The problem with Palantir is they target gov. agencies.

Most of the time companies who have systems like Palantir, I’m thinking the SAP, Oracle, blah Blah, have to report earnings to the street through a 10k or have to comply with regulations like Sarbanes Oxley.

They will also have in-house IT staff to monitor the logs etc.

The programs installing the Foundry system have an incentive to hide the data from prying eyes and therefore it never leaves the Palantir ecosystem. The government doesn’t hire independent consultants, auditors etc to confirm if it’s being used or not.

They simply have to demonstrate trustworthiness to a security officer and hope an IG doesn’t have an external equivalent of a Forward deployed engineer.

So while the technology is mediocre, it’s the nebulousness or the lack of audit-ability and the are the people writing checks the same people signing them.

So I sympathize with Karp talking about technology being fine it’s the apparatus surrounding it that says “just trust us” that gives pause, especially in today’s culture of conflict.

If I told you that 90% of all transactions get routed through a foreign companies software, you might pause but it’s been like that for years (SAP). The difference is there are controls in place.