Palantir wants to 'defend the West,' but the West is wary (opens in new tab)

'Lord of the Rings' Palantir was born in 2003 from former founders of PayPal -- known as the PayPal Mafia -- in the wake of the September 11 attacks. It pitched software that could sift through vast intelligence datasets to flag threats -- an idea adapted from PayPal's fraud-detection systems. Peter Thiel, the arch-conservative PayPal co-founder, believed better data-sharing between agencies might have prevented 9/11, and built the company around a mission of "defending the West." The name ca...