Who is Palantir and why is USDA giving it $300 million?

[progressoid]

On April 22, the Department of Agriculture signed a $300 million “blanket purchase agreement” with Palantir Technologies Inc. to, as Palantir explained, “support the National Farm Security Plan” to “modernize how USDA delivers services to farmers.”

The National Farm Security Program was rolled out last July by Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins in a splashy — and soon forgotten — ceremony. Its purpose, explained Rollins that day, was to be “the next pillar of her Make Agriculture Great Again Initiative."

Most American farmers don’t need any “pillars” to whatever is “next.” Many simply want farming to be profitable enough to not depend on Congress to make a living or for the U.S. to reclaim markets lost to pointless tariff wars and sweetheart import deals. Three-dollar diesel and $800 anhydrous — on-farm prices before the Iran “excursion” began nearly three months ago — would be very welcome, too.

....

So who is Palantir other than a USDA contractor now at the data-collecting heart of federal farm programs like crop insurance and disaster payments? Here’s how WIRED magazine described it last August: “Palantir is arguably one of the most notorious corporations in contemporary America… Palantir has been so infamous for so long that, for some people, its name has become a cultural shorthand for dystopian surveillance.”

Whatever it is, it’s now USDA’s partner and that makes it your partner, too.

More...https://www.farmanddairy.com/columns/usda-palantir-300-million-national-farm-security-plan/915781.html

[mr715]

1. Soyveilance

[AZJonnie]

2. It's not like Palantir doesn't advertise their evilness, it's right there in their name

Surprised their subsidiaries aren't named like Sauron Systems & Ringwraith Reconnaissance.

ALSO, this is unquestionably corrupt as fuck. Thiel is Vance's patron FFS, and donated HEAVILY to Trump in 2024. The whole thing reeks to high hell

[pat_k]

3. The trump administration is corruptly shoveling hundreds of millions of our tax dollars at AI and Mag 10 companies.

That, and the incestuous, circular deals among these companies are largely responsible for the market being so incredibly "out of step" with reality.

[progressoid]

4. BTW, I originally found this op ed in a right of center AG newspaper.

People are getting sick of the corporatocracy.

[Botany]

5. Why?

Because Peter Thiel and Palantir rat fucked our elections to help Trump. Included 2 Ohio
Senate races in 2022 and 2024 along with the 2016 Presidential elections.

Btw Thiel just fled America and went to Argentina.

[usonian]

6. Thiel and crony capitalism.

[Melon]

7. They pull together databases and use AI to analyze it

They can take huge subsets of data that are totally dissimilar, organize it, and analyze it to easily visualize and make decisions. It has AI integrated in the platform. It can easily recognize patterns that would have been too complex years ago, but also find things like fraud that would have been buried in the data. Conceptually it should speed up programs like payments etc. or identity areas for quick action.

[Uncle Joe]

8. I think GAZA has been their laboratory for years,

and they helped enable the genocide with their targeting and constant surveillance.

Thanks for the thread progressoid