This is my understanding of Palantir too: it's a consultancy with a map, a graph database, and some "AI" nonsense. They sell expensive "forward deployed engineers" (aka, consultants) to customize this map and graph database to specific use cases.
I'm not trying to argue Palantir is an ethical company; my views on "company ethics" are nuanced but I wouldn't put them anywhere near my "places I want to work" bucket. But (contrary, perhaps, to their name), they're not some weird deep demonic trove of personal information; that's supplied to them by their customers, which is where change needs to happen.
> expensive "forward deployed engineers" (aka, consultants)
Well, at least they're paying those consultants a lot of money, since they're charging a lot for them... right? Right?
Referring to engineers with top secret+ security clearances as "consultants" seems reductionistic.
I think Palintr ought to be nationalized and placed under the jurisdiction of several competing watchdog agencies - it can generate automatically our annual, quarterly and etc datasets for specific, selected things.
Anyone in disagreement needs to read about Palintr and what has intentionally been said about it