this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2026
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Showerthoughts

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Is Palantir just a privatized NSA? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 week ago by Yondoza@sh.itjust.works to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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Just occured to me that functionally that seems to be their role. Conspiratorially, super troubling. Viewed this way, it's essentially the NSA without political oversight (what little the NSA had to begin with).

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[–] hypna@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Palantir is a data analysis company. Data analysis is just one part of what the NSA does. Other important functions of the NSA include cyber warfare, cryptography, and data collection. I have not read that Palantir does any of that.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 25 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You're not paying very much attention.

CyberWarfare:

https://myprivacy.blog/australias-cyber-warfare-division-signs-largest-ever-palantir-contract-what-it-means-for-national-security-and-digital-sovereignty/

Conventional Warfare Kill Chain / Communications

https://time.com/6293398/palantir-future-of-warfare-ukraine/

As far as cryptography goes... cryptography basically is data analysis, in many respects. Obviously they work with and in the field of cryptography, certainly their live military comm networks need to... be encrypted.

Data collection?

They get all the data of everything they are plugged into, everyone who sells data to them, like Oura, for example.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/09/smart-ring-maker-ouras-ceo-addresses-recent-backlash-says-future-is-a-cloud-of-wearables/

[–] hypna@lemmy.world -2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I guess if you wanna go off at people like that, I have to go through your links and point out that

  1. Providing services to a cyber warfare organization does not make one a cyber warfare company. I bet they contract out their cafeteria services too. The article specifically states the contract is for data analysis.
  2. Doing data analysis for target selection also does not make one a cyber warfare company.
  3. Data analysis is not cryptography. Also, my personal computer is encrypted. Am I a cryptographer?
  4. Receiving data from your customers does not make you a data collection company, and the article points out that the data is being collected by Oura. Compare that with the NSA who for example have internet backbone splitters installed at the major telcos, or put cell spoofers in cities.

Why is doing data analysis for unethical ends not enough?

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I just gave you what took me about 60 seconds to web search.

You could maybe do your own actual research, you know be active, and find way way way more information, fairly easily, than what I linked here, to just illustrate the point that you aren't paying attention.

Also, to your points:

1] It does, actually. If you provide your services to a cyber warfare outfit, you are now involved with and facilitating cyberwarfare.

2] You apparently don't know what a kill chain is, look it up. Palantir has directly been doing target identification, tracking, and assignment of lethal munitions toward Palestinians, and others. That's not cyberwarfare, its just warfare, the comms network behind coordinating it. It has to be harderned against cyberwarfare, via encryption and other kinds of security measures.

3] This is either a non-sequitir or you don't anything about cryptography. Yes, yes indeed, massive data analysis capabilities are used in cryptography, to decrypt things. You look for patterns, in data, and then try to reverse engineer a semantic structure. This is a kind of data analysis... called cryptographic analysis.

4] Right, I'm sure that Palantir doesn't keep their own copy of the data they recieve, or the analytic results that the derive from it.

... Have you worked in tech much? I'm guessing no. Look up 'data broker' as well.