1. As per usual, the things that make palantir well known not even close to being the most dubious things.
2. I agree that the rank and file of palantir is no different from typical sv talent.
3. The services -> product transition was cool, I didn't weigh it as much as should've, but I did purchase fomo insurance after they ipo'd
4. The shadow hierarchy was so bad, it's impossible to figure out who you actually needed to talk to.
Edit: aha, found. https://doctorow.medium.com/how-palantir-will-steal-the-nhs-...
"Palantir is one of the most sinister companies on the global stage, a company whose pitch is to sell humans rights abuses as a service. The customers for this turnkey service include America’s most corrupt police departments, who use Palantir’s products to monitor protest movements.
Palantir’s clients also include the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a federal agency who rely on Palantir’s products for their ethnic cleansing..."
Some approximate stats:
Mexico has 45,000~ murders a year. The United States has about 25k a year.
The population of Mexico is 130m. The population of the US is 350m.
One can't derive the distribution of motivations that bring immigrants from these statistics. That said, I'd call that an alarming about of horrific violence. It's safe to say it's not evenly distributed over the whole of Mexico. It's easy to imagine being motivated to move by those statistics/events.
Like everything, it's probably a spectrum of motivations. More opportunities, better schools, fewer decapitations?
The big picture comes down to supply and demand. Today's supply is from specific countries: Venezuela, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Brazil, a few others. Each country has a different rationale, but generally it boils down to violence, poverty, and Putin. Not necessarily in that order, and often it's all three.
"Demand" is due to the congestion backlog in the US immigration courts. A prospective refugee might not see a judge for a year or two. During this period they have to be paroled in and granted work authorization.
Most applicants today aren't genuine refugees. This was not the case in prior decades because there was no backlog. Awareness of this loophole makes the US a much more practical and appealing destination than it used to be.
The backlog, in turn, stems from the congressional paralysis on immigration. For 20 years the nativists blocked bill after bill, despite large bipartisan support for reform. They did so because every compromise also included a guest-worker program and other immigration benefits.
More recently, there was a deal on the table with no GWP and no immigration benefits. In previous years, it would have been a nativist's dream. It was blocked by the Trump campaign in order to "run on the issue." [2]
A large fraction of the 2024 immigration numbers is due to Trump, maybe as much as 50% or 80%.
For the bigger picture, consider the fact that the exodus in Venezuela and Syria was started by Putin. He gives you the flu (waves of fleeing migrants,) blames the aspirin (the "globalist" Western governments who are forced to handle them,) then sells you the Ivermectin (Trump, Orban, Le Pen, AfD, etc.)
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/07/09/before-co...
[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/senate-republicans...
One of the best things the US can do for its economy IMO is get back to being better at brain drain, and helping naturalize the people ready to work hard in general. They make jobs and help drive the American spirit because they basically have to. That's a tough message for people in struggling industries & towns, but it's hard to make a competitive & growing American economy when the job makers and doers are instead growing the economies of competing countries.
As a job maker, successful scientist, OSS supporter, & thankful refugee granted citizenship, immigration has become simultaneously one of the most American things to me... and one of the most bizarre.