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sschueller
GorbachevyChase
The company I worked for has a contract with them. My best guess as to why is that shareholders use their power over management to force publicly traded companies to funnel money into the pockets of their mafia friends. I can’t explain what actual business value the platform provides.
stingraycharles
I do know that they’re on pretty much all large organizations’ shortlist when they need any type of data intelligence, all of them note even remotely related to the type of intelligence the government has/needs.
And that they’re outrageously expensive as well but somehow still land a lot of these deals.
gjm11
I think there may be a bit less to that one than meets the eye. In Swiss law there's some kind of right-of-reply thing where if someone puts something about you in print and you think it's wrong you may be entitled to have some sort of response printed. And AIUI the way this works is that you go before a court and say "we want our response printed, please", and that's what Palantir's done in this case.
(Note 1: For all I know it may well be true that the reporting is 100% accurate and Palantir's claim to deserve a reply is 100% bullshit. I'm not saying they're in the right here! But I think the actual story is a bit less horrible than "Palantir is taking these guys to court because they didn't like their reporting" sounds without the relevant context. They're not, e.g., trying to get damages from the newspaper, or trying to get what they wrote retracted, or anything like that.)
(Note 2: I am not an expert on Swiss law or on this case, and I am accordingly not 100% confident of any of the above. In the unlikely event that whether I'm right about this matters to anyone reading, they should check it for themselves :-).)
crimsoneer
Indeed, assume this is the reply in question: https://blog.palantir.com/korrektur-wie-das-online-magazin-d...
sschueller
The goal of Palantir is clear here. Bleed a small newspaper of its finances using bullshit claims.
Also important to note that a Palantir exec sits on the board of Ringier (aka Blick) one of the two large media conglomerates in Switzerland.
Zigurd
What would the founders of Palantir know about bankrupting small journalistic ventures?
Oh.
throwaway27448
Weak authoritarians who don't understand how to govern seem to adore palantir
infinitewars
Now with Golden Dome, Palantir is a global security threat not just a national one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s...
Alive-in-2025
golden dome seems less useful by the day now that drones are the new unstoppable weapon of choice
palmotea
> golden dome seems less useful by the day now that drones are the new unstoppable weapon of choice
Your thinking is too black-and-white. The emergence of a new technology (drones) does not necessarily make previous technologies (ballistic missiles) obsolete or a non-threat.
What it means is the effective defensive system will need to be bigger and more capable.
And, IIRC, the ballistic missiles are still the more effective weapon in Ukraine and Iran. Long-range drones are easier to intercept cheaper interception technologies are catching up with them: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/10/what-are-the-ukrain....
bigyabai
Palantir has been integrated with global-scale ISR for several years, in the US.
themafia
Oracle 2.0.
tablets
Related meeting launching today about Palantir and the NHS - https://www.medact.org/event/briefing-launch-the-risks-of-pa...
mentalgear
Thiel - the dark data lord - tries to get his fingers in any data source imaginable.
graemep
The NHS is also heavily dependent on AWS.
basisword
We're not a serious country anymore. We build very little. We control very little. Three years ago the war in Ukraine broke out causing the energy price crisis and the short term solution was the government paying a portion of everyone's bills. Three years later we're in the same situation again thanks to the US and Israel's warmongering. Are we prepared? No. What's the solution? Freezing the price caps and paying a portion of peoples bills.
IshKebab
You say that as if a "serious" country would have a better solution. Which countries are "serious" in your view?
happymellon
In my opinion (not OP), a serious country would look at it's basic national security risks, and work to minimise them.
I'm not talking terrorism, far more basic than that.
Food, Energy, Transport Communications, Manufacturing.
Are you either able to be the provider of any of these if it really came down to it, or are you dependent on a single outside source?
Most countries will be unable to fulfill all of these, but they can mitigate by not being dependent on a single source, maybe working together in a union.
Russia has been an unreliable partner for energy for decades (if ever?), yet the UK yoked itself with them relying on their gas for energy instead of diversifying. We are doing it now but it has been far too late to mitigate the damage.
roryirvine
That's not really true. The UK has run an open economy for almost 200 years and has long had one of the most diverse sets of trading arrangements of any country in the world.
For domestic energy, it has never relied on Russia. Natural gas supplies are a roughly equal mix of domestic production, Norwegian pipeline imports, and LNG imports (primarily from the USA, but with no restriction on switching to other providers if needed). Yes, there was a spike in global LNG prices due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine but that was driven by other countries seeking to replace Russian imports.
The same goes for the other areas you mentioned - food, transport, communications, and manufacturing. All have vast diversity of supply, with robust supply chains. None of them are remotely close to being dependent on a single external source.
undefined
Alan_Writer
Threat to UK security??? lol
Is a threat to everyone on earth. Palantir is the real Skynet. They are developing everything they can to control and surveil the population at all levels. And the founder is evil, and he knows it.
US-Israeli cybersecurity-AI-related infrastructure is crazy but not good for the world.
__MatrixMan__
Obviously, just look at what the Palantir stones did to Saruman and Denethor. They're a corrupting force, both in the middle-earth case and in the our-earth case.
Thiel has made no secret of his intent to use technology to dispense with that pesky democracy problem that billionaires have, and Palantir is pretty obviously his attempt to do just that. It's a reductio-ad-absurdum argument against listening to your citizens:
You put it in the hands of a populist demagogue, the power to apply hyper-targeted pain to their enemies amplifies their darker tendencies, and when evil happens you say: "look, the people can't be trusted." Meanwhile, you use it to direct the pointy end of the state's stick towards people you don't like (because the demagogue is too lazy to actually use those hyper-targeting features themself) so you can interfere with democratic attempts to limit your power without bothering to pay for the pepper spray.
Nobody in their right mind would want their government anywhere near it.
Calavar
I still don't understand why Theil and Karp decided to name their surveillance tech company after a device that is best known for being used by an evil dark lord to decieve and corrupt. It's like the Mitchell and Webb skit "are we the baddies" except they're the ones who designed the uniforms with skulls on them.
thatguy0900
Because it's funny and they genuinely don't care whether or not they're bad guys
undefined
0x3f
Well, it's not inherently any more evil than Fanta, is it?
ljm
I don't think you have to understand why they made that decision, you just have to understand who they are and what they believe in. Just have a look at what they talk about, and what they are quoted as saying.
Then it will start to make sense.
Manuel_D
It'd help make your point to actually share the ominous quotes you're referring to.
b800h
[flagged]
groby_b
I'm not sure you can describe somebody who supports ICE in its current incarnation, who profits from surveillance of vulnerable populations, who believes in revenge (cf Gawker), who abuses wealth (NZ citizenship shenanigans) as "a very thoughtful Christian", unless you do a lot of definitional work on "Christian".
Talking about the antichrist doesn't make you Christian.
skciva
A very thoughtful Christian..seems his actions differ a lot from my interoperation of the faith.
BLKNSLVR
Sounds deranged to me. Like, seriously, has had a psychotic break from reality.
FridgeSeal
> constantly talks about the anti christ and getting rid of democracy
“He’s just got a quirky sense of humour”
Where does this inclination to completely brush off what is pretty clearly exceedingly weird and concerning behaviour come from?
throwaway27448
I think that's more about trying to attract christian rubes than it is reflective of his actual humor
zh3
Yes, when it makes the front page of the FT (2 days ago) you know there's some interesting stuff going on. The whole article is worth a read (I didn't known JD Vance's career was "largely bankrolled by Thiel").
>US tech billionaire and Maga donor Peter Thiel is starting a series of closed-door lectures about the antichrist in Rome on Sunday, putting him on a collision course with Pope Leo XIV, the Catholic Church’s first American pontiff....
* https://www.ft.com/content/fc1e7e9a-9d5d-4217-b9b2-38069eb11...
alterom
>Thiel apparently gives talks about the Antichrist
You forgot to mention the part where Thiel tells, in all seriousness, that the Antichrist is on Earth, now, and may literally be Greta Thunberg [1].
And that's one of the reason Greta Thunberg must be opposed.
> He's actually a very thoughtful Christian
That's one way to upsell "deranged".
Thoughtful he is (as many lunatics are).
As far as religious aspects go, him losing faith in democracy after women and "benefits recipients" got the right to vote[2] doesn't sound very Christian-like to my ears.
Neither does his argument to end affirmative action[3], if you read it carefully, but that's a whole another can of worms.
> following the works of Rene Girard.
Ah yes, the fine fellow who (like Thiel) sees religion as a technology to manage humans by designating sacrificial scapegoats, which is the Girard's final solution to all problems.
In Girard's (and Thiel's) view, scapegoating isn't only an emergent outcome, it is necessary to stave off the end of the world.[3]
Thiel's support of Trump and his influence and backing of the Heritage Foundation / Project 2025 is very consistent with this philosophy.
Trump/Project 2025 make scapegoats out of immigrants, DEI, minorities, trans people, women who don't dedicate their lives to being breeding machines, ... - the list goes on.
So, in Thiel, we have:
- a gay man (who destroyed the paper that outed him out of spite) who thinks women are not just ewww, but are the reason democracy failed and is antithetical to freedom and are to blame for the Great Depression. And one of them (Greta Thunberg) is literally the Antichrist, in all likelihood.
- a white German raised in apartheid South Africa[5], in a city described as "more German than Germany" in 1976 where "Heil Hitler!" salutes were still the norm [6], who thinks that affirmative action has never been a good idea and was utterly unnecessary by the 1990s in the US because, quote [3][7]: “There are almost no real racists . . . in America’s younger generation”, and whose politics have declared "DEI" as an enemy. Here's a reminder that DEI stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
- a Christian who sees Christianity as an instrument of "political theology". See, aside from "let's make scapegoats" Girard, he has been heavily influenced by the writing of Carl "Hitler is good for us" Schmitt[8]. Schmitt was not just a Nazi, but a jurist who provided legal (and moral) basis for Hitler's power grab.
- a self-proclaimed "Libertarian" whose primary source of fortune is selling totalitarian surveillance products to governments
We have that person effectively controlling the US policy and executive actions (Thiel has groomed JD Vance into vice presidency[9]).
I don't see any signs that Thiel has a sense of humor at all, dark or otherwise.
But the universe in which he gets to do all that and be called a "very thoughtful Christian" sure does.
----
[1] https://theconversation.com/peter-thiel-thinks-greta-thunber...
[2] https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...
[3] https://stanfordmag.org/contents/the-case-against-affirmativ...
[4] https://thenewinquiry.com/the-scapegoating-machine/
[5] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/26/elon-musk...
[6] https://www.nytimes.com/1976/10/30/archives/southwest-africa...
[7] https://www.ft.com/content/cfbfa1e8-d8f8-42b9-b74c-dae6cc618...
[8] https://peripateticpastor.com/2025/02/18/a-totalitarian-bent...
[9] https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-libertarian-tech-ti...
farisa_lives
[dead]
ZeroGravitas
You could probably do a series of parody 007 trailers and insert clips of a different Palantir leadership team member saying insane shit in interviews as the Bond villain in each one.
qweiopqweiop
Can someone explain why Palantir are seen as such a threat? My understanding is their product is a PowerBI++ and they don't host any user data themselves. Are people scared of backdoors?
vrganj
Two Reasons:
1) It holds deeply sensitive data and does so in the US. In times of increased mistrust of the US, many (including myself) see that as a risky choice.
2) Speaking of mistrust in America and American corporations, have you heard their execs talk? It's absolute cuckoo-town:
> If they are not scared, they don’t wake up scared, they don’t go to bed scared, they don’t fear that the wrath of America will come down on them, they will attack us. They will attack us everywhere.
Well, you've convinced me. I'm scared of America, I'm scared of American companies and I'm scared of your company in particular.
Good job, I guess?
qweiopqweiop
Are you sure they hold sensitive data themselves though? My understanding was they integrate their tools with customers own data and don't have access to it themselves (at least in theory).
Of course I agree that quote is insane and you can dislike them for political reasons, but I want to understand the technological fears and see if any are unfounded.
sizero
The article mentions “while the underlying data may remain under the MoD’s control, any insights derived from that data do not. The implications of this, the insiders say, are far-reaching, especially because of the vast quantity of personal and other data the company has access to across UK government departments.”
iinnPP
Part of the core offering is data washing.
crimsoneer
they most definitely do not, and especially not on-prem, national security systems like are being discussed here. They sell software.
https://www.palantir.com/palantir-is-still-not-a-data-compan...
mborch
Deployments can be on-prem or cloud-based depending on needs and constraints.
gib444
Stop sealioning
undefined
hedgedoops2
My reading of [1] is that Palantir does data fusion. Their software, when installed on an organization's peripheral systems by their FDEs, centralizes all the org's data (within the org - not at palantir), and allows the org's management to do analyses on the pool.
I'm guessing that people are scared that the state will install one big palantir instance on all its systems. So that anything any part of the state learns about you, in any context or interaction, can be effortlessly used against you in every other context (perhaps via parallel construction in a lawsuit).
Basically, the fear would be that palantir makes mass surveillance data actionable, fuses surveillance programs, and incorporates most IT into mass surveillance programs.
The government would become less like a series of seperate agencies, more like a big consciousness that knows things (knows centrally, everything it was told anywhere).
Note this is just my interpretation of the fear.
Its fuzzy. Others may know more about palantir than me and thus have a more precise and grounded concern.
[1] https://archive.ph/6ljwy#selection-2539.194-2539.400
See also: https://redlib.privadency.com/r/Futurology/comments/4o02p3/o...
thatguy0900
Even if the software is mundane I don't think most people should want their country offloading sensitive spy stuff to a guy who's obsessed with the antichrist to the extent the Vatican itself is complaining he's going to Rome and giving secret speeches about it.
efxhoy
I’ve only had their platforms explained to me by them (palantir) at a conference but the mental model that stuck with me was more of an operating system than a single tool. Think AWS managed services + databricks + whatever library of ready made intelligence software they have already built for others.
They also have “forward deployed engineers” to help organizations actually use the platform. It looked complicated enough to probably be completely useless without these specialists, even in a “self hosted” setup.
The managed hosting also seems like a major selling point so many deployments that probably should be self hosted probably aren’t because muh managed services added value.
And the backdoors of course. There is no way it isn’t full of plausibly deniable “metrics endpoints” that helpfully spew out all the internal data if the right key comes knocking. There’s no way it’s auditable at the level of detail you would need compared to the value of the data and the sophistication of the potential attacker (NSA).
rainworld
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maxwell#Distribution_of...
It’s just the latest implementation of a winning formula.
undefined
stefan_
For a company that tries exclusively to sell to people that are very far removed from the use (government), yet have onerous reporting standards for all spending (government), there sure is very little independent reporting on the efficacy of whatever it is they are even selling. Even the contract with NHS was heavily censored. So frankly I oppose it on that ground alone.
empath75
The United States is no longer a reliable ally.
That is the reality that the world is having to adapt to. Even when Trump is gone, it will take a long time to rebuild that trust.
aunty_helen
You shouldn’t assume trust will naturally just regrow. This may be it, we may have passed peak USA.
munk-a
Hence the Carney strategy up here in Canada. We can realize in hindsight that we were far too dependent on a single ally. We're diversifying - and even if America wants to become reliable again we've learned and will (hopefully) never be so dependent again.
In the post WW2 era most western countries grew lazy about sovereignty due to America's open-handed approach - this has been a wake up call and has severely lowered America's soft-power globally.
goku12
Would you trust Palantir if you're I'm the US?
skciva
Surely this time around, technological advancements in the name of "national security" won't end up used on its citizens ;)
Genuinely a bit shocked at the naivety on HN on this topic but maybe thats a misunderstanding on my part. Happy to be shown otherwise. Alex Karp, if you're reading this, please don't send your fent laced urine spraying drones after me!
GorbachevyChase
No longer? Never was. The Epstein Alliance does not have your interest at heart. Whatever comes after those oligarchs decay will probably be worse.
mhlansx
The history of Palantir:
Christine Maxwell and Alan Wade found Chiliad, a database surveillance application that was used in the FBI. Then Alan Wade became CIO at the CIA. Then In-Q-Tel (CIA) co-founded Palantir with Thiel.
Karp, who was at Haverford college with Epstein's neighbor Lutnick, became the philosophical ideologue for Palantir.
With these overt and easily verifiable connections it is beyond belief that any European state would even consider using Palantir. The governments do not even work any better with all that surveillance software, they work worse than 20 years ago. So even the "we need it" argument is a fallacy.
PeterStuer
"it is beyond belief that any European state would even consider using Palantir".
Germany's PM was formerly at BlackRock. What exactly do you find so hard to believe?
einpoklum
Note that "UK Security" and "safety of people in the UK" are very distinct things. But - exposure to whatever Palantir does is very likely bad for the second regardless of whether or not it's bad for the first.
Joker_vD
> Note that "UK Security" and "safety of people in the UK" are very distinct things.
"Everything in the name of man, everything for the good of man!" — The 3rd Program of the CPSU, 1961. As the joke went, "and if you get to visit the Party Congress in Moscow, you will even get to see that very man!"
spot5010
I feel like there’s a lesson to be learnt by reading Lord of the Rings and seeing what happens to Saruman and Denethor.
mystraline
Yep, Palantir of NOTHANKS.
(Play on words of Palantir of Orthanc)
sifar
The corruption of LoTR is the saddest part here.
iheartbiggpus
Why do the worst companies have the best names.
A_D_E_P_T
Palantir isn't a good name. It's a disastrously bad one, if you ask me. It's a constant scandal as every five minutes somebody gets the bright idea that "ackshually the Palantir were a tool for evil made by a demon!!"
They're never able to live it down. It always comes up. And it makes them seem, in a way, careless.
gzread
It's a great name if your target customer base is people who want to be evil by surveilling everything. Behold my next company, "Eye of Sauron LLC"
munk-a
Nah - that customer base would much rather a mean-nothing name like "Salesforce". The real evil people don't revel so much in their evilness they're much more in the "ends justify the means" camp where they can try and hide their evilness from their conscience. Nobody wants to wear a pin saying "I am, in fact, a terrible person that the world would be better without."
Cpoll
Ackshually the Palantir were made by the Elves of Valinor, and weren't made as a tool for evil.
In fact, there's a very interesting theme there: The Palantir are only as useful as their users are wise. The power to see is disastrous if you don't know where to look and how to interpret what you see.
If they named it with that in mind, I'd say it's a very thoughtful name, and a prescient caution. But I doubt it.
Steltek
It was a powerful tool made for good but trivially corrupted to serve evil. It's a perfect description of the real world thing, IMO.
XorNot
You're talking about it. Right now along with a solid dozen other people as the only comments on this thread.
People barely understand what the company does, but boy do they want to tell you all about the name.
It's marketing gold. Because rather then "who was that? Some firm named something corp" instead you're spending 5 minutes reinforcing how bad the name is..just building a ton of word association games for a name derived from a well known fiction work and really building up the message that the company is named Palantir and they sell products to the government.
epistasis
At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from the classic sci-fi novel Don't Invent The Torment Nexus.
dlev_pika
Fascism puts a heavy emphasis on aesthetics
navane
They're better at selling ideas than having fleshed out ideas. One could say they sell before they build.
octopoc
How do you square that with Germany’s miraculous economic recovery pre WII? Obviously they were doing something right. It took every other major power on the planet to take them down.
bilbo0s
Italian fascists did have fashion forward uniforms.
So did the German Nazis back then now I think about it.
Maybe there is something with cult-like thinking, fascist or not, where the aesthetics seduces more people into wanting to be a part of it all?
hermitcrab
No doubt the smart uniforms, the rallies, the flags, the songs etc were a factor in many young men joining the SS.
undefined
scarecrowbob
There's a bit of writing in that direction if you're curious. I like Benjamin quite a but and have gotten a lot out of his thinking. Here's the wiki-level entry to it:
energy123
They like purity. Purity of the body (fitness and lifestyle) and purity of society (regimentation, conformity, single race, single ideology, single sexuality, standardized architecture).
It's neurological. They feel emotional disgust if the regimentation isn't there.
rsynnott
Oh, it was 100% marketing.
It's not just fascists, either; totalitarian regimes _in general_ tend to be very keen on this sort of thing.
captainbland
Honestly it's really weird that it was ever allowed to get this stage. Their leadership has been pretty "mask off" for a good while now.
spiderfarmer
That's what you get when decisions are made by people who don't understand anything about the stuff they vote on.
coldtea
...but understand and appreciate bribes very well
spiderfarmer
You only need to buy one or two to get it on the agenda, then everybody votes along party lines, on stuff they don't understand. It's not even that expensive.
_joel
Just ask Wes Streeting and Peter Mandelson.
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Palantir is dragging a small independent Swiss investigative newspaper to court because they reported[1] about Palantir getting the door slammed in their face in by several Swiss government agencies including the military over the last years. No one wants this turd of a company.
[1] https://www.republik.ch/2026/02/18/how-tenaciously-palantir-...