Spain Orders Blacklist of Palantir from Public and Private Companies
clashreport.com577 points by mgh2 10 hours ago
577 points by mgh2 10 hours ago
Spain is really going in the right direction, I wonder why no one countries inspire from what they are doing
I do agree blocking Palantir is a good move but the Spanish government is doing it for the wrong reason. Spain is storing all sort of data on Chinese servers, including their Intelligence, and Judicial wiretaps.
https://www.politico.eu/article/spain-huawei-contract-judici...
That is rather disturbing but this had me lol:
> Spain is “making a big mistake,” said Bart Groothuis [...] “Spain is now dependent on the country with the largest and most sophisticated offensive espionage program directed against us.”
I highly doubt he's naive enough to believe the "against us" qualifier exempts the operator of the largest and most sophisticated offensive espionage program ever.
They deliver part of hardware but the data itself is hosted in Spain and operated by the interior ministry.
The Spanish public overwhelmingly trusts China over the US, so from their perspective, this is not necessarily a bad move.
Obviously, the best move would be to keep the data in Europe instead.
>Obviously, the best move would be to keep the data in Europe instead.
While 80% of Europe is subservient to the US?
Or just keep it in Spain? It's not exactly a developing nation. Can they simply not build a server and find people willing to take care of it?
Ghana can host their own IT infra. Why not Spain?
As opposed to what? American servers with Isreali backdoors?
How about Spanish servers?
I will never understand this helplessness that comes from these European countries. They are choosing to be dependent on foreign powers.
You know, we all thought you were allies. But you tricked us well.
> Fool me once, shame on... shame on you
— George Bush, 2002
The original saying: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
I think an intellectually honest take is that it's advantageous and prudent to depend on allies and neighbors; leveraging each party's strengths for efficiencies over strategic autonomy. This trade-off is commonly debated with depending on US military hardware in favor of EU military hardware (e.g. France's long standing position for EU strategic autonomy), or vendor lock-in with AWS vs cloud-independent offerings.
The problem is when an ally becomes inconsistent and/or uncooperative; a high stakes version of prisoner's dilemma. At which point do you replace an ally's offerings with more expensive, and often inferior, alternatives? The general populace rarely has the appetite for the short-term economic pain required to achieve long-term strategic independence.
It's expensive to home-grow your own solutions and if you try transitioning too many services at once the cost will be outrageous and you'll probably open other security holes. I am glad Spain is taking this step and I hope they continue this trend - but outright refusing to use any software built abroad requires a massive investment in domestic tech. That investment would likely pay economic dividends but it is a cost that needs to be measured against other investments Spain needs to make and in Spain's case resilience against global warming is especially important.
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> In political science, the term banana republic describes a politically and economically unstable country with an economy dependent upon the export of natural resources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic
What natural resource export is Spain’s economy dependent upon?
I don't have any insight into what to call it right now, but I thought for several decades after WWII it was still fascist? If anything being a banana republic might not be as as bad as what it used to be
i knew it was a little while after WWII (college history was long, long ago!) but didn't realize it was ... 1975-1977!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_transition_to_democrac...
I did a whole Wikipedia deep dive on this several months ago. I vaguely remembered hearing how long it took for it to switch back, but the history around it is kind of fascinating; the son of the previous king was groomed to be the successor of Francisco Franco, and I guess he did a good enough job convincing him that he was ideologically in agreement so that the power was passed to him, which he then used to reinstate a republican form of government.
Hell, how can you be a banana republic when you're not even a republic?
(Sorry for the pun, I'll see myself out.)
If the data is encrypted before the upload I see no problem
> I do agree blocking Palantir is a good move
Why? I'm not an expert and have only googled a bit, but I can't figure out what the specific objection to Palantir is.
did you hit up wikipedia? the controversies section would be a start. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palantir#Controversies
This section is hilariously hostile towards Palantir.
"Wired wrote that some people think Palantir "maintains a giant, centralized database of information collected from all of its clients", which is untrue."
'some people' is a classic weasel word[0] used to prop up the writer's opinion. This sentence is even funnier because it initially appears to state that Palantir has a centralized DB of clients data, only to finish with "...which is untrue." If the claim is untrue, why lead the section paragraph with it unless you're intending to smear or mislead? If I were to end sentences with "...which is untrue" I could write any number of things on Wikipedia.
It's as though I wrote "A YN user wrote that 'john_strinlai works for the CCP and uses ChatGPT to write all his posts', which is untrue."
I'll keep reading but rhetorical chicanery like this colours my interpretation of the article in general.
EDIT the section goes on: "[We can't pin anything specific on Palantir here]; still it is generally accepted that abuses by governments and data management failures can happen." What does that have to do with Palantir? "data management failures can happen" why is this in the section on "Palantir:Controversy"? This article is not good.
EDIT 2: This section is just comedy gold... 'Palantir "remains open to the critique of potentially being an accessory to acts of deportation, imprisonment, and racism through its contracts".' Open to critiques of potentially being an accessory to "racism?" What is this, the Future Crimes unit from Minority Report? This "future crimes" accusation is especially ironic in relation to the critiques of Palantir itself!
So I haven't read this whole section (it's quite long) but if this is the nature of the "smoking guns" I don't think much of it. Potentially maybe doing something according to 'some people...' this shouldn't hold water for any rational person.
If someone objects to Palantir for working with ICE I understand that, and if that's the nature of Spain's objections they should just say so.
>'Palantir "remains open to the critique of potentially being an accessory to acts of deportation, imprisonment, and racism through its contracts".' Open to critiques of potentially being an accessory to "racism?" What is this, the Future Crimes unit from Minority Report?
No. What that means is, "there's nothing here that prevents these tools from being used in this manner". It's not about what may happen in the future, it's about the current situation, which is that the tools are already produced with the objectionable capacity. It's the same reason speeding is punished, even when no harm follows as a consequence; the act is inherently reckless, regardless of the actual consequences.
Someone in ICE uses Microsoft Excel to maintain a list of people who they believe should be send to an internment camp. Therefore Microsoft is an accessory to that?
Where do you draw the line? Are we arguing there is a level of software capability that is simply too dangerous?
Maybe everyone should just stick to "I have my own biases, and I don't like Alex Karp's politics because they don't match my own. I'd rather this software was developed by someone from my side of politics - but still have the same capabilities".
> This section is hilariously hostile towards Palantir.
Funny, one comment ago you had no idea what the controversy around Palantir was. How could you possibly know the wikipedia article is hostile? It might be downplaying the controversies around Palantir.
This reaction almost makes it seem like you were being completely disingenuous with your first post, and had already made up your mind about Palantir. Curious.
Here's an easy one:
Their CEO is a megalomaniac who brags about "killing people"[0] and can't string together coherent sentences on live television[1]. Did I mention it's backed by Peter Thiel who is openly and actively trying to tear down the world's oldest constitutional democracy in favor of a technocratic oligarchy[2]?
[0]: https://youtu.be/G5gC_fParbY?si=isXSwbgUsdsQyGFD
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A3sGymV6kY
[2]: https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/porta...
Well the CEO doing a public speaking tour where he sounds like a complete lunatic probably isn't helping...https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gjkj7975po
I think in general people are a bit distrusting of a tech firm headed by billionaires with deep political ties that sells AI driven surveillance state technology to governments
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That's ridiculous. All he espouses is that all of this stuff is going to happen and so you might was well do it right (with Palantir).
Without even getting into how shady his actual product is, have you seen that recent he did? He was babbling about alpha, kept babbling about how people were stealing "ontology" (yes i know it's their application layer for agents), I wouldn't trust his business on him alone. I trust even less considering how familiar I am with it.
So the objections to Palantir are political? I know nothing about Spanish politics so I assume that makes sense in the Spanish political context. This helps explain why I can't find a specific concrete concern, it sounds more vibes-based. Thank you!
if you take the time to read karp’s manifesto and look into thiels beliefs, then maybe it wouldn’t seem “vibes-based” for you.
an example that may cure you of your “vibes-based” confusion, karp, palantirs ceo, argues clearly for authoritarianism and aggressive surveillance of the general population. he hilariously tries to convince people that the best way to have democracy is to not have it at all. a kind of “to protect your freedom, we’ll take away your freedom” idea that only a certain kind of person falls for.
so yes, people may find it silly to pretend those politics aren’t troubling, particularly when its relating to a government. i’m sure you’re aware that considering political ideas when thinking about how a government is operating isn’t “vibes-based”, it’s integral.
does this one example appease you that it isn’t “vibes based”? if this example doesn’t help you understand, both karp and thiel are not at all shy about their anti-freedom views. they’ve spoken loudly and publicly about them all over the place. if you’re truly curious, there is plenty of info out there you can read.
just be aware, they try to couch their ideas in rhetoric like “the best way to have democracy is to let us take it from you” or “let us surveil you so you can know you have privacy and freedom” kind of nonsense. it’s pretty obvious so i’m sure you won’t be tricked.
Can you point to where Karp falls for abolishing democracy? I can't seem to find that part.
"he hilariously tries to convince people that the best way to have democracy is to not have it at all."
I'm sorry but I can't find where he said this. I'm finding it confusing and suspicious that the objections to Palantir & Alex Karp are all so vague and seem to lack the rigour typically required of assertions made here on YN. Usually if you declare something like someone "argues clearly for authoritarianism," you're expected to link to a source of this claim.
People keep telling me here it's so obvious Palantir is bad I shouldn't require any specific evidence and I'm stupid if I don't see it; I'm only reminded of the emperors new cloths.
How would you interpret Thiel's “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible"?
Are you going to suggest that Thiel's role as chairman of Palantir is ceremonial and he's just there to make the tea and arrange the flowers?
> How would you interpret Thiel's “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible"?
The point is that democracies tend to want to erode liberties. Take the age gating bills floating around as an example.
The solution Thiel proposes is not eliminating democracy. It's building technology that governments cannot easily control. Cryptocurrency is one good example of this.
Yes, the objections to Palantir are mostly just partisan politics. Efforts to portray Karp or Thiel as especially dangerous usually involves some taking some quote and applying a massive leap in logic.
Like, Thiel says that it's easier to change the world by inventing new technology than through democracy. And people turn around and try quote this to prop up the claim that he wants to abolish democracy.
> says that it's easier to change the world by inventing new technology than through democracy
It had a better ring to it to me when Buckminster Fuller said essentially this. He was trying to do it through design rather than control.
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For anyone causally scrolling by, know these people are trolls. The founder of Palantir has called technology an "incredible alternative to politics", saying:
> you could unilaterally change the world without having to constantly convince people and beg people and plead with people who are never going to agree with you through technological means
If that's not "technofascism" then idk what is. Trying to spin that as culture war bullshit is disingenuous.
See quote at 13m14s in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ95Gmvg_D4
You realize that "changing the world without politics" doesn't mean overthrow of democracy. It means founding businesses to produce goods and services that change the world. Google and Facebook absolutely changed the world, not through politics, but by creating technology.
If that were the case, then why do they spend millions of dollars on lobbying every year? Why does Meta have a "president of global affairs" plucked from Republican political circles? [1]