Palantir Technologies: 9000 Words about a Secretive Company

April 3, 2017

Palantir Technologies is a search and content processing company. The technology is pretty good. The company’s marketing pretty good. Its public profile is now darned good. I don’t have much to say about Palantir’s wheel interface, its patents, or its usefulness to “operators.” If you are not familiar with the company, you may want to read or at least skim the weirdo Fortune Magazine Web article “Donald Trump, Palantir, and the Crazy Battle to Clean Up a Multibillion Dollar Military Procurement Swamp.” The subtitle is a helpful statement:

Peter Thiel’s software company says it has a product that will save soldiers’ lives—and hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds. The Army, which has spent billions on a failed alternative, isn’t interested. Weill the president and his generals ride to the rescue?”

The article, minus the pull quotes, is more than 9000 words long. The net net of the write up is that changing the US government’s method of purchasing goods and services may be tough to modify. I used to work at a Beltway Bandit outfit. Legend has it that my employer helped set up the US Department of the Navy and many of the business processes so many contractors know and love.

One has to change elected officials, government professionals who operate procurement processes, outfits like Beltway Bandits, and assorted legal eagles.

Why take 9000 words to reach this conclusion. My hunch is that the journey was fun: Fun for the Fortune Magazine staff, fun for the author, and fun for the ad sales person who peppered the infinite page with ads.

Will Palantir Technologies enjoy the write up? I suppose it depends on whom one asks. Perhaps a reader connected to IBM could ask Watson about the Analyst’s Notebook team. What are their views of Palantir? For most folks, my thought is that the Palantir connection to President Trump may provide a viewshed from which to assess the impact of this real journalism essay thing.

Stephen E Arnold, April 3, 2017

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Government, Indexing, News, Search

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.