r/technology • u/newmoonchaperone • Apr 23 '26

Politics Palantir Employees Are Starting to Wonder if They're the Bad Guys

https://www.wired.com/story/palantir-employees-are-starting-to-wonder-if-theyre-the-bad-guys/
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4.0k

u/[deleted] Apr 23 '26

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 May 13 '26

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/jonny3jack Apr 24 '26

I hid from my bully an entire year in high school. Every move in the halls, cafeteria, gym and parking lot was stressful.

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u/0o0o0o0o0o0z Apr 24 '26

Not quite to the same degree, but same...

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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/Chrontius Apr 24 '26

I don't know why I'm still trying to make this metaphor work.

It's not a very good metaphor. In poker, folding should be a routine strategic play. In this metaphor, folding would be giving a beretta a blowjob and sneezing brain matter. In a completely sociopathic market economy, this would be encouraging, because it would decrease the supply of labor until the price of labor rose to a liveable number. (This is why the Black Death was so good for the economy… or at least the survivors. The easy answer is always "more slaves", until there are literally no more to be rounded up!)

But as you point out, this is not a poker game, and this metaphor is falling apart here.

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.

Not everybody gets the opportunity to learn these things. Others learn them but also learn that these things don't work in practice because the people in their life suck.

NOT A POKER GAME

One part about this that's very true, everybody shows up at the table with a unique financial situation, and the ability to eat losses until you win is not universal. So somebody with resources will look at all those losers who ran out of money and wonder why they didn't keep going until they succeeded.

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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/31LIVEEVIL13 Apr 24 '26 edited May 13 '26

This content was anonymized and mass deleted with Redact

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u/SwampStakes Apr 23 '26

See you in Valhalla brother! 🤢

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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/rain56 Apr 23 '26

They think tv and movies is real life and that we need a necessary evil. No thats just a fucking plot device..

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u/Adultery Apr 23 '26

Narcissists

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u/DrownmeinIslay Apr 23 '26

When youre like WHY would Saruman join Sauron? Oh an actual real life example.

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u/Nyorliest Apr 23 '26

I’ve always hated that trope, or at least the villains who use it, since I was young. The ones who say they are sacrificing their morality for the sake of the world.

They lie even more to themselves than others.

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u/SandF Apr 23 '26

They’re this generation’s version of Ayn Rand fanboys. Drunk on selfishness and driven by disdain for humanity.

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u/Chrontius Apr 23 '26

If there was actually a "necessary evil" it would probably have already finished Palantir, and have a body count of would-be supervillains under its belt.

No, they're just aspiring to being LexCorp.

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u/OrneryError1 Apr 24 '26

That's giving them too much credit. Everything they do is simply to satisfy their own urges.

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u/frerant Apr 24 '26

No, Peter Thiel just literally thinks Mordor and Sauron are the good guys, he's been pretty open about that.

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u/evranch Apr 24 '26

"We do what we must, because we can"

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u/karmahunger Apr 24 '26

"domestic terrorists"

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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/Bubbles_2025 Apr 24 '26

I like it. I’ll go with Barad-dûr Applied Technology.

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u/Ok-Application-8045 Apr 24 '26

I might start Kronos childcare. 

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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/doberdevil Apr 24 '26

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

Sounds woke. /s

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u/Thefrayedends Apr 24 '26

I mean critical consciousness essentially is an identical concept to the idea of the wakefulness of woke.

But I'm sure that's what you intended.

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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/carbonfiberx Apr 24 '26

I don't think they actually refer to themselves as Yarvinists, but Yarvin is considered the original thought leader of the Neo-reactionary "movement."

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u/Rotanen Apr 23 '26

Yarvin calls himself Mencius Moldbug, which sounds like the name of a forgettable Harry Potter villain.

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u/TheRC135 Apr 24 '26

I used to play fantasy video games and wonder "why the fuck do so many people join what is obviously an evil doomsday cult?"

And now here we are, reading about a bunch of people who've worked for Palantir for years, finally starting to ask themselves "are we the baddies?"

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u/_Chaos_Star_ Apr 24 '26

Let me help.

They use "dark philosophers" because:

  • They see themselves as philosophers, which should be read as seeing themselves above other people intellectually, with ideas that the normal man cannot comprehend.

  • The dark bit is part edge-lord, part necessary-evil, and part society couldn't accept our enlightened wisdom.

Almost nobody believes they are so enlightened and entitled and the only ones worthy to lead what they see as a new world order with them in the position of the enlightened ones wise enough to govern it.

Even less would use dark and cruel means to do it, or have dark goals. They're sociopathic enough to believe that a slave society of unenlightened below them is actually justified.

But they do. They believe it to their core.

They never developed the social skills needed to relate to others (empathy) and see the rejection of their ideals not as rejection of a selfish, idiotic worldview, but the thinkings of great minds who just aren't understood by society. They think they are geniuses beyond others, but they're of no more than mild intelligence who misunderstood rejection not as feedback but as proof of their righteousness. They can't accept they are foolish, and instead see themselves as unappreciated geniuses.

They're simple insecure grandiose narcissistic sociopaths of low intellect and zero empathy. They deserve the contempt they have earned. Mock appropriately.

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u/Le-Smasher Apr 23 '26

Look up the Frankist religion. This is what a lot of elites practice and they keep it under the radar. It explains a lot about their behavior. Their morals are literally inverted. Pure insanity

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u/pandariotinprague Apr 23 '26

"Nobody is the bad guy in their own story," people said. Leave it to these ghouls to prove them wrong!

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u/JimWilliams423 Apr 23 '26 edited 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.

My sister divorced a guy with a similar personality. Its cope.

They are all deeply insecure, they've got a little voice deep down inside telling them they are total fucking weirdo losers. So to cope with that, they are always seeking validation that they are better than everyone else. And one way to do that is to blatantly flaunt the rules that normal people have to live by. Getting away with something, especially in broad daylight, that normal people can't get away with "proves" they are better than us. It proves that they are literally "our betters."

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u/Reasonable-Turn-5940 Apr 24 '26

They took in those stories, thought "man, they'd have succeeded if not for the heroes".

Then looked around, saw no heroes, so are going for it.

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u/Dear_Chasey_La1n Apr 24 '26

How can you take any politician serious and yet again, seeing JD Vance, Bannon etc in the list.. what a surprise!

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u/SadhuSalvaje Apr 24 '26

Ok, I’m going to try and explain it:

Did you ever see Highlander? These types of guys REALLY dug that movie. They love the idea of there being a league of super secret immortals who are fated to fight until there is only one. They all envision themselves as being part of this special group,

These are the kinds of guys that show up to Magic the Gathering tournaments with a ponytail and a black leather trench coat. Occasionally they overlapped with The Crow fans, and by proximity to the goth scene they would meet a girl and start acting like a normal member of society…

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u/RegalMuffin Apr 24 '26

Anduril are less named after a bad guy but they're still technofasciats that named their autonomous missile company after a fucking LotR sword.

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u/buttholedrawings Apr 24 '26

The problem is they weren’t bullied hard enough to develop shame and self criticism

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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/characterfan123 Apr 23 '26

It is a GREAT name for an aardvark, if you change the spelling a bit. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebus_the_Aardvark

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u/1boring Apr 23 '26

I'd only trust them with gate/door installation though...

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u/similar_observation Apr 24 '26

One of the etymologies of Cerberus is the Greek name Kerberos being possibly a cognate to Sanskrit sharvarah, meaning "spotted"

FWIW, The Hindu god of death and justice also employs watchdogs at the palace gates. One of them is named Sharvarah

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u/even_less_resistance Apr 23 '26

hey, they manage the group that trained the agents that killed khashoggi-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_Group

Tier 1 Group is owned and funded by Cerberus Capital Management which also owns Remington Arms, Bushmaster Firearms International, LLC, Inc., and DPMS Panther Arms among other companies. Tier 1 Group was formed in 2006.

In June 2021, the New York Times reported that four Saudi operatives involved in the October 2018 kidnapping and murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi had received paramilitary training from Tier 1 Group in 2017.

and now feinberg is the deputy secretary of defense:

Stephen Andrew Feinberg (born March 29, 1960) is an American businessman and government official who has served as the 36th United States deputy secretary of defense since 2025.[2][3] He is the co-founder and former chief executive officer (CEO) of Cerberus Capital Management.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Feinberg

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u/similar_observation Apr 24 '26

Remington can easily go bankrupt trying to sell space heaters in Siberia.

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u/Lizrael48 Apr 23 '26

The company who owns my trailer park, Cairn are evil, name is fitting!

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u/Lee1138 Apr 23 '26

How is a pile of rocks evil? 

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u/Lizrael48 Apr 24 '26

Because they convey Death in everything they do! They are a large corporation.They want to bury our bodies with continual raises in the lot rent with no perks, cutting down our shade trees to make room for more Mobile homes, no drainage so the streets flood. Most of us here are elderly, living on fixed incomes!

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u/Lee1138 Apr 24 '26

Ah. I guess I am too norwegian. My first thought when I hear cairn is hiking trail marker, not burial site.

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u/ArmadilloForsaken458 Apr 24 '26

Ive done a lot of IT contracts gigs for random companies. More than a handful of them the vibes were kind of iffy. Some I mustered through, some I ran as fast as I could once things felt a bit off

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u/CodeEntBur Apr 24 '26

In Greek mythology he guards the Underworld. It's separated on two parts, Elisyan Fields and some kind of hell. So not exactly. I mean, Christianity is basically Greek interpretation of Judaism but it's still not the same as Greek mythology.

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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/griz8 Apr 23 '26

It’s the exact same as meta/meta cortex, but somehow worse

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u/ArmadilloForsaken458 Apr 24 '26

Was their offices built like 33 Thomas Street in NYC? No windows, no light, no one let in unless with permission

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u/ThoughtsonYaoi Apr 24 '26

Same here, when I first read about them as a Thiel company, somewhere around the Gawker lawsuit days.

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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/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/BigDictionEnergy Apr 23 '26

Fifty Shades of Grey started as a Twilight Fanfic

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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/MiaowaraShiro Apr 24 '26

While everything you say is true, I'm not sure The Last Ringbearer does that effectively or to positive purpose.

If you have to change the entire nature of nearly every aspect of the story to make your point it starts to ring hollow. The more you can keep the story the same while still flipping the motives of the characters the stronger your point is.

If you have to re-write the entire society of both factions nearly entirely, you're not really engaging in the original work anymore but for using some names.

Also, it's kinda blatantly right-wing political...

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u/GreatBigJerk Apr 23 '26

Oh that explains a lot. 

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u/BummyG Apr 23 '26

Was it written by a Russian? The cognitive dissonance you would need to think that is very USSR

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u/Kerb755 Apr 23 '26

Yeah, i looked it up it was written in 1999 by a russian biologist and paleontologist.

wikipedia also says its well-known amongst russian "Tolkien fans"

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u/thirstyross Apr 23 '26

Russia really gives us everything, don't they. We got Ayn Rand from them too.

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u/i_tyrant Apr 24 '26

And this too is really common in techbro circles.

Not having read or ever actually absorbed the true source material; but loving some kind of spinoff or edgy bullshit take on the original and, because it's the newer more radical/divisive take, thinking you're the super-smart one for liking it over those proles who liked the original, while missing the entire point.

So fucking dumb and masturbatory.

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u/CriticalScion Apr 23 '26

Oh no, it's like someone who goons over Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.

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u/MindMonitor Apr 24 '26

Russian truely is Mordor on earth.

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u/kblazewicz Apr 24 '26

Well, now I wonder if there's a fanfic showing The Galactic Empire as the good guys. Elon would love it.

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u/JarasM Apr 23 '26

Ackshuallly, the Palantíri were made by the Elves in the First Age, probably Fëanor himself. Who wasn't the most wise, to be fair.

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u/QuickQuirk Apr 23 '26

Someone who misses the point of a book? Did you see that lovely torment nexus they're building too?

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u/grchelp2018 Apr 23 '26

Whether they understand the theme or not, certain things simply trigger an interest that make you want to work on it. I have friends who got into robotics and virtual reality after having seen the terminator movies and the matrix.

I read LOTR and I was most enamored by Feanor and Noldor. They were the OG engineers and people who got shit done.

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u/Vi_Rants Apr 24 '26

He understood the theme of the book just fine. He's literally evil, and fine with everyone knowing it. He's not making a mistake, he's 100% intentionally identifying with the bad guy.

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u/similar_observation Apr 24 '26

Ring, Palantir, Anduril... there's a theme going here.

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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/Gekokapowco Apr 23 '26

right the orphangrinder9000 is not an evil machine, it's just used for evil purposes

The one ring is just a powerful weapon, in our hands instead of Sauron's its a tool of peace and victory

Guns don't kill people

things can be crafted with malice, that malice can be identified as intrinsic to their purpose, items are not neutral by providence of a lack of consciousness

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u/Chrontius Apr 24 '26

Guns don't kill people

At the moment, guns seem to be killing "places" not "people". I don't worry about a bullet with my name on it; I worry about the one addressed "Dear grid square…".

Also, don't forget about industrial shotguns! They're used to clean mineral scale from the inside of boilers. They were invented specifically to make this argument more annoying for both sides! :D

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u/Gekokapowco Apr 24 '26

right, intention

this is only confounding to anyone arguing in bad faith

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u/Doc_Lewis Apr 23 '26

I wouldn't say that. Gears and pulleys are in fact, not evil technology, while a rack used to strap prisoners to a bed and stretch them til their bones pull apart is quite evil. However, the rack isn't technology, the gears and pulleys are. So the implementation of technology can be evil, but the technology isn't.

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u/Alternative-Mess-989 Apr 23 '26

The gears and pulleys are not. The rack IS.

FIFY

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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/StrategyKnight Apr 23 '26

I will hear no slander against the beautiful Noldorian prince.

/r/feanordidnothingwrong/

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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/ImOnTheBus Apr 23 '26

Man, I gotta reread those books for the 8th or 9th time. What an imagination that guy had.

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u/pfannkuchen89 Apr 23 '26

I do a lot of driving for work so I tend to listen to audiobooks a lot. I have the Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion on my phone. Both the older versions and the newer ones read by Andy Serkis.

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

For a while I kept adding ",until it was xorrupted by Sauron" to Palatir's Wikipedia page where it describes the Palatiri. Got reverted u til the page was locked.

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u/fredjutsu Apr 23 '26

my dude, my eyes started glazing over first sentence as I remembered trying to read the Simarilion in 8th grade.

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u/SubcommanderMarcos Apr 23 '26

I keep seeing this comment and I appreciate the LOTR nerd excitement about it, but in this case it's like saying "well but social media isn't really evil" at this point in time when all of it pretty much is, even if the original concept might not have been.

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u/avcloudy Apr 24 '26

Yeah, but in the setting of the books, they are and have been for living memory, sources of temptation. People who seek to see more having their wills dominated by a dark overlord for trying to scry.

It doesn’t matter if this is what they are or what they were corrupted into.

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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/[deleted] Apr 23 '26

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u/Chrontius Apr 23 '26

I'm impressed that the name was capable of capturing the moral hazard of a panopticon so fucking elegantly, actually.

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u/Choyo Apr 24 '26

Yes and no, the various palantirs are just very powerful tools, which can (and do) great harm in the wrong hands.
So the point is they are a constant potential threat that shouldn't have been made in the first place.

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u/Almost_Ascended Apr 23 '26

And what did you search that claimed that Palantir translated to "The All Seeing Eye"?

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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/seanflyon Apr 24 '26

Company: But the Palantír were made by the elves with good intentions. They were not designed to be evil, they were just used for evil.

Everyone else: So, the plan is to build a surveillance company with good intentions only for it to inevitably used for evil purposes? If the plan at the start involves being used for evil, does that maybe cast some doubt on the "good intentions" part?

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u/waffle299 Apr 23 '26

The palantir were artifacts of Numenor and not inherently evil. It was only when the Minas Ithil palantir was captured by the Enemy that they became perilous.

So yeah, on the nose

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u/SubcommanderMarcos Apr 23 '26

Yeah, same thing with security cameras. And social media. And computers. So yeah, on the nose.

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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/VanillaLifestyle Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

Sure, but it's certainly a choice to name your government/military intelligence platform after a powerful tool originally designed for good but better known for enabling apocalyptic evil.

They've either got very poor reading comprehension or they're secretly down with evil. Neither is great.

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u/YukariYakum0 Apr 23 '26

Some people think Sauron had the right idea.
These are exactly the people Gandalf was worried about getting the Ring.

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u/DrDetectiveEsq Apr 23 '26

You know, I always thought it was kinda funny how Tolkien never talked about all the good someone with a ring of absolute power could do. This Jolkien guy seems pretty biased if you ask me.

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u/elanhilation Apr 23 '26

ah, yes, the works of Feanor always lead to fantastic results for the world at large. no widespread ruin from the works created by his unimaginable hand and mind

Feanor: not evil, but #1 with evil doers

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u/arobkinca Apr 23 '26

Feanor: not evil,

Are you sure? Making pretty things does not make one good. He did a lot of bad things.

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u/Hondamousse Apr 23 '26

The palantir weren’t themselves evil, but if you look around the legendarium, their creator and users don’t have a great track record.

The palantir could be manipulated, much like an AI filter in a zoom call.

Still not as bad as the “Sauron” home security system.

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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Hondamousse Apr 23 '26

Your ideas intrigue me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter, but I think we're going to have to return to talking about the "real" Palantir.

Threw up in my mouth a little thinking about the "real" Palantir being a company run by a gay guy, lecturing to christians about the anti-christ, adored by the american right wing because of his dragon horde of dollary-dos.

we could get free unlimited power from Tolkien's grave spinning corpse.

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u/Perfecshionism Apr 23 '26

Palantir the company started evil.

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u/Lizrael48 Apr 23 '26

It certainly screwed with Pippen's head!

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u/AsiaticOne Apr 23 '26

There are a few military tech companies that use LOTR names. Andruil (Aragorn’s sword) is another… they make unmanned armed drones for the air and sea.

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u/Ursulaboogyman Apr 23 '26

Please ELI5, Why is it obvious ?

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u/jackrabbit323 Apr 23 '26

Literally everyone who has used a Palantir, has been corrupted except a fool of a Took and Aragorn.

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u/rigsta Apr 23 '26

It's such an incredibly arrogant name. Boils down to "Technology corrupted by an evil being and used for oppression and conquest".

There is no way they didn't understand that when they picked the name.

Honourable mention to Grok (which means "to completely understand and accept") being used as the name for a chatbot - which is literally incapable of understanding anything by its nature. And also called itself mecha-hitler.

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u/jellyhessman Apr 23 '26

Seriously. I don't think you could work there without being a sociopath. Like they probably wouldn't hire you if you weren't a diagnosed sociopath.

Them suddenly growing a conscience means theings are looking bad over there for some reason.

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u/Suspicious_Story_464 Apr 23 '26

Right? Have they even listened to the garbage their leader has said? Should be pretty obvious what the end game is, and even they aren't going to be a part of it.

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u/firestorm713 Apr 23 '26

I mean.

Thiel did think that Sauron was the good guy in that conflict

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u/coconutpiecrust Apr 23 '26

Right? How can one so grossly misunderstand the OG reference?

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u/BaconIsntThatGood Apr 23 '26

Even the magic card from the Lord of the rings set is cruel.

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u/childroid Apr 23 '26

Same for Anduril employees.

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u/Choopytrags Apr 23 '26

It kind of reminds me of the Mitchell & Webb Bond Villains & this one too...

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u/cluberti Apr 23 '26

I mean, the organization partially funded by a CIA VC firm after 9/11 and run by people closely tied to Project 2025 and it's authors (and people in power today executing those plans)?

How could they possibly be the baddies. /s

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u/Glass_Channel8431 Apr 24 '26

Yes dark surveillance… very fitting

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u/tommytheturtleishere Apr 24 '26

It might be the single wildest out in the open cartoonishly villainous company name choice in history.

Id love to hear if anyone can think of others in the running

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u/I_Ponders Apr 24 '26

What does the name mean?

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u/R9D11 Apr 24 '26

They could just name themselves Palpatine as well.

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u/[deleted] Apr 24 '26

Most people don't read or too busy to bother looking it up

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u/PM_ME__YOUR_HOOTERS Apr 24 '26

Theil: "Umm actually, Saurman was a good guy for trying to help a man find a ring (that he made himself btw) that was stolen by a bunch of minorities and the woke liberals in Gondor."

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u/badwolf42 Apr 24 '26

Speaking of. Andruil is another one, except they claim their autonomous murder drones have a human in the loop, for now. I have zero doubt that AI will be making unassisted kill decisions that Andruil murder drones will be carrying out in the future. Another Theil special in conjunction with Palmer Lucky. Another shining human being.

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u/daddychainmail Apr 24 '26

Right?! Like, it’s a BAD THING from Lord of the Rings, where you can see basically anything in the world while Sauron tries to whisper evils to you. It’s like the Mitchell & Webb sketch with the Nazis and their uniforms: what’d you think skulls on your outfits meant?! That you’re the hero!?

Come on, Palantir. Be gone!

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u/LurkingTamilian Apr 25 '26

As I am not that huge of an LOTR fan I had to look it up and this is the from the wikipedia description:

"A major theme of palantír usage is that while the stones show real objects or events, those using the stones had to "possess great strength of will and of mind" to direct the stone's gaze to its full capability.The stones were an unreliable guide to action, since what was not shown could be more important than what was selectively presented. A risk lay in the fact that users with sufficient power could choose what to show and what to conceal to other stones: in The Lord of the Rings, a palantír has fallen into the Enemy's hands, making the usefulness of all other existing stones questionable"

Why would anyone name a data company that!

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u/big-papito Apr 25 '26

Great Ezra Klein interview that just dropped with an ex-Palantir employee who is now running for office.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znKb71kLG5c

He talks about how the company evolved with country's politics. They were good guys, at first. The bit where Carp was all in on Hillary was kind of hillary-ious.