If I didn’t spend 5 years obsessed with Palantir, reading everything I could get my hands on, meeting people who work there, understanding the reason they exist and what motivates them, I probably would’ve heard something like this from AOC and carried on with my day thinking what she’s saying is true. But I have put in the time, and it makes listening to stuff like this totally surreal.
Either AOC is knowingly making shit up to misrepresent what Palantir is, or she’s just unqualified to speak seriously about these things. I don’t even feel like unpacking this stuff does anything anymore. The information is out there to be consumed and understood. Anyone who takes the time can learn that Palantir’s very existence is to be a force to protects the American people against the sort of corruption AOC suggests they wish to contribute to.
Using Palantir over some other data integration software (that definitely would’ve been built) makes it nearly impossible to break the law without getting caught. Can it be abused? Sure. Anything can. But study the architecture, and understand that it’s nearly impossible to use Palantir illegally without getting caught. You’d rather the government use something like Palantir over something else that wasn’t structured from first principles to protect civil liberties.
“Yeah right, that’s just what they want to convince you of so you’ll let them get in there and start breaking the law.” Study the founders. Read their books (I think all of them except for Stephen Cohen have written one). Read everything I’m going to share below too.
Alex Karp rips into the Palantir conspiracy theorists:
“You're attacking the person who's protecting you— idiot.”
“You may hate this, but there's one person protecting your rights to be a conspiracy theorist that actually has a seat at the table, and that person is me.”
“You may not want to hear that truth, but it's fucking true.”
“Maybe do a little more reading before you pontificate on your absurd and obviously ill-formed and many times stupid opinions.”
“It's like fucking so stupid.”
Via @tbpn
@gothburz Stopped reading at the word surveillance. You realize government is only half of the company right? this retarded narrative ignores billions in yearly revenue from commercial
@piscesgutt@bestofbreakin Genuinely don’t get how people think this, if you had gone thru the exact same things as him you would do the exact same thing