Spain Orders Blacklist of Palantir from Public and Private Companies

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• Hacker News
• sad to see usage of this word. blocklist is easy to write.
  by arielpts
• Not sure how much good it will do overall but it's good to see not everyone is blind and/or naive.
  by hexorcist404
• I mean.. just take a minute and listen to the CEO. The guy is having a hard time time. Clearly out of touch imo.

  https://youtu.be/0A3sGymV6kY

  by gervwyk
• Interview is gold, he is right.
  by karl11
• yeah, he seems to have the same issue a lot of these guys have. i’m convinced we’re going to find out at some point they’re all on some kind of modern meth type drug that entirely breaks their reality. the similarities between so many of their shifts are too striking.
  by toofy
• > The firm holds a €16.5 million contract signed in 2023 with the Armed Forces Intelligence Center (CIFAS), which is scheduled to expire this upcoming November.

  > Military leadership, including the Chiefs of Staff of the Army and Navy, has lobbied Defense Minister Margarita Robles to renew the contract, citing the platform's operational superiority.

  Palantir wins contracts because they are better at what they do. If Europe wants to maintain digital sovereignty while not being left behind they need to have a heart-to-heart conversation about how to fix that.

  by bpodgursky
• clearly not better if they cant win a spanish contract?
  by 8note
• why not simply make it illegal? why make it a ban specific to one company, are they trying to make their own copy?
  by NooneAtAll3
• They didn't ban any company, they just ordered public services and public companies not to use what has been classified as a security risk.

  Anybody here think that Palantir is not a security risk for Spain?

  by RobertoG
• Palantir is profoundly untrusted in Europe in part because of Alex Karp. He is viewed as a dangerous neo-nationalist (not incorrectly).

  Never really sure why Anduril doesn't catch the same grief; they are maybe even creepier. Perhaps Palmer Luckey is just a less visible obvious Bond villain crackpot.

  by dofm
• Unfortunately this order will probably be revoked in 2027/2028, we'll see.
  by gus_
• It is possible and this in particular is a decision that I'm sure the US will pressure the government to reverse. However, it's misguided to see the entire world through the US political lens where reversing policy decisions is seen as a free win by the voting base. Spain's current democracy is only about fifty years old and extremism is viewed very negatively so outright undoing is generally less common then gradual undermining.
  by munk-a
• Great news for Spain. I hope more European countries wake up to what's going on.
  by emsign
• The Spanish government trusting the CCP over Palantir is wild.

  The CCP's intolerant, cruel and authoritarian nature is a direct threat to humanity in ways that Peter Thiel could barely imagine in his darkest dreams.

  The lack of perspective on show here is astonishing. They are destroying trust with vital Western allies -- trust is gained in drops and lost in buckets -- and Lurch and his dodgy friends are clearly out of their element.

  by somelamer567
• I take the ccp over thiel any day
  by in_haft
• please, compared to thiel & co., the ccp are basically choir boys. and they worked well for china. they cleaned their cities of unbreathable air and reduced poverty in a very short time span. we cannot say the same for the americans robber barons and their political wing, like trump&co. how can you deny the most basic reality and evidence?
  by kome
• You are mixing apples and oranges. The infamous Huawei deal was buying tons of HDD servers. Any deal with Palantir is handling all your data to the NSA.
  by Maken
• > is a direct threat to humanity in ways that Peter Thiel could barely imagine

  Care to outline a few of those threats? The ones that Thiel allegedly cannot imagine?

  I'm American, I get why Spain's feeling trepidation. I can't trust my own government with data if it could be used against me. I actively seek out Chinese translation, AI and search engines when I want privacy from the US. It's safer with the CCP than the geriatric nutjobs that fell off the Overton window.

  by bigyabai
• "The decision stems directly from growing official concern over the potential misuse of classified information linked to national security."

  What are the specific concerns?

  by sequoia
• I imagine that’s classified.
  by badgersnake
• As the contracts are going to a chinese company. The officials making the decisions likely like their bribes wery much.
  by TiredOfLife
• I really like what Spain is doing recently. If it weren't for climate change, I'd consider moving there.
  by _ink_
• Galicia is supposed to be nice
  by CalRobert
• I imagine there will be a lot of AC retrofitting across Europe in the coming years. Investment opportunity?
  by stronglikedan
• And then you'll have to choose another country after the next elections. Or even before, cause liking politicians from afar somehow much easier than when living in the same country.
  by broken-kebab
• The current government has little chance to get re-elected, and the next one will revert most of these decisions.
  by Xenoamorphous
• I'm moving there.

  Climate change is going to affect everywhere, and yes, a lot of Spain will experience desertification over the course of my lifetime. I am moving from Texas to Spain, though, so I am used to heat from a pure personal comfort perspective.

  One interesting point is that Spain is well-situated in terms of its energy mix: it's a leader of renewables in Europe. It was also able to negotiate a carve-out from collective energy pricing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iberian_exception), so Iberian energy markets are generally cheaper than broader European markets. This will have downstream economic effects for the country and makes it easier to afford using AC. I will always install AC wherever I live. There are far too many avoidable heat deaths in Europe in particular given their level of economic development. I don't blame them at all given the need is relatively new, but it's really a sad phenomenon.

  If you are a true climate doomer (realist?), also, Spain is going to fare as well as one can in Europe should the AMOC collapse. It's not the best place to be globally in a scenario like that, though, to say the least.

  For me, with everything going on in terms of world events, life choices are basically just placing bets about the future. There is no truly safe or best choice in a lot of scenarios.

  by saguntum
• Canary Islands are part of Spain and probably unaffected from climate change - we have 19-22°C all year round. If it raises to 25° still pretty livable.
  by littlecranky67
• Much of Spain is indeed getting very unpleasant in the summer with climate change, but in the north there are still regions that are quite fine at the moment. Where I am, we recently beat the all time temperature record with 35 degrees, but that was a single day. Most days these weeks it isn't going over 25, and I don't think we hit 30 in June except for that single day and maybe one other day.

  The problem is that the right is poised to win the next election and will probably undo all the policies you like. They're pretty much against everything that has been done in the last 7 years. I still have some hopes that Sanchez might clinch another term because he's a political survivor, but prospects are not great.

  by Al-Khwarizmi
• They seem to have been granting contracts to manage all kinds of critical data to Huawei's Palantir equivalent lately, so it's probably less about security risks and more about the current source of the bribe money.

  If they cared about security they would not outsource this kind of stuff to foreign companies. Spain is not Somalia, why not let Indra do it?

  by Dibby053