All-Star Panel: A Major Turning Point in Gaza
California Governor Gavin Newsom threatens to redraw his state's district maps in retaliation.
Republican Strategist Colin Reed, former State Department Spokesperson Marie Harf, and FOX Radio Washington Correspondent Jared Halpern discuss the latest updates on the Israel and Hamas conflict, whether an occupation would work strategically, and what the fallout of Texas's redistricting plan might look like.
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Forbes
a minute ago
- Forbes
Palantir: As Revenues Rise, Controversy Grows
The battle between big legacy firms like Lockheed Martin and emerging military tech firms like Palantir for dominance of the defense sector is well underway, and the outcome will have a huge impact on the size and scope of the Pentagon budget and the direction of U.S. defense strategy in the years and decades to come. Palantir, an emerging tech company that was founded by Peter Thiel in 2003 with support from In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture capital arm, is a central player in the fight between the old guard and the up and coming weapons firms of Silicon Valley. It was with this in mind that I read a Wall Street Journal profile of Palantir that came out this week, entitled 'How Palantir Won Over Washington – and Pushed Its Stock Value Up 600%.' Early on, the piece contrasts Palantir's financial success with growing ethical concerns about the activities that are driving its revenue growth: 'The company's transformation from an awkward Silicon Valley upstart trying to make it as a government contractor has also emboldened it. Some of its recent and prospective deals toe the lines of what even some of the company's current and former employees consider a violation of ethical applications of AI and moral uses of software by the government—and Palantir is unapologetic.' 'Unapologetic' may be an understatement. At the height of the Israeli bombing campaign in Gaza, in January 2024, Palantir president and CEO Alex Karp held the company's board meeting in Tel Aviv to show solidarity with the Israeli war effort and to goad other pro-Israel business executives to openly support that country's campaign of mass slaughter in Gaza, which many independent experts – including independent human rights groups based in Israel – have described as a genocide. The Journal piece describes company leadership as Trumpian in its approach 'taunting its critics, lambasting the media, and showing contempt for the departed employees who have sounded alarms about Palantir's recent work.' As the Wall Street Journal piece on Palantir further points out, part of Palantir's extraordinary financial rise is due to its adoption of the president's agenda by 'providing software used in the deportation of immigrants, boosting manufacturing and shipbuilding, making a bid to build out the planned missile-defense shield called Golden Dome, and chasing AI deals in the Gulf states'. Palantir also has extraordinary influence inside the Trump team, beginning with vice president J.D. Vance, who was employed, mentored, and financed by Palantir's Peter Thiel before joining the administration. And former Palantir employees are hard at work inside a variety of executive branch agencies. At least a half dozen former company employees worked inside the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency, making recommendations for deep cuts in a variety of federal agencies. And a senior counselor at Palantir has close ties to White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. Palantir has also dramatically beefed up its lobbying efforts, more than quadrupling its spending in this area since 2019, from $1.4 million then to $5.8 million last year. Palantir CEO Alex Karp expects there to be big winners and big losers in the fight to reshape the federal government and revise U.S. military spending and strategy: 'We love disruption. There will be ups and downs – there's a revolution. Some people get their heads cut off.' Palantir is aggressively pursuing business with Saudi Arabia, a move that the Journal article describes as 'a departure from the company's stated focus on Western democratic values and freedom of speech.' In addition to protests over the use of Palantir technology in Israel's campaign of mass slaughter in Gaza, the company's most controversial activity involves its role in aiding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in locating subjects for deportation. Alex Karp claims that the criticism doesn't bother him, but perhaps he protests too much: 'We are sorry that our haters are disappointed, but there are many more quarters to be disappointed and we are working on that too.' Meanwhile, Palantir's revenue stream just keeps growing. Last month it got its largest military contract ever – up to $10 billion to consolidate ongoing software initiatives for the Army. The emerging military tech firms and the venture capital firms that invest in them see themselves as more than just business people. They believe that they are a special breed of human being, the 'new patriots' who are willing to take risks to restore America's position in a place of global dominance, so far ahead of China that Beijing will never catch up, or so Karp and others have said. Karp's coauthored book, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West fuses 19th century ideology with an uncritical faith in the power of 21st century technology. Karp believes that America has lost its way. We're soft and unfocused, more interested in shopping, gaming, and reality TV than in building useful products or bolstering America's global influence. Karp's solution is for the U.S. government to fund a unifying national mission – a Manhattan Project-sized effort to master military applications of artificial intelligence. Given all of the problems we face – from active conflicts to climate disasters to outbreaks of disease to ever widening global inequality, Karp's proposed vision seems like an unduly narrow, impoverished view of what America should be about. Karp is right that we need a new mission and a new narrative to define what America should be about in an era of rapid change and shifting power relationships, but rushing to militarize AI is not the right mission, and worshiping at the altar of tech is not the right narrative. Silicon Valley has achieved some amazing technological feats from the middle of the past century up to this moment, but that doesn't mean the leaders of emerging tech firms should have privileged influence over how we organize our government, our economy, or our foreign policy. They should be vendors, providing tools that can be used to defend the country or improve the economy. But the decisions on how and when to use those tools, and what strategy we should pursue to keep America safe, should lie with elected officials, influenced by their constituents, not by a political/technological elite.
Yahoo
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- Yahoo
What Gov. Mike Braun said about redistricting in Indiana following meeting with JD Vance
Gov. Mike Braun was noncommittal about the prospect of redistricting in Indiana following a meeting with Vice President JD Vance and Indiana legislative leaders at the Indiana Statehouse on Aug. 7. When asked by reporters if the group came to a consensus on redrawing the state's congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, Braun said "We listened." He also described the conversation as "pretty good." "It was great to meet with @VPVance today," he posted on X. "We discussed a number of issues, and I was pleased to highlight some of the great things happening in Indiana," Braun tweeted after the meeting. The push in Indiana, where Republicans already hold seven of the state's nine U.S. House seats, comes as the Trump administration is looking to Republican-led states to initiate mid-decade redistricting in order to pad the GOP majority in the U.S. House of Representatives prior to 2026. The party breakdown currently stands at 219 Republicans to 212 Democrats. The effort is already underway in Republican-led Texas, where new congressional maps could give the GOP as many as five additional seats. Texas Democrats fled the state on Aug. 3 to disrupt legislative processes to approve those maps. Political analysts say, if Gov. Mike Braun calls a special session for redistricting, Republicans could easily redraw maps in Northwest Indiana to flip the 1st Congressional District, currently held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Frank Mrvan. That would put the state at eight Republican seats to one Democratic one. Redrawing the 7th Congressional District in Indianapolis, held by longtime U.S. Rep. Andre Carson, to get the state to nine Republicans would pose more challenges. Any breakup of deep blue Democratic voters in Marion County could make other Republican House districts more vulnerable in future elections, analysts said. This story will be updated. Contact IndyStar state government and politics reporter Brittany Carloni at Sign up for our free weekly politics newsletter, Checks & Balances, curated by IndyStar politics and government reporters. This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Following VP visit, will Indiana GOP start mid-decade redistricting?
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Trump's planned 100% computer chip tariff sparks confusion among businesses and trading partners
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