Robert Reich -- Peter Thiel's Palantir poses a grave threat to Americans

[ancianita]

For the record because it bears repeating, and because we already know but need to stay aware.

Draw a circle around all the assets in the US now devoted to artificial intelligence...
a second circle around all the assets devoted to the US military. A third around all assets being devoted to helping the Trump regime collect and compile personal information on millions of Americans...
a fourth circle around the parts of Silicon Valley dedicated to turning the US away from a democracy into a dictatorship led by tech bros.

Where do the four circles intersect?

At a corporation called Palantir Technologies and a man named Peter Thiel.

In JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, a “palantír” is a seeing stone that can be used to distort truth and present selective visions of reality. During the War of the Ring, a palantír falls under the control of Sauron, who uses it to manipulate and deceive.

Palantir Technologies bears a striking similarity. It sells an AI-based platform that allows its users – among them, military and law enforcement agencies – to analyze personal data, including social media profiles, personal information and physical characteristics. These are used to identify and surveil individuals.

In March, Trump signed an executive order requiring all agencies and departments of the federal government to share data on Americans. To get the job done, Trump chose Palantir Technologies...
The CEO of Palantir is Alex Karp, who said on an earnings call earlier this year that the company wants “to disrupt and make the institutions we partner with the very best in the world and, when it’s necessary, to scare enemies and on occasion kill them”.

Palantir recently disclosed that Karp received $6.8bn in “compensation actually paid” in 2024 (you read that right) – making him the highest-paid chief executive of a publicly traded company in the United States.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/30/peter-thiel-palantir-threat-to-americans

[usonian]

1. Tech? Used to repress people? How naive (NOT)

From the book "IBM and the Holocaust"

Book site: https://ibmandtheholocaust.com/about-ibm-and-holocaust

IBM and the Holocaust is the stunning story of IBM’s strategic alliance with Nazi Germany—beginning in 1933, in the first weeks that Hitler came to power, and continuing throughout World War II. As the Third Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s.

Only after Jews were identified—a massive and complex task that Hitler wanted done immediately—could they be targeted for efficient asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, enslaved labor, and, ultimately, annihilation. It was a cross-tabulation and organizational challenge so monumental, it called for a computer. Of course, in the 1930s no computer existed.

But IBM’s Hollerith punch card technology did exist. Aided by the company’s custom-designed and constantly updated Hollerith systems, Hitler was able to automate his persecution of the Jews. Historians have always been amazed at the speed and accuracy with which the Nazis were able to identify and locate European Jewry. Until now, the pieces of this puzzle have never been fully assembled. The fact is, IBM technology was used to organize nearly everything in Germany and then Nazi Europe, from the identification of the Jews in censuses, registrations, and ancestral tracing programs to the running of railroads and organizing of concentration camp slave labor.

IBM and its German subsidiary custom-designed complex solutions, one by one, anticipating the Reich’s needs. They did not merely sell the machines and walk away. Instead, IBM leased these machines for high fees and became the sole source of the billions of punch cards Hitler needed.

[ancianita]

2. Thanks! You're so right! This has a looong history. I learned

about IBM back in 1980 when I was writing a 3-part series in a newspaper for Chicago Public School teachers,
Pt 1) explaining apartheid at that time;
Pt 2) showing how much our pension fund invested in companies doing business in SA and listing them,
Pt. 3) making the case that our pension fund must divest all its holdings in the companies I listed.

What I learned (no computers then, just smuggled info out of SA and pension fund reports) was that IBM was the first to develop the "swipe" feature for South Africa's apartheid government. Black workers forced on pain of death to live in so-called bantustans. could only leave their 'stans' and enter white SA with a passbook that used IBM's barcode system. Yes, with some obvious "tech improvements," this had been around since before Hitler.

We live in a scaled up version of those days of controlling huge populations in high tech serfdoms.

When this slave bill is passed, ALL of America must go on a General Strike.

[usonian]

3. Why we fight, and Why We Strike

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220444673

graphics copied here


THAT'S WHY

THAT'S WHY

THAT'S WHY

[ancianita]

4. Exactly. Thank you. My town council son in Silver City NM says a General Strike is a 140 y.o. tactic "might not work

these days" "no one lives in communities that can support one another in a general strike" but I quickly told him not to shortsell Americans when it comes to material support, or in sustaining power and comms in a general strike.

Communities, their neighbors, churches, and help orgs, have to prepare to shut down the tech fascism -- which is not announcing itself, and which is prepared to kill us all by waiting us out. Even as it does, communities have to commit to fighting and surviving and preserving the history of these days for the sake of future humans.