Palantir Technologies: An Overview of What Looks Like a Muliti Front War
October 18, 2016
I read “Conservatives See Political Reprisal As Obama Administration Sues Peter Thiel’s Palantir.” Here in Harrod’s Creek “political reprisal” gets translated as blood feud. The source for the “reprisal” allegation is a real journalistic outfit, The Washington Times. The story appeared on October 16, 2016, when most of the movers and shakers in DC and other US power centers were gearing up to watch NFL football.
Let’s assume that the information in the write up is rock solid, built on verifiable “factoids”, and objective. This suspension of disbelief is helpful for me; otherwise, I would have some research to do. I prefer to let the article about political reprisal speak for itself.
The hook for the write up is the legal action taken by Palantir Technologies against the US Army. On June 30, 2016, Palantir filed legal documents to air the matter of the US Army’s reluctance to license the Palantir Gotham system instead of the Army’s DCGS or Distributed Common Ground System.
The write up points out that eight weeks after Palantir’s legal eagles dropped their payload on the US Court of Claims, the US Department of Labor pointed out that Palantir was discriminating against Asians. For Federal contractors, discrimination, if proven, is bad news. Loss of contracts and road blocks for future US government work are more than speed bumps for fast growing companies.
The article explains that Palantir perceives that it is not being given a fair shake; specifically:
The US Army “illegally prevented Palantir from bidding” when regulations required the armed service to seek already developed commercial products.
The write up draws a connection between a Palantir founder (Peter Thiel), who supports Donald Trump, and the alleged “political reprisal” by the Department of Labor.
The write up reports that Palantir’s legal eagles:
forced a number of Army intelligence czars to undergo sworn depositions by lawyers from the firm of Boies, Schiller & Flexner. While much of their testimony is under seal, some surprising snippets have emerged in follow-up legal motions asking the judge to rule based on the existing record of evidence.
The article asserts that a decision from the court may come as soon as the end of October 2016, which is pretty zippy based on my experience with US government processes.
The article then shifts to a discussion of the multi year, multi billion dollar DCGS system itself. Among the points in the write up I highlighted is this statement from the Washington Times’s write up:
Depositions also show that the Army misled lawmakers when it circulated a white paper on Palantir. The paper said the Army had conducted an extensive evaluation of Palantir when, in fact, it had not. “We did not do any formal evaluation or determination of whether or not the tools could live inside [the common ground system],” an Army official said.
I also noted this comment, which—if on the money—may make some of the big players in the DCGS contracting game nervous:
“This case has the potential to dramatically change not just DCGS as a program, for the better, but also the way the Army goes about contracting commercial solutions already in the marketplace,” said Joe Kasper, Mr. Hunter’s chief of staff. “From the beginning, utilizing Palantir has always been a win-win for the Army and the taxpayer. And if it takes a court decision to make the Army see it, then that’s just the way it is.”
The article then digs into the history of DCGS. The article reveals:
A confidential Army email reveals one reason Palantir never gained favor inside the halls of the Pentagon: Ms. Schnurr hated the system.
Okay, the article pinpoints Lynn Schnurr, once the US Army’s senior information officer, as the source of the burr under the saddle. Ms. Schnurr, the write up says:
appears to have an entrenched animosity towards Palantir, which has been spread and inculcated into the DA staff,” the [an unidentified US Army] officer wrote.
Ms Schnurr has an interesting background. She joined General Dynamics in February 2013. She left her job at the US Army in January 2013 after a 17 year career. She was a 1975 graduate of Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Blacksburg, Virginia) with a BS in education.
Several observations crossed my mind as I thought about this interesting example of “real” journalism:
- The sources for the write up remain a bit fuzzy. That’s not uncommon in some “real” journalism today. I find it annoying to read a reference to an email without a link to that source document.
- The write up laser dots Lynn Schnurr. I find it interesting that an individual is responsible for the behavior of procurement procedures. When I worked at Booz, Allen & Hamilton, it was unusual to find one person who could be identified as the “cause” of a particular event. The bureaucracy works in predictable ways because committees have to do the real work with assorted contractors lending a hand. I am confident that Ms. Schnurr is and was a force with which to be reckoned, but when I bumped into one government project and was hired by a sitting president, I was told: “Not even the president can pay you. Fill out these forms first.”
- Other issues affecting Palantir are not far to seek. The Washington Times did not explore such issues as: [a] Possible resistance to Palantir after the legal dust up about Palantir’s alleged improper use of i2 Group Analyst’s Notebook intellectual property, [b] Palantir’s providing some US Army personnel with access to Gotham without going through the US Army’s often Byzantine procedures, and [c] the clash of the Silicon Valley culture with the Beltway Bandit culture, among others.
If you are following the Palantir US Army legal matter, you will want to read the Washington Times’s article. However, there may be more information germane to the subject than putting Ms. Schnurr in the spotlight. Why identify a person no longer working at the Pentagon as a full time employee as the primum mobile? That triggers me to look for other factors.
In the back of my mind, I continue to consider the consequences of the i2 Group (now owned by IBM, a company with DCGS aspirations). I recall the shock of Sergey Brin’s visit to Washington when he chose to wear sneakers and a T shirt as he called on officials before Google embraced traditional lobbying and revolving doors. I understand the so-called “arrogance” of the start up culture when it encounters individuals who are not as “clued in” to the ins and outs of the Clue Train Railroad. I understand the connection between selling work and following government procedures and protocols.
I surmise that Palantir is facing down a bureaucracy which wants what it wants when it wants it. Outfits which light up the radar screens of numerous individuals in the bureaucracy find themselves burdened with tar balls at every turn. Palantir faces not a singleton issue like the legacy of Ms. Schnurr. Palantir finds itself dealing with the consequences of its actions since the company took CIA – In-Q-Tel funds and received the smiles of a powerful intel outfit.
I have not worked in Washington’s corridors of power for years, but I know that friction can exist between Executive Branch agencies and other US government units. Palantir may be caught of a multi front war here in the USA. Write ups like the one in the Washington Times may only provide a glimpse of a larger, more variegated scene and raise other questions; for example, fund raising, taxes, etc.
Stephen E Arnold, October 18, 2016
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