URI:
       [HN Gopher] Palantir loses legal challenge against Swiss investi...
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       Palantir loses legal challenge against Swiss investigative magazine
        
       Author : sschueller
       Score  : 220 points
       Date   : 2026-06-12 20:39 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
  HTML web link (www.ft.com)
  TEXT w3m dump (www.ft.com)
        
       | sschueller wrote:
       | https://archive.ph/lXw7j
        
         | catlikesshrimp wrote:
         | If Cannot resolve archive.ph host
         | 
         | Access the .is domain https://archive.is/lXw7j
         | 
         | internet archive cannot resolve either
        
           | tremon wrote:
           | archive.ph works fine for me. Resolves to
           | 168.222.241.49 archive.ph
           | 2a09:b280:fe00:5a:d197:eab6:9aa0:f22 archive.ph
        
             | akerl_ wrote:
             | Archive.ph returns different results to Cloudflare's
             | resolvers intentionally, preventing Cloudflare DNS users
             | from resolving it correctly.
        
           | buildsjets wrote:
           | Find a better network service provider, you are being
           | censored by yours.
        
             | akerl_ wrote:
             | What makes you say that?
        
         | cluckindan wrote:
         | Please don't use these sites, they alter archived content and
         | use visitor browsers as a ddos botnet.
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.today_guidan...
        
           | themafia wrote:
           | Then I'd have to ask of publishers please don't use
           | subscription oriented paywalls. I'd be happy to pay for an
           | article here and there. I do not want to understand your
           | subscription model, compare benefits between "tiers" of
           | subscriptions, or think about how to cancel when I eventually
           | realize I'm not getting the value I hoped for.
           | 
           | This is the price of that dark pattern. These sites wouldn't
           | exist if they acted like publishers instead of retailers.
        
       | mistrial9 wrote:
       | > officials in Denmark and the Netherlands have similarly
       | expressed a desire to uncouple from the US-based software group
       | 
       | oh that is clever writing
        
         | tokai wrote:
         | I wonder which Danish official they are talking about. Lots of
         | voices against it, but not from officials. The danish state is
         | going full steam ahead. Just yesterday the Greenlandic police
         | was integrated with Grotham from Palantir.
        
       | holistio wrote:
       | Anyone who has read The Lord of The Rings has exactly zero
       | reasons to trust Palantir.
        
         | DoktorDelta wrote:
         | Crazy that there's a weapons company called Anduril as well
        
           | nickff wrote:
           | Why? Naming a weapons company after Aragorn's sword makes
           | sense. "The Daily Beast" on the other hand is a rather
           | cynical name...
        
           | scns wrote:
           | Creative people seem to be rather pacifistic. Warmongers seem
           | less so, they have to "borrow" from the creative ones.
        
           | goldenarm wrote:
           | Anduril is quite a positive name, it is a broken sword
           | reforged later to save humankind. Quite a metaphor about
           | western reindustrialization.
        
             | Barrin92 wrote:
             | except of course that Tolkien, as a Catholic was quite
             | adamant that he didn't write a story of Western chauvinism.
             | The sword is not a metaphor for industrialization, which is
             | quite literally the villain of the story, it's a symbol for
             | restored kingship and hope.
        
               | cmrdporcupine wrote:
               | Right, and his concept of nobility and just kingship was
               | about mercy love justice and a love of nature, good food,
               | merriment, harmony, and treating others with respect. His
               | works are full of cautionary tales of people who reached
               | for immortality, power, self-aggrandizement, and control
               | over others and fell as a result.
               | 
               | (Though he _was_ obsessed with lineage and blood
               | quotients and pale skin)
        
               | holistio wrote:
               | It's very difficult to judge the attitudes and held
               | values of people who lived in the past - I mean the
               | parentheses.
               | 
               | We don't know how much of it is real flaw or corruption
               | and how much is just the zeitgeist they lived in.
               | 
               | I wouldn't be at all surprised if Musk's capital T today
               | would end up becoming the beginning or turning point of a
               | cautionary tale in the future. And, for better or worse,
               | I know a lot of otherwise great and talented people who
               | are still his fans.
        
               | DaedalusII wrote:
               | tolkien largely copied the nibelungsenlied and
               | accidentally inherited western chauvinism and many other
               | ideas from that lore, including especially a great amount
               | of racism
        
           | alterom wrote:
           | Crazy? It's backed by Thiel as well IIRC.
        
           | inigyou wrote:
           | I'd call my company Sauron's Eye (we'll figure out what the
           | company does later), but sadly that's trademarked to the LOTR
           | franchise.
        
         | emptybits wrote:
         | Indeed. The corporation name is literally (in _literature_!) an
         | example of all-seeing surveillance tools causing harm when (not
         | _if_ ) they fall into evil hands.
        
         | za3faran wrote:
         | It's enough to hear what their genocidal maniac of a CEO says.
        
         | gmerc wrote:
         | Well it's kind of the same with Rand. That's their thing, they
         | read these books as preteens and the nuance is lost on them
        
       | tremon wrote:
       | > "We welcome that the Zurich Commercial Court confirmed our
       | right to publish a counterstatement"
       | 
       | Well that certainly is one way to spin having 22 of your 23
       | counterstatement requests dismissed by the court.
        
         | saghm wrote:
         | Their right to publish multiple counterstatements is left
         | unsettled by current law
        
       | zzzeek wrote:
       | > Palantir, whose software is widely used by US defence and
       | intelligence agencies, has faced growing scrutiny in parts of
       | Europe as governments reassess their dependence on American
       | technology companies.
       | 
       | I think it's great. Europe and other regions will be building out
       | their own tech stacks, decreasing global dependence on big US
       | players like AWS and Palantir, creating lots more jobs for
       | programmers and much broader ecosystems for doing things.
        
         | inigyou wrote:
         | No evidence for this. Europe talks a big game and consistently
         | fails to deliver.
        
       | Yokohiii wrote:
       | Wait europe doesn't want to buy spy tech that spies on europe?
       | Shocking.
        
         | scottyah wrote:
         | Some people in Europe don't want new sources of data coming in
         | outside of their control.
        
       | baobabKoodaa wrote:
       | Fine. Thiel will just fund a Hulk Hogan lawsuit against the Swiss
       | magazine, then.
        
       | timoth3y wrote:
       | Palantir is clearly a mind-boggling on-the-nose, but terrible
       | name to those familiar with the book.
       | 
       | The Palantiri consistently provided their users technically
       | accurate intelligence that lead to _disastrous_ strategic
       | decisions.
       | 
       | Denethor committed suicide out of despair, after a palantir
       | showed him the black fleet approaching, but he did not know that
       | it was actually Aragorn who had captured the fleet and was coming
       | with reinforcements.
       | 
       | We don't know specifically how the palantir deceived Saruman, but
       | it's pretty clear it was one of the key factors in his corruption
       | and downfall.
       | 
       | And even Sauron himself was misled in this way! The palantir
       | showed him, correctly, that a hobbit and Aragorn were at Helm's
       | Deep, and he concluded that Aragorn had the ring. So he
       | prematurely moved his armies out of Mordor and left the plains
       | and Mt Doom unguarded, which permitted the destruction of the
       | ring.
       | 
       | I honestly can't think of a worse name for a company that
       | provides intel for strategic decision making.
        
         | WhatIsDukkha wrote:
         | Saruman was already rotted by lust for the ring when he began
         | to use the Palantir and then came into the presence of a
         | dominating and corrupting will.
         | 
         | So yeah... plenty of real world versions of that.
        
         | AndrewKemendo wrote:
         | As though the ego of Peter Thiel has any grounding in reality
         | or ironic metaphor
        
         | antonvs wrote:
         | I can think of a worse name: Peter Thiel. Oh wait I'm confused.
         | That's a better name for this.
        
         | BLKNSLVR wrote:
         | I've pointed this out before, but there's an interview clip of
         | Alex Karp saying that Trump won the election in a landslide[0].
         | 
         | If you look at the actual numbers, no one, with any idea of
         | mathematics or statistics or even just basic analysis skills,
         | would call Trump's election victory a landslide.
         | 
         | It calls into question the fundamental raisin d'etre of
         | Palantir. It makes Palantir look like a pure propaganda tool.
         | 
         | Therefore, also entirely useless for strategic decision making.
         | 
         | Interesting analysis of Palantir and Alex Karp:
         | 
         | Part 1, Palantir: https://youtu.be/PpEg0XIeFtA
         | 
         | Part 2, Alex Karp: https://youtu.be/6YWFDhOps6I
         | 
         | [0]https://youtu.be/6YWFDhOps6I&t=1119s
        
           | holistio wrote:
           | It's _raison_, but "raisin d'etre" would make an excellent
           | name for a haute cuisine dessert.
        
           | pstuart wrote:
           | Alex Karp's transformation from progressive to MAGA is
           | fascinating; more so knowing that his father was jewish and
           | his mother was black.
           | 
           | I can understand a zeal to "protect the country", but FFS, to
           | be the brains of the secret police is a bit much.
           | 
           | https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/10/opinion/alex-karp-
           | palanti...
        
         | warumdarum wrote:
         | Its cellphones ? They show the rulers accurate predictions of
         | human behaviour after the the fall of the towers proofed that
         | the left only had enbarassing cofabulations to explain
         | behaviour at scale. Thats the most valuable thing you can gain
         | out of social network sensor data.
        
         | teravor wrote:
         | someone will name their company Ashnazg, probably an AI company
        
           | LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
           | Already happened. Ashnazg Enterprises LLC https://ashnazg.com
           | 
           | No AI though, just fully stacked...
        
         | GolfPopper wrote:
         | > _I honestly can 't think of a worse name for a company that
         | provides intel for strategic decision making._
         | 
         | Yet the choice is very effective at telling those with eyes to
         | see that the one who chose the name possesses only a surface-
         | level understanding of what appears to be his favorite piece of
         | literature.
        
           | themafia wrote:
           | Or he's broadcasting his intention to destroy world
           | governments and institute a new global order under
           | technocratic control. He's banking on a US General not
           | understanding the deeper lore behind of the name.
        
             | GolfPopper wrote:
             | In folklore, supernatural monsters are often compelled to
             | show their true selves in non-obvious ways.
        
             | anonymars wrote:
             | He literally considers Saruman the good guy, Mordor the
             | good place, and Gandalf the bad guy (holding back
             | technological progress)
             | 
             | Discussed previously e.g.
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45901389
        
       | mentalgear wrote:
       | To all investigative Journalists: Thank you for your hard work,
       | and for being an inspiration and beacon of hope in these dark
       | techno-feudalistic times.
        
       | dyauspitr wrote:
       | Get this cancer out of Europe.
        
       | irsagent wrote:
       | Here are the series of articles that the Swiss investigative
       | magazine, Republik + WAV, published and Palantir looked to
       | silence: https://www.republik.ch/dossier/die-republik-vs-palantir
        
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       (page generated 2026-06-13 03:00 UTC)