alt Hacker NewsWhy does Palantir specifically need to exist? To funnel those juicy government budgets into shareholders' pockets.
Why does anyone bother to use them? Because they have convincing marketing (which may or may not include buttering government palms with, um, "incentives" ...)
Occam's razor: It's a big pile of "list of things being handled by an outside entity so I neither have to think about it, nor hire for them."
If Palantir wasn’t highly effective at aggregating data no one would care about the. They are considered a threat to privacy and freedom because they are a good product