Peter Thiel’s ambitions. Cory Doctorow
THREAD
Palantir is one of the most sinister companies on the global stage, a company whose pitch is to sell humans rights abuses as a service. 15/
The customers for this turnkey service include America’s most corrupt police departments, who use Palantir’s products to monitor protest movements.
Palantir’s clients also include the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a federal agency who rely on Palantir’s products for their ethnic cleansing:
Palantir has a solution. The company has effectively unlimited access to the capital markets, as well as to its deep-pocketed founder Peter Thiel, a cartoon villain who’s written that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote and that democracy and freedom are incompatible. 20/
All that liquid capital means that Palantir doesn’t have to win NHS contracts – it can simply buy up *other* companies that have won them. Palantir’s strategy leaked to @business, and @oliviasolon lays it out: bloomberg.com/news/articles/ 21/
Palantir – In The Lord of the Rings, the Palantir the communication and spying devices that evil Sauron used to manipulate his dupes
https://www.cbr.com/lord-rings-pippin-palantir-and-sending-stones-explained/
In The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf discovers Saruman in possession of a mysterious black orb known as a palantír. It’s clear these stones were used as communication between all those who held one, with Sauron using his to talk to Sauron in secret. Yet, with how they affected Pippin when he grabbed one, it’s also apparent that there’s something much more sinister going with the palantíri.
Peter Thiel, born somewhere else and now a big supporter of seditious treason?
GOP tech sugar daddy Peter Thiel
“I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible. ”
Peter Thiel, Rupert Murdock, Elon Musk
The GOP is owned and operated by foreign-born billionaires. (The problem isn’t that they’re foreign-born. It’s that they’re using their fortunes to undermine American democracy.)
Peter Thiel’s Palantir Technologies had a secret plan to deepen its relationship with the UK’s National Health Service without public scrutiny
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-30/palantir-had-plan-to-crack-uk-health-system-buying-our-way-in
Elon Musk’s Texts Shatter the Myth of the Tech Genius
The world’s richest man has some embarrassing friends.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/09/elon-musk-texts-twitter-trial-jack-dorsey/671619/
The texts also cast a harsh light on the investment tactics of Silicon Valley’s best and brightest. There’s Calacanis’s overeager angel-investing pitches, and then you have the more chill tactics of people like Andreessen, who in a tossed-off Twitter DM offered Musk “$250M with no additional work required.” “Thanks!” Musk responded. In a separate exchange, Musk asks Ellison if he’d like to invest in taking Twitter private. “Yes, of course,” Ellison replies. “A billion … or whatever you recommend.” Easy enough.
“This is one of the most telling things I’ve ever seen about how investing works in Silicon Valley,” Jessica Lessin, the founder of the tech publication The Information, tweeted of the Andreessen exchange. Indeed, both examples from the document offer a look at the boys’ club and power networks of the tech world in action. Is it surprising that rich people (including one of the world’s 10 richest men) are throwing money at their friends the way you might on a low-stakes poker night? Not really—and especially not when that man is the richest man in the world.