One of the founders of the start and combinator accelerator offered insufficient criticism this weekend of the controversial Palantir data analysis company, which led an executive of the company to offer a wide defense of Palantir’s work.
The return to height came after Federal presentation He showed that the United States immigration and customs application (ICE), responsible for carrying out the Trump administration aggressive deportation strategy, is paying Palantir $ 30 million to create How to call the Immigration Life Cycle Operating SystemOr immigrants, to help ICE decide who to aim for deportation, as well as to offer “almost real visibility” in self -sports.
And Combinator Founder Paul Graham shared headlines about Palantir’s contract in XWriting: “It is a very exciting moment in technology at this time. If you are a first level programmer, there are a lot of other places to which you can go to work instead of the company building the infrastructure of the police state.”
In response, the Global Commercial Chief of Palantir Ted Mabrey wrote which is “waiting for the next set of hiring that decided to run to Palantir after reading their publication.”
Mabrey did not discuss the details of Palantir’s current work with ICE, but said that the company began working with the National Security Department (under which ICE operates) “in the immediate response to the murder of agent Jaime Zapata for Los Zetas in an effort called Operation Fall hero. “
“When people are alive for what you built, and others are dead because what you built was not yet good enough, you develop a very different perspective about the meaning of your work,” Mabrey said.
He also compared Graham’s criticism with Protest the Google Maven project In 2018, which finally led the company to stop its work by analyzing images of drones for the army. (Google has subsequently pointed out that has become more open to defense work again.)
Mabrey urged anyone interested in working to Palantir to read the new book of the CEO Alexander Karp “The Technological Republic”, which, which He argues that the software industry needs to rebuild its relationship with the government. (The company has been Recruitment in University Campus with signs that declare that “a moment of calculation has arrived for the West”).
“We hired believers,” Mabrey continued. “Not in the sense of homogeneity of belief, but in the intrinsic ability to believe in something bigger than you. Belief is required because 1) Our work is very, very hard and 2) must wait for climate attacks like this all the time; from all sides of the political hall.”
Graham then Mabrey pressed “Commit publicly in the name of Palantir so as not to build things that help the Government to violate the constitution of the United States”, although he recognized in another publication That such commitment would not have “legal force.”
“But I hope yes [make the commitment]And one day a Palantir employee is asked to do something illegal, he will say “I did not register for this” and reject me, “Graham wrote.
Mabrey in turn compared Graham’s question For “the” will promise to stop beating his wife “, the trick of the courtroom”, but added that the company “has made this promise in many ways since Sunday”, beginning with a commitment to “the 3500 enormously reflective people who are grinding just because they believe they are doing the world a better place every day, since they see first hand what we are really doing.”