The vibe for the expo, according to the Guardian, was quickly set by a panel of speakers that included billionaire former Google CEO and current drone manufacturing hopeful Eric Schmidt, billionaire Palantir cofounder Alex Karp, CIA deputy director David Cohen, and Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley. (View Highlight)
Speaking about campus protests, for instance, Karp blamed student backlash against Israel’s response in Gaza on “pagan religion infecting our universities” and referred to demonstrations as an “infection inside of our society,” according to the Guardian. He chillingly added that a US failure to quell public dissent against a conflict could be chalked up to an ideological failure, declaring that “if we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any armies in the west ever.” (View Highlight)
A Palantir booth titled Civilian Harm Mitigation, for example, demoed a map tool dubbed “Gaia.” The map, Palantir engineers helming the exhibit told the Guardian, is designed to let users “nominate targets of interest” for the “target nomination process” — euphemisms for deciding who gets bombed and where. The map will also reportedly summarize its analyses by way of a large language model (LLM). You know, in case the person deciding who gets to live or die doesn’t feel like reading. (View Highlight)
It’s a deeply dystopian sign of the times. Our world is rapidly changing, including the way we wage war — and as the likes of Palantir and others become ever more embedded into the national defense of tomorrow, we’d do well to pay attention to how, exactly, Silicon Valley operatives think and feel about war today. (View Highlight)
