Palantir bros are usually not arduous to come across on-line: There are a number of Palantir-focused subreddits, the most important of which has 109,000 members. Some folks on X have been in a position to amass large followings by posting completely concerning the firm all through the day.
Palantir followers can obsessively concentrate on the corporate’s inventory worth. They’ll behave like American soccer followers when it goes up, celebrating as if their workforce scored a landing. When it will get an enormous contract, it’s as if their workforce acquired a brand new star participant. On this context, it is smart that folks would need to buy merch—it’s like shopping for a jersey.
Palantir’s fan base step by step expanded throughout the years that contractors for immigration enforcement and the navy have been least in style in Silicon Valley. For followers, Palantir was a contrarian darkish horse that stood by its ideas, regardless that others detested them.
For Palantir, turning into a way of life model appears extra about getting the corporate’s followers to publicly establish with its model and its mission. That is made express on a white word card, with CEO Alex Karp’s signature, that was included with current orders of Palantir merch.
“Thanks on your dedication to Palantir and our mission to defend the West,” the cardboard reads. “The long run belongs to those that imagine and construct. And we construct to dominate.”
Younes has expressed an identical sentiment. “Palantir is not only a software program firm,” he wrote on X in August. “It’s a world view—western values, pro-warfighter, drawback fixing, conviction, dominant software program, and many others. that’s why folks rep the gear.”
These values haven’t all the time been in style in Silicon Valley. In truth, traditionally, they’ve been outright rejected. In 2018, hundreds of Google staff rallied in opposition to the corporate’s involvement in Challenge Maven, a Pentagon venture analyzing drone footage with AI. Conceding to the employees, Google selected to not renew its Maven contract however mentioned it wouldn’t cease working with the Pentagon. That very same yr, protests in opposition to Palantir have been popping up in Palo Alto in response to the corporate’s work with ICE. (ICE didn’t cancel any contracts.)
Nonetheless, beneath the second Trump administration, the tech world is starting to brazenly embrace aligning with the navy—each transactionally, and symbolically. In June, the Military commissioned an elite group of tech executives to be “lieutenant colonels.” Palantir chief know-how officer Shyam Sankar was joined by Meta chief know-how officer Andrew Bosworth, OpenAI chief product officer Kevin Weil, and present Pondering Machines Lab adviser and former OpenAI chief analysis officer Bob McGrew, who additionally labored at Palantir.
Palantir’s present merch retailer seems to capitalize on this vibe change and talk that the corporate is doubling down on its status, branding, and mission. In an April letter to shareholders, Karp wrote that its mission “was for years dismissed as politically fraught and ill-advised.”
“We, the heretics, this motley band of characters, have been solid out and practically discarded by Silicon Valley,” Karp wrote. “And but there are indicators that some throughout the Valley have now turned a nook and begun following our lead.”
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