Can someone explain why Palantir are seen as such a threat? My understanding is their product is a PowerBI++ and they don't host any user data themselves. Are people scared of backdoors?

Two Reasons:

1) It holds deeply sensitive data and does so in the US. In times of increased mistrust of the US, many (including myself) see that as a risky choice.

2) Speaking of mistrust in America and American corporations, have you heard their execs talk? It's absolute cuckoo-town:

> If they are not scared, they don’t wake up scared, they don’t go to bed scared, they don’t fear that the wrath of America will come down on them, they will attack us. They will attack us everywhere.

Well, you've convinced me. I'm scared of America, I'm scared of American companies and I'm scared of your company in particular.

Good job, I guess?

I’ve only had their platforms explained to me by them (palantir) at a conference but the mental model that stuck with me was more of an operating system than a single tool. Think AWS managed services + databricks + whatever library of ready made intelligence software they have already built for others.

They also have “forward deployed engineers” to help organizations actually use the platform. It looked complicated enough to probably be completely useless without these specialists, even in a “self hosted” setup.

The managed hosting also seems like a major selling point so many deployments that probably should be self hosted probably aren’t because muh managed services added value.

And the backdoors of course. There is no way it isn’t full of plausibly deniable “metrics endpoints” that helpfully spew out all the internal data if the right key comes knocking. There’s no way it’s auditable at the level of detail you would need compared to the value of the data and the sophistication of the potential attacker (NSA).

The loudest people about this have no idea what they're talking about essentially.

It's not sufficient but the first thing you can filter by is anyone who comments on the name first (literally one of the most effective marketing strategies in government contracting history basically).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maxwell#Distribution_of...

It’s just the latest implementation of a winning formula.

Even if the software is mundane I don't think most people should want their country offloading sensitive spy stuff to a guy who's obsessed with the antichrist to the extent the Vatican itself is complaining he's going to Rome and giving secret speeches about it.

For a company that tries exclusively to sell to people that are very far removed from the use (government), yet have onerous reporting standards for all spending (government), there sure is very little independent reporting on the efficacy of whatever it is they are even selling. Even the contract with NHS was heavily censored. So frankly I oppose it on that ground alone.

The United States is no longer a reliable ally.

That is the reality that the world is having to adapt to. Even when Trump is gone, it will take a long time to rebuild that trust.

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