Hacker News Reader

Comment by lokar | Hacker News Reader

Why go to the NSA when you can do just as much evil (for the same people) at palantir for twice the pay?

Because palantir can lay you off.

Also the scope of the NSA is much more broad and you'll also have the possibility to work on stuff that could be closer to ops stuff as well.

For example I don't think palantir works on shit like stuxnet or deploying stuxnet.

Last I read about palantir it was some boring ass search graph relationship thing.

> For example I don't think palantir works on shit like stuxnet or deploying stuxnet.

You mean they don't help prevent a hostile state from developing nuclear weapons? All withou causing anything approaching the collateral damage (and risk of open war) that a traditional attack on infrastructure would cause?

Setting aside the fact that the NSA work sounds a lot more interesting from a technical perspective [0], a lot of people would find the work far more fulfilling than convincing people to buy widgets they don't need.

[0] Especially considering that the day to day work of working for a large government organization is far more boring, even without the extra headache that comes with working with classified materials.

> You mean they don't help prevent a hostile state from developing nuclear weapons? All withou causing anything approaching the collateral damage (and risk of open war) that a traditional attack on infrastructure would cause?

I think the parent comment fully agrees with you on this. Their whole reply is just saying that despite paying more, Palantir isn't nearly as layoff-proof as NSA, and you don't get to work on such a wide range of "cool" things (such as stuxnet) at Palantir either.

> For example I don't think palantir works on shit like stuxnet or deploying stuxnet.

Stuxnet was developed in a way that Palantir or other people outside the ultra secrete government cyber weapons labs, could have been contracted to work on parts of it, government may have merely assembled parts of code sourced from private industry to create the malware.

The NSA’s TAO (tailored access operations), the group that wrote Stuxnet and is known to the cybersecurity community as The Equation Group, is not known to work with outside contractors to develop malware. They’re more likely to collaborate with GCHQ and Israel’s Unit 8200, but not contractors. The NSA does some of the most advanced malware and vulnerability research internally, no contractor has the capabilities they do internally. They might buy some premade malware from contractors, but for a highly targeted piece of malware like Stuxnet it would be developed internally.

>no contractor has the capabilities they do internally. Thats where you are wrong! Capitalism enables the greatest number of (self/mon(k)ey token) motivated varieties, beit innovations, why do you think ESA just put out a request for idea's on the space suit to be used on the moon? The creativity of unrestricted thinking especially from kids, is massively untapped, they are natural operating-in-plain-site Dimenthyltryptamine users for a start, unconditioned by university's, culture and life in general!

Saying that though, working for govt in any form comes with its own risks. https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Document:NSA_GCHQ_and_the_Death_... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6585263/Damning-new... https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Chelsea_Manning https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Julian_Assange

Sometimes being in the public spotlight is the less dangerous path, which these NSA jobs are not. https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Bill_Clinton

Accidents happen. Prison happens. Intelligence gathering comes in all shapes and sizes, but one thing is for certain, it was previously thought being on the right side of the law was a psychological advantage, its not any more, it could be extremely risky. This is the era of psychological warfare, and the best candidates are those who volunteer for their trauma as any Emergency Response (Police/Fire/Ambulance) person knows.

Psychological trauma is a life long condition with no visible scars.

How you survive working for the state largely depends on your own intelligence, but you can bet your bottom dollar you will be experimented in ways that science dictates that subjects are not too be made aware of any said experiment.

The compartmentalization required for NSA TAO to interoperate with GCHQ or Israeli Unit 8200 or the French, Canadians, Germans, Australians etc, is the same as if they wanted to plug in code from some private network or PLC expert.

I'm not saying that they are going to subcontract out everything or the important things, but their advantage is being able to leverage private industry for specific knowledge and expertise.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com