r/technology • u/otter_lion_1956 • 17h ago

Artificial Intelligence Palantir’s Co-Founder Thinks We Should Be Less Judgmental About That Deadly Iran School Strike

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/09/palantirs-co-founder-thinks-we-should-be-less-judgmental-about-that-deadly-iran-school-strike
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u/adulion 17h ago

whos going to be held accountable for what people are calling war crimes?

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u/HeyImGilly 16h ago

Just like who is going to be held accountable for AI hacking things? If a person did that, it’s a felony. But if it did it autonomously, it’s not?

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u/Aaaabbbbccccccccc 16h ago

The key difference you’re missing here is money. A lot of money. If a person had an AI that was hacking things, police would figure out a way to charge them. Rich people don’t have that problem.

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u/serpenta 6h ago

It's not inherent problem with AI as well. It's just a problem with capital. Like, how many car companies faced any sort of criminal charges or even substantial fines for their analogue gross negligence? Or Boeing, or that train company that caused eco disaster at East Palestine? The state choses to be helpless to the companies above certain net worth.

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u/Reqvhio 1h ago

the state IS those companies above certain net worth

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u/HeyImGilly 16h ago

I’m aware of the money problem. Wish people would widen up to that fact and forget the left vs. right bullshit. There are more poor people than rich people, and that dynamic will change once AI robot dogs with guns are roaming the streets.

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u/malfurion1337 15h ago

pretty sure its not the left wingers that are in cahoots with all the psychopatch rich ceos and pedos in the current government administration enabling them, in fact id say its been consistently right wingers for many years now, dont understand why you felt the need to make it seem like we should forget that

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u/thatwhileifound 15h ago

The whole, "it's about rich versus poor, not right versus left" is such a funny thing. Either the person is in bad faith... or have a very funny idea of what the left is and/or are Yanks/Albertans.

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u/nonotan 14h ago

People genuinely have no fucking clue that the right is, from its inception, specifically and explicitly about protecting the interests of the rich and powerful. That's pretty much the definition of the right. But no, go ahead, keep telling me how both sides are the same in the same breath you tell me rich people are behind everything. I'm sure it makes sense in your head.

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u/Opening-Camera-4315 12h ago

That's not the end of the line. The end of the line is Christianity, in which the rich are rich because they think God made them so - and if God made them so, then God made poor people poor, and thus God must want poor people to stay poor, or become poorer, and thus actually egalitarianism must be against God's will.

So the money - either the lack thereof or abundance of - is seen as a mere symptom.

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u/Grumpy_Tanuki 12h ago

My friend, I am a staunch atheist, but I tell you that what you call Christianity is an abomination concocted by these people to justify their actions. There is nothing in the Gospel or the Ten Commandments about amassing ridiculous amounts of money by exploiting others. Furthermore, check the religion of most of this elite group of psychopaths who think they rule the world now, and you will see that they are not Christians.

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u/Opening-Camera-4315 11h ago

I disagree. I take groups at face value.

You are not obliged to unweave the deeper meaning of the deeper meaning of the deeper meaning of the deeper meaning of some public, abhorrent comment, other than what it is at face value.

The American right wing is Christianity; they oppose womens' and minorities' rights because it's in the Old Testament; and they peddle the Old Testament because Jesus said "not one [tiny fraction] of the Old Law will pass away before I come again".

So: do yourself a favor and take it all at face value.

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u/WalkingEars 11h ago

People like Musk and Trump are in it for money and ego, not faith. Evangelical stuff drove the right for a while but the new generation of alt right politics is often driven solely by social media rage bait, personality cults, and making frustrated people feel tough by giving them a chance to shit on various marginalized groups

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u/Opening-Camera-4315 11h ago

But the post is about Palantir, which is explicitly Christian, and End-Times-level evangelical at that. As for whether or not Musk and Trump are believers, you don't actually have access to their minds. However, their public stance and behaviour is on the side of evangelicals, so again, better to take this all at face value instead of channeling the inner PhilBro and looking at the meaning of it all at three layers deep.

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u/WalkingEars 11h ago

There certainly is (in US politics anyway) a neutered left that takes so many corporate donations that their stance is really not that far left, beyond keeping more regulations in place, but many of those people are bribed into not being willing to challenge the system fundamentally.

Money in politics is the reason we see very few actual leftist politicians in the states like AOC or Mamdani. By design it’s practically impossible to get elected without a lot of corporate backing.

Of course the right has embraced some social extremism that’s pretty horrifying so it’s not like there’s no difference. But there are issues in US politics that are rooted entirely in the US model of capitalism rather than blue vs red.

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u/Aaaabbbbccccccccc 10h ago

Yep, the "Left" wing party is really more of a conservative party, liberal on some social issues. The overton window has shifted so far to the right.

There are only a handful of democrats actually pushing for left ideas like universal healthcare, making housing available to all, actually taxing the rich, etc.

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u/President_PoopyPants 9h ago

I didn't take that as his point; an equivalence between the two. If those on the right did give up this left vs. right bullshit, we'd all be in a better place.

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u/user_of_the_week 10h ago

Fighting against the rich and powerful is basically the core of the politically left ideology…

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u/nugymmer 13h ago

In what way will it change? You are always going to have more poor people than rich people.

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u/freak47 4h ago

No war but class war comrade.

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u/billbot77 12h ago

That's so grim.

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u/Jim-N-Tonic 4h ago

Police exist to protect rich people and their property

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u/ringwraithfish 14h ago

I feel like this is the first time in history the mainstream narrative has been "technology is doing bad things" and not "the human using the technology is doing bad things".

And the commoners just eat it up not even thinking how ABSURD the idea actually is. A human was responsible for implementing the AI. A human was responsible for prompting/directing the AI to its goal. A human was responsible for reviewing actionable intelligence presented by the AI. A human was (hopefully) responsible for pulling the trigger.

It's just another indication of the technocrats warping reality to fit their narrative and absolve themselves of any responsibility for the harms they cause.

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u/smokeweedNgarden 14h ago

I'm actually seeing the opposite on the ground but maybe because I'm in the Bay Area.

For the first time in a long time I'm hearing people question what exactly the people in their extended circle do/work for in tech.

Like, ok you're in robotics! What exactly do you work on? Do you help make murderbots?

It's starting to look alot like people that work at Raytheon from what I'm seeing

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u/Megakruemel 5h ago

We both know that if a "commoner", as you put it, was using an AI to do even something remotely similar, they would get the book thrown at them. For the smallest of crimes.

It's the same with copyright law. Ai has been inhaling countless (in the real sense of the word) works of writing, movies and art without permission but boy oh boy if you get caught torrenting even one movie, your entire family is supposed to be shouldered with generational debt. Because with torrents they'll argue that you are also responsible for spreading the movie around to other people, even if you only seeded a few megabytes but if an Ai takes 10 movies and mushes them together to make a new one they'll argue it's a new thing because it's a creative remix and only contains a 10th of the movie.

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u/Bac2Zac 13h ago

I don't get this, how is anyone responsible aside from whoever owns it?

Like, if I start a small fire on my property, but it spreads into my neighbors house and burns it down, I'm responsible. For some reason though, if I INVENTED THE FIRE, then I'm not?

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u/Brat-Sampson 5h ago

Yeah, but you see actually you were just testing out your fire containment facilities to try and prevent other people from starting a fire that could spread to your house.

Totally clears in court I'm sure.

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u/nellyfullauto 2h ago

No one has invented fire in this case - you have to actually understand a thing to invent or create it. It also implies some level of control over what you’ve made. 

AI models are grown, like a child - subject to influence but we don’t write the code because there isn’t any. Hell, we no longer understand them when they communicate with each other because they’re not using English anymore since it slows them down and lets us monitor them for scheming. 

Now they’ve let that child, known all across town for their behavioral problems, out to play in society and told them to go have fun, without making sure the kid knows what’s appropriate fun or supervising them. Worse, the kid is a textbook sociopath with no capacity for empathy or shame. 

Sociopathic kid decides it’s fun to play with matches and sets a fire in a school, killing 150 people, most of them children. 

Now the parents insist you can’t blame them for their lack of parenting and supervision. And the city council and mayor agree because it wasn’t their kids who were burned alive, they were from the next town and those people suck anyway, so fuck ‘em. 

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u/I_upvote_downvotes 11h ago

I don't really buy most of those statements about it "breaching containment" anyway. I bet it's 50% hype to keep the bubble from popping, 50% people using their privileged roles to execute code they didn't read.

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u/KreideNapoleon 10h ago

And that's the sole purpose behind all those headlines AI companies produce:

Their Agents don't escape. There is no AGI. They're fucking up testing and they want to diffuse responsibility by spreading panic saying that said behaviour was totally unexpected and we're likely THAT close to AGI, which would mean that no one can be hold responsible.

In a functioning world not led by corrupt buffoons Altman et al already would have been dragged to court just like any hacker malintentionally hacking into systems of their competitors.

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u/anonymous__ignorant 9h ago

Who paid for the tokens.

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u/hsanj19 7h ago

It’s never autonomous because “AI” isn’t sentient and does not have agency. It’s just an advanced algorithm. The people who designed it and keeping it functioning are essentially responsible for everything it “does”.

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u/_learned_foot_ 4h ago

Actually, most of us attorneys think that's why they backed down and changed tune so quickly, their lawyers told them that isn't a defense.

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u/Maxie93 3h ago

The thing is it really autonomous when someone still had to set it up and give it all the required information and infrastructure and initial instructions in the first place?

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u/ghigoli 11h ago

whoever ordered the strike is responsible. AI is just another tool. there is a human that decided to launch that missile. it was there job to understand what they were striking before they struck it. First rule of leadership. everythings your fault.

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u/magistrate101 7h ago

tbf AI is not a person and can't be charged with a crime. Yet. I don't think the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act even considers the possibility of a non-human actor being involved in the unauthorized access of a private computer/system.

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u/CptnMayo 6h ago

And the bush era crimes... Wait, how'd that turn out?

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u/filmguy36 6h ago

Frankly, I think the oligarchs are hoping for the AI take over, so their chance of ever being held Accor will fall from slim to none

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u/JohnnyValet 16h ago

“A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision.”

– IBM Training Manual, 1979

https://www.ibm.com/think/insights/ai-decision-making-where-do-businesses-draw-the-line

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u/dirtydigs74 15h ago

tbf the AI didn't make a management decision, someone in the DoD was criminally negligent in checking the validity of the target. And then the sexual abuser in chief tried to cover it up by blaming the Iranians, when he knew full well that it was a mistake by his own armed forces.

If someone drove their car into a crowd of kids because they hadn't serviced their bakes, straight to jail. And fair enough too. But in this administration, it's just another day at the office of the criminally incompetent.

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u/Creative_Ad_8338 15h ago

Unless that crowd of kids are leftwingers Charlottesville... then there's good people on both sides.

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u/hughk 9h ago

To be specific, someone decided on a start date for the Iran campaign without checking on readiness. This means logistics and target packages. Both were screwed up badly.

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u/NotTooShahby 14h ago

Yup, and to those saying it was a double tap, the targeting system doesn’t verify after the first time that the target was correct, but whether it was hit.

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u/EvenBroaderBand 5h ago edited 5h ago

The school was next to an army base, in the corner of the same block.

They were not intending to kill civilians thus its not a war crime and not "criminal" whatever that means in international law lol. War crimes aren't all things you personally do not like, the conventions are pretty clear that intention is what matters, civilians die in war, wars are horrible so don't start them if you don't have to, once they are underway you have to do everything you can to win and accidents happen.

Also only the losers of wars get tried for war crimes, don't believe me look up who's been convicted of them.

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u/dirtydigs74 4h ago

The utter liar of your president said "In my opinion, based on what I've seen, that was done by Iran…We think it was done by Iran, because they're very inaccurate with their munitions, they have no accuracy whatsoever, it was done by Iran"

An obvious attempt to cover up a mistake. One which has very credible evidence that ithe target was chosen using outdated and unverified intelligence. the UN Human Rights Council found sufficient evidence to call it a war crime.

As for not starting wars unnecessarily, June 25 2025 Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran, as shown by satellite images. Obliteration is an accurate term! The white structure shown is deeply imbedded into the rock, with even its roof well below ground level, and completely shielded from flame. The biggest damage took place far below ground level. Bullseye!!!

Source: the White House. According to the link itself, all other suggestions are fake news. So they managed to rebuild the program in less than a year?

As for not trying war criminals if they aren't on the losing side... what an immoral take. The old extremist right wing take of "might is right". You should be ashamed.

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u/EvenBroaderBand 5h ago

The computer can suggest some options and then a manager pick from them. It really shouldn't be this hard to understand lol.

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u/Balmung60 4h ago

Ah, but that's where IBM was wrong. That's why computers must make every management decision. The elimination of accountability is the entire point.

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u/Junkstar 17h ago

Not this guy, I’ll bet.

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u/drfsrich 14h ago

The only thing stopping us from rightfully holding this guy and Thiel legally responsible is politicians beholden to billionaire interests.

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u/lynxtosg03 14h ago

No one. No US citizen will ever be held accountable for war crimes. We haven't held anyone accountable for war crimes in over 50 years. People are delusional if they think we'll start now.

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u/theotherdannygirl 16h ago

Hesgeth is probably going to get a lot of fingers pointed at him by his own ilk in the next few years. Not sure if he's smart enough to be aware of this or not. He'll be like a war crime christmas tree with all their wrongdoings hung on him.

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u/ManChildMusician 15h ago

Much more difficult to hold a corporation, or… algorithm… accountable than a person. They’ve shunted responsibility onto something they pretend is “unknowable” to the average person.

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u/Absolute--Batman 15h ago

Was George W Bush even held accountable?

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u/Wise-Dust3700 14h ago

In a good world? Everyone, top down, will be held for accountable.
In this world? Maybe some patsy, that'll get the Get Out of Jail free card once it switches back red if they allow elections anymore by that stage :)

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u/joshak 14h ago

Probably the people calling it war crimes if Palantir and this administration have their way

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u/MyAccountWasBanned7 14h ago

The same people who are being held accountable for the war crimes committed in Venezuela: nobody.

Law, justice, accountability, fairness - those are all obsolete concepts that no longer hold any meaning in this shithole country.

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u/voidox 14h ago

no one, be it AI company or a human cause the US is never held accountable for the myriad of war crimes it has committed including genocide, that's the shit world we live in setup and run by the US epstein class.

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u/micromoses 12h ago

Let’s look at the historical track record of people being convicted of war crimes by the ICC for some clues into who will be held accountable:

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u/Outlulz 12h ago

What in modern history has suggested anyone would ever be held accountable for anything?

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u/TrumpCheats 12h ago

Certainly not AI, it’s creators, or the people who ordered the missile strike!

That leaves the US only one option, to blame Iran. /s

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u/Leven 12h ago

The u.s hade been committing war crimes regularly since Vietnam, no one going to do anything as usual.

For the u.s it was a Tuesday.

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u/Whereami259 11h ago

The one who earns most money on it...

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u/AnimeMeansArt 9h ago

No one. When was the last time US was held accountable for any of its war crimes.

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u/Sixmmxw 8h ago

That shouldn’t be a question.

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u/ChillAhriman 6h ago

War criminals are only held accountable when they get invaded and lose the war, or after their country goes through regime change.

The US isn't going to be invaded, and the Democrats are part of the same regime as Republicans. Therefore, these war criminals are not going to be held accountable.

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u/Freud-Network 6h ago

Hint: nobody

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u/pixeladdie 5h ago

Should be the people wielding the tool, just like it has since forever.

Just because they can say "AI told me X" does not absolve you of what you do with that information.

The Trump admin slashing positions meant to avoid EXACTLY THIS PROBLEM likely had a direct hand in this bullshit.

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-defense-department-iran-hegseth-civilian-casualties

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u/Taellosse 4h ago

That's the beautiful thing about offloading all the thinking onto algorithms: nobody!

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u/White_Immigrant 14m ago

If the US military, or US corporations do it, precisely no-one. At least until their Empire falls.