- Palantir is clearly a mind-boggling on-the-nose, but terrible name to those familiar with the book.
The Palantiri consistently provided their users technically accurate intelligence that lead to disastrous strategic decisions.
Denethor committed suicide out of despair, after a palantir showed him the black fleet approaching, but he did not know that it was actually Aragorn who had captured the fleet and was coming with reinforcements.
We don't know specifically how the palantir deceived Saruman, but it's pretty clear it was one of the key factors in his corruption and downfall.
And even Sauron himself was misled in this way! The palantir showed him, correctly, that a hobbit and Aragorn were at Helm's Deep, and he concluded that Aragorn had the ring. So he prematurely moved his armies out of Mordor and left the plains and Mt Doom unguarded, which permitted the destruction of the ring.
I honestly can't think of a worse name for a company that provides intel for strategic decision making.
- Saruman was already rotted by lust for the ring when he began to use the Palantir and then came into the presence of a dominating and corrupting will.
So yeah... plenty of real world versions of that.
- Do you have a citation for that? I read the books a long time ago, but I was sure that he was corrupted through the palantir
- > I honestly can't think of a worse name for a company that provides intel for strategic decision making.
Well their motto is basically "Be Evil and Get Rich" so I think the name fits.
Peter Thiel routinely defends Mordor - "they had technology! The rest of the world was just agricultural luddites."
- I've pointed this out before, but there's an interview clip of Alex Karp saying that Trump won the election in a landslide[0].
If you look at the actual numbers, no one, with any idea of mathematics or statistics or even just basic analysis skills, would call Trump's election victory a landslide.
It calls into question the fundamental raisin d'etre of Palantir. It makes Palantir look like a pure propaganda tool.
Therefore, also entirely useless for strategic decision making.
Interesting analysis of Palantir and Alex Karp:
Part 1, Palantir: https://youtu.be/PpEg0XIeFtA
Part 2, Alex Karp: https://youtu.be/6YWFDhOps6I
- It's _raison_, but "raisin d'être" would make an excellent name for a haute cuisine dessert.
- Well you could just say ”purpose” rather than ”reason of existence” in French. Some expression of course only exist in French - about 70% of English language - but the purpose of this francoism I never quite understood.
And yes, I’m fully aware I am annoying.
- Purpose doesn't have the gravitas of raison d'être: the very reason for its existence; the thing without which it would have no reason to exist.
I can't be too annoyed, for I can also be annoying and appreciate some level of pedantry. Words mean things!
- ... or a minor work by Sartre
- I would argue that it just shows Karp understands that the US is transitioning to a hybrid regime.
- I don’t know why we keep platforming these people. Go interview a normal person with normal thoughts. Karp is one of the most vile, insensitive, and immoral people in charge of anything tech. Just ignore him and his antics.
- Alex Karp's transformation from progressive to MAGA is fascinating; more so knowing that his father was jewish and his mother was black.
I can understand a zeal to "protect the country", but FFS, to be the brains of the secret police is a bit much.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/10/opinion/alex-karp-palanti...
- It’s easy to explain once you realize the real ideology of these people is money. Even if they have other internal beliefs they’ll get buried under the desire to make more money.
- Money is just a metric. I'd say their real ideology is power. It's the classic authoritarian delusion that has fueled every "web 2.0" startup, now writ large - it's okay if we centralize power, because we will only ever use the power for good. Of course this completely ignores how power agglomerates in the real world, especially in the presence of the strong Moloch attractor accelerator that is state-orchestrated capitalism (why it's tempting to focus critiques on money).
And ironically (or not), this overarching dynamic is exactly the core lesson of the One Ring! It's like their main takeaway from the books was "having that ring would be awesome!!1!".
Maybe the facile fascination with Tolkien comes from having read them too early in life, before they were able to understand adult concepts like burden ? If you think of Frodo as merely having to do some chore that The Adults are making him do, then at least he gets to play with some pretty awesome toys and see some pretty cool stuff. And this would seem to be the level of moral development underpinning the contemporary neofascist movement (or "autocratic authoritarian", for those who are triggered by the F-word).
- Here are some key quotes from the linked article:
"Woke" was originally about waking up to the fact that America was built on systemic racism (which is absolutely the case), but was then artfully redefined by the Right as "shrill liberal nonsense" that is designed to be completely vague and amorphous so that it satisfies the desire for "librul tears" and cannot be defended because there's no specific points to defend.But Karp, Steinberger told me, needed “to find a reason beyond just opportunism and necessity” to embrace Trumpism. His reasoning, however, is so incoherent it seems pretextual. Toward the end of the book, Steinberger quotes Karp lambasting the left for failing to adequately address antisemitism, chaos at the border and the threat of Iran. “I’m sick and tired of left-wing people fostering right-wing populist movements because they won’t be adults about these issues,” said Karp. That is perfectly cogent as a centrist critique of progressives. As a justification for aligning with a right-wing populist movement, it’s bizarre.So by stating they are "anti-woke" they just mean "New! Improved! 100% Librul Tears!". It's intellectually fraudulent and just spiteful.
- Some Jews in Germany thought that the EK medal from WW1 would safe them from the Nazis.
- Might be a hint that a lot of tech/SV signalling was just "woke capitalism" the whole time, and they dropped the pretense the moment it became politically advantageous.
- Tech was never woke. It's a boys club and on the "good" side was geeky nerds who just cared about hacking and the "bad" side about financial velociraptors hunting money. Nothing woke about that.
- Well, Aragorn used the information he got from the Palantir of Orthanc to make a correct and very important strategic decision, to take the Paths of the Dead so that he could stop the Corsairs in time to save Minas Tirith.
So the lesson is that you have to use the intel you get wisely, or else very bad things will happen. I'm not sure if that makes the name any better for the tool it's applied to, though.
- The actual lesson was that you need to be the trueborn king who can claim the palantiri by birthright if you want to use them for good. Even then, it requires great effort. Bad things will happen if anyone else tries to use the palantiri, no matter how great and powerful they are.
- > The actual lesson was that you need to be the trueborn king who can claim the palantiri by birthright if you want to use them for good.
Not really. Denethor was the trueborn steward, whose ancestor had been officially appointed by the King, and though it isn't mentioned in the Lord of the Rings, the essay on the Palantiri in Unfinished Tales says that stewards were often deputized to use the Palantiri. So Denethor had the right to use the Palantir of Minas Tirith. But he didn't have the wisdom to realize that Sauron was manipulating what he saw.
- So .. who is the trueborn king today?
I believe there is no shortage of aspirants.
- > who is the trueborn king today?
Of course there isn't one; the notion of the "rightful king" in Middle-Earth does not have a real world counterpart.
Tolkien might have believed it did, since he was a Catholic and might have believed in some version of the divine right of kings that the church supported for many centuries. But even then, the power the "rightful king" has in Middle-Earth is very limited. There is no hint that Aragorn, once he becomes King, micromanages everything in Gondor or makes rules by royal decree about everything, or even any very great number of things. The only actual official acts of his that are described are making peace with the Haradrim and the Easterlings, giving Sauron's freed servants the lands about Lake Nurnen, and pronouncing judgments of particular cases, of which Beregond's is the last. He certainly doesn't seem to be dictating what everyone in Gondor should do in their daily lives. Nor is there any hint that previous Kings did any such thing.
And even Tolkien's real world attitudes weren't necessarily monarchist. In a letter to his son, he wrote:
"The most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity..."
If this espouses any kind of political view, it's libertarianism.
- Easy. Nobody. The extreme power this gives will corrupt anyone in the real world.
- And yet we continue to give people such extreme power in the real world. What kind of sense does that make?
- So fantasy novels aren't a great playbook for actual government? Too bad that too many people are still heavily influenced by this.
- A bullied kid finds refuge in sci-fi and fantasy books. This kid builds a mental fantasy world where they get revenge on their tormentors. In this mental fantasy world, every self-serving thing they do is “righteous”, because it undoes the harm that was done to them. Their manifesto is a mish-mash of ideas from the books, but twisted to make them into the good guy.
Some of these kids eventually grow up and meet people who are kind to them. They find positive lessons in real human social interactions. They leave their protective fantasy bubble behind. They eventually learn to seek justice where there was injustice.
Others never grow up. They end up seeking to fight injustice with a new form of injustice. Only this time, they get to be the tormentor.
- Its cellphones ? They show the rulers accurate predictions of human behaviour after the the fall of the towers proofed that the left only had enbarassing cofabulations to explain behaviour at scale. Thats the most valuable thing you can gain out of social network sensor data.
- >I honestly can't think of a worse name for a company that provides intel for strategic decision making.
Yet the choice is very effective at telling those with eyes to see that the one who chose the name possesses only a surface-level understanding of what appears to be his favorite piece of literature.
- The man seems to have severe difficulty interpreting fiction. See: his antichrist ramblings (sorry, "lectures").
- Or he's broadcasting his intention to destroy world governments and institute a new global order under technocratic control. He's banking on a US General not understanding the deeper lore behind of the name.
- He literally considers Saruman the good guy, Mordor the good place, and Gandalf the bad guy (holding back technological progress)
Discussed previously e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45901389
- Wait seriously?
I'm pretty sure Tolkien would be furious at the mere idea. He could not have written more thoroughly black and white morality if he tried...
- It’s based on a retelling of the story that isn’t as black and white and more based around the idea that technology and progress are good.
I haven’t read it but the premise is quite cool. Of course having Thiel as a fan kinda ruins it but I still wanted to read it sometime.
- Well if the stories where realistic the shire would overproduce people in 3 generation and then export miserable mercenaries ala afghanistan for the rest of days.
- In folklore, supernatural monsters are often compelled to show their true selves in non-obvious ways.
- someone will name their company Ashnazg, probably an AI company
- Already happened. Ashnazg Enterprises LLC https://ashnazg.com
No AI though, just fully stacked...
- As though the ego of Peter Thiel has any grounding in reality or ironic metaphor
- I can think of a worse name: Peter Thiel. Oh wait I'm confused. That's a better name for this.
- Here are the series of articles that the Swiss investigative magazine, Republik + WAV, published and Palantir looked to silence: https://www.republik.ch/dossier/die-republik-vs-palantir
- To all investigative Journalists: Thank you for your hard work, and for being an inspiration and beacon of hope in these dark techno-feudalistic times.
- Thank you for your hard work, and for being an inspiration and beacon of hope in these dark techno-feudalistic times.
The best way to thank them is to pay them for the work they do.
Donate to a journalism collective. Subscribe to a newspaper or magazine. Some even have gift shops, so just buy some swag. (Do not send pizza, unsolicited food always goes straight into the trash.)
"Information wants to be free [as in beer]" is great for t-shirts, but leads to societal downfall.
Journalism is absolutely one of those things in life where you get what you pay for.
- Good point. Thank you.
- Anyone who has read The Lord of The Rings has exactly zero reasons to trust Palantir.
- Indeed. The corporation name is literally (in literature!) an example of all-seeing surveillance tools causing harm when (not if) they fall into evil hands.
- If my understanding is correct, the use of palantir by creatures leads to their own downfall, both for evil and good characters. So following through, it's very useful for it to be in evil hands
- Crazy that there's a weapons company called Anduril as well
- Creative people seem to be rather pacifistic. Warmongers seem less so, they have to "borrow" from the creative ones.
- Why? Naming a weapons company after Aragorn's sword makes sense. "The Daily Beast" on the other hand is a rather cynical name...
- Anduril as a 'tech' weapons company is ironic. In the books, it is Saruman, with his "mind of metal and gears" who is the scientist and engineer. The sword Anduril powerful not because of technology but because of the craftsmanship of its make and the valor of its wielder.
- Anduril is quite a positive name, it is a broken sword reforged later to save humankind. Quite a metaphor about western reindustrialization.
- except of course that Tolkien, as a Catholic was quite adamant that he didn't write a story of Western chauvinism. The sword is not a metaphor for industrialization, which is quite literally the villain of the story, it's a symbol for restored kingship and hope.
- tolkien largely copied the nibelungsenlied and accidentally inherited western chauvinism and many other ideas from that lore, including especially a great amount of racism
- Nibelungenlied (not Nibelungsenlied) was racist? That needs a citation
- Right, and his concept of nobility and just kingship was about mercy love justice and a love of nature, good food, merriment, harmony, and treating others with respect. His works are full of cautionary tales of people who reached for immortality, power, self-aggrandizement, and control over others and fell as a result.
(Though he was obsessed with lineage and blood quotients and pale skin)
- It's very difficult to judge the attitudes and held values of people who lived in the past - I mean the parentheses.
We don't know how much of it is real flaw or corruption and how much is just the zeitgeist they lived in.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if Musk's capital T today would end up becoming the beginning or turning point of a cautionary tale in the future. And, for better or worse, I know a lot of otherwise great and talented people who are still his fans.
- Crazy? It's backed by Thiel as well IIRC.
- Well it’s kind of the same with Rand. That’s their thing, they read these books as preteens and the nuance is lost on them
- I thought RAND was just a contraction of Research And Development?
- I suppose this is about Ayn Rand. I haven't read her books, but from what I hear they aren't very nuanced though.
- Her books are mostly about genius caring people being held back from their plan of helping humanity into a golden age by more stupid evil people and regulation and so on.
- > Well it’s kind of the same with Rand. That’s their thing, they read these books as preteens and the nuance is lost on them
In the case of Ayn Rand, it is questionable whether there's nuance to be found.
- It's enough to hear what their genocidal maniac of a CEO says.
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- Please don’t use these sites, they alter archived content and use visitor browsers as a ddos botnet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.today_guidan...
- they alter archived content and use visitor browsers as a ddos botnet.
Interesting. I'm surprised I didn't notice it on HN. From Wikipedia:
In January 2026, archive.today added code into its website in order to perform a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against a blog.[2] This code uses the computers of visitors of the site to repeatedly send requests to the blog, with the goal of overwhelming the blog's ability to handle legitimate traffic. The code is still present as of 5 June 2026, but has been modified to reduce the frequency of malicious calls. [3] On June 12, at least two users reported their requests were redirected to tehrantimes.com. Some common ad blockers, such as uBlock Origin, are currently stopping these malicious requests. It was later discovered that archive.today tampered with archived web pages.[4] It was also later discovered that this was not the first DDoS attack Archive.today has performed.
- Then I'd have to ask of publishers please don't use subscription oriented paywalls. I'd be happy to pay for an article here and there. I do not want to understand your subscription model, compare benefits between "tiers" of subscriptions, or think about how to cancel when I eventually realize I'm not getting the value I hoped for.
This is the price of that dark pattern. These sites wouldn't exist if they acted like publishers instead of retailers.
- Most digital subscriptions to large news organizations are in the order of $5 - $10/month.
If you can't afford 16¢ a day, then you have bigger problems.
If you don't want to pay monthly because you find it inconvenient, well boo hoo. Just do without. The world, and its journalists, don't owe you anything.
I find the exercise of buying a car to be tedious. That doesn't justify me just driving one off the lot without paying.
- If Cannot resolve archive.ph host
Access the .is domain https://archive.is/lXw7j
internet archive cannot resolve either
- archive.ph works fine for me. Resolves to
168.222.241.49 archive.ph 2a09:b280:fe00:5a:d197:eab6:9aa0:f22 archive.ph
- Wait europe doesn't want to buy spy tech that spies on europe? Shocking.
- Sadly german law enforcement is definitely on the Palantir train..
https://www.dw.com/en/german-police-expands-use-of-palantir-...
- Switzerland is not part of the European union (nor a member of the European Economic Area) but your point still stands
- OP did not say EU, he said europe. Switzerland is part of europe.
- Some people in Europe don't want new sources of data coming in outside of their control.
- Fine. Thiel will just fund a Hulk Hogan lawsuit against the Swiss magazine, then.
- Anecdote: When I was looking for a job in 2014, they were present at a student job fair in Zurich. Barely knowing that company, I started off the conversation with "hey, you are creating all these intelligence tools for governments, right?".
The representative somehow started rambling incoherently about what wonderful work they do for NGOs and non-profits. Without acknowledging that their main customers are the intelligence community and law enforcement. Or telling me anything concrete their software is supposed to achieve.
Color me not surprised. Needless to say, I applied for a supposedly much lower-paying job where I actually knew what the work was about.
- > Palantir, whose software is widely used by US defence and intelligence agencies, has faced growing scrutiny in parts of Europe as governments reassess their dependence on American technology companies.
I think it's great. Europe and other regions will be building out their own tech stacks, decreasing global dependence on big US players like AWS and Palantir, creating lots more jobs for programmers and much broader ecosystems for doing things.
- > officials in Denmark and the Netherlands have similarly expressed a desire to uncouple from the US-based software group
oh that is clever writing
- I wonder which Danish official they are talking about. Lots of voices against it, but not from officials. The danish state is going full steam ahead. Just yesterday the Greenlandic police was integrated with Grotham from Palantir.
- Is that for real? After all the Trump wanting to take over Greenland stint? I I should not be surprised if Iran would integrate with Palantir as well.
- Maybe being Danish they're cautious and want to test it on polar bears first, you know, before widespread adoption.
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- Streisand effect?
- Excellent.
Although, while I enjoy watching them lose. I don't appreciate the waste of time.
- "Protecting privacy and upholding liberal democratic values have been central to Palantir's identity and mission since our founding in 2003." - Palantir
lol
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388 points by sschueller 21 hours ago | 100 comments