Data Mining Tactics: Palantir and Friends
February 21, 2011
Here in Harrod’s Creek, life is simple. We have one road, a store, and a pond. Elsewhere, there are machinations that simple folks like me and the goslings have difficulty understanding this type of pitch. I noticed an impassioned blog post from Craft Is Cranium here. Then we saw the Register’s write up “HBGary Quails in the Face of Anonymous.” As I understand the issue, experts working in the commercial side of intelligence saw Wikileaks as a business opportunity. The experts did not want to sell their technology to Wikileaks. The experts wanted to get the US government to pay the experts to nibble away at Wikileaks. The assumption was that Wikileaks was a security challenge and could be sanded down or caged using various advanced technologies. A good example is the thread on Quora.com “Why Would Palantir Go after WikiLeaks?”
The Quora answers are interesting, and as you might imagine, different from what folks in Harrod’s Creek might suggest. First, there is a link to some interesting article titled “Data Intelligence Firms Proposed a Systematic Attack against WikiLeaks.” It is difficult to determine what is accurate and what is information shaping, but what is presented is interesting.
Second, one answer struck me as pure MBA. The proposal to nibble on Wikileaks’ toes was summarized this way:
For money. It’s a pitch deck targeted towards the concerns of governmental and financial institutions.
Third, there is a paraphrase of the specific motive for floating this trial balloon:
“You [the US government] have to respond to Wikileaks immediately, by giving us massive amounts of money for our software and consulting services. You cannot wait to write us a massive blank check, because the threat of Wikileaks is too great.”
What I find interesting is that the sharp edges of the Palantir-type approach may create some problems for search companies now venturing into “business intelligence.” My view is that enterprise search marketers are often crafted with memory foam and rounded edges. The Palantir type approach seems to be elbows and sharp fingernails.
Quite a few search vendors want to play in the “intelligence” sector. I am not sure that technology will win out over attitude and aggressiveness. Palantir, as you may recall, was engaged last year in a legal spat with i2 Ltd., another foundation company in certain intelligence sectors. Incumbents may eat the softer newcomers the way a goose gobbles bread crumbs.
Stephen E Arnold, February 21, 2011
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