Palantir CEO Calls for Tech Patriotism, Warns of AI Warfare (bloomberg.com) 100
Palantir CEO Alex Karp warns of "coming swarms of autonomous robots" and urges Silicon Valley to support U.S. defense capabilities. In his book, "The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West," Karp argues that America risks losing its military edge to geopolitical rivals who better harness commercial technology.
He calls for the "engineering elite of Silicon Valley" to work with the government on national defense. The message comes as Palantir's stock has surged more than 1,800% since early 2023, pushing its market value above $292 billion -- exceeding traditional defense contractors Lockheed Martin and RTX combined. The company has expanded its military AI work since 2018, when it took over a Pentagon contract after Google employees protested their company's defense work.
He calls for the "engineering elite of Silicon Valley" to work with the government on national defense. The message comes as Palantir's stock has surged more than 1,800% since early 2023, pushing its market value above $292 billion -- exceeding traditional defense contractors Lockheed Martin and RTX combined. The company has expanded its military AI work since 2018, when it took over a Pentagon contract after Google employees protested their company's defense work.
Fascism (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Fascism (Score:5, Interesting)
Karp is as coherent as a soup sandwich. Someone who claims to be a socialist and marxist, but also owns a 200 bil dollar company and prattles on about the evils of "woke".
If he's a marxist, he's unlike any marxist I've heard of, and I did a minor in pol-sci and consider myself somewhat marxist-sympathetic myself (I think marx's use of adam smiths labor theory of value to map out the substructures of capitalism are brilliant. I dont necessarily agree with his take what we should do about it, because I think its a very different world than the mid 1800s, but his description of the inner workings of capitalism are shockingly logical and on point, even now)
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If he's a marxist, he's unlike any marxist I've heard of
Friedrich Engels, the rich factory owner who supported Marx and himself wrote a great part of the fundamental works of Marxism.
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If we accept Mussolini's definition (and we should, because he introduced fascism) then fascism and Marxism are not mutually exclusive. An example - the Soviet-style socialism/communism/whatever it was.
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Lenin saw the Communist Party as a highly committed intellectual elite who were committed to attaining this power by any means possible, including violence and revolution if necessary.
If the conditions of Russia in its backward state of development did not lead to socialism naturally, then, after coming to power, the Bolsheviks would legislate socialism into existence and would exercise despotic control to break public resistance. Thus, every aspect of the Soviet Union’s political, economic, cultural, and intellectual life came to be regulated by the Communist Party in a strict and regimented fashion that would tolerate no opposition.
You will be socialist, and if not straight to jail. Score too many points in a communist basketball game, believe it or not? jail. right to jail.
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Soviet style really wasn't Marxist though, at least not by the time Stalin was in charge. Communism had an end goal that was very different from fascism, but the Soviet leaders were clear that they only had a socialist republic and not actual communism. The end goal being that the workers own the means of production, whereas in fascism the end goal was that the state was in total control (though fascism has murky ideologies primarily because all of them were populist movements revolving around a personali
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Re:Fascism (Score:5, Informative)
Which is why Bernie Sanders is openly calling it an oligarchy.
"Professors Archon Fung of HKS and Lawrence Lessig of Harvard Law School say Trump’s brazen embrace of billionaire ruling partners could be an inflection point in America’s long slide toward rule by the wealthiest." ~ https://www.hks.harvard.edu/fa... [harvard.edu]
“Both parties have shifted well to the right, the Republicans almost off the spectrum. Respected conservative commentator Norman Ornstein described them, plausible, as a ‘radical insurgency’ that has largely abandoned parliamentary politics. Democrats now are mostly what used to be called ‘moderate Republicans.’ There’s ample evidence that most of the population, at the lower end of the income spectrum, is effectively disenfranchised – their representatives pay no attention to their opinions. Moving up the income ladder, influence increases slowly, but it’s only at the very top that it has real impact. Plutocracy masquerading as formal democracy.” ~ Noam Chomsky
Re:Fascism (Score:5, Interesting)
I havent agreed with everything old Chompy has said (I dislike immensely his take on the Ukraine war) but damn if I aint gonna miss the old boys wisdom when the innevitable happens (very soon I suspect, he's 96 and his health is failing) and he passes off this this mortal coil.
But he's got an eye for bullshit, and boy does he ever have a point on the Dems. Whilst individual dems (like AOC and Bernie) are still reliably left wing, the old guard are just as much a party of Wall Street elite as the Republicans (even if the GOP is a little more obnoxious about it, trying to hand over running the country to the tech-bros).
People are super disenfranchised. They want change, but the only change on offer has been hard-right, even though going that way is objectively against the self interest of the working and middle classes. People still do it because *something* has to change, and an old blowhard ranting about "elites" and "deep states" and nonsense like that at least *smells* like change, even if frankly it hasnt exactly been good change.
Re:Fascism (Score:4, Informative)
In retrospect, he was 100% right.
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Not every politician - there was 1 dissenter, Barbara Lee.
You're kidding, right? Or is that a joke?
The October 11, 2002 resolution that authorized President Bush to use force in Iraq passed the Senate by a vote of 77 to 23, and the House by 296 to 133.
133+23 = 156, 156 > 1
22 Democrat and 1 Independent senator voted against. 126 Democrats, 6 Republicans & 1 Independent (Bernie) congressman voted against.
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The amount of cognitive dissonance in this post is staggering, you lead off with people
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"Unelected Bureacrat" is a just a thought-stopping cliche way of saying "Public servent"
If you had to vote for every public servent, you'd be filling in 9 million ballots every 4 years.
But the public service always had a code that they DONT get involved in politics. Well until that recent executive order that just just got passed ending that.
Before we had a public service, now we really do have a "Deep state", courtesy of Trump. And yes, the Elites are in charge still. Even more so now that the most elite o
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i hardly think big pharma is going to pay Bernie Sanders for denouncing them, but,, hey trolling tell us we're on the right side, keep up with your abuse, I wouldn't want to be disappointed
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He's exactly right which is why people need to be dismissive. Neither Chomsky nor others have moved. They are steadfast and honorable people who don't need to move from an ethical stand point, you trolls on the other hand dance like cold drops on a hot surface
"
classism creates abuse and we can see that here
Re:Fascism (Score:4, Insightful)
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"but that's because he's consistently moving to the left."
Source: my ass
Re:Fascism (Score:5, Insightful)
Chomsky is always a bit weird when he's not doing linguistics, but here's mostly right on occasions.
However I think this overlooks a change in politics that is significant - the single topic voters had become very powerful. Ie, those who ignore all issues except for where the candidate stands on abortion; or the stance on gun control; or a stance on immigraion; etc. This is mostly US centric, and I think it's due to the defacto two party system. Each party must present a stance on all issues, and the voters can't just choose the anti immigration party who then gains 1/5th of vote in the governing coalition. Instead by choosing their anti abortion vote, they get saddled with the same party that has hundreds of other issues, many of which may hurt those same voters.
It's a problem for example when one wants strong fiscal conservatism but is also gay and doesn't want to vote for the anti-gay party merely to proect their pocket book. But then the party says that they'd love to have those fiscal converative votes but if they dump their anti gay stance they'll lose elections. This goes back and forth awhile until eventually they decide that fiscal conservatives are RINOs and should be ignored, censured, and ejected from the party. It works both ways, I'm not just picking on Republicans here: the Democrats seemed to be ignoring those favoring the Green party, assuming naively that they'd have to vote (D) eventually, and that backfired badly.
Overall, the defacto two party system means that fringe groups with extremist views end up being a recognized part of each party. In other countries such groups would exist but would never get any appreciable power.
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The problem is this isn't left versus right anymore. Left versus right is just divide and conquer while all our political parties are owned and controlled by upper class influences based on campaign contributions and political lobbying.
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the single topic voters had become very powerful.
No. Voters do not really matter as the elections are all rigged. Single topic issues are all propaganda designed to shut down your brain so you can be silenced. 'They' control the narrative and you thinking single topic voters matter is part of the narrative so you waste your time with stupid shit instead of dealing with the person positioning themselves to fully own you, the things you care about, and everything you have created.
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So would most other countries in existence. It's not a good definition. Major parts of Fascism are also nationalism, authoritarianism/totalitarianism and militarism. These parts probably seemed too obvious to mention to Mussolini.
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Corporatism is not, "corporations control government", it's, "government utterly dominates businesses and labor".
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By that definition the United States has been a fascist state for decades at least, regardless of who the president happened to be or which party he purported to represent.
Both Sides!
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By that definition the United States has been a fascist state for decades at least, regardless of who the president happened to be or which party he purported to represent.
No because you still had rule of law. Fascism is ultimately about ensuring the people in charge have all the power necessary to implement their vision. Laws serve as an expression of their vision, but are never a constraint.
That's what's changed, in the past American corporations had out sized influence in writing the law, but the law was still the law and if you violated it you had to deal with a relatively impartial legal system.
Now? The signals are clear, when it comes to the big players whether you get
Re:Fascism (Score:4, Insightful)
Mussolini, now he expected the corporations to be fully subservient to the state, an extension of his own body if you will, since he viewed himself as the "brain" of fascism. In his view, all of society exists to serve the fascist state, and that is the only justification for anybody's existence in it.
Kind of like a CEO who rules a private company. Except the company is the whole country with everything and everyone in it. And the decisions that the CEO makes have to be adapted in this setting. For example, if an employee/citizen doesn't perform satisfactorily, how do you fire them? Firing them means they get kicked out of the country, and the most efficient way to do that is to disappear them and kill them. Same with employees/citizens who speak up or complain about company policies. Same with employees/citizens who want to resign. You get the idea, that's Mussolini's fascism.
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Sounds like la Presidenta's fascism. He's already said he wanted to send Americans convicted of crimes to jails outside of the country. 'tis but a short step announce new class of crimes, mostly involving people against him.
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Benito Mussolini defined fascism as the merger of corporatism and the government.
More accurately he said "the initial stages of fascism should more correctly be called corporatism because it's the merger of state and corporate power".
The later stages of fascism were not nearly as pretty mind you.
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But the important thing to know is that Corporatism is not about corporations. Sure, they share the root 'corpus', but that's it. Corporatism is a structure for managing an economy. Command economies in particular.
The idea stems from Marx's reification - treating the nation as a single body (hence the corpo- root). Government breaks the economy down by industrial sector and has representatives from capital and labor
What a fucking moron (Score:4, Insightful)
HUH? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet your take away is that people approve...?
That makes no sense.
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Re:HUH? (Score:4, Insightful)
You're doing the math wrong. There is a majority (approving + indifferent, who'll do nothing) that gives the orange shitgibbon enough leeway to do what he wants.
Add to that the rule of thumb that one in a hundred of the unhappy will consider doing something, and you're having a pretty comfortable situation for the donold.
That he will last long enough to fuck up the US good is a very safe bet.
Re: What a fucking moron (Score:1, Flamebait)
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Of course, that is my point. Since nobody cares, shit will continue in the same direction.
No whining is warranted.
Re: What a fucking moron (Score:2)
Re: What a fucking moron (Score:2)
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Go ahead and good luck.
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Are you well? Digging her up to have sex is already demented, but you've probably picked worse than STDs off the corpse.
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Please prove this quantum theory that involves some parallel universe where the US population is "content" with current events?
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I already did. Most people either approve or don't care. Politically that defaults to acceptance of the current course, QED.
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Since when is a 250+ character quote "unknown"?
The poll is recent, sampled randomly and representative.
If you dislike the fact that one can draw inferences about the population from a sample, take it up with Kolmogorov, not me.
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quinnipack university, apparently they are among the ones with good standing.
https://poll.qu.edu/poll-relea... [qu.edu]
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Here's one more for you to despair over:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/6... [gallup.com]
Dismantling democracy apparently pays off well.
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I'm expecting that the fallout will eventually catch up with everyone that has IQ over, say, 85-90. But by that time it will be hard to recover.
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Oh good, more government debt. No wonder they're supposedly content.
Fucking bread and circuses.
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Worked last time for the morons. Will probably work this time as well.
Also, I read he'll be dumping "hundreds of millions of dollars" to friendly media as a part of "anti-drug" PR campain targeting his fellow kids' drug habit.
Here: https://bsky.app/profile/atrup... [bsky.app]
There'll be a lot of positive coverage of this imbecile, whether the saner among the brave and the free like it or not...
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Sure, there are some fine nuances that one can dig for.
But all in all, the poll numbers aren't really different from the happy/unhappy counts in the Biden years.
So we will not see anything radical... Yet.
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Voters, on average, are abysmally stupid and easy to manipulate. What else is new?
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Sadly, not much, except that vote manipulators have gone way up from the reagan-thatcher level ruthlessness.
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Does not fix that you are stupid though. Does not fix that you are self-destructive either.
Incidentally, that is not a "view" (that is just you trying to manipulate), that is an analysis.
oh look (Score:2, Insightful)
TL,DR: "Give me more money" (Score:5, Informative)
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https://finance.yahoo.com/news/palantir-stock-drops-after-report-trump-administration-is-eyeing-large-defense-budget-cuts-214020340.html
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Not even subtle.
The money is implied.
It was the metric fuckton of FUD that was not subtle.
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"Give me more money for killer robots."
WORK with WHICH government? (Score:5, Interesting)
Palantir is that part of the US that does with the US Government those things that the intelligence and SMUs do for other countries. The US just has a better PR program. SO, for example, when Israel's NSO Group does something it gets that long-ass title. But when the US's Palantir corp does something there's no need to say "US". When the Israeli Pegaus software.... but when Palantir hacks a nation it's just a corporatoin.
Palantir is evil. It's hard to call an entire corporation evil, but it is. They have good people there. I have two friends who are devs there and they're not evil... but they know they are working on evil things, and we don't email from work to each other.
Peter Thiel is evil. He destroyed an entire publishing outfit for... them having told the truth. Most of us don't care if he's gay or not but somehow this became a raison d'etre to kill Gawker Media. Why? How did this improve the world? I'm assuming you fellow /. readers agree that improving the world is a good thing and "taking down" media that speaks truth is not a good thing.
When the CEO of Palantir talks about sucking "the government's" parts he means the US Government. He never says US. See paragraph 1. Easy to blame the Israelis... whose software is used throughout the US Federal Government, states, and police departments. But ... he just says "government" and the media laps it up and repeats it.
China does the same thing. So does AU, UK, NZ, CA so we got all Five Eyes Countries and the Chinese and the Russians and the Israelis. Wanna bet Turkey and Saudi ("Kill Kashogi violently") and Somalia and the rest don't? They all do. But hey let's shelack over that.
You may think "Oh well it's the US Government so 'we' are the 'good guys' so it's all ok." It is not."
Everything in this post I stand by as truth and fact. I've avoided using pejorative words. This is YOUR opportunity to STAND UP and say "Yeah that's right" or "No you're full of crap; the US Government is awesome and Elon Skunk is awesome and Doggy will give me $5K and Trump wears trucker hats so he's cool."
Your call, repliers and mods.
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Spot the contradiction.
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Spot the contradiction.
Which end of the gun is the defensive end again? Just curious. According to some here, there isn’t one.
Kitchen knives and baseball bats kill more than assault rifles in America. Should Ronco and Rawlings be considered weapons manufacturers now? Because they seem to be working to make “evil” things instead of kitchen and sports tools.
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Kitchen knives and baseball bats kill more than assault rifles in America
Extraordinary claims require some sort of proof.
Re: WORK with WHICH government? (Score:2)
The name is warning enough. Anyone working for someone in a company named after an object that bends the viewers to the will of Sauron and only shows what he wants you to see, doesn't have a lot of principles or is far too trusting.
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It’s all in the name you say?
Oh, if only the Oracle could have only seen how much of a greedy asshole Larry was gonna be and prove you right.
Gawker was terrible (Score:2)
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Oh it's worse than that, when the iCloud leaks aka the "fappening" happened Gawker was all kinds of upset for those poor
The Old Playbook (Score:5, Insightful)
Then sell everyone the solution.
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"They're eating the pets!"
Late stage capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
In a way Palantir does the same that modern "Tech"-Companies do. They collect and centralize data to profit of it. However while you might still see some benefit from companies like Google, Apple, Facebook and the like, Palantir does this explicitly to prop up elites.
While the destruction of society may be a side-effect for most companies, it is the goal of Palantir. Apple and Google probably will cooperate with problematic governments (if forced to, e.g. by money) but it's not their goal. For Palantir such activities are their business model.
If Trump wants a list of all transgender people in the US, Apple and Google probably would take at least a week to compile that list, Palantir probably already has it ready.
They should be careful (Score:2)
Trump says anyone saving the country is not breaking the law, we all know that cuts both ways.
Palantir wants tech patriotism? Do they have any idea what that would look like when everything they do is unconstitutional? They are asking to be destroyed. I hope they get it.
"Tech patriotism?" Yikes. (Score:2)
That particular combination of concepts leaves me with a SERIOUS case of the heebee jeebees.
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The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgement or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others--as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders--serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God.
— Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
Particularly the "no free exercise whatever of the judgement." With today's Americans, I can stick a flag in a lump of dirt and create an instant "patriot."
Be a patriot, says automated killing enthusist (Score:2)
This guy wants to cut up the first amendment as soon as he sees people protesting Israel, the true target of his own fealty. Patriotism my ass, what an evil person
https://unherd.com/breaking_ne... [unherd.com]
Once you have killed all your enemies (Score:2)
Oh, hell no... (Score:2)
> He calls for the "engineering elite of Silicon Valley" to
> work with the government on national defense.
He can fuck right off with that noise. My first job out of college was with a defense contractor. And just no... just... HELL no! That was the most political, officious, unproductive, and overall miserable workplace I ever had the displeasure of putting time in. Every Dilbert strip you thought was just an exaggerated cliche? Know-nothing PHBs? Burnt-out engineers coasting toward retirement w
"...coming swarms of autonomous robots..." (Score:1)
Recently read The Diamond Age, did you, Alex?
Except the Trump factor (Score:2)
Trump will probably just sell our military tech to Putin to make a buck so there's that.
F-16s sold to Ukraine flying against F-16s sold to Russia = mo money, mo money, mo money!
The assets of the US are just things to be sold to make money in his eyes. That's how companies work!
It's all part of the master plan: https://www.facebook.com/share... [facebook.com]