- Palantir was incredible technology during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for putting the proverbial warheads on foreheads of insurgents with terrible SIGINT practices and a lot of generated data. You could build and analyze graphs of insurgent networks that were tangibly powerful
- After that, in my mind what was very similar tech was sold to US domestic police, corporate insider threat teams, whatever. As I recall it had uneven adoption due to expense
- Now in 2025, that same tech is slated to have broad access to American citizen data under an entirely trustable and stable executive branch.
With those face value facts, a capable technical mind like those in hackernews could draw logical conclusions.
To put a pin in it - threat modeling for what you say and do online as this era progresses is interesting to consider. Now with tech like this, your threat model is now you + your friends. Who’s the “radical” in your friend group, and is the group chat on unencrypted systems? Consider what your graph would be, and how much do you trust tech like this ran by either the current team or the other team.
Don't forget that Lavender AI, the "cool system" that automatically targets all Hamas fighters (with probably 1000% civilian casualties because it destroyed all hospitals, churches, mosques and schools along the way) was developed by Palantir.
The irony is that this really bad SIGINT graph flags also relatives, e.g. cousins of cousins of fighters, just because they had e.g. family events where they attended together, even though all other intelligence data would point to the contrary. The documentary that got banned from BBC highlights this with a lot of stories where e.g. hospital workers were specifically targeted because a distant relative was associated with hamas.
Palantir had a video on YouTube where they were even bragging about this graph, though not under its now-leaked codename.
Exactly what I remember reading all the time about the Afghanistan war - the OP calls the Palantir tool 'incredible technology' but the one thing I remember seeing reported time and time and time again during that war was reports of strikes against civilians accidentally being targeted because their mobile phones had been nearby to insurgents (like maybe having visited the same mosque or the same family gathering)...
I'm not a conspiracy theory person, but if I wanted to ensure a perpetuation of terrorism and consequently ever-present wars in the Middle East, I wouldn't do this any other way.
Fucks like Bibi do this successfully (propping up Hamas in detriment of democratic movements). Why wouldn't the MIC do it as well?
There’s some nuance to understand about targeting flows and precision strikes, and why “incredible” is suitable term to use. Not that what you list out didn’t occur, certainly
The only thing incredible about "targeting flow" and "precision strikes" is the genius of the pentagone propagandists who coined these expressions and managed to have people use them and somehow believe there is any kind of subtleties in the way this war was fought.
> There’s some nuance to understand about targeting flows and precision strikes
There's a lot of "nuance". From understanding that these systems will always "need" to target and strike, and they'll always find an enemy to strike at because it's their sole reason to exist, to the arbitrary definition of "precision" or "success".
The entire system and philosophy become redundant without guaranteed targets and weak without guaranteed success.
What it means today is that a random US citizen in the street can be a target, and arresting him up can mean success. Being infallible by definition is indeed incredible.
Palantir is extremely bad, but this not making the point you want to make. Hamas infamously wears civilian clothes during combat and operates out of civilian structures in civilian zones. We ought to oppose the destruction of democracy and the arrival of dystopia without defending terrorism.
They avoided larger number of civilian casualties/deaths.
The strikes will happen, and if you did not know of the approximate location, you will then use more saturation strikes for _even more_ locations to ensure target is hit.
The fact that a target _needs_ to be hit is indisputable.
> The fact that a target _needs_ to be hit is indisputable.
At best, you're confusing "indisputable" with "an input or requirement imposed by the user."
At worst, the software is suggesting who ought to be killed, the user trusts the software, and then the software trusts the user's choice, and the magic of circular-logic supposedly absolves everyone involved of responsibility when murder happens.
The underlying ethos here is “the target must be hit, regardless of the number of civilian casualties,” which is actually evil. “Palantir allowed us to go from 10000 civilian casualties per target hit to 9000” is not some win, it’s a confession of genocidal intent.
Amusingly, I started reading it without knowing it was from the same author as another book I'd read before about the economics of scams, Lying For Money.
My memory is a bit rusty, but I can't recall any time that "we would have lost if we didn't do it" was used as a successful defense at a war crimes trial.
Normally you go with "that didn't actually happen" or "that was an isolated incident by rogue commanders".
I have no idea what your point is? I suppose you’re implying they should just give up? Sure I’d support that so long as the other side also give up.
And let’s be clear, Isreal commit plenty of war crimes of their own using excuses you describe. Personally that seems more morally reprehensible to me given it is utterly unnecessary.
The UN Special Rapporteur's report indicates as much. This is from early 2024, the evidence has only mounted since then. Would you mind explaining which points in particular you don't agree?
> destroyed all hospitals, churches, mosques and schools along the way
Hamas doesn't have an air force, and they're facing an enemy with a good air force and good intelligence. They can't have nice things like "zoning", if they stored rockets away from civilians they would all get destroyed.
So, in order to have rockets, they must be stored under targets that would cause political trouble if they were to be hit: hospitals, churches, mosques and schools.
Random anecdote, probably repeated all over Europe and the rest of the world: During World War II, the top leadership of the Norwegian resistance had most of their meetings in a civilian apartment in the middle of Oslo.
One you’re occupied, the only way to do resistance is from civil infrastructure.
And that makes it ok to commit warcrimes? Under that reasoning, which really only comes down to "because it is needed", anything is allowed. Including everything Israel does, because to them, it's also needed.
And here's the thing: hamas has extensive underground tunnel networks, so it actually _isn't_ needed to hide among civilians! They do it purely for the optics: every destroyed school or hospital will help sway Western opinion.
Hamas has an extensive network of tunnels, so it doesn't need to store weapons in hospitals on a permanent basis. Besides, many of those facilities host foreign NGOs which would protest as they'd know that it would justify their targeting. What you are saying is false.
> So, in order to have rockets, they must be stored under targets that would cause political trouble if they were to be hit: hospitals, churches, mosques and schools.
Sure man, whatever you tell yourself to sleep at night.
What's next, an ICBM hidden as a mosque tower?
Just think for a second in rational terms, who funded this if - as the IDF claims - every person entering and leaving the Gaza strip was thoroughly controlled?
Where did the suitcases of cash and weapons come from?
Just something to think about.
Hint: It's an artificial conflict, and both sides (Hamas and IDF) rely to consolidate their power on each other. Without Hamas, there can be no Natanyahu.
Without the Second Intifada, you mean. That's the moment when Israel's political left was obliterated according to domestic polling, and it hasn't yet recovered.
Hamas took over Gaza in 2007 and shortly after is when Netanyahu delivered those famous briefcases full of cash.
His goal in helping them take over was to foment a political split between the Palestinians in order to try to head off any possibility of a two state solution.
They provided what he thought of as the ideal justification for a hitler style ethnic cleansing on Oct 7.
You are mischaracterizing it. Willfully. That makes you a liar.
The "briefcases full of cash" were money from Qatar to pay the civil servants to keep the society going because PA wouldn't pay them (given that they were just thrown off the roofs in Gaza by victorious Hamas following a short civil war).
Now where that money went is a different conversation. But you are making it look like Netanyahu went into Israel's treasury, filled briefcases full of cash and had someone deliver it to Hamas. You are willfully lying.
It always strikes me how much effort certain people are willing to make to defend a state that is racist to its very core.
>Now where that money went is a different conversation
This is precisely the conversation we were having.
>But you are making it look like Netanyahu went into Israel's treasury
I neither said nor implied that. That is a lie. I know that the ultimate source was Qatar. Netanyahu nonetheless delivered it for precisely the reasons I gave.
These facts are public and well known, hence why I used the term "famously".
People do things with the best of intentions. Sometimes it doesn't work. How you went from there to Netanyahu supports the very entity he spent his entire life fighting - that's quite a reach even for the smooth brained pali supporters.
> defend a state that is racist to its very core.
The Jews wouldn't need a state if they weren't being ethnically cleansed, genocided, resettled, etc... throughout history at the whims of their Muslim or Christian rulers or "neighbors".
But as it is, we have wannabe genocidal maniacs running around the world wanting to kill every Jew and, inexplicably supported by the likes of you. So yes, Israel is not only needed - it's required.
It always blows me away how, historically, actual two-state progress has been intentionally hindered. There was a point way back when at least some meaningful work towards peace was at hand, but when Kissinger got wind of it and he wasn’t the one who could get the credit, he sabotaged the whole thing.
Fast forward to Benji saying that the best way to ensure funding for Israel is by having a strong Hamas, and things never change.
It's funny (horrifying) coming from an advertising background - this sounds exactly like the tech that allows advertisers to take credit for conversions that are wildly unrelated to ads, in reality.
The comment throws around impossible numbers and unverified claims as if they were facts. “1000% civilian casualties” is nonsense mathematically, and nothing backs it up. There is no public evidence the BBC “banned” the documentary, so that looks like hearsay.
Lavender AI is one lead-generation tool among several, with human analysts and other intelligence sources involved. It does not “automatically destroy” hospitals, churches or schools, that is an unfounded exaggeration. Many such sites remain standing, and damage in a war zone is not proof of an AI-driven targeting policy.
Social network mapping is used by counterterrorism agencies everywhere. Being on a graph does not mean you are on a kill list. Without solid data on actual misidentifications, repeating anecdotes does not prove the system works the way you claim.
While I appreciate the attempt to remove some of the parent's exaggeration, the conclusion is not wrong. I work in relatively well-regulated industry and I more often than I would like, I read about things that suggest people are, at best, not really following the rules.
Now, and this is the part that annoys people like me, the problem of a graph and anecdotes. The reason we are discussing anecdotes has some of its source in the nature of the effort, which by default secretive. In other words, we do not find until years after the fact ( if we do ever officially do ). Add to this normal politics, some sad human tendencies and most can reach a rather quick decision why we only seem to have anecdotes.
More to the point, I would like you to invite you to a thought experiment.
If you had the responsibility of running IC in US, what would you do?
You don't need to answer, but the answer should be clear.
> “1000% civilian casualties” is nonsense mathematically
I assumed they meant relative to militant casualties. So 10:1 ratio civilian:militant. You could also say 91% , if you use total casualties as the denominator. You could even prefer it. But “nonsense” is uncharitable.
Even worst case sources not claiming anywhere near 10:1.
As of early–mid August 2025, the Gaza Ministry of Health reports around 61,600 total deaths in Gaza since the war began, without distinguishing between civilians and militants. The Israeli military’s most recent on-record statement (January 2025) claims it has killed about 20,000 Hamas operatives. Subtracting that claim from the total suggests roughly 41,600 civilians have died, an estimated civilian-to-militant ratio of about 2 to 1, though if lower militant-death estimates from independent analysts (10,000–15,000) are used, the ratio could be closer to 3–4 to 1. Both sides’ figures are contested, and humanitarian agencies such as the UN caution that these numbers are unverified and incomplete due to the difficulty of collecting accurate data in the conflict.
During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the US defined insurgents as any male of fighting age. And that wasn't even 18. Most people being dropped very much were not soldiers and it became incredible apparent when several weddings were bombed because maybe one person in attendance might've once talked to a person who knew a guy who was familiar with a guy who might've known a guy who was a guy who said he supported the war against America. "Hamas operatives" is very much the same thing, unless evidence of their membership with Hamas is provided. And I'll change my mind if a list of 21000 verified hamas fighters is provided.
Anything Hamas says must be judged against the track record of its past falsehoods and distortions, this is their norm, not the exception. If someone still takes their words at face value, no fact or evidence will change how they see them.
Before October 2023, several high-profile Hamas claims were later undermined by evidence: after denying involvement in the June 2014 kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers, senior Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri publicly acknowledged the group’s role; while Hamas framed the 2018 “Great March of Return” as largely civilian, its own official Salah al-Bardawil said 50 of the 62 people killed on May 14, 2018 were Hamas members; despite Hamas’s insistence that it did not use civilian sites, the U.N. agency UNRWA repeatedly found rockets stored in its Gaza schools in 2014; and although Hamas dismissed allegations of abuses against Palestinian rivals, Amnesty International documented a 2014 campaign of abductions, torture and summary executions in Gaza.
The Gaza Health Ministry has a very good track record of providing verifiable death counts.
It works on the basis of reports from hospitals, and keeps information (like name, ID number, age and gender) for every deceased person. A lot of that information can actually be verified by Israel, since Israel controls the Gaza population Registry. If these people later showed up alive, that would easily prove the Health Ministry is lying. Yet that hasn't happened.
After past conflicts, outside organizations have reviewed the Health Ministry's numbers, and have determined them to be accurate, which is why major news organizations consider it reliable.[0] Even the Israeli government privately considers the numbers to be reliable and uses them in internal discussions, though it publicly claims them to be unreliable (the reader can guess why). Israeli intelligence has surveilled the Health Ministry, and came to the conclusion that it was working in good faith.[1] Again, this is completely different from what the Israeli government says in public.
The Gaza Health Ministry has periodically released its entire list of verified deaths. You can read every person's name, age, etc.[2]
The main concern about the numbers is that they are probably a massive undercount. Every hospital in Gaza has been bombed by the IDF, and the healthcare system is barely functioning at all any more. Beyond that, there is rubble everywhere, and nobody knows how many people lie dead underneath it.
> The main concern about the numbers is that they are probably a massive undercount. Every hospital in Gaza has been bombed by the IDF, and the healthcare system is barely functioning at all any more. Beyond that, there is rubble everywhere, and nobody knows how many people lie dead underneath it.
Just to back this up - this study published in the Lancet estimates a 41% undercount for deaths up to June 30, 2024.
This is exactly the sort of brain-dead take that my comment was meant to correct.
The Gaza Health Ministry is a professional organization that has been found again and again to work reliably. Even Israeli intelligence has determined that the Gaza Health Ministry is reliable. Look, I don't like the fact that a far-right political party (founded by a literal terrorist, Menachem Begin) that wants to annex the West Bank and Gaza runs the Israeli government, but I still trust morgue data that comes out of Israel. The same goes for Gaza.
The Gaza Health Ministry was also completely destroyed in March 2024, because the increasing death toll was inconvenient. Since then, the most cited death toll ("more than 50,000") has been the one that was current in March 2024.
You'll have to explain that to the Israeli intelligence services, which surveiled Gaza Health Ministry staff (e.g., listening to their phone calls) and determined that they were working in good faith.
Just because the governing political party carries out terrorist attacks against Israel, that does not mean that literally every institution in Gaza is unreliable. The IDF carries out war crimes all the time and is known to be extremely unreliable,[0] but there are still many institutions inside Israel that are reliable.
0. There are way, way too many examples of this to list here, but I'll just highlight one. The IDF attacked a convoy of Palestinian ambulances in Rafah, killing almost all of the paramedics. When this came out, the IDF put out a statement claiming that the ambulances were actually being used as a cover for Palestinian Islamic Jihad and had approached an IDF position with their lights off. Then, a video surfaced of the incident, showing that the ambulances were flashing their emergency lights, and that the paramedics were unarmed and had been gunned down by the IDF. It also came out that the IDF had subsequently buried the ambulances, in order to try to hide the evidence. In other words, the IDF committed a war crime, tried to cover it up, and then concocted an elaborate series of lies that they put out for public consumption: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafah_paramedic_massacre.
It's very convenient to assert that literally nothing that goes on within Gaza is knowable, in exclusion of any other facts, "because Hamas", but you're not actually engaging with the reality that external validation and corroboration can still exist.
So you say IDF is so inept it can't stop this after year and half? How much longer and what kind of escalation will it take? They are basically letting Hamas win this way. As if it was some unfathomable mysterious adversary that had not lived next door for decades.
This makes no sense. Israel calls everyone killed a Hamas operative. If GP's 10:1 ratio were true, it would be within the 20,000 Israel said they've killed.
That shifts the argument from evidence to speculation. The original claim was about current operations, not hypothetical futures. If there is no proof that everyone on such a graph is now targeted, then the central accusation falls apart. Counterterrorism systems generate far more leads than they act on, and those leads are filtered by human review and corroborating intelligence.
Suggesting “who knows what the future may bring” is not an argument about present facts. Policy and oversight should be debated on actual documented use, not on imagined scenarios.
> Counterterrorism systems generate far more leads than they act on, and those leads are filtered by human review and corroborating intelligence.
From Wikipedia on Lavender:
> The Guardian quoted one source: "I would invest 20 seconds for each target at this stage, and do dozens of them every day. I had zero added-value as a human, apart from being a stamp of approval. It saved a lot of time."
If the BBC didn't ban the documentary, why do you think there are journalists now protesting in front of the building? What is the reason for those ongoing protests if that didn't happen?
Maybe read some world news outside Fox News once in a while, man.
The name of the documentary (obfuscated to avoid auto flags, because this is HN after all): Gaza: D0ctors under attack (2025).
I agree that the 1000% were hyperbole on my part, but you have to admit that destroying clearly labelled-on-the-outside buildings that are hospitals and houses of international organizations like doctors without borders were all destroyed. Not once, but actually more than 13 hospitals alone (just in case you play the it was a mistake part).
People literally died while the IDF/IOF was "checking" their passports, refusing critical treatment, with people literally bleeding out outside the hospital because they were not allowed to enter.
Nurses and hospital doctors were stripped naked and beaten to death, in mass interrogation camps.
This is not some misidentification issue.
This is post-Desert Storm trying to manufacture evidence, at all cost. These types of actions are absolutely disproportionate.
I’m not downvoting you, that would be someone else.
Protests outside a broadcaster do not prove that a ban occurred. People protest over editorial decisions, framing, or lack of coverage without there being an actual prohibition. Without a formal statement from the BBC or credible reporting confirming a ban, the claim remains unsubstantiated.
The rest of the comment mixes admitted hyperbole with serious accusations that are either unverified or based on partisan sources. The destruction of “clearly labelled” hospitals and aid facilities has been reported, but such claims require independent investigation to determine context — including whether the sites were being used for military purposes, which changes their legal status under the laws of armed conflict. The figure of “more than 13 hospitals” destroyed is meaningless without distinguishing between those damaged, rendered inoperable, or completely demolished.
Allegations of executions, beatings, or denial of treatment are grave, but they must be supported by verifiable evidence from credible investigators, not presented as conclusive fact. Calling such events “not misidentification” assumes intent without proof. Assertions about “manufacturing evidence” are also speculation unless backed by concrete documentation.
Emotive claims without substantiation do not replace the need for clear, verifiable facts when discussing events of this seriousness.
> The figure of “more than 13 hospitals” destroyed is meaningless without distinguishing between those damaged, rendered inoperable, or completely demolished.
They are utterly destroyed, aka blown the fvck up. There is no degree of "maybe they can work again", the buildings are now rubble and lose bricks.
> Emotive claims without substantiation do not replace the need for clear, verifiable facts when discussing events of this seriousness.
You can also just google once in a while, you know. That's how you keep an open mind for discussion. You didn't do that, you criticized my claims without even bothering to google it. You've made up your mind already, therefore this discussion is kinda pointless.
If you don't believe me because you hold a personal grudge against me for whatever reason, check the sibling comments from other people.
> Yesterday it became apparent that we have reached the end of the road with these discussions. We have come to the conclusion that broadcasting this material risked creating a perception of partiality that would not meet the high standards that the public rightly expect of the BBC. Impartiality is a core principle of BBC News. It is one of the reasons that we are the world’s most trusted broadcaster.
> The production company's founder, Ben de Pear, said earlier this week the BBC had "utterly failed" and that journalists were "being stymied and silenced".
> Responding to De Pear's comments, a BBC spokesperson said the BBC "totally reject[s] this characterisation of our coverage".
> An open letter, which was also signed by cultural figures such as Dame Harriet Walter, Miriam Margolyes, Maxine Peake, Juliet Stevenson and Mike Leigh, said: "This is not editorial caution. It's political suppression."
Plenty of other UK news agencies have covered the story, too: it's really not hard to substantiate this one. Consider how many people read each HN comment, and then please put a bit of time into researching the things you say.
Don't forget hamas, hiding behind hospitals, churches, mosques and schools makes those valid targets. And it could quit islamo-facism any day of the week!
The same can be said for Israel. Just stop believing in god, put some fucking lines on the map and most importantly jail/shoot dead religious crazies who break the peace.
That "incredible" tech didn't seem to help all that much in Afghanistan. Not only did the US lose, I never got the sense we were even particularly close to winning, even if we'd stayed there for another 20 years and trillion dollars. In terms of tangible wins, what was Palantir's "incredible" tech actually delivering?
It delivered two things, and the easy response to your fair point is tactical tools — a rifle, great software — don’t win wars on their own.
1) Palantir was the first breath of fresh air that brought actually good tech with modern tech support practices to the warfighter, and by extension put the big
defense contractors on notice. I personally believe this impact was tremendously important as there were real safety connotations involved, and anyone with a family member downrange could appreciate this.
2) Palantir was great targeting software that worked like modern tech vs a custom Linux distro with a GUI from 1970 and required 5 months of finagling to get vendor support for.
So Palantir just brought standard 2010’s tech to soldiers betting their safety on it. This was incredible although ordinary.
If anything though, all the civilians that they accidentally targeted probably played a part in radicalising a lot more people on the ground, so if anything the tools probably made things worse.
I'm sure it was very shiny looking software though, but that doesn't mean it's good.
You’d have to define “good” and your understanding of fires targeting chains before I feel I could make a useful response!
You’d be mistaken to think of me as a fan. But, I understand, I think you miss, what Palantir did as a net positive for defense acquisitions and the very legitimate impact on warfigter safety. And, how huge of an achievement it was, given what vendor impact on basic military’ing in the 2000-2010’s was like.
Also, good or bad, all this modern defense innovation new American Century VC stuff, which good or bad is part of the tech industry and it’s continued stability, in my mind sources from this break through.
Also, maybe the software tracked down an IED network or two. And that means there are some limbs on Americans that aren’t robotic. Pretty great too.
My biggest takeaway is surprise at how much the old sw must have sucked. Without knowing anything about it, I've always assumed military tech was cutting edge.
That should be the takeaway, paired with if you ever make a startup avoid “military grade” marketing as you’ll eventually sell to a vet who thinks it’s quite humorous.
The other takeaway is tech used to target insurgents is now getting American citizen data.
That last part I understood already (and have never been a fan of Palantir for that reason, well, that and that I don't very much like companies that profit from making products that kill people). So maybe I should have said "new takeaway".
Sometimes you really can build a long-term company on technical arbitrage when the established competitors are incapable of significant improvement due to misaligned internal incentives. Sometimes executives will allow a company to die instead of fixing it because that outcome maximizes their own personal income or career trajectory: this is one aspect of the principal-agent problem.
On the contrary, the US-led coalition achieved military victory in Afghanistan in under 60 days. Which is an incredible feat. Though what that coalition failed to achieve, and where people try to adjust the definition of tactical victory, was the nation-building goal of creating a functional, independent Afghanistan government. The counterinsurgency aspect was the process of protecting that fledgling "nation".
The very uncomfortable truth here is that Israel is demonstrating how to effectively destroy insurgencies in Gaza and Lebanon. You cannot pussyfoot with nasty, brutal tactics and expect to accomplish anything. This was a lesson the west learned in the world wars, and we seem to have collectively forgot it again.
> The very uncomfortable truth here is that Israel is demonstrating how to effectively destroy insurgencies in Gaza and Lebanon. You cannot pussyfoot with nasty, brutal tactics and expect to accomplish anything. This was a lesson the west learned in the world wars, and we seem to have collectively forgot it again.
Israel is getting sucked into their own quagmire right now as we speak and is taking on an expensive ground invasion and occupation of a territory they don't want to be in (like we did) for an unforeseeable amount of time, over a hostile population, against the advice of their own military leaders. They are also actively starving civilians, who are at this very moment dying of malnutrition in scores every week.
It's easy to win the brute force battle with money in the modern world. But wars aren't about destroying things and people with brute force. They are about achieving political objectives. That's what we failed to understand in Afghanistan and Iraq and what Israel failed to learn from our failures in those regions
The counterinsurgency lessonz of note from a doctrinal standpoint have little to do with how you framed it and I recall it. So before we go in on Total War is the Best War, your framing feels convenient vs actually thought out.
How to do counterinsurgency, as I ran into it from the “what works” angle in the formal setting to learn these things.
- the Malaya/British example. Notably Britain doesn’t run Malaya anymore and that country doesn’t exist. This is the direction you’re arguing works fwiw
- COIN and Patraeus (sp), assuming conditions were correct across the board and you could get a unit commander and all related stakeholders to try it. Notably we didn’t “win the insurgency” in Afghanistan
So there are both well established COIN case studies, one heavy and one light, both didn’t work, and no overlap with what you’re arguing.
Defeating the government of an impoverished, low-tech country in 60 days is not exactly like Napoleon crossing the Alps. It's also not victory.
The US fought for 20 years, could never eliminate the insurgency, and then withdrew with its tail between its legs, leaving the old government to come back to power.
Yes, if you kill 10%, 20%, 30% of the population, maybe you'll eventually destroy the insurgency, though that approach hasn't worked yet for Israel in Gaza. But if you're not completely genocidal, that's not an option.
> This was a lesson the west learned in the world wars
The world wars were not counterinsurgency operations (except from the German and Japanese side in the occupied countries). They were traditional wars between major powers.
By today's standards, mass rapes against german civilian women by the soviet army and other allied forces[0] or bombing of various cities of no industrial importance, such as Dresden would be easily considered as war crimes.
Saying "but they were nazis" is no different that when the Hamas explains that every Israeli civilian is a soldier to justify their actions.
A lot of people say "We did Dresden" to justify Israel's crimes but they don't realize Dresden was viewed very negatively even by the allies and the people involved in the attack after the war...
The Germans weren't a stateless people who had lived under an oppressive foreign military occupation for over half a century, after getting kicked out of their homeland. They were a major world power that decided to launch a war of conquest against the rest of Europe and beyond.
These are more not remotely similar situations.
What is the ideology that is even supposed to be eliminated in Gaza? Killing people who are oppressed is not going to make them start loving their oppressors.
Defeating the army of one the poorest country on earth is not an incredible feat. Understanding the fact that it's borderline impossible to import american-style democracy in Afghanistan didn't require more than a few anthropologists and historians specializing in this part of Asia. Or they could have asked anyone who had lived there for some time. US soldiers would have been much safer this way.
Israel didn't suppress anything in Gaza so far, and for sure the next generation of insurgents (not necessarily Hamas) who have nothing to lose since Israel destroyed their homes and killed their families is being cultivated right now. This is why now the government talks openly about their own "final solution"[0][1], as they know that it will be difficult if not impossible to stabilize the situation.
> The very uncomfortable truth here is that Israel is demonstrating how to effectively destroy insurgencies in Gaza and Lebanon.
Neither Gaza nor Lebanon are insurgencies - Israel is trying to destroy terrorist organizations, not rebellions.
> You cannot pussyfoot with nasty, brutal tactics and expect to accomplish anything. This was a lesson the west learned in the world wars, and we seem to have collectively forgot it again.
Neither world war was either an insurgencies nor a war on a terrorist organization, so unclear why this is a relevant example at all.
A better example of how to win that type of war would be the Malay insurgency (especially when compared to your example of the Vietnam war)
> Neither Gaza nor Lebanon are insurgencies - Israel is trying to destroy terrorist organizations, not rebellions.
Terrorism and insurgency are not mutually exclusive.
The classic example of a modern insurgency, the Algerian resistance against the French, was led by a terrorist organization, the Front de libération nationale (FLN). More correctly, it was a political organization that used terrorism as a tactic, and which eventually became the government of an independent country.
Hamas is a pretty similar case to the FLN (though the PLO was more similar in the old days, in terms of ideology).
there's lots of near admission by numerous service members (retired now) who go on those war/special forces podcasts and admit they had their hands tied and told to stall. the 'brass' didn't want the war to end - unclear if it was the presidents of the time or the generals but we accomplished the mission those in charge wanted (forever war).
Rarely or never lost a tactical battle or a strategic conflict ther. Some big ones like Operation Anaconda are the obvious outlier.
But what the Army, Marines, and all the Air Force can’t do: nation-building.
What the State Dept is supposed to do but didn’t: nation building
What congress never really bothered to do per the Constitution: a non half-assed attempt at routine approval and review to authorize the use of military force
What the public did: super bowls and tech boom, poor people and idealists go to war
What senior officers did: another 18 months of warring and I get a deployment patch and strategic command
What your line officers and NCOs did: love a combat tour, pay and patch, but how much do we dig into the bigger picture mission and put ourselves at risk on (check notes) War Year 19 Strategy #807
It sounds like you’re judging by the political outcomes, and frankly the tactical effectiveness is pretty far disconnected from that. It’s like saying a Chef’s knife must be dull because the meal tastes bad.
Yea, but with a cool modern spin on it, it's not imperialism it's fighting terrorism!
Still not clear on how murdering the poorest people in the world with the least reach of anyone on the planet with devastating weapons like the R-9X missile, which has been described as a "samurai sword warhead" because it uses bladed protrusions to penetrate and then mangle it's victims, has solved anything. Other than putting loads of money in Palantir and Raytheon's pockets.
I think these days though they just sell political influence since Trumps brand of populism has made war _slightly_ less popular than it was 10 years ago.
> Peter Thiel’s worldview centers on the conviction that Western society faces existential threats from nihilism, progressivism, and the rise of a global totalitarian order, which he believes are leading to decline and could culminate in an apocalyptic collapse. His proposed solution involves a right-wing religious revival rooted in Christianity, combined with technological acceleration and a reimagined political order that prioritizes heroic individuals and hierarchical impulses.
>right-wing religious revival rooted in Christianity, combined with technological acceleration and a reimagined political order that prioritizes heroic individuals and hierarchical impulses
Sounds like a fast path to totalitarianism a la 1930.
- Those weapons get field-tested in a real-life (or rather, real-death) scenario. Kids always want to play with their newest toys. The weakest of the weak also have no lobby and no(?) way to fight back.
- “We kill them all before 0.001% of them could become suicide bombers”. Has the additional dubious “benefit” of being merely incompetence, not malice (/s).
It gave them targets but was it correct? Afaik people in LA are targeted by police simply for living in the area of known drug gangs. Guess it's a lot like Israel and Hamas targets.
I figured this was coming. It'll get really bad if we eliminate birthright citizenship because then you'll have to supply papers proving you're a citizen like your parents' or their parents' birth certificates. Good luck providing those to anyone from a prison in Nicaragua or El Salvador.
The EO only calls for elimination of birthright citizenship on a prospective basis. It would not affect anyone who is currently a citizen. It would simply be marked on your birth certificate if you were a citizen, based on whether your parents are citizens (either one). This is not at all remarkable, and plenty of countries operate this way. The US is somewhat anomalous in granting citizenship to children born to tourists or illegal immigrants, simply because they were in the US when the child was born.
Probably it would just say, like it does in so many other countries. No need for crypto-conspiracy theories since it's a totally normal thing in most of the world.
wait so if you give birth as a tourist in the US your kid has to fill out IRS and FBAR forms each year even though they only lived in the US for their first week or whatever?
Yes, unless they renounce. They might also not be able to invest in their home country and things like the sale of their home are taxed by the US. Starting a business or buying an etf are also fraught with peril.
The only other remotely similar country is Eritrea
You'd still have to apply for a Social Security Card for them to have anything to worry about. That's not automatically granted to babies at birth. The hospital should certify the birth and give you paperwork from something like a state's vital records department but you still have to present that to the SSA. Ostensibly yes they are automatically citizens of the US but they're in a weird spot I would think that you could resolve with a court case if the IRS suddenly came after them for back taxes or something when they were adults. Honestly that sounds like such a ridiculous situation that I can't imagine it's happened.
You should look into how the LA targeting works, and what vendor drove data-driven policing like this. If I recall, it might have been Chicago PD or NYC that dumped Palantir bc the issue you note + cost.
Trump launched MAGA by attacking the Iraq war, and the Bush family.
This is 2008:
“When she first got in and was named speaker, I met her. And I’m very impressed by her. I think she’s a very impressive person. I like her a lot. But I was surprised that she didn’t do more in terms of Bush and going after Bush. It was almost – it just seemed like she was going to really look to impeach Bush and get him out of office, which personally I think would’ve been a wonderful thing,” Trump told Blitzer in the interview.
“Impeaching him?” Blitzer asked.
“Absolutely. For the war. For the war,” said Trump, referring to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. “Well, he lied. He got us into the war with lies, and I mean, look at the trouble Bill Clinton got into with something that was totally unimportant and they tried to impeach him, which was nonsense. And yet Bush got us into this horrible war with lies. By lying. By saying they had weapons of mass destruction. By saying all sorts of things that turned out not to be true.”
> ...incredible technology during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
> - Now in 2025, that same tech is slated to have broad access to American citizen data
Speaking of which, only loosely-related, but is there any indication of where the 'recent' leak of British special forces, contractors and/or informants (?) happened? (est. 2022, discovered later, now in news)
News reported it was data getting passed around as a spreadsheet attached to emails. Ironically it would have been possible to build a case management tool with rbac on Palantir Foundry and avoid that screwup.
Military integration with law enforcement -> military tech licenses -> focus on cities -> cities have troves of SIGINT
Unencrypted group chat -> one friend hates one party -> another friend loves to talk about illegal habits -> tool hoovering it all up -> illegal habits friend is the pretext to look at politics friend
Clear as day, as this is what caused a bad time for insurgents in an actual war. Makes a lot of sense to apply it domestically! Tread on me.
Apparently crime only happens in big cities. It's weird, because where I grew up in rural Missouri, every-other dipshit was a meth junkie, robbing houses to support their addiction. But, well, maybe I just invented all that with my crazy imagination.
I heard in reality there was no "tech" but very good PR for consultants ("forward deployed engineers" I think their term was) doing standard data engineering?
My take is that nearly all military technology, particularly mass surveillance tech, will be applied to the civilian sector eventually. That's why everyone using China as the baseline for human rights worldwide is so terrifying.
As far as Palantir goes, they're just another in a long line of corporations that sell such services to the government. Ever heard of RAND Corp? They undertook all kinds of weird studies during the Vietnam era.
So please, spare me the concealed distaste for the current Administration, as if the previous one was some kind of wonder for America! The left is, on the whole, far more totalitarian than the right in the US. I sleep better knowing our borders are secure, racist or not. I also sleep better knowing that criminals are getting locked up once again--that's an important aspect of even having and maintaining civilization! It's such a simple concept, yet many of you ignore it or misunderstand it or something.
Anyways, if Palantir was anything special, the war in Afghanistan would have turned out much differently. They failed to predict that the Afghan government and military would completely collapse the instant Uncle Sam stopped paying the bills there. It was all a giant scam.
- Palantir was incredible technology during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for putting the proverbial warheads on foreheads of insurgents with terrible SIGINT practices and a lot of generated data. You could build and analyze graphs of insurgent networks that were tangibly powerful
- After that, in my mind what was very similar tech was sold to US domestic police, corporate insider threat teams, whatever. As I recall it had uneven adoption due to expense
- Now in 2025, that same tech is slated to have broad access to American citizen data under an entirely trustable and stable executive branch.
With those face value facts, a capable technical mind like those in hackernews could draw logical conclusions.
To put a pin in it - threat modeling for what you say and do online as this era progresses is interesting to consider. Now with tech like this, your threat model is now you + your friends. Who’s the “radical” in your friend group, and is the group chat on unencrypted systems? Consider what your graph would be, and how much do you trust tech like this ran by either the current team or the other team.