Palantir has hired more than 30 senior UK Government officials(thenational.scot) |
Palantir has hired more than 30 senior UK Government officials(thenational.scot) |
I worked for UK government for a few years. Then I went to the private sector. This happens a lot. Most of people who do, me included, it's because the public sector is so deep in incompetence and stupid politics that it is soul-crushing. Also to get anywhere you tend to have to take placement roles andmove around a lot and resort to a lot of arse licking and back-stabbing. Having a family or any stability is really difficult.
So you leave. And then they attempt to get you back with "enhanced pay" over your initial mediocre salary because there is suddenly a skills vacuum and everything is falling apart. They know who to reach out to because they want people who can slide back in and clean up the mess. All with redundancy again waved around constantly due to government reshuffles.
Whether the civil service is a shit place to work or not (it is), there should be a recognition of the fact that the government still controls a large budget. Whilst MPs are scrutinised quite heavily, that same scrutiny is generally not extended to civil servants (because they make the rules). The number of senior civil servants who have been bent beyond belief is long (Heywood, Sedwill is still being put forward jobs even though he has been selling access to the government...it is incredible).
I had to say that it's up to you, but don't expect me to still be your friend and still talk to you if you go for that.
"defense"
I can approve of just about any job unless it's about murdering people because some politician(s) want it.
Either you're going to be surprised or you're just in bad faith.
My job does pay my bills and put food on the table but is certainly less glamorous than something which changes the lives of millions of people (though in some way it might). It is definitively inoffensive.
Adding a line of code to a killing machine. That is something else my friend.
Out of curiosity, what's considered an "already ridiculous salary"?
Friends have to be honest with each other. Friends don't let friends become fascist!
Pretty much the only honest ones I can think of are things plumber, carpenter.
Have you seen what Russia is doing to Ukraine?
What's wrong with a European company working on not letting the same (or worse) repeat in the Baltic states or Poland?
"Yes, of course I'd make tools to kill people for money! How dare you unfriend someone for that?"
Telling on themselves.
The fact that this feels like a normal thing to say to a friend tells on you a bit. Get out more, spend time with people who don't already share your priors, and the certainty starts to sand down on its own. Threatening your friendships over someone else's career is not the moral high ground, it's just an ugly way to treat people. Humility is understanding you can be wrong about things even when you're certain you're correct.
> Of [the 32], 14 no longer work for, or with, us, some of whom stopped as long as five years ago. Six are ex-armed forces veterans whose public sector experience involved serving and protecting their country.
> Not only do we entirely reject claims of an alleged ‘revolving door’ strategy, but we also believe it is inappropriate to include veterans in a report alleging such a strategy. Aside from the immense value of their experience, there is rightly an undertaking by government and society to ensure they are afforded the opportunity to build a career outside the armed forces when the time is right for them.
No.
Being a veteran at this point shouldn’t shield you from criticism from being part of the MIC/Revolving door
The owners are doing their absolute best to make military members become hardcore MIC capitalists to give companies trying to get into defense, credibility like a token.
The whole thing is fucking gross and there’s a whole miltary to corporate leadership pipeline.
Everyone should read war is a racket: https://archive.org/details/WarIsARacket
Why should people who been in the army be exempt when talking about a company in defence ?
Notice they think it’s inappropriate to include them for negative conclusions but its appropriate to talk about the positive conclusions.
We need to hold the line — nobody who has held a job with the UK Government ever deserves to be employed by the private sector. Once you're in the government, you've made your choice, you live or die in the public sector. No more begging the private sector for mercy later.
It is everywhere, it is endemic, and part of the game is people who are involved briefing the media against other people who are involved in corruption. Almost all the people involved with this campaign that I could find are people on the UK's left-wing grift circuit (in short, you setup an "independent" company/think tank claiming that you are the only source free of big tech...and you are funded by an array of quasi-state bodies and coincidentally end up pumping out continuous pro-regime, anti-change agitprop...it is just layers and layers of corruption).
https://www.ft.com/content/3d1d8511-fb5b-4de4-b93c-990df9cad...
But it'd be really helpful if this obvious moral hazard is explicitly enumerated in the law somehow. Look, the Commons runs the country, and the PM can't violate the constitution (not that there is one and I don't think it's a coincidence that countries have tended to write theirs down, apologies of Bagehot). Why does the Lords still exist when they are basically a rump branch anyway? If the lower house can simply legislate every aspect of it, it's a liability and not that great of a look from afar, whether some sort of influence peddling actually occurred or not. In the US the standard is appearance of impropriety in addition to actual bias and conflict of interest (as in, more than appearance) because this kind of relationship erodes public trust. At some point, it can't be worth the potential PR problem to keep around a rump branch of the government. There's almost 1000 years worth of sunk cost so gotta know when to let go. Are the OBEs and CBEs and all that honours list stuff not good enough? I'm with David Bowie on this one.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/congr...
Is everyone aware of all the unhinged beliefs their CEO and leadership has been spreading. never mind their actual practices.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/21/palantir-...
I guess like Americans, Britons also have forgotten all of those who paid by their blood to keep destroy these sort of people. Just like Americans, a large number of people know this is a crazy deal, but not enough to do something about it.
No idea what the grandsons politics are like, and the guy has to work somewhere. But, you get the feeling mentioning his famous grandfather in the interview was ticking a lot of boxes for this gig.
When they're not legislating dystopian privacy invading rules they're voluntarily hand over citizen medical data or letting shit like this fly.
People feel much better having some distance from cruelty, that's why they prefer to eat meat from animals that were tortured their whole life and then killed, but somewhere else where your don't see it happening.
What this person is arguing is not for pacifism, its an argument that to be their friend you must agree with them on pacifism.
I have my own thoughts and beliefs. My friends have theirs. They arent all the same. Thats how it should be, and thats healthy. Thats diversity. This "you're dead to me if you dont believe what I believe" culture is idiotic and is not inclusive at all.
Doesn't have anything to do with the fact that Putin transformed the young post cold war democracy of Russia right back into a dictatorship and is now in a full scale war with another country and would have already invaded everything he thinks should be part of 'great Russia'.
A country needs an army because at any time there are just too many aggressors out there. Who that is exactly might change over time, right now Russia clearly is one of them. As the US threatened Greenland and it's raging war against Iran (which course itself is an aggressive dictatorship), it's also a current aggressor against which European countries need an army.
Eh, this is a bit of a straw man, no? It's one thing to be liked by everyone. It's another for a (presumably) long time, close friend to say they can no longer respect you due to your decisions.
In this case, it's someone who is already making a lot of money, who could make even more by working for a company that builds AI killing machines. Telling that person they are making a serious mistake is doing them a favor. Wouldn't you want your friends to do the same for you?
Obviously, it's one thing to be a commander ordering an attack, vs a soldier firing the weapon, vs starting the company to make the weapon, vs being a supplier to the weapons company, vs being an employee at the manufacturer, etc.
What about working for a president who is going to inevitably order hundreds if not thousands murdered? Or voting for said president?
What about paying taxes, knowing those tax dollars will go to missiles and guns used to murder?
(This isn't a criticism of your worldview, by the way. I'm just genuinely curious about how others draw these lines.)
I personally turned down multiple offers/work when it comes to drones for example, I designed stuff back in 2020 that some companies now just knew about it and its potentials, but when you meet with them and discuss what they are trying to build, you know that whatever they are after can be used in bad faith if the company decided to do so, do you sell your soul for the cash or do you prefer to sleep well at night?
The only exception is whatever you built has no direct or obvious bad faith, you build a library, a gstreamer addon, etc., that can get a pass.
Of course you can. It's just inconvenient. You could leave the country, break the law or stop getting a taxable income.
It's not that "playing along" isn't a choice. It's just an easy one.
If the CEO of your company changes and turns out to do evil things with the company and the product of your work, would you switch the company?
If the President of your country changes and turns out to do evil things with the country and your taxes, would you switch the country?
The line you draw is always the one of the level of convenience you are targeting for yourself. Not saying there is no point having a line, but it's highly subjective.
And anyways, nobody _likes_ abortion, even if they are committed to it being a woman’s right
Not if you are a US citizen, you pay taxes even if you’re living abroad.
And yes I would switch companies, it’s exactly what I did before, and I will do it again. I can’t switch countries and I don’t think it’s effective like switching companies, but there are other means if your president or PM turned things evil, from pressuring your MP/senator to campaigning against to others. You never succumb to evil things no matter what.
Afair: Only if you pay less taxes where you live, which won't apply if you move to any European country.
> but there are other means if your president or PM turned things evil
I think that's correct, as long as we are thinking about a functional Democratic country. In an autocratic country this doesn't hold anymore.
Would you tell Palestinians to stop working on 'killy stuff' for moral/ethical reasons?
Others will have different opinions, obviously, but this is mine.
Now, cutting friends and family off over something this just means you do not want to tolerate people with differing views and opinions on this.
It's more about the side you are on rather than some abstract moral argument against working for companies tangentially related to the defense sector.