on the palantir alumni open letter: a rant

2025-05-07 10:30

hey, sorry for not posting. you know why.

i’m back, and with a political bent, because i absolutely feel the need to excoriate the worthless activism of the tech industry in this political moment.

background

for those of you unfamiliar, Palantir is a surveillance tech company founded by peter thiel. it’s named after the palantirs¹ in lord of the rings, used by the extremely evil sauron to spy on and oppress his subjects.

so yeah, great name. anyways, they spent the better part of a decade heavily recruiting from college campuses for a sort of wide-eyed idealist with good grades, who could also somehow ignore that it was named for evil magic spying stones.

to be fair, i remember their recruiting efforts, chiefly because they spent large sums of money getting the word out. their merch was always the sleekest at the hackathon, and they had a message perfectly calibrated for the obama era: they were a company of high-minded thinkers with a noble mission to keep america safe (and thus the world).

needless to say, they are now profiting immensely from the torment nexus of america’s fascist turn and its enthusiastic embrace of artificial intelligence.

the palantir open letter

a few days ago, some people who used to work at palantir posted an open letter in protest of their former employer with npr, titled “the scouring of the shire.”

i don’t think it’s a very good open letter. i will now argue why i believe this to be true, and offer some ways that the undersigned could clarify their positions to be more convincing to a jaded curmedgeon like me.

what’s wrong with the open letter?

1. it’s written with chatgpt

let’s cut right to the chase. the open letter is very obviously written with chatgpt.

i know this immediately, because i spotted the telltale signs of chatgptese:

1. typographic tells: the letter overuses the em dash with spaces ( — ). it’s ugly and superfluous.
2. vocabulary tells: chatgpt has been RLHF’d to use language that’s so “professional” it has been completely polished of any precision whatsoever.
3. cheesy, saccharine alliterations. what exactly does “Scouring The Shire” have to do with… anything?

here are some passages i found especially offending. i don’t feel bad about roasting it, because it’s obvious no human wrote it.

The myth of the powerful seeing stones warned of great dangers when wielded by those without wisdom or a moral compass, as they could be used to distort truth and present selective visions of reality

huh? i think this is referring to in LOTR where sauron uses the palantirs to affect what other users saw with the palantirs and thus how they thought about the world. so why not just say that?

Palantir’s leadership has abandoned its founding ideals. Public statements have grown hostile to diversity, equity, and inclusion, principles that — despite corporate misuse — remain essential for critiquing power and ensuring ethical applications of technology.

public statements by whom? palantir’s “leadership?” look, there’s plenty of bad advice in strunk and white but this could really benefit from some active voice. you can also see how the em-dash abuse prevents the sentence from scanning correctly. corporate misuse of what? the principles of DEI? how do you misuse a principle?

Big Tech, including Palantir, is increasingly complicit, normalizing authoritarianism under the guise of a “revolution” led by oligarchs. We must resist this trend.

calling palantir’s growing authoritarianism a “trend” undercuts your message. fascism is hardly comparable to like, that time when everyone wore peplum tops.

In the spirit of communicative action and rationality, they endorse the following statements in this section

what is a “communicative action.” why are you referring to yourself in the third person?

To speak out while we still can, and to work against the dangerous path in the history of technology we are currently heading down towards — one which is central to the allegory and legend of the palantír stones

this closing sentence is a meandering, meaningless jumble of words. we must work against a path, which by the way is also allegorical. i dare you to tell me this makes sense.

i’m not pointing this part just because i’m a luddite. no, it’s because an open letter represents the voices of those who signed onto it.this is important because by signing onto the open letter, they are saying that they stand by every word they have written, they are saying this all in unison, and they all have some proximity to the words said. if this open letter were polished off by some pr agency completely removed from the impact of these words, then i would also complain, and hopefully i’ve demonstrated that by using an llm to write stuff for you, you subject others to writing that is the equivalent of those taco bell cinnamon twists: strange, synthetic, and devoid of substance.

2. it is vague, makes no clear demands, and what little demands it does make are aimed at the wrong people

but maybe that was the intention. because while the open letter decries Palantir’s association with the current administration, it does little to call out any specific actions of Palantir.

i had to scan the letter a bunch to figure out the arguments and demands it was trying to posit.

here is what the letter is trying to argue:

• Palantir’s current leadership is flouting its code of conduct² and abusing its technology
• it’s abusing its technology by aiding and abetting fascists³ like donald trump and DOGE⁴⁵
• DOGE has attempted to recruit from Palantir⁶
• thus, politicians⁷ and other tech workers⁸ must mobilize, speak out⁹, and “take action” against…
• um, against DOGE[^5], i think?

do you see what’s missing?

• why doesn’t this open letter call out any specific actions by Palantir leadership that they believe is in violation of the code of conduct?
• why doesn’t this open letter demand anything of tech workers other than to “speak out”?
• why doesn’t this open letter call on current employees of Palantir to do anything?
• why doesn’t this open letter demand anything of Palantir’s leadership?

3. its accounting of events is incomplete, and suspect

it’s strange to me that this open letter would mention ukraine, but completely forget palantir’s long-standing association with the IDF, which just last year deployed artificial intelligence heavily in its targeting and killing of Palestinians, with no oversight and no transparency.

it’s strange to me that the letter calls out the “erasure” of trans people from government databases¹⁰, while not mentioning DOGE’s misuse of government databases to aid in deportations and the likelihood that the government is attempting to construct a registry of marginalized people.

Even though Palantir is working heavily with ICE, this letter does not even once mention ICE.

it’s strange, isn’t it?

i want to be charitable and say that the authors of the letter wish to avoid “controversy,” that by avoiding “controversy” their letter will seem more respectable, be shared more openly.

but if that were the case, why share it exclusively with NPR?

so, if i were to be uncharitable, i would argue that this represents a form of cowardice, an inability to fully take account of Palantir’s willful participation in atrocity. because that would mean acknowledging Palantir’s long history of working with fascists to quell dissent of the US surveillance regime. (just take a look at the wikipedia article.) and that would mean for the authors of this open letter to taking a long look at themselves in the mirror.

in fact, this almost reads as a sales pitch for Palantir. surveillance dragnets can be ethical, guys! we simply have to deploy Guardrails and all will be right. there couldn’t possibly be anything wrong with the technology itself, right?

by the way, there’s no ambiguity in what jrr tolkien had written about the palantirs in lord of the rings. sauron used them to manipulate others and to tighten the grip of his empire.

how not to write an open letter

if, by any chance, one of you who wrote told chatgpt to write you this open letter are reading this: i could tell you to rewrite it, amongst yourselves only this time. i could tell you to tell a story that was more specific and thus impactful. i could tell you to be braver and properly call out palantir itself, and take proper accounting of its atrocities.

but look. it’s time for me to drop the mask, because i don’t really think you’re writing this letter in good faith. so maybe i could just tell you to grow a spine and actually call out power. don’t write this weak, meaningless letter, share it exclusively with one media channel, and demand others speak out while you say absolutely nothing and try to absolve yourself of your own complicity.