
Palantir worked with Cambridge Analytica on the Facebook data it acquired - jacobsheehy
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/27/palantir-worked-with-cambridge-analytica-on-the-facebook-data-whistleblower.html
======
vowelless
I wonder how confident Thiel was of a Trump presidency back in May 2016, when
he started being open about his support for Trump. Perhaps he was operating
with more knowledge than available to the general public and national
pollsters? I wonder how involved he was with CA for the purpose of the
election. His $1.25 million donation in October 2016 seems even more
interesting in light of all this.

I took out a bet on Trump when Thiel became open with his support. It was
driven by my belief that he was operating with deeper knowledge about the
state of the nation precisely due to his association with Palantir (mostly)
and Facebook. I feel dirty about winning that one.

~~~
gdubs
I've always thought of it in terms of asymmetric risk – something Thiel seems
to have a preternatural intuition for. In other words, what he stood to gain
with a Trump win far outweighed what he stood to lose with a Trump loss. Most
business leaders were throwing in with Clinton. If Thiel had done the same,
and Clinton won, he'd be one voice in a crowded field. By being one of the few
to publicly back Trump, he all but guaranteed a prime seat at the table. This
is exactly what played out post-election, with Thiel ushering in tech leaders
in the lobby of Trump Tower.

Had Trump lost, Thiel would have probably diminished his standing with the
Clinton administration significantly. But, due to the crowded field, it would
have been a small standing to begin with.

And here's the crux: Thiel has held controversial opinions for a while. He
probably figured his association with Trump wouldn't really move the dial on
his likability much, and he seems to enjoy being contrarian anyway.

So, anyway, there's my theory. Risk asymmetry. A lot to gain in the event of a
Trump win, little to lose in the event of a Trump loss.

~~~
walrus01
I don't think thiel and palantir would have lost that much if Clinton won. If
the bulk of palantir revenue comes from DoD and intelligence community (IC)
contracts, he cares about whoever will increase the DoD budget in general. No
matter whether it is Bush or Trump or Reagan, a republican president almost
always increases defense and IC spending and green lights new toys for them to
play with. Defense contractors who don't care about Democrat or republican
ideology simply care about their bottom line.

~~~
lesss365
True that the Republicans usually increase defense/IC spending, but the
Democrats support them just as much. Feinstein is almost always pro IC
operations. Clinton pushed for US involvement in Libya and Syria, and in a
speech before the Democratic Convention was sabre rattling at China. Clinton
also, according to Seymour Hersh, was aware of CIA gun running operations out
of the US consulate in Benghazi. Obama's support for DoD/IC activities should
be common knowledge.

Not making a partisan argument, as I don't affiliate with either party, just
stating that both sides exhibit support for DoD/IC activities and both were
likely to support equal, if not increased, levels of spending on them

~~~
walrus01
Probably the biggest recent example would be the size of the DoD budget shrink
during 8 years of Clinton:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=clinton+presidency+dod+budge...](https://www.google.com/search?q=clinton+presidency+dod+budget&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1)

And then the massive DoD budget increases under Bush, post 9/11 and
Afghanistan/Iraq related which kept a lot of large and medium sized defense
contractors riding the gravy train for a very long time.

As best I can remember Obama did not significantly shrink the DoD budget as a
whole, though it did drop a bit from the 2006-2007 peak under Bush, though
some programs were cancelled.

------
throwaway84742
And CA was introduced to Palantir by none other than Sophie Schmidt, the
daughter of one Eric Schmidt. It’s turtles all the way down, and anyone who
thinks their private data is not being abused elsewhere (wink, wink) needs to
perhaps think again.

~~~
harryf
That's pretty amazing if true. Eric Schmidt and Google seemed to be pretty
firmly behind the Clinton campaign in 2016

~~~
throwaway84742
Their CFO, Ruth Porat, publicly wept at the weekly company meeting when
Clinton lost. Google also heavily censored their otherwise automatic search
autocomplete so it doesn’t bring up negative suggestions for HRC. No such
courtesy was afforded to Trump. Bing, to their credit, did not censor either.

~~~
forapurpose
Can you back this up with sources that others will find credible? This topic
really doesn't need more loose claims.

~~~
aioprisan
Of course not, it's all conspiracy theory BS

------
JumpCrisscross
If Cambridge Analytica violated (a) the CFAA [1] or (b) federal election law
[2][3], Palantir could be--best case--dragged into years of lawsuits. If they
knew about said violations and did nothing, it could be more serious. Either
way, I'd write off the near-term odds of their managing an IPO.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act#C...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act#Criminal_offenses_under_the_Act)

[2] [https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/26/cambridge-
analytic...](https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/26/cambridge-analytica-
investigation-request-484866)

[3]
[https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/blu...](https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/blumenthal-
calls-for-fec-investigation-of-cambridge-analyticas-reported-illegal-
interference-in-american-elections)

~~~
ineedasername
If Palantir had staff donating their expertise to CA free of charge then it
could also be considered an unreported donation in kind, and therefore a
violation for the FEC to investigate.

~~~
thyrsus
FEC: "The Commission is made up of six members, who are appointed by the
President of the United States and confirmed by the United States Senate. Each
member serves a six-year term, and two seats are subject to appointment every
two years.[1] By law, no more than three Commissioners can be members of the
same political party, and at least four votes are required for any official
Commission action." \- Wikipedia

Given the Republican's enthusiasm for pursuing Trump pecadillos, nothing will
ever come from there.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
Every state has election laws and an Attorney General to enforce them. They
have already taken an interest in Cambridge Analytica [1]. Palantir shouldn’t
expect partisan protection.

[1] [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cambridge-analytica-state-
attor...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cambridge-analytica-state-attorneys-
general-send-letter-to-facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg/)

~~~
ineedasername
And in fact the DOJ itself has been picking up the slack long kept flaccid by
the FEC: [https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/justice-department-now-
ca...](https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/justice-department-now-campaign-
finance-beat)

------
stevievee
I wonder if anyone is really surprised by this.

It became pretty clear right after Trump won the election (as early as
December 2016) during this meeting:
[https://youtu.be/oX_9yD2lN2g](https://youtu.be/oX_9yD2lN2g). Trump met with
13 tech company giants and somehow Alex Karp (CEO of Palantir) is at the
table. The rest of the executives are from companies with market caps well
into the hundreds of billions.

~~~
adamnemecek
Let’s not forget Thiel gave Trump money.

------
dbt00
FWIW Palantir gave a pretty ironclad denial on the record for this article:

> A spokesperson for Palantir told CNBC the company has never had a
> relationship with Cambridge Analytica and has never worked on any Cambridge
> Analytica data. Cambridge Analytica was not immediately available for
> comment.

~~~
rhizome
Does that include SCL and Emerdata and any other entities in this intentional
warren of shell companies?

~~~
Panjam
Yes, this. It seems SCL associates have exploited the commercial veil very
effectively and we need to look behind that veil to work out what happened. I
would also say that SCL has very cleverly exploited the difference between
equity and contract payments to subvert spending caps. Invest a business...no
spending cap.... I hate these guys. I'm a proud Brit, I do biz globally, and
these guys have trashes Brand UK. I'm sometimes close to tears at what these
guys have done.

------
stefan_
We need to treat illicitly obtained data like narcotics, incriminate everyone
that touches them. Then, we need to stop doing that with narcotics.

~~~
eitland
I've had a suggestion like that in my profile here at HN since sometime last
year.

Only I think all user data, legally obtained or not, and compare it to nuclear
waste.

------
mvpu
The sad part isn't that CA mined the data or that Palantir helped build
models, it's that those 50 million people believed in the campaigns they were
fed. If a few powerful people can influence the masses to achieve their
objectives, what good is democracy bringing to the table? More importantly,
how different is mental manipulation compared to physical manipulation as
commonly seen with dictatorship?

~~~
lmoml
Back when propaganda was first being developed as a field, particularly
between the two World Wars, it was greeted with a great deal of excitement by
the powers that be precisely for this reason: It provided a non-physical means
of coercing the will of the masses. There is plenty of material from those
days about the wonders of propaganda, that it would enable the ruling elite to
guide the caprices of the people while avoiding physical conflict (win/win!).
It was always a half-baked idea, and the other shoe dropped very quickly (Nazi
Germany was very forward thinking in its use of propaganda), but nothing
changed.

I doubt that you can remove all social inequality, and it seems throughout
history there have always been people who have exerted their wills more in
order to accomplish their ends in society. The deep issue that we face is that
there is no ingrained morality. Imagine if wealth and power were viewed as a
weighty responsibility rather than a privilege--as the holder is responsible
for using it to accomplish what they will, the choice of what one does
reflects the quality and worth of the person. That's the reality in any case,
but imagine if that were universally ingrained as how we, as a society,
defined success....

~~~
gowld
It goes back farther than the world wars.

Fake News used to be called Yellow Journalism.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism)

~~~
intended
No;

Fake news is the specific phenomenon observed recently of websites, operated
primarily by Romanian citizens, which made up events entirely to drive ad
click revenue.

The sites were made to look like they were for legitimate news papers, but
there were no actual newspapers with those names in existence.

Soon after the term was coined it was co-opted by president trump to mean all
media, leading to the blurring of its meaning.

Fake news is neither journalism nor politically motivated. It’s pure avarice
sans morality.

Yellow journalism was still about news and journalism. The root of fake news
is hard to even put into words.

It’s people who didn’t care about news, they just a/b tested text and saw what
got the most shares and likes.

Then they conned people into believing it was a legitimate source by putting
it under a news site like banner.

------
daodedickinson
Ha. I was just talking here the other day about how my friend at Facebook
would always say that Palantir has even more data, including just about
everything from Facebook, and a commenter responded that they couldn't see how
Palantir would actually be able to scrape up Facebook's data...

~~~
mieseratte
> including just about everything from Facebook

So all those half-joking "conspiracy theories" about Facebook being a
collection tool for three-letter agencies isn't that far off.

~~~
dictum
Ultimately, every American company is a collection tool for three-letter
agencies, and through allies, most non-American corporations too.

I like to think FB is how they check the accuracy of their other data sets.

~~~
icc97
Coincidentally FB and CA are are both only one letter I away.

~~~
gowld
CIA spooks put the "boo!" in "Facebook"

------
BillinghamJ
Perhaps companies contracted to provide data processing services should be
required to check that the source of the data was legitimate and within the
allowances of data protection regulations.

Just like AML rules, where companies processing large amounts of funds have to
check the source of the funds to ensure they were obtained legitimately.

------
joshwa
What I want to know: who were the ones who took that data and did the ad buys,
picked/wrote the rage-bait content, etc? I don't think I have seen that detail
anywhere. Did I miss it somewhere?

(follow the money, etc)

Psychographic profiles/privacy issues aside, to me it's the tension-stoking-
Willie-Horton-propaganda tactics that deserve public scorn, if, alas, not
prosecution. Unless it was (also) Russia.

~~~
nkassis
Could be a company in Texas named Harris Media was involved in the Kenyan
election at the behest of CA according to the Channel 4 investigation. They
also are a prime choice for republican campaigns in the US.

Their list of clients seems pretty much aligned with CA's client list.

[https://www.harrismediallc.com/](https://www.harrismediallc.com/)

------
downandout
This title really should be updated. Even the title in the linked story says
that this is “alleged,” and there is zero evidence in the story other than the
say-so of one media-hungry individual. Further, Palantir has issued a flat out
denial, yet this headline appears on HN as a statement of fact.

------
yawaramin
Article leaves out that Palantir's co-founder Thiel is on the board of
Facebook, and donated to a PAC which funded the Cambridge Analytica campaign.

~~~
wu-ikkyu
FTA:

"Thiel is a well-known supporter of Trump and donated over $1 million to his
campaign. He is also on the board of Facebook."

~~~
yawaramin
Whoops, guess I missed it. Or, it was revised.

------
olefoo
Not at all surprised that Palantir sees itself as being more powerful than
national governments.

The upside is that Palantir and Mr. Thiel will suffer the same fate as most
business associates of Mr. Trump, out of the money and with a permanently
tainted reputation to boot.

------
killjoywashere
Is anyone getting the sense that Palantir, Cambridge Analytica, and Facebook
aligned on a rather coherent political axis, with Google and Apple staking out
an opposing axis, and Amazon is staking out a sort of arms-dealer neutrality?

~~~
brokensegue
no because the headline here is wrong, the CEO of Palantir is a known Trump
critic and CA isn't even prominent enough to be on the same level as any of
these other companies.

------
colordrops
And Palantir worked with HBGary to infiltrate and destroy Wikileaks in 2010:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-wikileaks-
apology-20...](http://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-wikileaks-
apology-2011-2)

------
samkone
Does this even come as surprise?

------
feelin_googley
"Mr. Wylie said that he and Mr. Nix visited Palantir's London office on Soho
Square. One side was set up like a high-security office, Mr. Wylie said, with
separate rooms that could be entered only with particular codes. The other
side, he said, was like a tech start-up - "weird inspirational quotes and
stuff on the wall and free beer, and there's a Ping-Pong table.""

Source: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/us/cambridge-analytica-
pa...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/us/cambridge-analytica-
palantir.html)

------
mtgx
Thiel also gave money to a PAC than then paid Cambridge Analytica:

[https://mashable.com/2018/03/22/facebook-peter-thiel-
cambrid...](https://mashable.com/2018/03/22/facebook-peter-thiel-cambridge-
analytica/)

------
RosanaAnaDana
Right or wrong, 'Palantir' is a great name for this kind of company.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
Side question, why is it legal to take a name from "Lord of The Rings"?

Wouldn't the Tolkien Estate have a copyright on that?

Could I start a newspaper tomorrow called "The Daily Bugle"...(which is where
Spiderman works)?

~~~
jzl
They disingenuously claim it has roots in Latin without mentioning LotR at
all:

[https://www.palantir.net/blog/palantir-philosophy-or-
what-s-...](https://www.palantir.net/blog/palantir-philosophy-or-what-s-name-
anyway)

Even if it does, and I'd love to see more details about that (Google
translates 'openly' as 'palam'), it's clearly a LotR reference.

~~~
leodeid
Palantir.net is not the same Palantir everyone is talking about here.
Palantir.net seems to be a website consultancy for drupal-based sites.

Palantir.com doesn't seem to have anything referencing the source of the name.

~~~
jzl
Ah! Thanks for the correction.

------
gnbfulbvgjbvv
Deleted

~~~
gnbfulbvgjbvv
Deleted due to lack of context

~~~
tzahola
tbh, your posts read like the ramblings of a paranoid schizophrenic.

~~~
gnbfulbvgjbvv
Deleted

~~~
deft
Could you repost your original comment please? People seem to think any and
all outrageous tales where X told Y some shady Z was happening means
schizophrenia.

~~~
gnbfulbvgjbvv
It probably was schizophrenia. Sorry for wasting bandwidth.

