One of the founders of Startup Accelerator Y Combinator this weekend provided a relentless criticism of the controversial data analytics company Palantir, leading the company’s executives to provide a broad defense of Palantir’s work.
Before and after, federal submissions came after U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE), tasked with implementing the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation strategy, was paying Palantir $30 million to help them “target real-time visibility” the ice by creating a lifecycle operating system for immigration or what they call immigrants.
Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator, shared the headline on Palantir’s contract at X, saying, “It’s a very exciting time. If you’re a top-notch programmer, there are plenty of other places where you can go to work rather than building a police state infrastructure.”
In response, Ted Mabrey, global head of Palantir commercials, wrote, “I look forward to the next recruitment set that I have decided to apply to Palantir after reading your post.”
Mabury did not discuss details of Palantia’s current work with Ice, but he said he has begun working with the Department of Homeland Security (operated by the ice).
“When people are alive for what you built, and when others are dead because what you built wasn’t enough, you develop a very different perspective on the meaning of your work,” Mabury said.
He also compared Graham’s criticism to a 2018 protest against Google’s project Maven, and ultimately urged him to stop analyzing military drone images. (After that, Google once again shows that it will become more open to defense operations.)
Mabrey urged anyone interested in working at Palantir to read CEO Alexander Karp’s new book, The Technical Republic. This argues that the software industry needs to restructure its relationship with the government. (The company is recruiting on its university campus, with a sign declaring that “a moment of calculation has arrived for the West.”)
“We hire followers,” Mablay continued. “In the essential ability to believe in something bigger than you, not in the uniformity of your beliefs. 1) Our job is very, very difficult, and 2) you should always expect such attacks to turn into weather from all aspects of the political aisle.”
Graham then urged Mabray to “publicly commit on behalf of Palantiers to not build anything that will help the government violate the US Constitution,” but in another post he admitted that such commitment “has no legal force.”
“But I want it [make the commitment]and some Palantir employees are asked to do something illegal one day. He says, “I didn’t sign up for this,” and refuses,” Graham writes.
Mabray compared Graham’s question to “You ‘I promise to stop defeating your wife’s coat room parlor trick,” but he added that the company “made so many ways since Sunday.”
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