Reflections on Palantir

> During the 2016-2020 era especially, telling people you worked at Palantir was unpopular. The company was seen as spy tech, NSA surveillance, or worse.

Lots of people still see it in exactly this way. The fact that Palantir IPO'd and is a magnet for investors doesn't contradict this. Palantir always had a reputation for champagne and surveillance.

So does AT&T and Verizon which would fall in the morally neutral category. Even big tech - Google/meta are probably classified as morally neutral but in reality gray areas. The US government probably has access to all that data - with our without warrants.

I also agree with his premise. There is really no gray area working for defense tech in the US. In my opinion people have a rather lopsided view of that. You would rarely find any other nation that where defense tech companies are turned away from job fairs. Kinda ridiculous.

>You would rarely find any other nation that where defense tech companies are turned away from job fairs. Kinda ridiculous.

Probably because US MIC is weird political place. On one hand, it's turns out really cool tech and US needs defense. On other hand, who are we defending from and why are spending all this money on world police when we have a ton of internal problems? Throw in some pork barrel in there to add to political stuff.

When people post memes about "You are about to find out why US doesn't have free healthcare." with some overwhelming American firepower equipment in the image, it's not hard to see why a lot of people find it a grey area.

> On other hand, who are we defending from and why are spending all this money on world police when we have a ton of internal problems?

Because someone has to be this if you want the continuation of the post-WWII rules-based international order that underpins the entire global economy. The Department of Defense and US hegemony are essentially overhead that is the Least Bad Option to stop WWIII from kicking off or the world from fragmenting into spheres of influence (which is starting to happen already). Who else would do this and not screw over everyone else even worse? Russia? China?

Great. So Americans get to be the suckers propping up the decent lifestyles of the rest of the western world and much of Asia and the ME.

This country has a collapsing middle class, horrendously bad health outcomes, ever increasing amount of corruption and little chance to turn things around because of entrenched interests.

I can just picture the thought process going in your head(and many others) right now. If you hate it so much why dont you leave.

> Americans get to be the suckers propping up the decent lifestyles of the rest of the western world and much of Asia and the ME

America benefited greatly from this position though, it's just the gains have not been equally distributed, and one can make an argument that Americans simply vote for that outcome. It is very unclear to me how the situation of the middle class in the US becomes any better if the US gives up its leverage for Chinese to dictate the terms. FWIW pre-WW1 the US had even worse inequality while not propping up anyone's lifestyle abroad.

I think there's some clarification that needs to happen, though: what would it mean for "China to dictate the terms", and does that necessarily happen if the US "steps back" (and what does that mean?) In a charitable interpretation, the US remains an important trading, industrial, technological, and educational world power. Perhaps it might even keep the spending on worldwide surveillance (e.g. spy satellites). Geopolitical influence allows for many strategies.

Stepping back from enforcing post-WW2 world order means letting China, Russia, Iran to freely install their satellite and unfriendly-to-the-US regimes around the world, by force if needed. Which means access to the foreign markets will be curtailed for the US or otherwise "dictated" by other powers. It's hard to see how that leads to more prosperity for Americans, especially since the political forces trying to bring that about are also not very pro-"trading, industry, technology and education".

The GP says that they don't want to prop up foreign lifestyles because the middle class in the US is struggling but isolationism in the 21st century will not make things better for the US middle class. Nor for middle class of any other country really, although the GP doesn't care about those.

>Stepping back from enforcing post-WW2 world order means letting China, Russia, Iran to freely install their satellite and unfriendly-to-the-US regimes around the world, by force if needed.

The US isn't going anywhere. In fact China has serious structural problems that may make all this conversation pointless. But there needs to be some sort of pathway for the global south to move forward. If that involves having China rise up and then countries accepting that all they can do is play the US and China off of each other to get the best deals out of them then thats still a step forward. If climate change comes to pass it may not even matter. The US and the West is the cause for the majority of the historical pollution yet its the unprepared global south that will bear the worst brunt of climate change. So the best I am advocating for is that the global south take one step forward and hope they don't end up five steps backwards in the long run.

>The GP says that they don't want to prop up foreign lifestyles because the middle class in the US is struggling but isolationism in the 21st century will not make things better for the US middle class. Nor for middle class of any other country really, although the GP doesn't care about those.

As to improving the middle class, we need to understand the structural reasons why they are sinking. Decades of erosion to US institutions has led to a situation that can only change if things get really bad and the citizens really demand change..or the US elite are challenged with some real competition. I dont see how it can happen naturally in the US anymore. Every time people get fed up, there is a "release valve" or a distraction in the form of crumbs offered to people so that enough settle down or fixate on something else. We saw it after the "Occupy Wall Street Protests" with the beginning of the culture wars as well as the passing of Obamacare which eliminated the most barbaric provisions of health care in the US. It is not meaningful change but it calmed people down. This method will lead to decades of the elite retaining their leverage. I dont want to see my life pass before my eyes and no real reform ends up happening.

In terms of the second method of having the elite being challenged, We saw in the cold war how the US system had to prove itself and that led to a strong taxation on the wealthy, good institutions, positive movement for the middle class, all to show the Russians that the US led system is the best. There currently is no forcing function to return to that situation at this time.