Comment

Comment by mrlongroots

I think Palantir is highly misunderstood.

As a technology, it is just database joins. It is just that they are able to pull in data from everything from S3 to SAP to ArcGIS, and provide analytics, visualization etc. on top to provide global visibility into any system.

The visibility can be "show me all illegal immigrant clusters" or "show me bottlenecks and cost sinks in CAHSR construction".

When we offload the moral impetus for society from politics to technology, we also squander control. Tech is tech and can be used for both good and bad. It is not that a strategy that aims to cap downsides by preventing the proliferation of technology is inherently bad, but it is doomed to fail. The evidence for dysfunction is not the existence of Palantir but in the failure of the watchdog layer of society (also called the government).

Discussion

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton