At the New York Times’ DealBook Summit on Wednesday, Karp was asked about the worries over the unconstitutionality of the boat strikes.
“Part of the reason why I like this questioning is the more constitutional you want to make it, the more precise you want to make it, the more you’re going to need my product,” Karp said. His reasoning is that if it’s constitutional, you would have to make 100% sure of the exact conditions it’s happening in, and in order to do that, the military would have to use Palantir’s technology, for which it pays roughly $10 billion under its current contract.
If you're not being deceitful and seeking to violate people's rights for your own purposes (i.e. a politician or someone in that orbit) it's pretty clear.
Like "papers and effect", "shall make no law", stuff like that's pretty hard to screw up if you're not trying.
The Constitutionality of the attacks is orthogonal to their status as war crimes. (The Constitution doesn't concern itself with war crimes beyond the fact that they're crimes. Its writing almost predates the concept.)
What Trump can do without Congressional approval is a constitutional question. Whether it's a war crime is a legal one. I'm not sure how much Palantir can help with the first. I'm fairly certain it would be useful with the latter; Helen Mirren starred in a film that was essentially about this [1].
You could have the most precise surgical robot half way around the world, but you just put a dimentia riddled senior or drunken asshole, it don't matter the precision.
I feel like the headline kind of misleads since what he actually says is, essentially, "yeah, go nuts trying to limit it, then they need to buy from me." Which is still crass but not what the headline suggests.
Required reading on Palantir and its cousins, Dataminr etc. : "IBM and the Holocaust, The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation."
The book is good because of the extensive historical documentation of IBM practices, Nazi procurement orders, and the eagerness that IBM leaders displayed in fulfilling those orders, even though they knew the purpose:
> "The racial portion of the census was designed to pinpoint ancestral Jews as defined by the Nuremberg Laws, ensuring no escape from the Reich's anti-Semitic campaign. In addition to the usual census questions, a special card asked whether any of the individuals grandparents was Jewish."
In a not-so-unique historical inversion, the Israeli government is now using American tech firms like Palantir to assist in their ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide programs in the West Bank and Gaza, which have certainly not ended, ceasefire or no, as any reading of the statements of Israeli government officials, bloggers, online commentators etc. demonstrates (even though Twitter no longer provides translations of Hebrew to English, it's not hard to decipher the intent).
As far as Palantir and Dataminr's agenda? Same as IBM's - delivering value to their shareholders.
I agree that we've never been critical enough of America's strikes on innocent people. The difference though is that you can make the case that there was an ongoing war in which these strikes were ostensibly made in an effort to improve the outcomes of a congressionally-approved war.
Presently though, America is not at war with small boats in international waters, so it's a eyebrow-raising (or absolutely disturbing) in similar yet also different ways. They can't even pretend it was necessary or adherent to policy in this case.
So if Osama bin Laden was on a small boat in international waters, then it would be “wrong” to attack the boat?
Anyway, the point isn’t to justify extrajudicial killings, whether they occur in the Middle East or international waters.
The point is that, logically, you should feel the same way about both. “It’s ok to bomb people the country doesn’t like in a cave but it’s not ok to bomb people the country doesn’t like in a small boat” isn’t logical. It’s ok to believe both are wrong or both are right. That’s consistent. It’s inconsistent to believe one is right compared to the other, though.
Which brings me to the ultimate point, which is, if you feel that the boat bombings are a violation of law that should cause Trump to be removed from office, then you should also believe that Bush, Biden, and Obama should have been removed from office. And, if you believe Trump should be removed from office but not Obama, then you’re letting a media narrative influence your rational judgement.
If you need further evidence of Trump’s exceptionalism in the media, consider Hacker News. If you tried to discuss Obama’s Middle East bombing, your conversation would be flagged as political discussion. Yet discussing Trump does not receive the same treatment. The thing I dislike most about Trump is that every apolitical corner of the internet I enjoy has put political stakes in the ground.
> So if Osama bin Laden was on a small boat in international waters, then it would be “wrong” to attack the boat?
No, but I see why that might be inferred from what I wrote. I should have been clearer. The significance of international waters isn't to say "everyone should be safe if they're in international waters" but to highlight that it violated maritime law (despite that the administration claims otherwise, stating that the conflict is non-international and directed towards 'armed drug smugglers').
And you're right; I think previous administrations also committed war crimes. The difference is largely that the previous crimes had congressional approval and there was a nationally legitimized ongoing conflict. I don't believe any of it was morally acceptable, though.
That's why I said the attacks were 'ostensibly' made in an effort to support and ongoing war. That's a load-bearing word here, meant to indicate that I don't agree with the pretenses or actual intents.
> The thing I dislike most about Trump is that every apolitical corner of the internet I enjoy has put political stakes in the ground.
I think this is because people are understandably frustrated and frightened, and they're digging their heels in.
> I think this is because people are understandably frustrated and frightened, and they're digging their heels in.
Yes, I completely agree. But my question is, why are people afraid and frustrated? Is Trump truly uniquely abhorrent, or is popular opinion being swayed by media narrative?
And Obama famously killed a US citizen with drone strikes.
But again, my point isn’t to say that drone strikes good or bad. As you said, past administrations also did bad things. I’m simply observing that, in my opinion, the current administration is not so different. At least not different enough to justify a highly elevated level of fear.
I’m an avid NYT reader, and it’s impossible to avoid news about Trump. The things I read seemed terrible at face value, and it makes me afraid. But when I really dig in, I find that the facts are generally misrepresented.
The headline on the front page of the app, which differs from the article’s true headline, is “ICE Crackdowns Have Captured Few Immigrants With Criminal Records, Data Shows”
When you click into the article, the “data” actually shows that 67% of captured immigrants have criminal charges. The headline is misleading.
Ostensibly, the headline meant that “ICE crackdowns in specific cities pick up fewer immigrants compared to the nationwide ICE average”. Should we expect them to? I don’t know.
Then, when you think about the data even more, you realize that the only way the nationwide ICE data could differ substantially from the selected city-specific data is if the city-specific data only made up a small portion of total ICE activity. So another interpretation of the data is “Small ICE operations in US cities is less effective at capturing immigrants with criminal history compared to ICE operations nationwide.”
I’m not commenting on whether or not ICE operations are good or bad. I just genuinely feel there is a narrative that is making people feel more afraid than is truly warranted.
It was War on Terror, no? As a direct response to murder of thousands of citizens… (not condoning it though, America loves to murder people though I’ve heard a lot in October during election campaign that this time will be different…)
If you use War on Terror as justification, then why not use War on Drugs? How many citizens have died due to illegal drugs? How many lives have been ruined?
How many historical examples of civilians being misidentified as combatants does it take before we question whether these strikes have all been drug boats?
Focusing on acts of the current administration is sensible because the current administration can be stopped from similar future acts. Bush, Obama, and Biden are already prevented from future similar acts. It's also reasonable to protest more when the quality of the acts has changed.
Certainly, extrajudicial killings aren't new, but claiming the victims are drug dealers instead of terrorists is new, as is doing it at sea instead of on land. Above and beyond soverignity concerns and treaties about such things, there are many treaties and standards of maritime conduct and violating them seems to be more offensive than on land.
I think it's a question of what it means to make something constitutional, and also how to refer to that thing.
If the headline was Palantir CEO Says Making Boat Attacks Constitutional Would Be Good For Business, it would be easier to read it both ways; change the boat attacks so they comply with the constitution, or change the constitution so the boat attacks are no longer prohibited.
It's just a little harder to say change the war crimes so that they comply... But if they comply, are they still war crimes? And if they are still war crimes, and we entered a treaty to prohibit war crimes, and the constitution says treaties are the supreme Law of the Land, how can it be constitutional to carry them out?
However sloppily expressed I think the intent is clear: he is saying “I don’t think it’s important that they comply with laws concerning their conduct, but they’re drumming up business for me, so I don’t mind.”
> “Part of the reason why I like this questioning is the more constitutional you want to make it, the more precise you want to make it, the more you’re going to need my product,” Karp said. His reasoning is that if it’s constitutional, you would have to make 100% sure of the exact conditions it’s happening in, and in order to do that, the military would have to use Palantir’s technology, for which it pays roughly $10 billion under its current contract.
Make your own judgment but I thought that it was a reasonable inference if his answer is about how he’s got dollar signs in his eyes that he doesn’t see a moral imperative here.
At the New York Times’ DealBook Summit on Wednesday, Karp was asked about the worries over the unconstitutionality of the boat strikes.
“Part of the reason why I like this questioning is the more constitutional you want to make it, the more precise you want to make it, the more you’re going to need my product,” Karp said. His reasoning is that if it’s constitutional, you would have to make 100% sure of the exact conditions it’s happening in, and in order to do that, the military would have to use Palantir’s technology, for which it pays roughly $10 billion under its current contract.
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