

Friday, February 11, 2011

Email from Stanford student re: Palantir

Palantir is very well connected to the computer science community at Stanford; no one majoring in computer science here is more than two steps removed from Palantir. Everyone knows someone who works there or has tried to get a job there himself. I think that most CS students who know about Palantir's work in datamining surveillance data for the
Defense Department think it's a little sketchy but are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

They also are known for employing only the best of the best, and their exclusivity has made them a desirable employer. My friends who work there are some of the brightest programmers I know of at Stanford, which made their slide deck about attacking WikiLeaks (and you) a lot more
credible and worrying that it would otherwise have been.