Palantir Government

When Palantir Technologies was founded, we thought we were doing something particularly unique for Silicon Valley—embarking on a labor of love, solving hard technical problems, supporting the national security of our nation. It turns out that we are actually standing on the shoulders of heroes—of giants so prolific that they are the ones that not only bootstrapped significant innovation for the Intelligence Community, saved many lives, turned the tides of WWII and the Cold War, invented stealth and modern ELINT, but also they were the fathers of Silicon Valley. It is a distinguished lineage starting with Professor Fredrick Terman, followed by Bill Perry, and many others subsequently.

If this is news to you, be sure to watch Steve Blank’s The Secret History of Silicon Valley: Hidden in Plain Sight. And for you Stanford Alum/Palo Alto residents: was the the Dish at Stanford for radio astronomy or was it really a large radio receiver funded by the US Intel Community to detect TALL KING signals from the Soviet Union?

More from Steve at his blog:

• If I Told You I’d Have to Kill You: The Story Behind “The Secret History of Silicon Valley”
• The Story Behind the Secret History Part II. Getting B-52s through the Soviet Air Defense System
• Story Behind “The Secret History” Part III: The Most Important Company You Never Heard Of
• Story Behind “The Secret History” Part IV: Library Hours at an Undisclosed Location