Palantir fanboys are trying to defend the indefensible

Fanboys of military AI firm Palantir are trying to mount a defence of the authoritarian firm. This includes the company’s chief technical officer and an outrider linked to a shadowy right-wing ‘think tank’. The case they make is about convincing as our failing PM Keir Starmer, who is also caught up with the firm.

Welcome to the hard-right mirror world where such people live.

In a think-piece in the billionaire-owned Telegraph, pollster and thinktank fellow Matthew Lesh sketches for the reader a fantasy vision. In it, Palantir is has been unfairly misrepresented by left he appears to have imagined.

Won’t somebody think of the poor military AI firms?! Oh, the humanity!

Legitimate criticism of the genocide-linked firm is portrayed as follows:

The Left has a new bogeyman: Palantir, the American company that develops data integration and analytics software.

The targets are pretty standard: Bogeyman of the Right (every accusation is a confession etc.) and Green Party leader Zack Polanski and “uninformed, petulant child” Faiza Shaheen of Tax Justice UK.

Lesh said criticism of Palantir is down to “a dumb and dangerous ideology” his opponents have allowed to “infect their brains”.

Excellent and convincing argument-ification, old bean.

Shadowy lobby dressed up as a think-tank

Lesh is a ‘public fellow‘ at the hard-right Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a free-market lobby dressed as a ‘think tank’ and sustained by shadowy funding. The IEA is given a rolling, uncritical platform on legacy media for reasons nobody with any sense can grasp.

George Monbiot, to his credit, has called them out over their funding from oil and tobacco firms and oligarchs.

Lesh’s conclusion is just as bizarre: his fantastical version of the left simply wants patients to die.

It’s hard to avoid the reality that the opponents of Palantir would prefer that patients die rather than use the best available piece of software.

It is notable that even in his butt-hurt essay, Lesh cannot avoid naming the far-right ideology which animates Palantir’s leadership – sort of:

The company is unashamedly pro-Western and, unlike some in Silicon Valley, is committed to supporting hard power in a more dangerous world. It was co-founded by Peter Thiel, who has well-known conservative views and backed Donald Trump.

He adds:

It provides services to the American military and immigration enforcement (which begun under the Barack Obama administration), as well as the Israel Defence Forces.

It is a stretch to say Thiel’s politics are ‘conservative’ — conservatives generally believe in some form of democracy, Thiel doesn’t … but there you have it.

Presumably mentioning Obama is an attempt to infer the former president is a part of the left. Another gigantic reach, if ever there was one…

‘Pro-western,’ as our readers will know, is a coded dog-whistle used by the right in reference to a supposed civilisational conflict. In reality, it simply means capitalism and empire. Not this again.

But wait, there’s more…

War is good for business

To their credit, some actual Palantir staff are far more honest than Lesh about what the firm is fundamentally about — making money from empire and war.

As the Register reported on 5 May:

The Iran War has been great for business at Palantir, as the Department of Defense has doubled usage of the company’s Maven targeting system in four months.

Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar told an investors meeting:

Maven met its moment across real world events in Q1 … When the stakes are highest, when failure is measured in lives and readiness. This is where we are uniquely positioned.

Adding:

On the factory floor side, the demand on the defense industrial base to ramp production and sustainment has been so acute that we have surged resources from our commercial business.

Maven is Palantir’s military targeting system. It has already been connected to civilian casualties in the illegal and unprovoked – and rapidly failing – US-Israel attack on Iran.

Alex Karp carps on as usual

Palantir CEO and co-founder Alex Karp – another far-right nerd – also addressed investors, according to the Register, telling them:

We 100 percent prioritize this nation’s security over any other variable.

Adding:

By the way, we tell commercial clients, I tell commercial clients all the time: ‘We are highly monogamous in the way we work. We are not trying to make you into a commodity.’

The only thing we will put above you is US national security. And by the way, we’re more than willing to do this when it is unpopular or when it’s popular.

According to the Register, Karp also said:

being unpopular is part of daily life for Palantir employees as they work with clients including governments that have been accused of war crimes such as targeting aid workers, lethal strikes on suspected drug boats, or the undeclared war on Iran that has killed at least 13 American service members and wounded more than 300 and caused unknown quantities of casualties in Iran.

It’s not so much a case of the mask slipping — the mask was never even on.

For his part, Keir Starmer has proven his own right-wing, authoritarian credentials by endorsing Palantir. This is despite the obvious ethical and practical problems with the firm and its creeping control of, for example, the NHS, the UK military and British police.

The right’s formula hasn’t changed. Level some charges at a version of the left which exists only in their heads. Mix in a bit of personal attack to spice it up. Let the loyal legacy media push it out. And don’t worry, they won’t make much of your state or corporate links. Rinse and repeat.

They’ll keep doing it, rest assured. And here at the Canary, we’ll keep exposing it. And if you’re sick of it, well… the council elections on 7 May are a good place to start.

Featured image via the Canary