Comment by bArray | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bArray | Hacker News Reader

> NHS England is rolling out software to run our health records from Palantir – a US spy-tech firm that has supported mass deportation in the US and enabled genocide in Gaza.

Forget politics, not everything has to be framed this way. This is simply something that should be done in-house. What if the UK's relations with the US break down, or there is a cyber attack on the infrastructure?

> One of Palantir’s founders is also openly against the NHS. Peter Thiel claimed it “makes people sick” and said that the British people love the NHS because we’re suffering from Stockholm syndrome.

Is the insinuation that Thiel will sabotage the NHS servers because he wants to see it fail, at the cost of billions if he were to be caught? Do we have to be politically aligned with absolutely everybody at all times in every part of life in order to be able to function?

> With the government putting NHS trusts under pressure to adopt the software, we need to act right now. If you want to keep Palantir out of our NHS, send an email to your local trust and Wes Streeting, secretary of state for health.

This Wes Streeting guy has a high chance of being the next UK Prime Minister in early 2026.

> Is the insinuation that Thiel will sabotage the NHS servers because he wants to see it fail, at the cost of billions if he were to be caught?

I think the insinuation is that if someone is explicitly outspoken against something, don't hire/contract the guy/organization for tasks that are meant to help that something get better, the incentives just aren't aligned. Which in my mind, ignoring all the politics, make a ton of sense, I wouldn't want an anti-environmentalist to be "Head of Environmental Impact" or someone anti-education to be "Head of Education" or even involved in anything education.

Peter Thiel says a lot of high and mighty things but has made pretty much all his money in mundane software, mostly ads. So if it offers any solace, I doubt his principles will get in the way of him making money.

Billionaires have sabotaged pretty much every aspect of life by using their enormous wealth, power, and influence to hijack our public institutions. They're destroying our country and our way of life. We don't have to bend over passively to receive a shafting.

The insinuation is that they'll use their market position and political influence to extract funds for costly products and services that should be being spent on improving the NHS instead, happily driving the NHS towards a crisis so that they can privatise it. This is the project, and has always been the project of the billionaires. And even if all the current billionaires die and are replaced tomorrow, it will still be the project of the billionaires who replace them. The only solution is to eradicate billionaires.

> The only solution is to eradicate billionaires.

History is quite clear on this: it doesn't work and ends in bloodshed.

Yes. Billionaires with an authoritarian agenda will cost their businesses and their shareholders billions of dollars in pursuit of ideological goals. Throw a few fascist salutes and people stop buying your cars. Was that salute rational? Is rationality even the right question?

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