I wonder what is the contextualization of the OP's preference of the "Palantir as a data/power broker" narrative to that of "Palantir as a highly profitable staffing agency".

> 5. Surveillance can only be defeated by building software and hardware to defend ourselves.

Here's where it went off the rails. Once you've abandoned the idea of democracy and peaceful self-governance, you're just another technofascist. You are Palantir, just in an earlier stage.

> These are my personal beliefs, not those of Nym.

Why are you posting this on your company's site, littered with ads for the company's product?

Post it on a personal blog, or just say that these indeed are the company's beliefs.

I had high expectations, there’s a lot of interesting content in this topic, but this is 22 points of low-substance buzzwording.

There’s no common theme, very little justification of any of the claims, and frankly very little to do with palantir

My strong feeling while reading this “philosopher CEO”’s manifesto: consumer VPNs primarily help customers fight for their right to stream Netflix. This doesn’t strike me as effective advertisement.

> 19. America created the first global surveillance state, but it will not be the last. Too many have forgotten, or perhaps taken for granted, the revelations of Wikileaks and Snowden. States across the world from China to Russia are creating even more powerful global surveillance systems and propaganda machines. Leveraging private defense contracts in countries across the world, Palantir seeks to make itself the operating system of a cross-border global secret state while it pushes its own farcical version of ethno-nationalism.

If you're honestly thinking the US surveillance state is used to the same extent that those in China and Russia are to act upon enemies of the state at home and abroad, it makes me take you less seriously.

Could it be? Absolutely. Would Alex Karp gladly direct his company to program it even if it imprisoned/killed his own family for the benefit of shareholders? Probably. But when SCOTUS just told the government this week that they need warrants for geofenced surveillance operations, this doesn't point to the existence of a surveillance state like that in those nations. At least, not yet.

Since all the top comments so far are skeptical of the post or in favor of Palantir, let's just say, irregardless of everything else:

Fuck Palantir and fuck Peter Thiel.

And fuck you to who flagged the article.

>> Unlike the generations that fought in the world wars, most of our current rulers are degenerate pedophiles who would sacrifice the well-being of the youth and the entire planet due to their infantile desire for wealth and power. Technologies of surveillance and automated warfare reflect their increasingly desperate attempts to maintain archaic forms of domination.

Tell us what you think, Harry, please don’t hold back

the author lost me at "muh immigrants". stopped reading. its like the only people who agree with me on resisting evil tech companies and surveillance ai are open borders fanatics who refuse to accept that regulating who is able to access your home is something that people have always done. go on and "resist" big tech for the poor immigrants sake while big tech and every other corporation goes out of its way to replace you with cheaper labor in the form of illegal migrants, scammy visa guest workers, foreign labor, etc.

Blogger has thoughts. World continues to spin.

Europe and Asia have it much much worse than we do on the surveillance state.

Ask anyone in jail for social media posts in the UK.

Ask any Chinese citizen about their social score and how it's adjusted.

So this sounds like an Anti-American and Anti-Palantir rant.

The fear of an imminent surveillance state just rings so hollow to me. It used to appeal to me as an existential threat, but then real world experience made me realize how implausible this is, not due to technological limitations but political will.

We already have surveillance states. Walk into any chain drug store in the country and you'll be met with cameras tracking your every movement, deodorant under lock and key and a security guard at the door. You walk in and the overseers know who you are and track your every move.

However, people walk in to drug stores every day and walk out with stuff. They're often unmasked and repeat offenders. The drug store chain gladly hands over all identifying information to police as well as their patterns. Yet nothing happens.

People comment on forums exactly how and where scams take place. YouTubers bait car and package thieves within hours. Whenever a horrific crime occurs, 9 times out of 10 the perpetrator has had dozens of arrests.

> The “enemy within” continually expands until it encompasses the entire population of a nation regardless of their status and beliefs, justifying evermore paranoid and totalizing surveillance.

So the police doesn't go after known criminals who have been arrested for the umpteenth time, but I'm made to believe they're about to come after me any day now for my innocuous offense, they just need one more Palantir camera.

Be real, there's just no political will to enable a police state.

So now on to technology. Technology should make our lives better. Police should use it to capture and stop the 1% of the population that's making life much more difficult for the rest of us. And they should lock them up for a considerable amount of time, not as rehabilitation or punishment, just to make the lives of ~99% of us better off. Maybe not 3 strikes, but can we settle on 10? 20? Anything would help.

So these theoretical arguments about a surveillance state where some hypothetical political dissident is getting doxed and raided just strikes me as fantasy.

How hot does the water need to be before you raise the alarm?

I think there is value in pointing out trend lines and voicing opposition even if there are other countries that have more authoritarian views on speech. This is not a competition, what matters is the experience of the people in the country today not the fact that if they moved to Russia it would be worse. What is important is that the US state has both gained capabilities to act that way, and has shown predilections for it.

Texas just gave a man 30 years for transporting zines because of the politics of those zines. The trend lines are potentially very bad. And it only gets harder to reverse if the concerned people are right; would you just say “I don’t think it can happen here” and have people wait until it does and delay talking about it until we are not allowed?

The book “IBM and the Holocaust” is instructive here.

These are simply tools, AI and surveillance tools included.

Tools can and are used for evil.

Some tools are much easier to use for evil. Tabulating and data processing is one of them. It makes conducting mass scale atrocity a lot easier.

Simply false.

Surveillance networks are commonplace throughout history. Classic examples include Renaissance Italian networks in Europe, Egyptian networks operating in the Levant, Nazi networks in Europe and the UK, and so many more.

Did the US bring technology to the game? Yes. Were they the first global surveillance state, no. Are they the first to bifurcate by legal statute domestic and foreign intelligence? Yes, and with Congressional and Judicial oversight I might add.

> Police should use it to capture and stop the 1% of the population that's making life much more difficult for the rest of us. And they should lock them up for a considerable amount of time, not as rehabilitation or punishment, just to make the lives of ~99% of us better off. Maybe not 3 strikes, but can we settle on 10? 20? Anything would help.

criminals are not out there making life difficult for you. you are far more likely to die in a car crash than a repeat offender that you don't know. this complaint is a subjective truth blithered from behind a keyboard.

> So these theoretical arguments about a surveillance state where some hypothetical political dissident is getting doxed and raided just strikes me as fantasy.

https://www.npr.org/2026/03/04/nx-s1-5717031/ice-dhs-immigra...

we know this is what they do, and we know this is what palantir does in other countries to help governments oppress civilians. that is the product. that is why it is worrying to see it used here.

All of your arguments are broad, baseless, and trivially disprovable.

There absolutely is political will to enable a police state, and history absolutely rhymes.

A Surveillance state is not the same as police state. We already live in a surveillance state, but we are protected by three things:

1. The cost of arrest. Actually sending someone to pick the person up and put them in handcuffs, process and change them.

2. The cost of prosecution. Having lawyers build a case, schedule a judge and courtroom.

3. The cost of enforcement. Putting someone in prison or threatening to put them in prison if they don't pay back what is stolen. Tracking if they paid it back. If they get probation it is cheaper but a probation officer is required.

These are expensive and use limited resources. Policing and governments prioritize these resources for more serious crimes like murder. Constitutional rights, including due process dramatically increase these costs. Mass surveillance made investigation and determining who did what for minor crimes done in public much much cheaper, so we just hit the next cost bottleneck.

The solution to the enforcement bottleneck is automated enforcement. This will likely be rolled out over the next ten to twenty years. If you steal from a store, you get banned from the entire story chain. This means living life very difficult, so you pay a fine. It is likely that stores will make lots of mistakes and flag innocent people, but most people will pay the fine because it is more convenient.

The situation is entirely different in a police state with no constitutional protections. The government can simply lock you out of everything you need to live because you did buy enough Dear Leader portraits this quarter. You can't use your car, can't call a ride share, can't catch a bus, can't buy food, can't get electricity to heat your house to keep your family comfortable. Instead of a fine, you need to walk to closest detention center, confess your guilt, lock yourself in and do manual labor and reeducation until the state allows you to leave. This system requires no guards.

Ever wonder why they let those criminals seemingly get away with it?

Think one extra step ahead.

It's not about the minor offenses of uninteresting people, but what happens because a change in political orientation makes you suddenly interesting. Even more so when AI automates this: Dear computer, we just got some ruling to remove citizenship of people that were not born in the country if they commit event the stupidest offenses: Go look them up.

It makes no sense for the authoritarian to anger everyone at once, but if you just convince people that complaining is bad for them, or expressing negative affect against the government, they can ge much done with little, and it doesn't take that much surveillance. We are already seeing governments that pursue their enemies to the fullest extent of the law for things that are, at best, dubious. Automation just makes this easier to do.

Have you tried reading the news?

Perhaps the shoplifters are less iportant to the surveillance state than the people protesting government abuse and getting chased around the country to their workplaces and vacation hotels?

Haha I think we have a different idea of which 1% is making life miserable

Adding this comment:

1) We DO actually need to detect crime if we are going to fight it. Sticking our heads in the dirt and strapping a sign to our rear end saying "no surveillance" may feel good, but it does nothing for the victims of crime.

2) The anti-Palantir cries are funded in part by state actors whose operations are constrained by technology that detects and predicts their actions.

The quantity of anti-Palantir, anti-America and anti-American ally threads on HN has grown substantially. YCombinator and HN owe something to this country for setting conditions for their success. How about returning the favor though diligence in moderating HN?