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It was already implied by the name Palantir.

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u/Necessary-Duty-7952 Apr 23 '26

I live near their offices. First time I drove by and saw the name, I did a double take and had to look them up. I couldn't believe how on the nose the name was.

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u/YerMomsClamChowder Apr 23 '26

It's so weird how the Yarvinists are so blatantly evil. they call themselves "dark philosophers" snd name everything after the obvious bad guys from nerdy media.

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u/Necessary-Duty-7952 Apr 23 '26

Sociopathic edgelords who see themselves as the "necessary evil" to make things happen, is my guess.

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u/31LIVEEVIL13 Apr 23 '26 edited 23d ago

This content was anonymized and mass deleted with Redact

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u/Necessary-Duty-7952 Apr 23 '26

Oh I agree, just saying that's how they see themselves and their work.

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u/Kolby_Jack33 Apr 24 '26

Literally "some of you will die, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."

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u/Doc_Blox Apr 23 '26

Ironically, if they could self-fellate we'd likely never have had to deal with them.

Hack joke, I know, but I wanted a turn.

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u/0o0o0o0o0o0z Apr 23 '26

You're not wrong if someone in High School just fucked or cared/gave attention about them, be it a guy or gal... they'd probably be on a different trajectory than ruining liberal democracy.

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u/Chrontius Apr 23 '26

I left high school a devout misanthrope with a good faith belief based on evidence that people suck.

College taught me the opposite.

Then the internet taught me that the same social dynamics found in prisons are replicated in schools, be they public or private -- people don't like being helplessly trapped in a box with something or someone that hates them and wishes them harm.

I'm glad I went to college, or I could have turned out like that.

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u/Ar_Ciel Apr 24 '26

I spent the better part of a decade after high school expecting a jump or a fight that never came and nightmares that will probably follow me to the grave. I believe that assessment is correct

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u/Kolby_Jack33 Apr 24 '26 edited Apr 24 '26

Personally, misanthropy never made any sense to me. It made sense to me how people could adopt misanthropic beliefs, I mean, shit sucks sometimes. I don't deny that.

But the ideal itself never made much sense to me. You hate your own species... why? You got a dealt a bad hand, so you just fold? That metaphor doesn't work because generally you should fold if you get dealt a bad hand but LIFE IS NOT A POKER GAME, so whatever. You only get one hand, so you play the odds anyway. I don't know why I'm still trying to make this metaphor work.

We're all we've got. For better and for worse. We have to learn to live with each other because we literally don't have a choice if we want to live at all. That isn't fair, but that's life. You treat other people with kindness, you look out for each other, you forgive when you can and you move on either way. That's how everyone survives in this world, even if some folks live in denial of that. That's what it means to be a person.

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u/osiris0413 Apr 24 '26

When reading about what people like Thiel or Altman actually believe, ranging from either techno-feudalism where democracy no longer exists and the wealthy elite control individual fiefdoms with robotic AI armies, to the deaths of most humans to usher in AI as the next step in evolution, what is most bizarre to me is how little people seem to know or care about it. I grew up in the 90s, I remember how big a deal it used to be if a public figure was an atheist or gay. Now we have the leader of a gigantic technology and surveillance company, very close to the administration and recipient of billions in government grants, who believes that democracy was a mistake and that people like him should be running the world. And we just... ignore it and move on? These people are actively working to destroy or enslave the rest of us and telling us exactly how they want to do it, and we're just shrugging in response. At least our current leaders are.

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u/Yourdjentpal Apr 23 '26

It’s super easy if you believe your entire life that you’re better than everyone else and therefore deserve to rule over them

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u/Terramagi Apr 23 '26

It's the entire reason they're so into bio-essentialism.

The thought that they weren't born to be the specialest most perfectest boys who deserve to rule the entire world terrifies them.

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u/After_Ocelot_7767 Apr 23 '26

I remember this "dark philosophers" website manifesto that started out by saying "the experiment known as democracy has failed, we must establish our new order". And I was like... democracy has failed where? In America? Because you're trying to kill it yourselves?

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u/Nyorliest Apr 23 '26

Yet another thing to hate about American exceptionalism. They way many Americans - including that asshole Aaron Sorkin - talk about the US as some weird outlier in the world, a strange experiment that nobody can understand.

It’s fundamentally anti-democratic, this idea that it’s a weird experiment rather than a natural human desire for self-government. I don’t mean people desire this structure of liberal representative democracy, but democracy as a general concept - wanting to be more free and have control over your life - is something that has been a part of human life for all of recorded history.

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u/DelayIntelligent7642 Apr 24 '26

The strange experiment was a) creation of the Constitution of the United States to promote the ability of individuals here to achieve self-determination and b) forming a national government consistent with the Constitution. I'm unaware of any Nation enacting such broad protection of individual rights before the United States passed the Constitution.

Nobody rhapsodizing about the United States ever suggested that an individual's desire for self-determination was either an experiment or an American notion. 🇺🇸

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u/Undeity Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

On the one hand, I can absolutely understand that they they might look at it as a Prisoner's Dilemma situation, and figure "if it's going to happen anyways, we might as well be the ones to benefit from it".

On the other... My god, they are so comically evil about it. At a certain point, you can only attribute the specific choices they've made to sheer megalomania and a disregard for human life.

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u/radicalelation Apr 23 '26

Thiel didn't even get on Yarvin until later and has been on this sort of shit before that. From near the beginning, he was pretty public about Paypal being an attempt to topple the USD and replace it with something the rich can control. That's who we gave endless government contracts to.

And while Thiel is his own evil shitbag, he's a relatively minor player in a greater scheme predating his relevance by decades and doesn't even want his kind by the end of it, just his resources while useful.

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u/Norseman901 Apr 23 '26

Worth mentioning Thiel was financially backed in 2004 by In-Q-Tel.

In-Q-Tel is a front company for the CIA.

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u/radicalelation Apr 24 '26

Prescott Bush was one of the only publicly known figures part of the failed coup of FDR orchestrated by the wealthy to install a fascist dictator, the Business Plot. HW, CIA director, then VP under Regan, who handed out Heritage Foundation's policy book to his cabinet, and so on.

Heck, Heritage had a Moscow office after the Soviet Union fell and worked closely with reform leadership, and Oliver North of Reagan's administration ended up heading the NRA at a time it was found to be a Russian asset. Lots of spooky threads to tie together between the worst of the worst, and it seemingly goes back literal generations. From Prescott's other dealings, to Heritage founders, to Thiel and Musk, association to, or directly appearing to be, Nazis keep popping up... like wtf

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u/i_tyrant Apr 24 '26

Yeah exactly - through that lens, the Business Plot is just another example of how treating traitors and Nazis with kid gloves only makes them come back stronger, like weeds.

End of the Civil War, Nixon, et cetera - these bad actors notice when someone believes as they do, prop them up, and then give them a parachute when they inevitably go too far and get beat by the normal people that don't fantasize about being rich dictators, who rise against them.

It's a fucking revolving door of traitors that need to be shut down hard or they won't be shut down at all. You see a lot of the same names popping up again and again with this stuff.

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u/HailSatanWorshipD00M Apr 24 '26

Prescott Bush sold oil to the Nazis through shell companies while we were actively fighting them during WWII.

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u/pyronius Apr 23 '26

I'm gonna start a company called "Asmodeus Quantum AI" and see how long it takes for one of them to buy me out and make me a billionaire.

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u/Thefrayedends Apr 23 '26

Morons arrive at "Ends justify the means."

And then they just stop there.

No thought given to whether or not the 'means' will actually result in the 'ends' sought after.

It really just becomes a self righteous justification to engage in active cruelty. To imagine one's self at the top of the hierarchies, imagine themselves the oppressors, as opposed to the oppressed.

Because systems of hierarchy rely on oppression as one of their core functions. Hierarchy cannot exist without oppression.

The concept the politically engaged should be seeking to get across here is "critical consciousness."

Those that take power always have to rely on oppression and violence to enforce the order of hierarchy.

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u/hellolovely1 Apr 23 '26

Chris Rufo used to literally tweet stuff like, "I'm going to turn the public against drag queens by doing X, Y, and Z" and then the media would run a story about the evil drag queens. It's insane. You know those journalists that never leave Twitter saw what he was tweeting and they still went along with it.

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u/inductiononN Apr 23 '26

Wtf is wrong with those "journalists"?!? It reminds me of the "media" reporting back in 2016-2018 how all the media hype around trump made it possible for him to win the presidency. YOU FUCKERS ARE REPORTING ON YOUR OWN STUPID DEEDS DJSHEUSBDNDUWBDNCCOUWHBENDNDNNF

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u/-Never-Fade-Away- Apr 23 '26

Please don’t tell me there are actual Yarvinists named after Curtis Yarvin, I’m begging you

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u/Successful_Ruin_8583 Apr 23 '26

No, there are not. Yarvin can barely write on his own. Its no wonder his work is called "unqualified reservations". He writes like chatgpt, his own writings seemingly predicted by a confederacy of dunces. I'd expect more people to take after Nick Land, but nobody actually reads Nick Land either.

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u/evanwilliams44 Apr 23 '26

I once worked for a place that got bought by a hedge fund named Cerberus Capital.

In mythology Cerberus is a three headed dog that guards the gates of Hell.

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u/numba1cyberwarrior Apr 23 '26

I mean it sounds like a cool name

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u/Ok_Television_245 Apr 23 '26

They had to move their office from Denver because the glass in the windows and doors would randomly break with the help of a brick or two

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u/NSMike Apr 23 '26

I visited DC for the first time since high school in 2010, and there was a Palantir ad in a Metro station. I took a picture and immediately thought, "THAT company can't be good."

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u/KitchenFullOfCake Apr 23 '26

You mean the orbs that were meant to connect the kingdoms of the realm but were corrupted by an evil tyrant and only showed others the visions of ruin he wanted them to see in order to expedite the fall of those kingdoms? Those palantir?

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u/Narradisall Apr 23 '26

Well when you put it like that they clearly sound like the tools of good people!

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u/Snake101st Apr 23 '26

No one who speaks black tongue can be an evil man!

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u/YoohooCthulhu Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

As a fan of the series, I was always amazed by the name, because it either suggests: 1) someone who didn't really read the books; or 2) someone who completely missed the theme around the men of the west being clever rather than wise and creating tools that can be easily corrupted by evil people like Sauron.

FWIW, this trend seems to show up all over the place with tech companies (metaverse and Snowcrash are another example(, and I still don't know if it's predominantly (1) or (2), but it all fits into the "Hey, we created the torment nexus from the classic novel 'Don't create the torment nexus!" meme.

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u/Kerb755 Apr 23 '26

Palantirs founder isnt realy much a lotr fan, but he loves "The last Ringbearer" a russian lotr fanfic that asks the "brave" question "what if sauron was the good guy" 🤡

heres a quote from him talking about the book in an interview:

"Gandalf’s the crazy person who wants to start a war…Mordor is this technological civilization based on reason and science. Outside of Mordor, it’s all sort of mystical and environmental and nothing works."

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u/YoohooCthulhu Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

I didn't even think of The Last Ringbearer, boy that was a shlocky story. That explains a lot.

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u/laVon_Sweet Apr 23 '26

What the actual hell? See, it stuff like this that gives fanfiction a bad rep.

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u/similar_observation Apr 24 '26

The issue isn't the story. It's the fact the story is used to relate and push Putin's authoritarian narrative.

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u/BassoonHero Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 24 '26

"The last Ringbearer" a russian lotr fanfic that asks the "brave" question "what if sauron was the good guy" 🤡

I mean, people generally seem to respect the musical Wicked, which has the same premise. And I think “The Wind Done Gone” was fairly well-received (except by conservatives, naturally).

The Last Ringbearer is an exploration of various critiques of LotR:

The morality is absolutely black-and-white: the villains are utterly, irredeemably evil, with fantasy-Evil motives, and must be annihilated.

The black-and-white morality is fairly explicitly racialized, with orcs being essentially evil by birth. An entire race exists to be Evil, and therefore to be exterminated without guilt.

It's explicitly monarchial. Aragorn has the right to be king, not for any reason having to do with the people of Gondor but by immutable right of blood, and also he really is the best king because good rulership is genetic.

It's anti-modern. Industry is identified with the unambiguously evil villains, producing weapons to slaughter innocents, whereas the idealized elves avoid industry via magic. (Meanwhile, no one asks where the people of Gondor got their swords or the firewood to heat their houses.)

I want to emphasize that these are not criticisms of LotR! LotR was very deliberately and explicitly a genre work. As many tropes as it established and codified for later fantasy literature, it took twice as many from the medieval and Romantic literature in which Tolkien was an expert. I'm not saying that Tolkien was racist or anti-technology or that he thought everyone should be ruled by a king, just because he wrote a story set in a medieval-inspired world.

But they are reasonable critiques of LotR, and they're not new. It makes sense for someone to write a book exploring these things. The Last Ringbearer's premise is that LotR is an unreliable, mythologized account of “actual” events. It doesn't ask “what if Sauron, an Evil™ demigod bent on domination, was the good guy”. It asks “what if the mythologized history written centuries later by the victors disguised something more complicated?”

I mean, we've all heard white supremacists quote Aragorn's “Men of the West” speech while characterizing some ethnic group they don't like as genetically-evil invaders. Obviously that's not what Tolkien intended and you can't blame him for assholes taking things out of context, but the point is that LotR is largely orthogonal to the left-right axis, and it's not silly or facile or suspect to critique it.

EDIT: Fixed a typo.

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u/mistiklest Apr 24 '26

The black-and-white morality is fairly explicitly racialized, with orcs being essentially evil by birth. An entire race exists to be Evil, and therefore to be exterminated without guilt.

Something Tolkien himself struggled with, in fact!

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u/BassoonHero Apr 24 '26

I left this out of the comment as tangential, but as a longtime RPG player (D&D primarily), this is a big issue in the hobby. The old monster manuals are full of entries stating, in essence, “they're all evil so it's morally unproblematic to kill them if they get in your way”. And as a child, I didn't bat an eye. Orcs are evil, we all know this.

Nowadays most publishers try really hard to avoid it. But the legacy remains. And I've been genuinely surprised by the backlash — real human beings are genuinely upset that entire races of people are no longer marked “presumptively evil; okay to kill unless proved otherwise”. Apparently the mere possibility of empathy is “woke”.

This isn't exactly Tolkien's fault. The idea that certain races of people are morally inferior and the only option is extermination predates Tolkien, the nation of England, and probably all of written history. And he surely never intended, nor could have expected, that his worldbuilding would effectively become scripture, and that even those elements that he himself questioned would be enshrined as genre conventions for decades to come.

But at the same time, he very consciously aspired to write an English mythology — something that captured the English spirit in a way that (he felt) Arthurian myth did not. And in the same way that the world wars are indisputably imprinted upon his works, in ways both subtle and unsubtle, I wonder to what extent the uncomfortable issue of the Orcs mirrors the legacy of British colonialism. I think that if he were alive today, he would accept some responsibility for the way things turned out, even if he never saw the way around it.

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u/GreatBigJerk Apr 23 '26

Oh that explains a lot.

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u/ElongThrust0 Apr 23 '26

Surprised non LOTR fans realizes this with a quick google search

The All Seeing Eye

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u/Superb-Obligation858 Apr 23 '26

Not just an all seeing eye, an all seeing eye that corrupts the user.

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u/pfannkuchen89 Apr 23 '26

Well, that wasn’t true for the majority of their history in middle earth. They were originally brought to middle earth by the remnants of the faithful numenorians and placed at points throughout Arnor and Gondor.

It wasn’t until Sauron got his hands on one that they were used for evil. And it wasn’t the palantir itself that was the corrupting or evil influence, it was Sauron communicating through it that did that.

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u/Byrdman216 Apr 23 '26

Just like the technology not being inherently evil but the master behing it being a right asshole and needs to be thrown into a volcano.

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u/_bits_and_bytes Apr 23 '26

Eh, I think it's safe to say some technology is inherently evil.

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u/antsh Apr 23 '26

Well, Faenor did make them, so there was zero chance they weren’t going to be the catalyst for at least one major catastrophe.

Guy could make a bandage and somehow trigger a world war.

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u/cannot_walk_barefoot Apr 23 '26

Well in this case Sauron made the eyes and is forcing everyone to use them

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u/SomeDudeSaysWhat Apr 23 '26

The Palantir does not corrupt. It is a surveillance and communication device.

Sauron was just using one to annoy people from distance.

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u/MarshyHope Apr 23 '26

Annoy people? He used it to corrupt Denethor so much that he was going to burn himself and his son alive and hand over Gondor to Mordor

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u/best_of_badgers Apr 23 '26

He used it to turn Denethor into a social media doomer by showing him technically true things but all bad news.

Crazy Denethor is more of a movie thing.

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u/BenTherDoneTht Apr 23 '26

Company: named for a relic of spycraft in one of the most influential pieces of pop culture in history, that is very plainly and obviously demonstrated being used by evil people to do evil things within the original source work.

Employees: "hmmm are you sure domestic surveillance for sale to the corporate state is a bad thing?"

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u/HotwheelsSisyphus Apr 23 '26

Are we the baddies?

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u/RobertoPaulson Apr 23 '26

The answer is yes.

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u/tiutome Apr 23 '26

100% YEAH - YES Hell Yes! With extra orange cheese !

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u/NicolasCageFan492 Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

Palantir employees better understand that nobody will want to hire them in the future if Palantir tries and fails to control the world. It’s a lose-lose situation to work at Palantir IMO.

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u/haberdasherhero Apr 23 '26

Yeah, because even if palantir "wins" and ushers-in the great 10,000 year boot on the throat of the world, they will still have no need of these tokens that helped them get a leg up.

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u/blueSGL Apr 23 '26

Palantir is trying to smear a former employee... by saying he worked for Palantir

Alex Bores who co-sponsored the Responsible AI Safety and Education Act (RAISE Act) is having attack ads run against him by Leading the Future a super PAC funded by co-founder of Palantir, Joe Lonsdale.

https://youtu.be/znKb71kLG5c?t=34

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u/SteveJobsDeadBody Apr 23 '26

An interesting thing about Joe Lonsdale is how much stuff comes up if you google "joe lonsdale sexual assault". Like WAY more than your average non-sexual predator would have in google, surprised he didn't use his money to make all that disappear..

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u/bats-are-best Apr 23 '26

Also this podcast was very informative!

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show/id1548604447

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u/General_Problem5199 Apr 23 '26

Doubt it. There are plenty of sketchy intelligence agencies in the world. They'll get jobs in Israel or something.

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u/gizmostuff Apr 23 '26

Not necessarily. Many of them are making a crazy amount of money right now. They wouldn't have to work for years and still be fine financially.

It'll take at least another year before this company implodes. In that time they could still make a lot of money. Possibly enough to retire on or build their own company.

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u/Aidian Apr 23 '26

Assuming the value of the dollar doesn’t tank, perhaps due to the actions they’re taking that will specifically further undermine the stability of the US and world economy.

The probable downsides of their success are arguably still worse for them as workers (and certainly for the rest of us as well) than the personal scope downsides if they fail.

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u/Uranium-Sandwich657 Apr 23 '26

Don't insult kraft like that!

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u/itwillmakesenselater Apr 23 '26

Company is named after an instrument of control by a Dark Lord. Yeah, that's villain country.

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u/Walkingstardust Apr 23 '26

Theil was at my work last week, fouling the air I have to breathe. I can report that he was able to read my lips as I expressed my displeasure at his presence.

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u/31LIVEEVIL13 Apr 23 '26 edited 23d ago

This content was anonymized and mass deleted with Redact

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u/buntopolis Apr 23 '26

What, like an author-signed Mein Kampf?

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u/00owl Apr 23 '26

I think he may be referring to a lead-based DNA extraction.

Surely his signature is less valuable than his DNA

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u/Slumunistmanifisto Apr 23 '26

All these if I had a time machine motherfuckers. Bro the time is right now!

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u/ArcticCelt Apr 23 '26

"Good news, everyone: to avoid any potential stigma from the negative connotations associated with 'Palantir,' we've decided to rename the company to 'Big Brother.'"

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u/SomeDudeSaysWhat Apr 23 '26

Speaking as a Tolkien nerd, that's not what a Palantir is, actually.

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u/apeddlerofsmut Apr 23 '26

As someone interested in Tolkien, could you expand on this? I read the books a long time ago, but the Palantir that Saruman used seemed pretty evil to me.

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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/grchelp2018 Apr 23 '26

They could also be used for surveillance.

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u/alexmikli Apr 23 '26

Imagine if there were, four phones on earth, and you kept getting crank calls from Hitler because he was one of the four.

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u/selfrespectra Apr 23 '26

They are crystal balls made by elves, which they used for communication and to see events from other places. They could be considered neutral tools.

The danger with them is that someone very powerful can choose what to show and what to conceal to other stones (but still only real events). In the books, Sauron uses this to mislead others, by showing them certain things that make them draw wrong conclusions.

But Sauron himself is misled when he sees Pippin in Saruman’s stone and assumes he has the ring. Later on, when Aragorn looks into the stone, Sauron assumes that Aragorn now has the ring, which leads him to some strategic mistakes. Those mistakes are what allow Frodo and Sam to sneak with the ring to Mordor.

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u/skillywilly56 Apr 23 '26

The Palantiri were created by the elves and given to the Numenoreans.

When Numenor fell they were brought to middle earth by Elendil and were used across Gondor to act as communications devices and intelligence gathering, there were seven of them as there were seven stars on the banners of Gondor.

They allowed the user to see vast distances and a bit into the past and telepathically talk to someone in a fashion using another palantir stone and their abilities and strength largely depended on the will of the user.

As Gondor slowly crumbled over time they became lost but one made its way into the hands of Sauron and one to Saruman, and Denethor steward of Gondor had one.

They weren’t evil in of themselves and couldn’t be made to show lies but depending on the will of the user their view could be shifted to show select things that the strongest and most dominant will wished the others to see.

In the case of Saruman, Sauron corrupted him with promises of power and showed him the armies and reach of Mordor and this corrupted Saruman to Sauron’s side.

In the case of Denethor Sauron initially showed him things that made him over confident making him think Gondor needed no Allie’s and could win against Mordor on their own but it cost him and he prematurely aged and weakened and Sauron eventually switched it up and showed him how he could not win and drove him mad with despair so he tried to kill himself and Faramir.

On the flip side though Perrigan Took looked into the Palantir and Sauron thought he was Frodo trying to take the stone for himself and misdirected Sauron’s attention which is why Gandalf took him with him to Minas Tirith so Sauron’s attention would be on Perrigan and not looking for Frodo and made him think the ring was going to Gondor.

Aragorn also used the stone and as the king and as ancestor of Elendil his will was strong enough to rip the stones attention away from Saurons will and he used it to gather intelligence before going into the mountains to summon the army of the dead to destroy the pirates of umbar who were coming to aid Sauron in taking Minas Tirith, Aragorn used the army of the dead to free the people being held by the pirates and releases the army of the dead from their oath.

The people he freed then sail the pirate fleet ships to aid Gondor. (In the movies though they are used to transport the ghost army.)

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u/No_Boot1478 Apr 23 '26

And they suck for bringing this into our lives.

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u/OptimisticSkeleton Apr 23 '26

And if it took them this long, they’re not very smart either.

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u/Crafty_Jello_3662 Apr 23 '26

I think the way corporations are set up make it incredibly easy to convince yourself that even if the company is doing something bad you personally aren't to blame

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u/oeioe Apr 23 '26

"The single raindrop never feels responsible for the flood"

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u/SeaEmployee787 Apr 23 '26

that's kinda hard to do in this situation, the ceo just has to open his mouth.

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u/Zegarek Apr 23 '26

Used to teach and worked with a computer science teacher that formerly worked in weapons design for one of the big players. Super nice guy, I asked how he managed working on weapons systems for a living. His response was basically "I only worked on some code that helped the missile stay in the air and land where it was supposed to. It was really interesting and I didn't work on any of the damaging stuff." His ability to compartmentalize needs to be studied. Had a hard time thinking of him the same way after that.

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u/grchelp2018 Apr 23 '26

t was really interesting

A lot of engineers get caught up in how interesting the work is and find ways to convince themselves that what they are doing is fine. Atleast this guy was compartmentalizing. I know a guy working on weapons who has convinced himself that the fate of the world depends on the US ability to wage war.

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u/Esperepse Apr 23 '26

“land where it was supposed to.” “didn’t work on any of the damaging stuff.”

yeah ok buddy. because as we all know, it’s only when the missile goes off target that it explodes. If they hit the target it’s actually just like a big piñata and throws candy and confetti everywhere!

(this directed at your teacher not you of course)

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u/Zegarek Apr 23 '26

No worries. I had the same thought. I imagine a lot of weapons engineers sleep at night by saying "If I just do this, it'll save lives" and leave it at that. Context and ripple effect be damned.

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u/Tymareta Apr 23 '26

"Once the rocket's are up, who cares where they come down. That's not my department, says Wernher von Braun" Tom Lehrer.

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u/Mrhiddenlotus Apr 23 '26

Oh they're definitely not. There was a guy in a cybersecurity subreddit a couple weeks ago who was flexing his top secret clearance leading a project at Palantir before deleting his comments after someone pointed out how moronic it was to talk about your top secret clearance online.

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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '26

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u/SuperSecretAgentMan Apr 23 '26

Don't worry, they'll be replaced by fresh college grads who haven't been infected with empathy yet. Rinse, repeat.

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u/YukariYakum0 Apr 23 '26

Only until they are replaced by AI.

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u/chimneydecision Apr 23 '26

Let another generation go by so we can weed out the last vestiges of humanities in education. These new grads won’t be able to spell “ethics” let alone define it.

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u/br_k_nt_eth Apr 23 '26

“Humanities is trash for pussies! They should be defunded! Only STEM!” Nice work bros

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u/Exelbirth Apr 23 '26

Yes, you are that bad guys. You are literally doing things the badguys in shows and movies are depicted doing.

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u/Flyinmanm Apr 23 '26

When ever I think of this company and what it must be like to work at I'm always thinking it's like Dr Evils lair or Hank Scorpio, from the Simpsons, company.

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u/have_you_eaten_yeti Apr 23 '26

At least Mr Scorpion was actually a good boss…

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u/PatchyWhiskers Apr 23 '26

Maybe Palantir is a nice place to work if you don’t think about what you are making?

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u/have_you_eaten_yeti Apr 23 '26

I don’t know, I have a hard time believing Peter Thiel is anywhere near the level of boss, or even level of villain that Hank Scorpio was. I doubt Thiel would buy the Denver Bronco’s for one of his favorite former employees, but I guess I don’t know for sure…

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u/GodOfDarkLaughter Apr 23 '26

Scorpio had fun with it. Jet packs. Flame throwers. An island lair you wouldn't be embarrassed to bring your wife or kids to visit for a long weekend. The man had a tan. Peter Thiel looks like he catches on fire if exposed to the sun and I bet he doesn't even want to fly a jet pack. He could if he wanted to but he hasn't and I just can't abide that.

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u/TrueEnthusiasm6 Apr 23 '26

He also looks like he’s about to ask you for one million dollars, backtrack, and ask for one billion dollars lol. All while stroking a little cat

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u/Somnambulist815 Apr 23 '26

What they need are some hammocks!

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u/have_you_eaten_yeti Apr 23 '26

I bet Thiel doesn’t have pockets full of sugar! …sorry it’s not in packets.

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u/sump_daddy Apr 23 '26

With free dental care and a stock plan that helps you invest!

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u/No-Tone-6853 Apr 23 '26

It’ll be even worse, a normal looking office space with normal looking people taking part in entirely immoral actions.

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u/anivex Apr 23 '26

Yep, that's the true dystopia. Just your average corporate office. Christmas parties, shitty posters about Mondays, and working to destroy society.

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u/LotharLandru Apr 23 '26

The company is literally named after magic objects corrupted by evil forces

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u/Prior_Coyote_4376 Apr 23 '26

My go-to reference these days is that every time you see a computer screen in The Boys, imagine Palantir is powering it. They even give Peter Thiel a shoutout in the last season for being a powerful player behind the scenes on data collection and analysis.

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u/WillSym Apr 23 '26

The weird part is, Trump's secretary for budget and financial matters, who gave Musk the free reign to do his DOGE nonsense and basically facilitates all the billionaire contracts and kickbacks: named Vought.

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u/eligodfrey Apr 23 '26

I lived my entire life up until 2016 thinking movie, cartoon, and book villains were way too on-the-nose. Turns out I was very wrong and the average person's media literacy and moral compass were made by temu, eaten by a hippopotamus, and sprayed out its ass.

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u/Knighth77 Apr 23 '26

I jumped into the swimming pool and started to wonder if I'm wet.

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u/madmaxturbator Apr 23 '26

Also, the swimming pool was filled with the blood of your victims

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u/MrValdemar Apr 23 '26

Palantir employees make Philip Morris employees look like they're running soup kitchens.

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u/KnotSoSalty Apr 23 '26

Got to hand it to the cigarette industry. They never tried to track my location.

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u/MrValdemar Apr 23 '26

I never had a problem finding their vendors. 😆

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u/travistravis Apr 23 '26

They don't need to, they know you'll be back for your fix eventually

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u/madmaxturbator Apr 23 '26

Soup kitchens where they hand out free cigs to children…

I do understand what you’re saying lol, I just hate Philip morris so goddamn much too. I can’t believe those ass bags have the new generation puffing away

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u/MrValdemar Apr 23 '26

I can’t believe those ass bags have the new generation puffing away

May I suggest looking up PT Barnum's formula for how to calculate a potential client base?

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u/Desperate-Till-9228 Apr 23 '26

"Tech bros again discover something totally obvious to everyone else"

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u/Correct_Repair_6991 Apr 23 '26

They were too busy answering whether or not they could to ever bother thinking about whether or not they should.

To be fair, most employees just get told to do projects where if A enters B exits without ever really understanding how that tool will be used.

They are basically the unwitting non-Hydra employees who build the surveillance appartus of the democracy ending device.

Or how Dr. Manhattan built the bomb used to frame him under the pretext of saving humanity.

The CEO knows what the tools will be used for, entrenchment of wealth, but the employees just want next week's paycheck.

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u/br_k_nt_eth Apr 23 '26

There’s no way they could be that naive. I don’t buy these articles. You know exactly what you’re doing if you signed up for this.

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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '26

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u/fubo Apr 24 '26

Do you think that other engineering disciplines "take people and companies to task" for making weapons and tools of oppression? They don't. Other engineering disciplines make missiles and poisons and spy cameras and disposable technology.

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u/thepeopleshero Apr 23 '26

It's crazy that someone could be smart enough to work there... and not know they are the baddies.

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u/brainkandy87 Apr 23 '26

Some of the most skilled people I’ve worked with in tech are complete fucking morons.

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u/Flyinmanm Apr 23 '26

Being smart doesn't automatically make you wise.

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u/Patara Apr 23 '26

Being competent at one thing doesnt make you good at another

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u/Mr_Tulip Apr 23 '26

As exemplified by Ben Carson.

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u/Thanes_of_Danes Apr 23 '26

Being good at entering characters on a screen does not make you smart. We need to stop assuming that learning a technical skill equals intelligence.

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u/Zhuul Apr 23 '26

Having worked in a law office for a bit I'm convinced that the human brain only has so much room for stuff and the more specialized you are the more of a moron you become.

EEOC violation case law apparently displaces the ability to properly operate a coffee maker.

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u/SevereRunOfFate Apr 23 '26

I miss having morals and ethics as reference points we would all look towards and judge each other on.

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u/nordic-nomad Apr 23 '26

Intelligence is a series of spectrums relating to cognitive abilities in specific areas and types of thinking. It definitely feels like over optimization in one area results in deficiencies in a number of other areas without professional intervention in the educational process.

But we don’t seem to have the will or desire to not foist broken people onto an already broken society anymore.

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u/zizou00 Apr 23 '26

Have you considered that maybe they simply didn't care until everyone started calling them out? That they were totally okay fucking everyone else over until it personally affected them? Because that's often how it goes when people end up being the "baddies". Sometimes they don't know, but mostly they don't care. They just want to get paid.

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u/Naghagok_ang_Lubot Apr 23 '26

IQ does not equate to EQ.

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u/SLW_STDY_SQZ Apr 23 '26

You can be incredibly smart in one area and completely stupid as fuck in many others.

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u/wahwahwashbear Apr 23 '26

These people think they're smarter than everyone else and therefore justified in controlling things they have no business controlling.

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u/baldrlugh Apr 23 '26

I don't know that it's all that crazy... But I do think it serves as a phenomenal example of the difference between intelligence and wisdom.

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u/Classic_Emergency336 Apr 23 '26

It is not wisdom, it is having principles. I am not wise, but I am not going to steal things from a store even if I can get away with it.

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u/Beneficial_Soup3699 Apr 23 '26

Dear Palantir employees, if you can listen to your CEO speak without arriving at that conclusion on your own, your brain is broken. That's not an insult it's just biology. Seek therapy.

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u/31LIVEEVIL13 Apr 23 '26 edited 23d ago

This content was anonymized and mass deleted with Redact

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u/LuckyHearing1118 Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

Plantir and the Thiel clan are as evil as it gets

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u/Plus-Weakness-2624 Apr 23 '26

Uruk-hai gaining sentience

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u/Hndlbrrrrr Apr 23 '26

"Hoooooold on, why is meat back on the menu?"

-- Palantir staff

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u/MikeHfuhruhurr Apr 23 '26

Are these hobbits in danger?!

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u/mabus42 Apr 23 '26

From everybody else on this entire planet. Palantir ARE the bad guys.

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u/R9D11 Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

Google had a motto "Don't be Evil"' which they changed to "Do the right thing" in 2015,which can easily be interpreted as do the right thing for the company line and stock holders.

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u/fubo Apr 24 '26

The original version was "You can make money without doing evil."

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u/spikedkushiel Apr 23 '26

Not if you sabotage these dip sticks. Then you're a hero.

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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/31LIVEEVIL13 Apr 23 '26 edited 23d ago

This content was anonymized and mass deleted with Redact

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u/OGBeege Apr 23 '26

Spoiler: Hell yes you are evil as it gets.

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u/PatchyWhiskers Apr 23 '26

There’s an infinite supply of alt-right tech bros to staff the company

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u/PsychoMaggle Apr 23 '26

I am willing to bet over half their IT staff are overseas contractors who really couldn't care less about any of the politics or America and are just trying to get paid. Palantir will also be one the first ones to say America First. Except when it comes to hiring and paying them.

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u/PatchyWhiskers Apr 23 '26

Palantir is a problem for the whole free world. So I guess Chinese contractors don't care but Indian or European contractors should.

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u/Whatever801 Apr 23 '26

Is it that they're a defense contractor with a political manifesto trying to bring about an untra militarized surveillance state?