Mike Stachowiak

Fascinating discussion on civil liberties, the fight against terrorism, and how a Silicon Valley company, Palantir, is helping to protect you on both dimensions.  Palantir is one of the biggest companies in the Valley you’ve likely never heard of.

Random thought after watching this, a fun connect-the-dots.  Peter Thiel was a derivatives trader on Wall Street that went on to found PayPal.  PayPal developed very powerful data mining / analytics under Thiel’s leadership that became the basis for Palantir (Thiel founded Palantir with numerous other early PayPal-ers).  Conclusion?  Palantir’s novel data analysis tools - tools that are being used heavily by the US government intelligence community to combat terrorism in a post 9/11 world - are likely the reformulation of financial data analysis techniques Thiel crafted as a derivatives trader.  Skills honed on Wall Street are now leading the charge against terrorism.