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What would J.R.R. Tolkien think of Palantir?

Peter Thiel and Alex Karp’s Palantir Technologies is one of the most powerful and mysterious tech companies in Silicon Valley. Its namesake is also one of the most powerful and mysterious magical objects in the lore of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy series The Lord of the Rings. The palantiri of The Lord of the Rings are sort of like crystal balls or “seeing stones” that allow their users to communicate across vast distances, see events from afar, and sometimes even peer into the future. But just about everybody who tries to use a palantir in The Lord of the Rings is deceived by it, a...