Palantir Technologies: Still a Go To Buzzfeed Topic
April 26, 2017
There’s nothing like leaked information and alleged missteps by top dogs. I have become somewhat tired of ad hominem revelations. How about some good old technical analysis?
That question is likely to be ignored or dismissed as the howling of an old person in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky. That’s okay, but I want to comment briefly about “Palantir’s Relationship With The Intelligence Community Has Been Worse Than You’d Think” and then circle back to a way to write about Palantir without the the National Enquirer thrill of humans who trip over their sneakers’ shoe laces.
The idea in the write up, in my opinion, is:
[Palantir’s] chief executive described the CIA as “recalcitrant” in the summer of 2015.
The topic is Alex Karp, not the Palantir Technologies’ Gotham system and how it compares to alternatives cropping up like weeds around the mine drainage pond near my log cabin in rural Kentucky.
I learned:
One source of the tension, these people said, has been Palantir’s failure to quash persistent publicity about its CIA business and about its supposed role in helping to track down Osama bin Laden.
Big surprise. Marketing clashes with engineers. Engineers side with the client. When marketing yaps about a client, there is blowback. This is news?
I found this assertion interesting as well:
The Palantir software, built with the CIA in mind, works better for managing HUMINT, or intelligence from human sources, than SIGINT, or intelligence from signals, which is the NSA’s bread and butter, people familiar with it say. Even Palantir insiders say it’s not surprising that the NSA relationship never took off.
I did my share of fumbling and bumbling in Washington, DC. I learned that the reasons why a particular vendor’s system does not take off in certain situations can be a result of many factors. Let me highlight a few to underscore why generalizations based on a two year old video and chatter about secret work can drag red herrings across a procurement:
- There is conflict, distrust, or active dislike between a player on the government’s side and on the vendor’s side. Is it possible for a Navy captain to refuse to work with a vendor’s contact who is an Admiral Rickover acolyte. You bet your mug of death cow on that being accurate.
- The procuring agency wants its own toys. Now the objective procurement process can be shaped to keep the big dog happy. Consequently, certain products, systems, and software get acquired even though lower level professionals do not want that product, system, or software. Don’t you love Oracle?
- There is a conflict between philosophies about to complete a mission. Operations folks like to go from A to B and achieve the objective. Some of those objectives are not the sort of thing one talks about at lunch Cosi’s in DC or in the aisle at the Interbay Meat Market. There is natural fiction between analysts who monitor intercept feeds and operations types who get shot at. Side with one or the other, but having both as best buds is tough.
There are other issues which enter into procurements, but I don’t need to rehash the fact that certain Beltway Bandits are aces at one government agency and losers at another. Vendor history can also play a role. Hey, if you want to kick IBM out of some projects, give it a whirl and let me know how your next job hunt is going, okay?
My point is simple one. I would prefer to read about the differences between Gotham and Analyst’s Notebook in comparison with systems from Centrifuge today. I cannot get interested in or excited about a two year old video.
But today, hey, anything goes. I try to identify silly write ups like the one coming along about why Thomson Reuters is the answer company. Maybe the reason is that Thomson Reuters has licensed Palantir Technologies’ software. That’s sort of interesting.
The old video. In front of staff. Sigh. A contractor’s bad relationship. Sorry. Boring. Routine. Part of the game. Just like CEOs who say things which perhaps should have been phrased differently.
Stephen E Arnold, April 26, 2017
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