Slack messages, interviews with current and former works paint picture of company in turmoil.
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Palantir employees are talking about company’s “descent into fascism”
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The company was explicitly founded to enable a surveillance panopticon in order to protect the interests of American oligarchs.
To wit: descent?!
To wit: descent?!
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Can't think of a more despicable way to tarnish the great works of J.R.R. Tolkien than to name this company after the seeing stones in The Lord of the Rings.
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There are several public companies named after things in Tolkien's universe. Their founders clearly never got the point of the story, and need lectured on that Sauron was not the misunderstood good guy.
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Turns out when you write about evil in the east and the “Flame of the West,” well, some people are going to read what they want into it!
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pyrategriff
Smack-Fu Master, in training
These folks didn't create the ability for the United States military to blow up a school full of little girls.
These folks created a convenient excuse for our fearless leaders to brush it off with.
These folks created a convenient excuse for our fearless leaders to brush it off with.
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That sounds a lot like "cancel culture" that scare-quote conservatives invented (see: Satanic Panic, or thr Purple Teletubby)--and then when actually used to actually intervene in the market, screamed bloody murder about being "cancel culture".Here is an amazing and simple solution
If you don't like the product your company is making -- don't work there!
OMG! I'm more disturbed by people that work for sugar loaded soda makers, don't even get me started on the millions of pounds of fat added to people by the chocolate makers!
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The palantir aren’t inherently corrupting, only when you use them to talk to Sauron.
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No wonder, Thiel himself is the chairman of the board and together with Karp and Cohen they still command 49,99 of the voting power through a special arrangement.
Now, Thiel himself is nuts: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/10/peter-thiel-lectures-antichrist
Karp and Cohen are not much better, they share the same Mad Philosophers King outlook on the world. This kind of non inclusive fear driven ideology never went anywhere good. And yes, the guys in the nice boss hats were the last occurrence of that.
Now, Thiel himself is nuts: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/10/peter-thiel-lectures-antichrist
Karp and Cohen are not much better, they share the same Mad Philosophers King outlook on the world. This kind of non inclusive fear driven ideology never went anywhere good. And yes, the guys in the nice boss hats were the last occurrence of that.
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At this point I'm convinced they have this challenge where they read all classic fantasy and sci-fi books and interpret them exactly the opposite way as the author intended. For example, after I re-read the whole foundation series I'm convinced that Musk thinks he's Hari Seldon.
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Elon Musk could have been a Tony-Stark-like rock-star inventor and stuck to spearheading pro-public technologies and travel to other planets. Alex Karp could have been a national hero by developing algorithms to find pedos and put them in prison. Mark Zuckerberg could have created a platform that didn't profit off of conflict, insecurities, and political tribalism. Instead, we got the very worst version of each one of them. This is a sign of the times, and the worst aspects of our political climate and our form of Capitalism.
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SubWoofer2
Ars Tribunus Militum
I too am baffled by this. The self-reflection appears to be not that their employer enables fascism, but that it too conspicuously is at the forefront of enabling fascism.
Sunlight does good things when it shines into dark places. One can only hope that Sam Gamgee was correct, with his thoughts that "The Shadow is only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."
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I hope all these companies and the people who lead them realize there will be a change in administration someday (assuming we're ever allowed to have nice things again).
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I love Banks' Culture series. Fortunately I don't think our tech bro wannabe feudal lords can corrupt their memory--because there no over-arching villain or hero for them to be interested in and completely misunderstand.
Why do you think they're buying bunkers and entire islands, and speed-running the end of civilization? The goal is to be on top and flee right as the roof collapses. Seriously read that link (it is The Guardian).
Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked: “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the Event?”
The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr Robot hack that takes everything down.
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This is only ONE of MANY things that Bush Jr. (and his administration) needs to be held to account for!
They had a mandate (and arguably a fully ethical one) to go after Bin Laden, and his co-conspirators.
They very much did NOT have a mandate (or anything else) to shred the constitution, in the process!
Worse yet, a lot of the sketchy, and likely unconstitutional, stuff they went for actually got turned into policy, regulations, and even law.
Not to mention squandering the lives of tens of thousands of service members, and many BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars on attacking a country where the terrorists WEREN’T!
The Shrub’s administration has a lot to answer for! And I, for one, would still like to see them brought to justice. But, more importantly, a roll-back of all the bad stuff that they perpetrated.
I highly recommend watching the Frontline documentary on the Bush Jr. administration. It is one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever watched. Well, at until the FIRST Trump administration . . .
ETA: word fixes
They had a mandate (and arguably a fully ethical one) to go after Bin Laden, and his co-conspirators.
They very much did NOT have a mandate (or anything else) to shred the constitution, in the process!
Worse yet, a lot of the sketchy, and likely unconstitutional, stuff they went for actually got turned into policy, regulations, and even law.
Not to mention squandering the lives of tens of thousands of service members, and many BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars on attacking a country where the terrorists WEREN’T!
The Shrub’s administration has a lot to answer for! And I, for one, would still like to see them brought to justice. But, more importantly, a roll-back of all the bad stuff that they perpetrated.
I highly recommend watching the Frontline documentary on the Bush Jr. administration. It is one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever watched. Well, at until the FIRST Trump administration . . .
ETA: word fixes
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Of course, this didn’t begin with ICE and the murder of Iranian school children:
https://bpr.studentorg.berkeley.edu...and-the-israelification-of-homeland-security/
What an empire does overseas doesn’t stay overseas.
Aside from those horrific issues, this:
https://bpr.studentorg.berkeley.edu...and-the-israelification-of-homeland-security/
What an empire does overseas doesn’t stay overseas.
Aside from those horrific issues, this:
Is a dreadful calculation. To focus on just one prong of the many problems with this analysis by Karp, AI actually increases the need for the humanities, it doesn’t decrease it. And anyone who thinks that a digital panopticon would increase the power of working class voters (male or otherwise) has need of…well, more “humanities training”.
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Anecdotally, in the tech worker communities I'm a part of, there are members who work at lots of companies I think do ethically-dubious things- Google, Meta, Microsoft, etc. The one thing they seem to agree on when it comes to problematic employers is that Palantir is evil, and anyone who voluntarily works for them is either naive or morally bankrupt.
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They know it doesn’t increase the power of the working class. Note the language used: male voters. They’re selling fascism to men, and it works.
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Kinda annoyed by how the Palantíri get misrepresented in the article and some comments. No, the Palantíri weren't by themselves corrupting, but
Sauron used them as a tool to corrupt those who used them, and even then:
- He wasn't able to fully turn Denethor evil, only driving him mad
- Aragorn was able to confront Sauron through the Palantír and win, sort of
- The Palantíri were created by the good guys, long ago. Sauron merely was able to obtain one after the fall of Minas Ithil (later Minas Morgul)
- The book (possibly the appendices) states that Aragorn used the Orthac (Isengard) Palantír to surveil his realm after becoming king
is Sauron.
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None of those people could have even approached achieving the things you suggest because it would require them to be an exact anti-thesis of themselves.
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For someone that accurately predicted the incentives of industrial society (see: Tolkien’s diatribes on the airplane and the bomb), he was incredibly inaccurate about the inherent incentives and corrupting nature of universal surveillance.
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Those other administrations love this surveillance shit just as much as trump. They might direct it towards someone else but in the end this shit was built-up over decades.
You can see the same in EU where EC is pushing for mass surveillance everywhere and all the time (chat control, age verification, "EU intelligence agency coordination" and so on.
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Lucky and Andruil are right there along with Palantir - racing to the bottom to enable a corpofascist surveillance state with full stack control from lowest to highest echelon.
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I know I'm just yelling at a cloud here but we really need congress to step in and protect personal liberties and our democratic principles. It's the only way.
Palantir is just one company. There's Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, RTX, Anduril, NSA, and many MANY more large and small contractors and internal government agencies building software and hardware to spy, track, control and destroy.
We can't expect workers at these companies to risk their careers to speak up. Some will, most won't. We need our elected representative to grow a f*ing backbone and defend democracy. Make it clear what's allowed and not allowed. Support whistleblowers. Reign in executives who abuse their power. All those good things America used to stand for.
Palantir is just one company. There's Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, RTX, Anduril, NSA, and many MANY more large and small contractors and internal government agencies building software and hardware to spy, track, control and destroy.
We can't expect workers at these companies to risk their careers to speak up. Some will, most won't. We need our elected representative to grow a f*ing backbone and defend democracy. Make it clear what's allowed and not allowed. Support whistleblowers. Reign in executives who abuse their power. All those good things America used to stand for.
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I don’t know how to tell you that our Congress, comprised almost entirely by literal millionaires, is showing you their backbone right now.
It’s the exact same backbone that Peter, and Elon, and Palmer have, and it is not for you.
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ubercurmudgeon
Ars Tribunus Militum
Oh, that's what the Palantir logo is meant to look like. Here I was thinking it was a rat's anus.
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After all, they want immortality. The new generation of billionaires feel that it is within reach. The ironic thing about "occupying Mars" is that compared to Mars, Earth will still be an infinitely more habitable place after a nuclear holocaust
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If you're employed by that company in a capacity that's beyond, say, cleaning the floors or working in the cafeteria, you are 100% complicit in the crimes that are being committed. That extends to the animals at Raytheon, Lockmart, and all the other disgusting organizations that exist purely to create death and destruction.
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As a corporate tech drone myself, the companies I would personally refuse to work at for moral reasons are Palantir and all of the scummy gambling companies like Kalshi and DraftKings. These companies are so gross.
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This is Peter Thiel being a fascist dick.
Or to be more succinct: This is Peter Thiel.
Or to be more succinct: This is Peter Thiel.
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Imagine how bad Palantir has to be that people who work at Meta think they are the good guys in comparison. 'We subvert democracy at every turn and ruin the mental health of millions of people, but at least we aren't Palantir.'
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Humans are justification machines.
Our glorious advertising surveillance platform, their barbaric panopticon platform. Tale as old as time.
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They are nowhere near as concerned and alarmed as they should be.
They should be manoeuvring to neutralize Karp, who clearly is a dangerous sociopath, and to target their tools as their fascist clients.
Nothing short of that will do.
They should be manoeuvring to neutralize Karp, who clearly is a dangerous sociopath, and to target their tools as their fascist clients.
Nothing short of that will do.
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The palantir aren’t inherently corrupting, only when you use them to talk to Trump.
FIFY
Really? Am i wrong comparing Trump to Sauron?
Hmm maybe your right that's giving Darth Cheeto to much credit probably, graft and self dealing compared to true evil.
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yeah. they'll get right on that. as soon as this is done:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/federal-surveillance-tech-becomes-mandatory-161321992.html
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I don't know. Look how palantiris were being used in that universe. I think it's quite appropriate.
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