In 2023, the then-Conservative government awarded Palantir with a £330m contract to “build a new NHS data platform”. The move proved controversial because Palantir is a US spy tech firm and its co-founder Peter Thiel is a prominent Trump donor with links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Now, a trove of leaked emails have shone further light on Thiel’s connections.

    • Optional@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      The UK has been doing some seriously batshit things lately. Obviously we’re not ones to talk but - yeah. It’s sad.

    • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      It’s universally true that having more and better information can improve business and efficiency. (This of course has limits, yes.)

      I’m sure they were offering data that would help the agency.

      Now the ethics, and creepiness? I’m not commenting on that. Palantir is not ethical. They labor under twisted logic.

      And every time we mention their name online, we probally get a demerit in their database.

    • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      10 days ago

      Oh yeah they are in deep cahoots you should read the investigative journalism article they mention from earlier this summer.

  • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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    I assume y’all on the other side of the pond are just learning about Palantir for the first time and that’s why you’re looking for bombshell headlines. I can assure you as someone from Silicon Valley that there is literally no single headline that can possibly convey the pure evil that is Peter Thiel. He literally believes that it is morally and, from his perspective, objectively correct that a few pre-selected technocrat elites (his words) should rule city-states that “compete” with each other. He is currently miserably failing at building a libertarian “eutopia” (his words) out in the desert to the east of San Francisco. He promises it would be done by this year. It hasn’t even started.

    He founded PayPal and got mad when he immediately learned that banks exist for a reason. He was such a piece of shit that Elon Musk couldn’t work with him.

    • Tweak@lemmy.world
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      Dude, the US has been lagging behind the UK for the last decade. We voted for Brexit because of Cambridge Analytica, then you voted Trump for the first time because of Cambridge Analytica. We voted for Boris in 2019, you got Trump again in 2024. We’re probably going to vote in Nigel Farage next and then the US will be like “Hold my beer!”

      Palantir is just another symptom of this wider problem.

      • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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        9 days ago

        Ok, but hear me out: what if we got Nigel Farage in a 10 gallon hat with Liz Truss in a 10 gallon hat for VP.

      • HugeNerd@lemmy.ca
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        10 days ago

        We voted for Boris in 2019, you got Trump again in 2024.

        It’s the hair!

    • HugeNerd@lemmy.ca
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      10 days ago

      Wikipedia classifies him as a “thinker”. Does your wiki entry classify you as a thinker? Check and mate, lib.

    • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      The first time? Hardly, for anyone who can read and find proper news sources. I’ve been telling people for years that the most dangerous people in the fascist middle northern america are not in the white house, but in the silicon valley - and that the most evil motherfucker is Peter Thiel.

    • Frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      9 days ago

      Well, Elon wouldn’t work with him because Elon had a shitty idea that Thiel said was shitty and wouldn’t let Elon do it. Elon was forced to settle for becoming filthy rich.

      That project is where the name “X” originally comes from.

  • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.worksOP
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    10 days ago

    Journalists have reported on Thiel’s links to Epstein for some time. In 2019, journalist Whitney Webb reported on the links between Epstein, Israeli tech company Carbyne, and the American intelligence apparatus. In the piece, she reported:

    Not long after Epstein’s arrest, and his relationships and finances came under scrutiny, it was revealed that the Israeli company Carbyne911 had received substantial funding from Jeffrey Epstein as well as Epstein’s close associate and former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak, and Silicon Valley venture capitalist and prominent Trump backer Peter Thiel.

    Webb added:

    Another funder of Carbyne, Peter Thiel, has his own company that, like Carbyne, is set to profit from the Trump administration’s proposed hi-tech solutions to mass shootings. Indeed, after the recent shooting in El Paso, Texas, President Trump — who received political donations from and has been advised by Thiel following his election — asked tech companies to “detect mass shooters before they strike,” a service already perfected by Thiel’s company Palantir, which has developed “pre-crime software” already in use throughout the country. Palantir is also a contractor for the U.S. intelligence community and also has a branch based in Israel.

    The latest revelations around Thiel come from the leaked emails of the aforementioned Ehud Barak (former Israeli prime minister). Writing in Reason, Matthew Petti reported:

    Epstein invited Barak to come to a meeting with Thiel, cofounder of PayPal and the surveillance contractor Palantir, in May 2014. Although Barak couldn’t make that meeting, Epstein insisted that Barak “spend real time with peter thiel [sic]” and offered to set up a dinner the following month.Epstein

    Barak wrote to a different business associate a few days later, without mentioning Epstein’s role, that he and Thiel would have a “first date” and “probably spend it talking just geopolitics” with an unnamed third person. In that email, Barak added that he had met Thiel once before in Davos, Switzerland, but speculated that Thiel “probably doesn’t even recall it.”

    Brace Belden of the TrueAnon podcast added that Barak suspected Thiel was “under some drug impact” when they met, according to the emails:

    • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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      Another funder of Carbyne, Peter Thiel, has his own company that, like Carbyne, is set to profit from the Trump administration’s proposed hi-tech solutions to mass shootings.

      This willingness to let billionaires offer for-profit tech solutions to social problems is a sickness, and this is the clearest example yet.

  • HugeNerd@lemmy.ca
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    10 days ago

    I find this very hard to believe, he’s such a good boy and helps grannies cross the street.

    I think it’s time we send some F-16s to fire missiles at Chinese weather balloons, our real enemies.

  • WanderWisley@lemmy.world
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    The most evil and corrupt person is linked to the most evil and disgusting person? Say it ain’t so I’m clutching my pearls over here.

    • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      This isn’t even the first time Thiel has been linked to Epstein, but we never really hear about it for some reason. This isn’t even the first time he’s been linked this summer.

      Ever since that gawker lawsuit, it kinda seems like bad press about Peter Thiel gets buried almost as soon as it’s published.

  • Deflated0ne@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    It’s 100% safe to assume anyone who even leans in the direction of supporting supply-side economics is a diddler.

    • tankplanker@lemmy.world
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      Does he put forward his case that he is the anti christ? As he sure comes across as someone who would want that. He has always felt like the sort of motherfucker who would read the Stand and identify with Randall Flagg

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    10 days ago

    There are jokes I could make. There really are.

    I just don’t know how to make the idea of Thiel wanting a database of everyone who’s underged into something funny.

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      10 days ago

      Thiel shared his views on the Ten Commandments and identified which ones he believes are the most significant.

      “The Ten Commandments, the two most important are the first and last on the list. The first commandment is, you should worship God,” Thiel reportedly told attendees. “The tenth commandment is, you should not covet the things that belong to your neighbor. In some ways, the first commandment is to look up, and the tenth commandment is you do not look around. And if you’re too much focused horizontally on all the people around you, that’s sort of the bad version you get caught up in.”

      He’s such a hypocrite!

      The greedy guy who owns a company that offers mass surveillance systems says that not looking around at your neighbors is one of the best virtues. LoL