Spain Orders Blacklist of Palantir from Public and Private Companies

https://clashreport.com/world/articles/spain-orders-blacklist-of-us-tech-giant-palantir-from-public-and-private-companies-fsnc2z17gjv

by mgh2 • 20 days ago

743 175 20 days ago

clashreport.com

ChrisArchitect• 20 days ago

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48748392

_ink_• 20 days ago

I really like what Spain is doing recently. If it weren't for climate change, I'd consider moving there.

Xenoamorphous• 20 days ago

The current government has little chance to get re-elected, and the next one will revert most of these decisions.

ncruces• 20 days ago

It could be worse can only take a government so far. Eventually, just preaching to the choir catches up with you.

littlecranky674• 20 days ago

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.

b40d-48b2-979e• 20 days ago

    and probably unaffected from climate change

No place is unaffected.

Daishiman2• 20 days ago

Islands are extremely vulnerable to climate change all over, as they are completely dependent in near-term precipitation for all their water (no rivers, no aquifers).

hecrogon• 20 days ago

It isn't that simple, Canary Islands already counts with 2.2 million + tourists people and the fresh water is a highly risk resource even when desalinization plants are widespread, the groundwater aquifers are severely compromised. The mild weather heavily depends on the trade winds. But models predict that due to fact of being so close to Africa heat waves are prone to be more and more frequent compromising the water resources.

Stevvo• 20 days ago

Ok but most of the populated areas of the Canary Islands are a tourist shithole, not somewhere you would want to live.

pvaldes6• 20 days ago

Canary Islands will be affected (severely) for any change on the sea currents. Because the marine trophic chains will change.

A warmer ocean means much bigger storms over the islands. This has both positive and negative aspects.

faust201• 19 days ago

Are you sure? It is sometimes close to 30°C in summer in Fue. BTW, did you forget sealevel rises, dust from Sahara, what is you have many days of > 40km/h winds. all those are climate change.

Al-Khwarizmi• 20 days ago

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.

karakoram• 20 days ago

I still think it will be a coalition and not a full right government.

How is the AC situation now is Spain? Has the country mass adopted AC in homes and offices?

CalRobert• 20 days ago

Galicia is supposed to be nice

pvaldes6• 19 days ago

Will face the same oceanographic problem that Canary Islands. Galicia is richer than they should be, thanks to the Artic. And also thanks to Ethiopy.

stronglikedan2• 20 days ago

I imagine there will be a lot of AC retrofitting across Europe in the coming years. Investment opportunity?

munk-a3• 20 days ago

Ventless temperature control units are extremely popular there so it's probably not an unwise investment but you're not really ahead of the curve. The construction of most European buildings[1] lends itself poorly to anything that requires knocking a hole in a wall but the systems that can exhaust heat through water lines are usually quite reasonable to set up.

1. Though this is significantly less prevalent in Spain due to a lot of reconstruction happening after the civil war - that isn't to say buildings there are perfect, they just have different problems than the classic German 30cm thick stone wall.

pvaldes6• 20 days ago

The price of AC gases had skyrocketed by EU laws, and more than half of the bill are just taxes.

Some gases, like ammonia are easy to manufacture, other are being banned by environmental concerns, and other depend on international trade nets that can be shocked at any time if somebody trumped that morning. Investing in AC should depend heavily on the kind of refrigerant used in your product.

broken-kebab3• 20 days ago

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.

saguntum• 20 days ago

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.

tngranados• 20 days ago

The no AC in Europe thingy is mostly central and north Europe, where, in fairness, it didn't use to get very hot but now have heat waves fairly often.

Spain, Portugal, Italy and other southern European countries have very wide spread AC usage.

sillyfluke3• 19 days ago

Nice. I don't know what your comfort with swimming is but battling extreme heat also happens to be much easier when you have large welcoming bodies of water for humans to wade in, and with easy and cheap access for the common man. It boggles the mind that for all its coast line the only place the US has that's comparable is Hawaii pretty much.

Sure extreme heat might ruin the seas too eventually (there is already talk of Asian jellyfish species being spotted in record warm sea temperatures) but the amount of due dilligence needed is non-existent compared to the US, Australia, or far east Asia.

emsign• 20 days ago

Great news for Spain. I hope more European countries wake up to what's going on.

milanito1985• 20 days ago

Spain is really going in the right direction, I wonder why no one countries inspire from what they are doing

cryo32• 20 days ago

Looks like we’re doing this in the UK soon too.

Edit: not sure what the downvotes are. Burnham literally said he’ll do it today.

john_strinlai• 20 days ago

indeed, and he has apparently already been walking the walk

"Burnham did not grant the US tech company any contracts during his nine years as Greater Manchester mayor, and is minded to take the same approach in Downing Street."

fodmap• 20 days ago

I do agree blocking Palantir is a good move but the Spanish government is doing it for the wrong reason. Spain is storing all sort of data on Chinese servers, including their Intelligence, and Judicial wiretaps.

https://www.politico.eu/article/spain-huawei-contract-judici...

croes• 20 days ago

If the data is encrypted before the upload I see no problem

mdni007• 20 days ago

As opposed to what? American servers with Isreali backdoors?

athrowaway3z• 20 days ago

That is rather disturbing but this had me lol:

Spain is “making a big mistake,” said Bart Groothuis [...] “Spain is now dependent on the country with the largest and most sophisticated offensive espionage program directed against us.”

I highly doubt he's naive enough to believe the "against us" qualifier exempts the operator of the largest and most sophisticated offensive espionage program ever.

cmxch• 20 days ago

Can’t form a COMINTERN if the US is watching.

vrganj• 20 days ago

The Spanish public overwhelmingly trusts China over the US, so from their perspective, this is not necessarily a bad move.

Obviously, the best move would be to keep the data in Europe instead.

chvid• 20 days ago

They deliver part of hardware but the data itself is hosted in Spain and operated by the interior ministry.

wodenokoto• 20 days ago

Right now you either give it to China or to the US.

China is not publicly threatening to invade the EU.

I think the EU needs to produce this themselves but right now they don’t and they don’t have any large, trustworthy allies.

8note6• 20 days ago

still not the worst of reasons.

would be better to be on spanish servers, but decoupling from american tech remains a public good, especially if using american tech bans american competitors

gonzalohm3• 20 days ago

So? And other countries are storing their data in the US, not covered by gdpr

altmanaltman• 20 days ago

You are literally wrong, the data is stored in Spain on their servers and managed by their government. The risk as stated by EU and US is allowing Chineese nationals to *enter* the data storage facilities (direct quote from the article you shared).

Yes, it's still bad but they are not as stupid to just have their servers located in China for this.

qpricjalcbeu• 20 days ago

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1w21gn340xo

gonzalohm3• 20 days ago

At this point, can you tell me one non corrupt government?

At least they are doing stuff for the people

kazinator• 20 days ago

Politicians and governments like to introduce crap like blacklisting when they have a good excuse to (a target the public agrees with) so that later it's easier for them to use against arbitrary targets.

one33seven3• 20 days ago

This prevents palantir being used against people, what are you talking about? How will blacklisting military tech affect you?

serial_dev• 20 days ago

I know I’m a conspiracy theorist but I’m looking out for random scandals, random high profile deaths, random infrastructure issues and random large scale accidents.

pbreit• 20 days ago

This seems ridiculously short-sighted and backwards.

Avicebron• 20 days ago

Is your assumption that palantir is a good thing?

oepsar• 17 days ago

yeah, well, this is what a socialist president gives you. same as mamdani and his achievements

Devasta• 20 days ago

Anything short of declaring them a proscribed organization is insufficient.

gus_• 20 days ago

Unfortunately this order will probably be revoked in 2027/2028, we'll see.

munk-a3• 20 days ago

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.

chinathrow• 20 days ago

Look, this is not a bad thing per se, but the US reaction will tell you everything you need to know.

NooneAtAll33• 20 days ago

why not simply make it illegal? why make it a ban specific to one company, are they trying to make their own copy?

RobertoG• 20 days ago

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?

FridgeSeal• 20 days ago

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

It boggles the mind a bit, but I’ve seen a few comments on here with people defending them to the tune of “what’s the big deal, they just help governments with their data! They're innocent” which is uh, either aggressively naive, or just paid PR behaviour.

NooneAtAll33• 20 days ago

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

why is THAT your take and not "WTF WHY ARE THOSE CAMERAS LEGAL IN GENERAL?"

dofm• 20 days ago

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.

fakedang2• 19 days ago

There are European alternatives to Anduril. But there are no European alternatives to Palantir, that's why.

xyzzyz• 19 days ago

What is creepy about Anduril? Anduril simply sells weapons. There's nothing mysterious or nefarious about it. European countries want to buy weapons too.

holoduke2• 20 days ago

I find it unbelievable that the current chief of Nato (Rutte) is basically an extension of Palantir. He is making sure countries are signing contracts with this extreme company that on pair with the Nazi ideology. They would support mass extermination camps. You probably think this is over exaggerated. But no its not. This company is evil.

CrzyLngPwd• 20 days ago

Pretty sure he would do unspeakable things if it meant getting a pat on the head, and a Good Boy, from the real head of nato.

loeber3• 20 days ago

You're out of your mind -- and politically radicalized -- if you think that Palantir is on part with the Nazis. And this kind of facile comparison is offensively trivializing those who died in the holocaust.

Laurel1234• 20 days ago

They're already helping run ICE's concentration camps. If Trump asked them for help with extermination camps they'd agree immediately.

omnimus3• 20 days ago

“offensively trivializing those who died in the Holocaust” - calling someone nazi or fascist is not trivializing Holocaust. These are clear terms and both Palantir and Karp often publish texts with fascist ideological elements and views. Read something they published like Technological republic. They are not hiding it.

It's not even some radical view.

watwut• 19 days ago

Yes palantir is fascist organization. They did not done the murders only because they dont have power yet. That is claim of CEO, I am just listening to what he says and writes.

Jews complained about nazi long before holocaust, btw. So did opposition.

inigyou3• 19 days ago

One of the things we need to learn from the Nazis is the banality of evil. They were not some unique video game bad guys. They were ordinary people doing mostly ordinary things that added up to an atrocity. Mostly they just had some bad opinions. The individual concentration camp guard had a vague bad feeling about the project but apart from that they felt the same as a security guard at a prison feels today.

And the Nazis were already around for 10 years before the holocaust began. And for all that time they were still the Nazis, but nobody considered them that badly, because they just seemed like a political party with some bad opinions. And we should think about that. Was it possible to stop them in the first 10 years of existence, before they did the holocaust, thereby preventing the holocaust?

sequoia3• 20 days ago

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

What are the specific concerns?

badgersnake• 20 days ago

I imagine that’s classified.

sequoia3• 20 days ago

People in the comments here are praising the move, so presumably something is public. I've googled but I can't see some specific breach or documented misuse. Is the objection to Palantir strictly political?

TiredOfLife• 20 days ago

As the contracts are going to a chinese company. The officials making the decisions likely like their bribes wery much.

Fairburn• 20 days ago

Someday, the US will be just a bubble where no other country gives their data to. We continue this decent into fascism to the point that nobody likes us.. or values us. Is this their idea of Utopia?

RIMR• 20 days ago

Unfortunately, yes. The American right has looked at Russia as a model for what they want America to be for some time.

protocolture2• 20 days ago

Its what the US wants, and honestly at this point we should just completely cordon off the US from the rest of the world and give it to them.

villish2• 20 days ago

Why don't you stop using American sites and services now then? I see comments like this a lot but no one wants to be personally inconvenienced to stop using hn/youtube/reddit/whatever.

one33seven3• 20 days ago

It's what heritage foundation, elon and all the other billionaires want. This is not what most americans wanted, is it? How much of the population voted for orange man?

Dibby0534• 20 days ago

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?

josu• 20 days ago

Spain is not Somalia, why not let Indra do it?

The data may be safer with the CCP, at least they won't lose it.

broken-kebab3• 20 days ago

Dunno, losing it maybe safer from a citizen's POV.

Dibby0534• 20 days ago

Right up until some kid named "Bobby Tiananmen" makes the whole database delete itself ;)

8note6• 20 days ago

Spain is not Somalia, why not let Indra do it?

foreigners are a bit more likely to be loyal to the government and not some separatist opposition? or at least the companies corruption will be quite separate from what impacts the local government

this also came up with the 6th gen fighter designs between france and germany. it works when theres a non-european driving, because both trust the non-europe option more than any fellow european. the local lords are too powerful to be trusted, and too competitive against eachother

Dibby0534• 20 days ago

foreigners are a bit more likely to be loyal to the government

Yes, to their own government! Both China and USA have laws to force companies to insert backdoors. These laws have been enforced numerous times. If you think this is a smaller risk than doing things nationally, then indeed you're basically arguing that Spain is Somalia, there are separatist forces roaming around, the country can't enforce its own laws and the government needs to sell everything to foreign governments to stay in power. This is not the case (for now).

Maken5• 20 days ago

The contract with Huawei was about buying storage servers [1], which would then be managed by the Interior Ministry. They were not outsourcing anything.

[1] Concretely these: https://support.huawei.com/enterprise/en/flash-storage/ocean...

bpodgursky2• 20 days ago

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.

8note6• 20 days ago

clearly not better if they cant win a spanish contract?

bpodgursky2• 20 days ago

They won the contract, the military wants to keep it, the politicians are threatening to blanket kill all palantir contracts.

sjsdaiuasgdia• 20 days ago

Alex Karp is clearly off his rocker. This is a good move.

one33seven3• 20 days ago

He cannot stop talking about murdering people.

gervwyk• 20 days ago

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

karl11• 20 days ago

Interview is gold, he is right.

toofy2• 20 days ago

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.

johneth• 20 days ago

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

It's called being out-of-touch obscenely wealthy coupled with a massive ego.

Maken5• 20 days ago

You are probably thinking about ketamine.

somelamer5674• 20 days ago

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.

in_haft• 20 days ago

I take the ccp over thiel any day

bigyabai• 20 days ago

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.

bit-anarchist3• 19 days ago

I thinking OP is worried about China exporting its political influence outside.

In China, the Ministry for State Security has the legal authority to seize and investigate your devices without warrant nor active case, for instance. This can be, legally, motivated by dissident political thought.

kome• 20 days ago

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?

somelamer5674• 19 days ago

The people who raised concerns about the awful things the Chinese Communist Party has done in the process are unfortunately unavailable for comment.

Maken5• 20 days ago

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.

somelamer5674• 19 days ago

The NSA have Congressional oversight and are held accountable for their (mis)deeds, more or less.

The Chinese MSS and the Chinese Communist Party itself aren't even accountable to God.

madhacker• 20 days ago

Get rid of this pestilence! Fark Palantir

localdeclan• 20 days ago

Every country needs to do this now

lolive2• 20 days ago

Larry Ellison: « We are always glad to help ! »

lolive2• 20 days ago

[… Plus the fact that I need another boat!]

arielpts• 20 days ago

sad to see usage of this word. blocklist is easy to write.

pvaldes6• 20 days ago

For context: The former Spanish president in the socialist party is being investigated with corruption activities related with Venezuela, happening in the years after he quit the presidency. It is not looking good for him.

On Mars 2026, US Homeland Security played a prominent role in providing sensible info that lead to the prosecution. Apparently they obtained that info after spying on a phone from [person of interest] in Venezuela.

Helping Spain to expose corruption is a good thing of course, but when who does it is, what could be the biggest stronghold of MAGA in US government, we can suspect that they don't do this out of sheer generosity. Trump keeps saying that "is not happy" with Spain, and this corruption scandal greases the path to power for the Spanish equivalent to MAGA party on the forthcoming 2027 elections so... hum

Palantir could be, or not be, related with the leak. In any case blocking it just right now, by the socialist party, would be the logical reaction if they are involved.

hexorcist404• 15 days ago

Not sure how much good it will do overall but it's good to see not everyone is blind and/or naive.

Spain Orders Blacklist of Palantir from Public and Private Companies

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