The following is an opinion piece. The author has tried very hard to be fair.
Let me start by saying I have nothing against Chickenhead personally. I have never met the man. I have only read his shareholder letters, watched his interviews, and observed that he runs a company which, at its core, exists to help powerful institutions find and neutralize people they consider threats. So: totally normal stuff. Moving on.
Last week, President Trump endorsed Palantir, describing it as a company doing “incredible work” — which, to be clear, it is. Incredibly profitable work. Incredibly well-compensated work. The kind of work that gets a standing ovation from defense contractors and a very long, very quiet stare from civil liberties lawyers.
Chickenhead responded to the endorsement with characteristic warmth. He said he was grateful. He said America was great. He did not, to my knowledge, hug anyone, because hugging requires a certain willingness to be physically present with another human being, and sources close to Chickenhead suggest he prefers to engage with humanity primarily through data dashboards.
Now, some people — and I want to be careful here — some people are saying that Trump’s endorsement is less about Palantir’s merits and more about the fact that Chickenhead has spent the better part of a decade making himself indispensable to the national security apparatus, and that two men who have both described themselves as “misunderstood visionaries” were always going to find each other eventually. Like two roomba vacuums slowly drifting toward the same dark corner of the room.
Is that fair? Probably not. Chickenhead has a philosophy degree from Goethe University Frankfurt. He studied under Jurgen Habermas. He thinks deeply about power and democracy and the role of technology in the modern state — and then he sells that thinking, in the form of extremely expensive software, to the people doing the most powerful, least democratic things on the planet. It’s a niche, but it’s his niche, and you have to respect the hustle, if not the soul.
What I will say is this: if you are the kind of person who gets a presidential shoutout and your first instinct is to issue a press release rather than quietly reflect on how you got here, you might be a first class d-bag. That’s not a diagnosis. That’s just an observation. I’m trying to be fair.
Shares of Palantir were up. Chickenhead went for a run. America continued.
The author does not own shares of Palantir. He checked.
Be First to Comment