There is a widely circulated article this week containing an allegation that I am ashamed about my affiliation with Palantir, a company with worldwide US-aligned military contracts.

It is an asinine assumption, maybe based on my choice that having a LinkedIn profile is unnecessary given my level of name recognition in industry, as far as I can tell. Would anyone also infer I am ashamed over my work for the National Institutes of Health, and Mozilla?

I create Rust libraries and give them away for free with a permissive open source license. Beyond that, please do not assume that you are entitled to my life, including employment history, hobbies, relationships, financials, etc.

My great-grandfather was tortured by Soviet invaders over political affiliation, including by stuffing glass rods into his urethra and shattering them. It is bewildering to expect that ostracizing defense employees or sponsorships from a software community would lead to some desirable moral outcome.

At Palantir, I worked with the most mission-oriented, diligent, conscientious engineering team of my career. I have always been grateful for the opportunity that taught me most of my engineering skills as a fresh college graduate, proud, and thankful that such talented engineers continue to apply their expertise to prosecute the modern world’s gravest challenges.

Please do not assume that I left over anything other than industry-standard programming language choice (Java, Go).