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COMMENT: Get ready. It’s com­ing. What’s com­ing? We don’t know. 

The news that Palantir–the alpha preda­tor of the elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance land­scape and inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the most crit­i­cal parts of the intel­li­gence community–has bought mil­lions of dol­lars of gold bars and will accept pay­ment in gold bul­lion as pay­ment for future trans­ac­tions rais­es inter­est­ing ques­tions.

(The com­pa­ny is named after the “see­ing stones” in the Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy.)

This fol­lows the com­pa­ny’s relo­ca­tion to Den­ver from the Bay Area by rough­ly a year.

” . . . . The com­pa­ny spent $50.7 mil­lion this month on gold, part of an unusu­al invest­ment strat­e­gy that also includes star­tups, blank-check com­pa­nies and pos­si­bly Bit­coin. Palan­tir had pre­vi­ous­ly said it would accept Bit­coin as a form of pay­ment before adding pre­cious met­als more recent­ly. . . .”

Recall that Pres­i­dent Biden’s Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence, Avril Haines, was a Palan­tir con­sul­tant from July 5, 2017 to June 23, 2020, when she left to join the Biden cam­paign.

Palan­tir’s intel­li­gence input embraces sources that are “in a posi­tion to know.”

“Palan­tir Buys Gold Bars as Hedge Against ‘Black Swan Event’” by Lizette Chap­man; Bloomberg; 08/17/2021

Palan­tir Tech­nolo­gies Inc. said it’s prepar­ing for anoth­er “black swan event” by stock­pil­ing gold bars and invit­ing cus­tomers to pay for its data analy­sis soft­ware in gold.

The com­pa­ny spent $50.7 mil­lion this month on gold, part of an unusu­al invest­ment strat­e­gy that also includes star­tups, blank-check com­pa­nies and pos­si­bly Bit­coin. Palan­tir had pre­vi­ous­ly said it would accept Bit­coin as a form of pay­ment before adding pre­cious met­als more recent­ly.

A spokes­woman for Palan­tir said no one has yet paid in either Bit­coin or gold. Accept­ing non­tra­di­tion­al cur­ren­cies “reflects more of a world­view,” Shyam Sankar, the chief oper­at­ing offi­cer, said in an inter­view. “You have to be pre­pared for a future with more black swan events.”

The gold pur­chase was buried in a secu­ri­ties fil­ing last week for its quar­ter­ly finan­cial results and report­ed ear­li­er this week by Barron’s. The accep­tance of gold as a form of pay­ment hasn’t been pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed.

Palantir’s 100-ounce gold bars will be kept in a secure loca­tion in the north­east­ern U.S., accord­ing to the fil­ing. “The com­pa­ny is able to take phys­i­cal pos­ses­sion of the gold bars stored at the facil­i­ty at any time with rea­son­able notice,” Palan­tir wrote.

Palan­tir, co-found­ed by the tech­nol­o­gy bil­lion­aire Peter Thiel and Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer Alex Karp, makes soft­ware used by gov­ern­ments and busi­ness­es. It fash­ions itself as a com­pa­ny of free thinkers. Palan­tir relo­cat­ed to Den­ver last year and mocked its peers in Sil­i­con Val­ley on the way out. In the inter­view, Shyam com­pared Palantir’s cul­ture with an “artist colony,” rather than a tech com­pa­ny churn­ing out soft­ware on an assem­bly line.

Gov­ern­ments have strong­ly embraced Palan­tir soft­ware to help them make sense of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, the cur­rent so-called black swan, a ran­dom and unpre­dictable event.

…

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