Hacker News Reader

Comment by ecshafer | Hacker News Reader

Palantir is along with SpaceX, Anduril, and a few others some of the most important companies in America. They are the ones that are pushing America forward. Not selling ads. But upsetting the incumbents that are undermining the DoD and national security, and making real technical progress. These are the companies that if it comes to war are going to be pushing us forward.

View on HN

> These are the companies that if it comes to war

Well, if you keep preparing for one you'll be the one starting it...

"If you want peace, prepare for war."

That's a nice quote, the problem is that once you gave birth to a giant you need to keep feeding it. We can see how it's going for Russia right now.

It also doesn't mean you should build private surveillance companies tightly coupled to a single political party, with all the conflicts of interest it brings

You mean the same Russia that the US and Europe has been too weak to stop? That's not a great argument...

That's one way to see it, the other way to see it is that they're bleeding russia dry while making big bucks on arms sales, basically forcing the EU to buy fracking gas at 4x markup and ensuring they'll get all the juicy reconstruction contracts.

modern american history shows how wrong this is. US has been at war almost every year since the end of WW2.

And if you don't, you'll be the one losing it.

Huh? Does preparing for winter make it come faster? Do you cause the winter through your preparation for it?

See you're already assuming war is coming and that it is a fact of life, inevitable just as winter is. With that mindset there is no other alternatives from the get go

If you walk around with a gun in your pocket drooling about self defence scenarios you might end up escalating a situation that could have been avoided altogether.

And you're assuming war is not coming? That there will never be another war? Don't get me wrong, I'm anti-war, but that sounds like an unwise assumption to make given history.

> If you walk around with a gun in your pocket drooling about self defence scenarios you might end up escalating a situation that could have been avoided altogether.

True, but this is another big assumption about the character of the person carrying the gun. The statistics on people with a permit to carry and the usage of their weapons tell a different story than you present. That is, they are much more likely to deescalate, most defensive gun usages require no shots fired, and license to carry owners are much less likely than the general population to commit or be convicted of a crime.

> See you're already assuming war is coming and that it is a fact of life, inevitable just as winter is.

I am because it is

In which direction are they pushing, though? National security as they pitch it look like security from citizen rather than for citizen.

Palantir is currently ramping up their spying on American Citizens at the behest of the government, which war are we talking about?

In the first place, they are pushing USA deeper into the dystopian hell. And they will likely start some wars along the way (if they haven't already), to justify their revenues. But I guess any direction is a forward..

Reply on news.ycombinator.com