fun thing, I just read his book. I have a lot of thoughts, namely how he believes defense contract tech companies are the purest form of employee-owned socialist enterprise (before starting Palantir he received his doctorate in socialist studies, and was a socialist, at one point?), but I digress, that explanation of warped logic will be in it's own post later.
But, to get back to the post, he does in fact talk about why he named the company that, and he was practically saying that LOTR is the closest thing to a societal mythos we have, and by naming companies and organizations, regardless of their original perceived goodness, is helping bolster a society that can create a communal shared mythos, and that the Real Problem of our current society is that with ever-increasing irreligiosity, we need to create a new mythos to create a sense of shared identity, and Palentir as an entity (as technology is inherently apolitical) is helping form the cornerstone of our shared identity. He wants to create organizations that use and build known mythos to create a new national identity.
On the same page he even mentions that LOTR-named entities are typically dogwhistles for the alt-right, but he argues that this is not the case as he is not a member of alt-right, and that he wants to reclaim LOTR as a societal mythos and he is doing his part... by creating a surveillance platform explicitly designed for military intelligence and operations, and then integrating them into local police departments as a deterance for the violence (that he says is identical) to the wars and overseas operations that veterans take part in.
By building onto the mythos of societal cannon, they can "help" bridge the gap between military and local actions, bring the intelligence and platforms of war home, to better prepare the American public for war (and to keep foreign ideals from influencing Our Mythos ie, communism).
Yes, it's strange, nonsensical, and such a weird way to try to say "we built a dystopian machine, and named it after a dystopian concept because we're nerds, but ALSO its NOT dystopian or bad, it's just how OUR shared society views it, and allows us to more easily create a unified nationalistic identity by building on the societal mythos we all love"
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