In 2023, the then-Conservative government awarded Palantir with a £330m contract to “build a new NHS data platform”. The move proved controversial because Palantir is a US spy tech firm and its co-founder Peter Thiel is a prominent Trump donor with links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Now, a trove of leaked emails have shone further light on Thiel’s connections.

    • tankplanker@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      Does he put forward his case that he is the anti christ? As he sure comes across as someone who would want that. He has always felt like the sort of motherfucker who would read the Stand and identify with Randall Flagg

  • Chaotic Entropy@feddit.uk
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    3 hours ago

    Its cofounder Peter Thiel is basically a doomsday culter who wants to be the one to herald doomsday for most of the population.

  • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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    7 hours ago

    I assume y’all on the other side of the pond are just learning about Palantir for the first time and that’s why you’re looking for bombshell headlines. I can assure you as someone from Silicon Valley that there is literally no single headline that can possibly convey the pure evil that is Peter Thiel. He literally believes that it is morally and, from his perspective, objectively correct that a few pre-selected technocrat elites (his words) should rule city-states that “compete” with each other. He is currently miserably failing at building a libertarian “eutopia” (his words) out in the desert to the east of San Francisco. He promises it would be done by this year. It hasn’t even started.

    He founded PayPal and got mad when he immediately learned that banks exist for a reason. He was such a piece of shit that Elon Musk couldn’t work with him.

    • zeezee@slrpnk.net
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      28 minutes ago

      uhm idk who’s not familiar with Thiel but the blueprint of his “utopia” - “The Sovereign Individual” was literally co-written by no other than William Rees-Mogg a conservative house of lords cross-bencher who’s also the father of two other conservative MPs that have served in the UK Parliament.

      the 2014 reprint of the book has a foreword by Thiel, where he says that it’s “the most influential book he had read”

      so as usual the theoretical frameworks have been drafted in the heart of empire and implemented in the “land of the free”

    • Tweak@lemmy.world
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      51 minutes ago

      Dude, the US has been lagging behind the UK for the last decade. We voted for Brexit because of Cambridge Analytica, then you voted Trump for the first time because of Cambridge Analytica. We voted for Boris in 2019, you got Trump again in 2024. We’re probably going to vote in Nigel Farage next and then the US will be like “Hold my beer!”

      Palantir is just another symptom of this wider problem.

    • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      The first time? Hardly, for anyone who can read and find proper news sources. I’ve been telling people for years that the most dangerous people in the fascist middle northern america are not in the white house, but in the silicon valley - and that the most evil motherfucker is Peter Thiel.

    • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 hour ago

      I can assure you as someone from Silicon Valley that there is literally no single headline that can possibly convey the pure evil that is Peter Thiel. He literally believes that …

      Fuck, you spoiled my plan to drop a nuke there.

    • HugeNerd@lemmy.ca
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      7 hours ago

      Wikipedia classifies him as a “thinker”. Does your wiki entry classify you as a thinker? Check and mate, lib.

      • Rose@slrpnk.net
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        4 hours ago

        Being a “thinker” isn’t exactly a high bar. A fish can do it (depending on the definition). I mean I suppose I can think, but I wouldn’t brag about it.

      • Saleh@feddit.org
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        4 hours ago

        They are both linked through their families colonizing history in South Africa, including staunch Nazi support in their families.

        • shads@lemy.lol
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          I knew what that was going to be before I checked the link. I see you are a cultured individual.

    • ohulancutash@feddit.uk
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      11 hours ago

      NHS England has tens of millions of patients. Most patient records are undigitised and must be couriered when patients move to a new area or when specialist care is required.

      It’s also a huge, publicly funded service so big data can be crunched to improve outcomes and efficiencies.

      Palantir wanted a big system to use as the testbed for its move into healthcare data systems and offered a low bid.

      • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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        7 hours ago

        Do y’all not have any software engineers domestically? I thought you invented the whole ordeal?

          • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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            Unless I am presented with contradictory evidence (I am not accepting feedback) I will assume nobody over there is willing to program a machine of any type out of fear that their balls will be cut off by the government like daddy Turing’s were.

            Edit: (to be clear, I’m just taking the piss. Please for the love of dog, do not touch Palantir with even the tip of any of your extremities.)

    • sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyz
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      13 hours ago

      Yeah I’m not surprised about the Thiel/Epstein thing, I’m more surprised that the NHS is considering any sort of private health data handling by PALANTIR of all companies.

      • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        Somebody is going to be getting a Non-executive board membership or millionaire consulting “gig” from one of Tiel’s companies or one from one of his friends…

        By this point in time in Britain that kind of I thing has been going on long enough to almost be tradition.

    • Optional@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      The UK has been doing some seriously batshit things lately. Obviously we’re not ones to talk but - yeah. It’s sad.

    • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      It’s universally true that having more and better information can improve business and efficiency. (This of course has limits, yes.)

      I’m sure they were offering data that would help the agency.

      Now the ethics, and creepiness? I’m not a commenting on that. Palantir is not ethical. They labor under twisted logic.

      And every time we mention their name online, we probally get a demerit in their database.

      • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org
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        13 hours ago

        fuck Palantir

        fuck these bots that only just predict, regurgitate and are not intelligent

        fuck peter dick eater (he is ashamed of his own desire) thiel

        i bet he wanted that Epstein dick deeply

      • brianary@lemmy.zip
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        17 hours ago

        The liability is obviously not high enough if keeping and sharing this data works out positively. Even if the parties involved weren’t obviously evil, the risk to the people is too high for them to accept the risk with only trivial, speculative improvements.

    • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      17 hours ago

      Oh yeah they are in deep cahoots you should read the investigative journalism article they mention from earlier this summer.

  • ALLGLORYTOHYPNOTOAD@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    Peter Thiel is pure evil. This tie is not surprising at all. The piece of shit is un-ironically giving a lecture on the antichrist in September.

  • HugeNerd@lemmy.ca
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    15 hours ago

    I find this very hard to believe, he’s such a good boy and helps grannies cross the street.

    I think it’s time we send some F-16s to fire missiles at Chinese weather balloons, our real enemies.

    • OozingPositron@feddit.cl
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      14 hours ago

      It’s worse, they sent an F-22 to shoot a 400k USD missile, I bet the balloon’s radar never saw it coming!

      • 3abas@lemmy.world
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        It’s way worse, shooting weather balloons make them sound like angels.

        https://investigate.info/company/palantir

        They provide police state technology currently used by ICE to target immigrants and several US cities police departments use their tech for “predictive policing.” Not to mention they are actively and enthusiastically testing predictive generative AI to plan war crimes and hallucinate targets in the Gaza genocide. Technology they will bring home as “battle tested.”

        • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          Also a lot of right-wing government are planning to use the same exact tech to “completely remove homosexuality from society” among others.

        • Zink@programming.dev
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          I don’t know which all aircraft were involved at different points, but there was absolutely a shoot-down by an F-22.

          I don’t know anything about this website but it was one of Wikipedia’s sources. I remember seeing the pictures/videos with the F-22 clearly visible, plus the noteworthy stats like being the first f-22 kill, being the first engagement over US territory since WW2, and that it was probably the highest air to air kill.

          https://www.twz.com/f-22-shoots-down-chinese-spy-balloon-off-carolinas-with-missile

  • sad_detective_man@leminal.space
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    17 hours ago

    as a rule I don’t subscribe to theories related to the blood libel myth but if there was a dude to try injecting children’s’s blood into his blood to prolong his own life, it’s probably this psycho. the dude needs a straight jacket and glands removed. not government contracts.

    • kibiz0r@midwest.social
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      13 hours ago

      I mean…

      In 2016, various media outlets reported that Mr Thiel had links to the radical life extension startup Ambrosia, with Gawker claiming he “spends $40,00 per quarter to get an infusion of blood from an 18-year-old based on research conducted at Stanford on extending the lives of mice.”

      These reports cited his investment portfolio, together with a 2009 essay that laid out his philosophical and political beliefs. In it, he wrote that he stood against “the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual.”

      However the blood transfusion claims were never verified and Gawker shut down shortly after following an unrelated lawsuit partly funded by Mr Thiel.

  • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.worksOP
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    19 hours ago

    Journalists have reported on Thiel’s links to Epstein for some time. In 2019, journalist Whitney Webb reported on the links between Epstein, Israeli tech company Carbyne, and the American intelligence apparatus. In the piece, she reported:

    Not long after Epstein’s arrest, and his relationships and finances came under scrutiny, it was revealed that the Israeli company Carbyne911 had received substantial funding from Jeffrey Epstein as well as Epstein’s close associate and former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak, and Silicon Valley venture capitalist and prominent Trump backer Peter Thiel.

    Webb added:

    Another funder of Carbyne, Peter Thiel, has his own company that, like Carbyne, is set to profit from the Trump administration’s proposed hi-tech solutions to mass shootings. Indeed, after the recent shooting in El Paso, Texas, President Trump — who received political donations from and has been advised by Thiel following his election — asked tech companies to “detect mass shooters before they strike,” a service already perfected by Thiel’s company Palantir, which has developed “pre-crime software” already in use throughout the country. Palantir is also a contractor for the U.S. intelligence community and also has a branch based in Israel.

    The latest revelations around Thiel come from the leaked emails of the aforementioned Ehud Barak (former Israeli prime minister). Writing in Reason, Matthew Petti reported:

    Epstein invited Barak to come to a meeting with Thiel, cofounder of PayPal and the surveillance contractor Palantir, in May 2014. Although Barak couldn’t make that meeting, Epstein insisted that Barak “spend real time with peter thiel [sic]” and offered to set up a dinner the following month.Epstein

    Barak wrote to a different business associate a few days later, without mentioning Epstein’s role, that he and Thiel would have a “first date” and “probably spend it talking just geopolitics” with an unnamed third person. In that email, Barak added that he had met Thiel once before in Davos, Switzerland, but speculated that Thiel “probably doesn’t even recall it.”

    Brace Belden of the TrueAnon podcast added that Barak suspected Thiel was “under some drug impact” when they met, according to the emails:

    • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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      Another funder of Carbyne, Peter Thiel, has his own company that, like Carbyne, is set to profit from the Trump administration’s proposed hi-tech solutions to mass shootings.

      This willingness to let billionaires offer for-profit tech solutions to social problems is a sickness, and this is the clearest example yet.

      • goodnighttothe_spoon@lemmy.today
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        2 hours ago

        It’s called greed. That big shiny bag of money behind them is a very compelling motivator for most people, especially the wealthy politicians.

  • WanderWisley@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    The most evil and corrupt person is linked to the most evil and disgusting person? Say it ain’t so I’m clutching my pearls over here.

    • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      This isn’t even the first time Thiel has been linked to Epstein, but we never really hear about it for some reason. This isn’t even the first time he’s been linked this summer.

      Ever since that gawker lawsuit, it kinda seems like bad press about Peter Thiel gets buried almost as soon as it’s published.

    • rayyy@piefed.social
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      14 hours ago

      Makes sense. Sex trafficking is sex trafficking. Remember when Lindsey Graham made the sudden switch from vehemently against the Orange pedophile/rapist to best buds? Blackmail makes real sense.

  • the_q@lemmy.zip
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    19 hours ago

    Let’s be real, most powerful people are attached to these types of monsters.