WW: Hey. And welcome to Unlimited Hangout. I'm your
host. Whitney Webb, Donald Trump has returned to the White House,
and since then, drastic changes have manifested as a very clear
effort to reorder the US government take shape. Many
Trump supporters are related, arguing that true changes come,
that corruption and fraud are being rooted out, and that the
quote, unquote Deep State is being dismantled before our
eyes, while a dismantling of government infrastructure, some
more controversial than others, is certainly happening, few of
the cheerleaders are taking the time to consider what may be
erected in its place, and if it will really manifest in
something better than the previous system. Part of the
reason for this disinterest, perhaps lies in the celebrity
status of many in the big tech clique that is shaping this
demolition of old structures and the erecting of new ones that
click, often referred to as the PayPal Mafia, have carefully
crafted a public image of libertarianism with a few
exceptions, and through their significant patronage of so
called independent media, have successfully manufactured trust
among many long time and also Recent Trump voters, with some
calling these former PayPal employees, quote, unquote, our
elites behind this carefully crafted image lies something
different, however, from CIA linked companies like Palantir
expanding their role at the core of the mass surveillance state
to the PayPal mafia's long standing ambition to create a
quote, unquote, new world currency, many of the same
policies that once recently incensed the right are cited to
now be implemented by this faction of big tech who have
cloaked themselves in free market in America. First
rhetoric to explore this reality, the Unlimited Hangout
podcast is beginning its first ever series entitled the PayPal
presidency to explore the way in which the PayPal Mafia is
molding government policy, as well as some of the often
overlooked ambitions of its members. In this first
installment, we will look at this group's ambitions for
healthcare and biotechnology. Many Trump voters this cycle
embraced the quote, unquote, make America healthy again, or
MAHA movement, which initially supported a rejection of the
experimental biotech products rolled out during the COVID era,
as well as a desire to extricate government health care
regulation from the pharmaceutical industry. While
it appears that MAHA de facto champion, Robert F Kennedy is
slated to become of HHS, the Department of Health and Human
Services, the Department is poised to approve a slate of
experimental products via deregulation, to introduce bio
surveillance regimes that would result in mass bio data mining
and to expand Palantir's Already massive and invasive contracts
with HHS joining me to discuss this and more is Max Jones, who
was written and co-written several recent Unlimited Hangout
investigations covering these very topics. In addition to
contributing to Unlimited Hangout. Max is the producer for
Chris Hedges, the Chris Hedges report and the staff writer and
Video Producer for sheer Post, thanks for joining me today,
Max, and welcome to Unlimited Hangout. Thanks for having me.
Whitney, well, it is my pleasure, and I guess we could
start up this discussion talking about the MAHA movement itself,
how it was an important part of getting Trump elected, at least,
you know, that's the perception anyway, and how a lot of the
initially stated goals that injected a lot of energy into
that movement have gradually been moved largely since the
Kennedy endorsement of Trump several months ago. So as I
noted earlier, a lot of the initial focus of MAHA was around
taking big pharma, the pharmaceutical industry, out of
government, healthcare regulation, ending the so called
revolving door, which was a big focus of Robert F Kennedy's
campaign, and some of his work prior and definitely something
he voiced extensively on his podcast, and also a rejection of
COVID era policies that including the military, military
run operation warp speed initially launched during the
first Trump administration. And also the experimental biotech
products, the namely the mRNA vaccines, that were produced
downstream of Operation warp speed and became, you know,
obviously a source of great controversy for a lot of people
in this particular movement. But it seems like a lot of the MAHA
ambitions, at least if you're following what the influencers
in this movement are saying, seems to have changed. Have you
noticed that as well? Yeah,
MJ: definitely. Because it's actually interesting, because I
think that there's been this characterization of RFK Jr, on
the liberal side of the spectrum as being like this insane right
wing nut job, even though he's a right wing Democrat. And then
there's this, I mean, I guess a lot of a lot of people on the
right, or conservatives that were skeptical of COVID era
policy really were drawn to him. Of because of his critiques that
I think he made in the book that he wrote, which were all very a
lot of it, which was very valid. And when you look at our case,
actual initial agenda that was then associated with Make
America healthy again, it was built on this kind of like
liberal promise to use regulatory power to curb the
influence of big pharma and big food and, you know, some of the
things that and in a pretty moderate way, I think that, like
in previous election cycles, if it was coming from a more
traditional like Democratic Party figure that wasn't
associated with conservatives via COVID. I'm guessing most
liberals would probably support like one of the things that he
wanted to do, aside from the increasing regulations and
making the clinical trials for vaccines more rigorous, were
things like stopping advertising on TV from big pharma, which is
something that's like pretty widely accepted among the
Democratic Party constituency, I believe. But, you know, partisan
politics kind of brain rots everything. So there's this
weird distortion with RFK. And so while RFK is an initial
agenda was built on this kind of promise to use regulatory power
to curb the influence of these industries, there's been this
shift, and that kind of grew out of, as we note in the article,
out of the shuttering of his campaign and his association
with Trump and RFK. Endorsement of Trump, in my opinion, was
pretty important, because the Trump campaign, I think,
realized this time around that the populist element of Trump
was what was going to give them the victory against the
Democrats, which were very much associated with the
establishment, and RFK kind of granted them this tinge of
populism through his association with Trump. And now we see, I
mean, just like recently with these hearings, RFK is starting
to really back away from these initial promises to use
regulatory power to do things like increase the rigorousness
of clinical trials on vaccines and re examining the childhood
vaccine mandates. And like just one tidbit that I saw on the New
York Times the other day that like shows this. So in order to
move forward in his confirmation to lead HHS, RFK, secured the
endorsement of Senator Bill Cassidy. And Cassidy has obvious
ties to Big Pharma and vaccine development like so. And by the
way, the way that he secured this endorsement, according to
the Times, was by extracting a series of commitments from
Kennedy. Cassidy did. And Cassidy's largest donors are
from pharma and healthcare companies, like his second
largest contributor was, contributor was actually from
Ochsner health system. If I don't know if that's how you
pronounce it, but it's spelled out, O, C, H, s, N, E, R, and
they actually, during the pandemic, increased insurance
costs for their employees with unvaccinated spouses during the
pandemic. And r k allegedly promised this guy, Cassidy, that
he was going to give Congress advance notice of any changes he
might make in vaccine policy, so that, among other comments that
RFK made, which you can which you can describe for the
audience, really show RFK shifting away from this initial
agenda that I think really helped Trump cultivate a lot of
those COVID era dissidents, despite being The government
that actually initiated a lot of this policy, like Operation warp
WW: speed, yeah. So I think, you know, obviously there are the
devil's advocates out there that say, Well, of course, RFK had to
say these things in front of the Senate, otherwise he can't be
confirmed. But sort of that wishy washiness as a means of
obtaining political power, it opens up enough doubt that you
can't really know if that's true or not. And if he's expressing,
you know, the viewpoints he expressed there to the Senate,
it's certainly possible that he plans to implement those
policies stated there. Obviously he'd experienced a lot more
resistance if he were to pursue stuff he said, you know, back
when he was on the campaign trail, for example. But again,
it remains to be seen, I think, to an extent, with RFK as HHS
Secretary. But I think there have been some revealing
statements even before and reports even before his
confirmation hearing. So one of these was a Wall Street Journal
article that's from January 14, so a little almost a month ago,
and it's entitled Trump team sidelines, RFK juniors, anti
vaccine aides. And essentially that article, citing people
close to both Trump and Kennedy, says that Kennedy was sort of
dumping a lot of his people close to him that were expected
to serve as AIDS if he were appointed to HHS that he had
affiliations with, from children's health, defense, from
example, in favor of, well, it seems like he didn't really pick
his staff, actually. So one of these would be that his chief of
staff is Heather flick, who was picked by Trump, who was per.
Previously involved with Alex Azar's HHS, which was Trump,
Trump's first term. And you know, was the HHS that have
first declared COVID a health emergency, and oversaw a lot of
the creation and implementation of Operation warp speed before
Biden came into office. And so there is a section in this
article that basically, and I'm paraphrasing here, but
essentially said something to the effect that he was going to
not pursue changes to vaccine policy because it instead was
going to focus on wins and food and exercise. And it's
interesting that that report came out when it did, because in
the months prior to that, sort of these several influential
figures. Now, influential figures sort of seem to come out
of nowhere after the Kennedy endorsement of Trump, namely the
mean siblings Callie and Casey means and started promoting a
lot of this, the stuff about sort of blaming chronic the
chronic disease epidemic, as it's been referred to, in which
I agree with the nomenclature there as being, you know, pretty
much entirely due to big food and but only specific aspects of
things in big food. I don't think biotech, you know, GMOs
and the food supply were necessarily, have been really
addressed meaningfully by the mean siblings, but have sort of
focused on the unhealthy standard American diet, and sort
of this promotion of things like beef tallow, among other things,
which you know is, is fine either I'm not, certainly not
criticizing, you know, those claims, but I think it's sort of
an effort to engineer a more myopic stance for MAHA so that
it's easier to secure those quote, unquote wins for the
movement, and sort of act like campaign promises so that
coalition were fulfilled, while avoiding the ones that involve
removing industry influence from HHS and the FDA, for example,
and anything that would have to do with sort of taking mRNA
products off the market or making it more difficult to get
on the market, right?
MJ: And another thing that I found interesting in that
article was that they described flick according to a former FDA
officials. So I don't know exactly how accurate this claim
is, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's true, and it seems to
fit based on the money and interest in the that are
associated with the Trump administration, that flick is
acting as the sort of, this is what they say, sort of Trump
guys, eyes and ears within the department too. She's a very
important liaison and information source, source, the
chief of staff, they kind of lay down the law. So like that
implies that there is this effort from within the Trump
camp to basically subvert Kennedy's more radical agenda, I
guess you could say, and it sounds like a babysitter, yeah,
exactly. And that makes you know that might be surprising to a
lot of people that are, you know, follow these like Matt hat
or MAGA influencers that kind of just don't really cover this
stuff. But when you look at the people that are actually very
heavily affiliated with Trump, it's not that surprising. Like,
for example, example, the most obvious one is probably like
Peter Thiel, who, you know was, is pretty much entirely
responsible for the rise of JD Vance's entire political career,
and also started his private sector career in venture
capital. And I mean, Peter Thiel is the founder and the largest
currently the largest shareholder of Palantir. And
Palantir right now has a contract with the CD has
multiple contracts with HHS and the CDC, which is a sub agency
of this HHS, to basically build up this entire bio surveillance
infrastructure across across the country, to basically feed data
from the local level to the federal level, a steady stream
of bio data to constantly develop pandemic and disease
outbreak Forecast, to then allow the CDC to correspondingly
provide curated policy for communities based on their
outbreak potential or outbreak status or whatever. And so
obviously, like something like that, is very heavily associated
with these mRNA, the procurement of mRNA and biotechnology
products, as we saw during COVID 19, like you reported, I think,
initially in the last American vagabond, about how Google and
Oracle were according to, I think, one of the operation warp
speed heads. I don't know if this was actually like, if the
contracts were ever
WW: officially, Slaouil, who was the head of Operation warp
speed, said it, yeah, that Google and Oracle had received
contracts to follow recipients of the COVID 19 mRNA vaccines
for up to two years, right?
MJ: Yeah. So, so um, biosurveillance is part and
parcel to uh, Emergency, emergency, um, procurement,
development and distribution of biotechnology products. So,
like, right there? You have a clear example of how one of the
key guys associated with Trump has made huge investments in
this industry existing in the first place. So when you take
note of that, it actually makes this whole effort to subvert
Kennedy. And this, this incentive from Kennedy so in
order to secure the position to, like, basically distance himself
from his initial policy agenda. It actually makes a lot of
sense.
WW: Yeah, well, I think there's the potential also to do some
sort of dynamic, some good cop, bad cop dynamic, at least in
terms of public perception with HHS policy going forward,
considering, as we covered recently, you know the
appointment to be the deputy to RFK, Deputy HHS Secretary being
Jim O'Neill, who was a long time Peter Thiel associate, co
founder. Used to run the Thiel Foundation. Co founded the Thiel
fellowship with Peter Thiel worked at Mithril Capital and
also Clarium capital, which is now Thiel Capital. And obviously
at Mithril, he was JD Vance's boss, I guess, where, you know,
significant investments in biotech and also in Palantir
were made so Jim O'Neill. And as you can read our article on
this, for all the nitty gritty details. He essentially has been
arguing for quite some time for the end, ending of efficacy
testing of products at, I guess the FDA specifically. He was
actually floated to be FDA head under the first Trump
administration, and was considered too controversial for
that role. I can't remember if Balaji Srinivasan, who's the
Andreessen Horowitz partner that created the network state idea.
He was also pitched to be head of FDA, but was also deemed too
controversial, and then they settled, I guess, on Scott
Gottlieb, who became kind of infamous during the COVID era
for his revolving door relationship with Pfizer and
also the CIA linked company that's now doing all the bio
manufacturing for this, a lot of the mRNA vaccines. It's called
resilience, I think previously was called National resilience,
that I reported on some few years ago. But essentially, Jim
O'Neill, by eliminating efficacy tests, would facilitate a lot of
these products getting on the market, because, as a lot of my
past reporting and reporting of others has noted about these
mRNA products, and what was even known about them before the
COVID 19 event. Basically, you can either make them safe but
not effective, or toxic and effective. It's kind of like the
slider where you either get one or the other, and that makes it,
of course, very difficult for them to get through the existing
regulatory paradigm at the FDA. And as we noted just a minute
ago, a lot of what was the initial ambition, at least
publicly expressed, of the of this MAHA movement was about
more stringent clinical testing for these types of experimental
products. Because, of course, a lot of the controversy around
what happened during COVID 19 is that, you know, the emergency
deregulatory paradigm was used to force this experimental
biotech onto the market and onto the public. And basically the
people that took it became guinea pigs. And this is when
you can, when you consider that, for 10 years, Moderna, and you
know, Pfizer's bio in tech, but you know, they couldn't get
anything on the market, because they couldn't even get through
animal trials, you know, all of a sudden they can get on the
market and they're,
MJ: well, yeah, like, like moderna, as you reported in your
moderna in need of a Hail Mary series, it actually suffered
from a lot of the same problems that we note in our article,
that the companies that O'Neill invest in via Mithril, and also,
I think, I think Personally as well, suffers from, which is,
like, they can't even get through or even get to clinical
trials sometimes because of these problems, right? And like,
like, some of these companies that he's worked for have
existed for like, over a decade, and they have no products
brought to market, just like moderna before the COVID 19
pandemic, and they were, yeah,
WW: and so some of these companies have been around for,
like, 15 years or a lot longer, in some cases, and haven't been
able to get anything on the market. So obviously, the only
way to get it on the market thus far has been to, you know, use
COVID 19 vaccines because of, you know, the emergency use
authorization. I would technically call it a loophole
in this case, but it's really the only way that it's been able
to go on the market. Obviously, it seems like the testing for
livestock. You know, there's been a lot of talk about mRNA
products already being with the livestock. I guess there are
cases where it does get through animal trials for animal
vaccines, but I have a feeling that animal vaccine tests.
Testing is a lot less stringent than it is for humans. And I
don't know Well, I'm kind of I think it's interesting this
whole ending efficacy testing paradigm, because, of course,
it's being framed as a way to remove needless regulation and
bureaucratic red tape and to make way for free market
innovation. And these are, you know, kind of the standard
Republican talking points here. But obviously what happened
during COVID 19 was a removal, technically right, of that
bureaucratic red tape, and it sort of unleashed a very corrupt
pharmaceutical industry, or wing of it, rather, in biotech, to
have no liability for these experimental products and have
them used massively and to reap massive profits from them. And
of course, now that's been pitched as the US government
would share in those profits. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick
in the press conference announcing the creation of a new
US sovereign wealth fund, commented how the US would begin
buying equity and and these types of vaccine companies. So
that when you know COVID 19 vaccines, for example, are sold
abroad, the US government, you know, has a direct financial
incentive, which is pretty telling, I think, of where this
administration plans to go with mRNA, and I think also the some
of the controversial statements made by Oracle's Larry Ellison
at the Stargate press press conference on Trump's first day
in the White House about this new era of AI powered
personalized mRNA vaccines for cancer. You know, a lot of these
mRNA companies that got, you know, sort of looked at by
independent media during COVID, a lot of them have been focusing
on cancer specifically for a long time, because you can
basically charge more because you're making a personalized
vaccine for each person. There's been a push for this. It was
arguably one of the reasons that Biden created the ARPA-H the
health DARPA agency, which he framed as a cancer moonshot. A
lot of it was framed around this very same idea that is being
promoted on day one of the Trump White House, which is quite
telling, and importantly, ARPA-H
MJ: was, as you noted in your investigation, was initially
approached to the Trump administration as a pre crime
tool, and a lot of I don't think that there was any when they
transitioned to a predictive health program, it wasn't like
they changed the data sources that they would be tapping under
this program for pre health purposes, versus
WW: the architect, I mean, one of the So, the main guy behind
it is this guy named Bob Wright, who was the top executive at NBC
Universal, and he's a good friend of Trump, because that is
the, you know, the the network that brought you the the
apprentice, but it was the main architect that was hired by
Wright to design the program as an ex DARPA guy named Jeffrey
Ling, who was basically running a lot of the experimental
biotech stuff at DARPA. Because initially, a lot of this mRNA
technology came out of DARPA funding. A lot of it happening
under the Obama administration there DARPA. And since then, you
know, the head of the director of DARPA, when those initial
investments in mRNA were made, was, is Regina Dugan, and she
has since become head of the Welcome Trust, own DARPA
equivalent, called Welcome leap, that I reported on a few years
ago. So, you know, it's, it's notable, I think that this is
set to expand in the US under the current administration,
because a lot of the same entities that were vilified
during COVID, and I think were rightly vilified personally,
whether that's the Wellcome Trust or Bill Gates and the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation are all in on biotech and really see
it as necessary to expand, you know, their ambitions for global
health, and you know, the health related Sustainable Development
Goals, which I've argued, you know, in my work on the SDGs, is
really about creating new markets, and using public
policy to impose those markets on people, because there's no
actual demand for the products of these markets that they're
making, and that kind of, you know, I think maybe kind of
similar to what ends up happening here, you know, it's
ultimately, you know, maybe the sales pitches are different, or
the way it's being marketed is going to be different, you know,
under Trump. But ultimately, having this, the having this
type of experimental biotechnology be all over the
market, and it's used to be normalized, I think, is
definitely something that we can expect over the next four years,
unfortunately. And I think another indicator of this, in
addition to sort of these quote, unquote babysitters that are
actually going to be running the show for our. RFK, you know,
he's nominally the head, but Heather flick, as Chief of
Staff, decides who gets access to him, what his schedule is,
what he does as HHS Secretary, basically. And then Jim O'Neill
being basically the person who manages day to day operations
and oversees the FDA and all these sub agencies on Kennedy's
behalf, there is a lot of room to go against Kennedy, even if
Kennedy was intent on challenging biotech as head of
HHS. And as you noted earlier, it's not necessarily clear that
is the case, but I don't want to come out and say it's not a
possibility. But you know, I'm not very enthusiastic about the
prospects at the moment, but I don't want to necessarily say I
know for a fact what his plans are. But another figure that
sort of points to this, in addition to the people at HHS,
the Larry Ellison statements, the Lutnick statements, is the
guy who's slated to be head of the FDA himself. So that's Marty
Makary, or Martin Makary, who's a top guy at Johns Hopkins, I
believe, and he became a pretty popular recently. He was, like,
on promoted a lot to Trump's base, I think before he was
announced to be FDA head, going on, like the Megyn Kelly show. I
think he even has his own podcast. But he definitely was a
frequent guest on a lot of podcast circuits, and, you know,
sort of talking about, using a lot of the MAHA buzz words
about, you know, chronic health epidemic and all of that, but
it's his tech, his stance on biotech, I think, has sort of
been overlooked by a lot of these influencers in the Make
America healthy again movement. And I think that was pretty
clearly portrayed, not just by the the reporting on industry
reactions to his appointment as charge of the FDA, but also the
boost in stocks for biotech that Makary announcement elicited.
So of course, you know, there have been reports saying every
time like a you know, Kennedy's is advancing toward getting
confirmed, there's a dip in vaccine stocks, but the opposite
seems to be true for Marty Makary, who has been was
considered, is considered very friendly to the biotech industry
by the people that run that industry to the so much to the
point that some have said they dodged a bullet with his
appointment, which I think is notable, and as we noted in our
article, his statements during COVID 19, he was very unhappy
with it taking multiple weeks for the COVID 19 vaccines to be
approved under the emergency use paradigm at the FDA. He argued
it should have happened in less than 24 hours. So that's sort
of, you know, combined with how biotech feels about him, and
that that COVID stance under that particular deregulatory
paradigm, it seems like he'd be pretty supportive of the vision
that people like Jim O'Neill hold. And I don't think I made
it explicit earlier, and I probably should have, but Jim
O'Neill's interest in eliminating efficacy tests isn't
necessarily to eliminate all efficacy data collection. He
thinks that data collection should take place after people
take the drug, and she should be conducted via bio surveillance.
And as we note in the article, there are a lot of people that
he cites as sort of his, I guess mentors, in a sense, in
developing this view, who argue that that should happen through
a variety of means and have a variety of outcomes. I don't
know if you'd be interested in speaking to that Max, yeah,
MJ: for sure. And just one other thing that I think will lead
into this stuff about Richard Barker, who, I think you're
talking about, one of the people that he mentions as being like,
I mean, not, he doesn't say necessarily that's like an
inspiration, but he talks about how he really appreciates his
work, and thinks they're doing great stuff on this end of
basically deregulation and but O'Neill's interest, as he notes
himself in that talk that where he says that notorious line,
well, it was notorious. Seems like no one cares anymore, at
least in the mainstream media, about eliminating efficacy
tests. He's actually been interested in this deregulatory
paradigm since his time at HHS, I think, with Tommy Thompson and
Mike Leavitt, where he was notably very close in proximity
to the centers of power that developed this initially made a
huge step, a significant step towards this deregulatory
paradigm. And you talked about creating artificial like,
basically manufacturing artificial demand for these
markets that no one really wants. O'Neill was arguably,
well, I don't, I don't want to comment on how crucial of a role
he played, but he was certainly very close in proximity to the
centers of power, the at the HHS that were crucial in getting the
BARDA pass, the project bioshield act of 2004 which.
Implemented, or created the BARDA agency, and that then led
to them purchasing all of these Tamiflu stockpiles, as you noted
in the article, which kind of caused Gilead stock prices to, I
think, as you noted, quadruple right when it when it had dipped
before.
WW: Well, so BARDA basically functions as like a an ATM for
Big Pharma, any sort of you know, threats, no matter how
manufactured the threat is. And in the case of bird flu, it was
mostly manufactured by people who are now very discredited
post COVID 19, like Neil Ferguson of the Imperial College
of London, a lot of his modeling was used to create these
doomsday statistics about what a potential bird flu pandemic
would be like, you know, between 2004 and 2006 right? And you
know, he was fresh off the controversy in Britain, where he
helped use similar doomsday statistic modeling of dubious
credibility as a part of the government response to a mad cow
disease outbreak, which led to the unnecessary culling of an
insane amount of livestock in Britain and very negatively
impacted their farming industry. Um, but basically, you know, as
we learned during COVID 19, it's very possible to manufacture uh,
fear, using statistics and using quote, unquote experts in the
events of real in the absence of real clinical data showing the
same. And by doing so, you know, you create this threat, and
Congress can express outrage, or, you know, the media drums up
concern, Congress responds, and BARDA ends up buying a bunch of
stockpiles of medication, often billions of dollars worth from
pharmaceutical companies, of things that will be used to
respond to this doomsday event that doesn't exist yet. And that
stockpile, you know, was justified initially by the 2001
anthrax attacks we need it was pushed for back as a policy
response to that before project bioshield was even introduced in
Congress, this idea that there's going to be bio terror events. I
mean, that was back, you know, this is back in the War on
Terror era. So that's initially how they sold it. But
eventually, you know, moved the idea of sort of a zoonotic
pandemic, and needing to sort of stockpile. And so the stockpile
since then has sort of been to to address both of those
threats, and has often been used, you know, by companies of
to basically boost companies of, you know, dubious credibility,
like emergent bio solutions, who created the anthrax vaccine that
was never properly tested and does not work and has been
linked to Gulf War Syndrome, among other things, and was
actually being given to military personnel and used in an off
label way to the point where they lost in court and had to
stop giving it to people until, you know, people like Jerome
Hauer came in and saved the day. We can talk about Jerome Hauer
another time, but if you're interested in learning more
about him and weird things about him at 911 you can read my few
years old series called engineering contagion, about
those attacks and how a lot of this came to be. But basically,
the people that created that infrastructure were also the
people that led early COVID response, like Robert Catholic,
for example, who was Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and
Response under the first Trump administration. He helped author
project bioshield, develop the idea for BARDA. I was very close
to the click that I argue in my series actually committed the
2001 anthrax attacks. There's no way it was actually Bruce Ivans.
Anyway, getting a little off topic, but basically, you know,
it was basically a way to create welfare for Big Pharma and to
manufacture fear for the purpose of basically creating markets
for products people don't need or want, and using fear to do
so. And also, at the same time, it's, you know, a dual use, in a
way, because fear is also routinely used to take away
people's civil liberties. So it's a way to get people to
surrender bodily autonomy in one way, and also a way to get civil
liberties, as many of them acts as possible for the benefit of
the national security state. And I think, you know, COVID, 19
years after, you know, bioshield was passed, was definitely quite
revealing and how, that's how these things tend to work. So,
you know, Jim O'Neill's proximity to that, I think, is
worth pointing out. And as we note in the article, he was the
main speech writer for Tommy Thompson. And leave it when a
lot of this fear mongering about bird flu was going on and when
project bio shield was being peddled to Congress. And he, you
know, notes in his own CV that he was very involved with Pan.
Academic response and writing speeches on pandemic influenza,
which in this case refers to the bird flu speeches, and then
subsequently went on to lead, you know, various, not the same
type of role he'll be having now as number two, but definitely a
top tier HHS executive level position later on. So he
definitely had a lot of clout within the the Bush
administration's HHS, and it seems like a lot of that
deregulatory vision that was, you know, characteristic of the
Bush era is likely to make a comeback, even with someone like
RFK as the public face of the agency, yeah,
MJ: notably by his own, you know, admission like he was
interested in this deregulation from the beginning, or from his
entire, from the beginning of his public sector career, at
least. And he was there helping this legislation, presumably
helping this legislation get passed on the speechwriting
teams of Tommy Thompson and Mike Lee, a bit. And he actually even
brags about, in that same talk, where he says that we need to
eliminate efficacy tests, how he actually blocked the FDA from
starting to regulate this one biotechnology anyway, is Yeah,
and, and one thing that the mainstream media reports that
talked about that a couple years ago, that speech that he gave
where he advocated eliminating eliminating efficacy tests, they
didn't mention was that he then goes on to praise the work of
this guy named Richard Barker, who's the founding director of
CASMI, and his model of adaptive licensing. And I think that
Barker's model is worth noting because I think it clues us into
what O'Neill wants to do, and also this kind of biotech,
deregulatory slash surveillance paradigm in general. Really
WW: quick. I just want to note for the audience that CASMI is
housed at Oxford. I believe Barker is British, and the
CASMI, I believe, is the Center for Accelerating sustainable
medical innovation, if I'm not mistaken, which the name should
tell you a lot, if you're familiar with a PR speak, right,
MJ: like something that Barker says, is that there's this huge
problem, I guess, in drug development, where basically,
and he says it's so severe that it actually is currently, the
current way we do drug development is not sustainable.
And this issue is that those handling clinical development,
so, you know, in my opinion, at least in the way that I think
drug development should work, the people that are, you know,
in theory, in the best form of capitalism or whatever, should
not be concerned with the commercial interests of the drug
they're creating, and instead should be concerned with, you
know, things like, is it does it work? Is it going to help save
lives or treat people's sicknesses or whatever? He says
that they actually need to, that they're too separated from the
commercial side, and that they actually need to be that big
pharma and the people that are more concerned with the profits
of those drugs need to be infused into the drug
development process further, and he says that that should be done
via the collection of value data. He basically thinks that
this should happen via the utilization and collection of a
massive amount of real world data, and that's data
accumulated outside of clinical trial settings, like, you know,
through electronic health records, maybe your apple,
watch, your phone, wearables, yeah, and then, you know, and
again, like, this is important to know, because regarding the
MAHA movement, because RMK Jr's agenda is like The exact, I
mean, at least the agenda that he was, you know, touting on the
campaign trail is like the exact opposite of what this guy,
Barker, says. And, you know, so, like, here's a quote that from
from Barker himself. He says that they need to integrate
value in the design of climate clinical development with an
early crafting phase involving the input of regulators, payers
and patient associations, so as to ensure the collection of both
clinical and value data and and he literally advocates This is
being a way to solve the problem of drug makers having to set the
initial market value of their drug as being very high, and
instead allow companies to basically, like, test the value
of their drug by through these real world data sources, and
then use that data to basically accrue or increase the value of
the drug over time. AKA, basically just like, Jack up
prices of drugs as they exist as they continue to exist on the
market longer by using this, what he calls value data, which
you know, for anyone listening, would be accumulated from your
devices and your labor, whatever you know. Your existence,
basically, so like you know, Barker's literally advocating
for Big Pharma to directly exploit data mined segments of
people to cultivate capital and value for drug products with
them getting nothing in return. And and then, you know, he goes
even further, where he believes that, where he believes that
patient populations should be segmented and surveilled to
basically allow pharma to develop this outcome focused way
of creating drugs.
WW: Do you think that could be used potentially to for Big
Pharma to, like, charge different prices for the same
drug on different populations? So, like, if it seemed to be
more effective in one ethnic group than the other, they could
charge that ethnic group more than they would charge another
ethnic group. Like, is that a potential consequence of this
segmented population idea? Yeah,
MJ: I mean, I would think so because I talked to Nolan
Higdon, this scholar from, I can't remember what university,
but he wrote this book about called surveillance education,
where he basically studied this data industry, this cloud
capital industry, whatever you want to call it. And he
basically said that every time that that in his studies, that
he came across these promises, these altruistic promises,
where, you know, because Barker's probably thinking that
people are going to hear this as, oh, well, that's great. They
get to, you know, use my data, and then I get a better drug,
because it's developed for me or something, or my population,
people like me. But, I mean, he said that in pretty much every
case that it's used to exploit the consumer and the worker and
jack up prices and cut costs, and so yeah, I wouldn't be
surprised if that's a possibility, or if that happens.
I mean, one thing that he said was that it's very it's very
likely that these, this real world data, will also be used by
insurance companies, for example, to charge higher
premiums based on certain lifestyle habits that these that
your wearables or your other devices might pick up on you. So
he said, for example, like, oh, you know, you're only sleeping
five hours a night, and that makes you X amount more likely
to get this disease or this condition. Therefore you're not
taking care of yourself. So we can't really cover you, because
look at the subjective data that we have that shows that you're
not taking care of yourself. Why would we cover you? So yeah, I
definitely think that's possible.
WW: Well, that's gonna be fun for the private insurance
companies. They're really gonna watch that. Yeah, they'll be
spawning like an army of Luigi Mangiones, I guess.
MJ: Yeah. And if O'Neill, you know, seeks to implement
Barker's model, they'll even be more involved in the development
process, right? And I'm sure they're probably concerns that
they may already be too involved in that to begin with, and maybe
now they'll just be even more involved, which will be great
for them. And you know, in addition, Barker believes that
we can have this outcome focused form of healthcare, like we just
mentioned. And basically he says that we develop in volume
currently. So, you know, we got to develop a bunch of this drug
and then, kind of like, hope that people need it to take it.
I think an example of that might be the Tamiflu stuff, right?
They had this drug and it seemed like there, maybe there wasn't
so much demand for it, and then they needed to manufacture this
artificial demand by instilling fear in the population and
selling this pitch about bird flu, et cetera. Yeah. So
basically, this predictive outcome focused use of data
would allow quote products to be prescribed and used by the right
patient segments. And then he goes further, and he says that
we can also use this data that where we segment patients to
focus on behavioral factors, so they're also now they don't just
want to cultivate this data for health purposes or for drug
development purposes, they also want to produce means of
behavioral modification, because he says that the industry needs
to focus on the behavioral factors which drive adherence,
either as accelerators or decelerators. So
WW: that sounds so much like the COVID era. Yeah? Behavioral
modification and nudging and all of that, right? Stop vaccine
hesitancy, but I guess now it'll be to stop bio surveillance
hesitancy.
MJ: Yeah, yeah. And the thing that I think that Matt hat
voters are, I mean, everyone, but especially these people that
may be optimistic about having RFK, JR And um. Um, you know,
some rhetoric about this stuff in the Trump administration,
they should be very wary of comments like this, because
they're actively studying ways to incentivize to make you
accept these products. And you know, so he says the goal should
be to collect evidence as to how to boost adherence. And the
exercise is complex. It's there are many types of patients with
different behavioral contexts and psychological barriers,
which, which highlights the breadth of data that they're
planning to collect on, on, on this specifically, this issue
specifically. And, you know, I noted in the article that this
concept of utilizing the data, these mass data sets, to
basically manipulate human behavior and direct outcomes of
populations is like straight out of the military playbook. I
mean, yeah, Phil bean surveillance Valley is basically
about how the entire DARPA tech military apparatus was a
counterinsurgency program from the very beginning, and you see
that just being repurposed for different means, and, and, and,
and the fact that a lot of this data that they want to collect
has dual use purposes. So like, for example, the same data that
they're collecting on you via your Apple Watch about your
health could also presumably be used to predict if you're going
to shoot up a school or whatever,
WW: yeah, because they'll just say it's mental health. Yeah,
exactly.
MJ: Because, I mean, I mean, that's the thing. Every time
someone does something like that,
WW: just wait till the Neuralink mandates to make sure everyone
is not secretly thinking about committing crimes before they
happen. I say that with a joke, but Larry
MJ: Alyssa has literally said that when we have this like
these AI nodes all across the country, of the of that are
constantly analyzing and getting fed this data that, you know, is
collected via all these devices, that, Oh, we're going to be a
lot safer, because no one's going to misbehave anymore. And
right? So, I mean, it's not that far fetched to think something
like that could happen or be pursued or in some capacity.
And, yeah, so, I mean, I think that that's the gist on Richard
Barker, and I think it really clues you into O'Neill's mindset
on these things. And also, like, I just wanted to note too,
because, I mean, it appears that they've really banked on
exploiting RFK Jr, kind of like anti establishment Bona feeds to
sell this stuff like so, for example, here's a tweet from Jim
O'Neill where he's advocating this outcome focused version of
drug development. He says, Many Americans think we have free
markets in health care. We don't hundreds of bureaucratic rules,
perverse incentives and opaque pricing make health care more
expensive and less efficient than it should be. Providers of
care are usually paid by volume, not outcomes. So he's advocating
for outcomes. And then he says this, And to me, this is the CO
opting of the RFK make America healthy again, language, he
says, and government makes chronic disease worse by
subsidizing unhealthy food and offering poor nutritional advice
to families who are trying their best to stay healthy. So right
there you have this deregulatory paradigm that conflicts directly
with the most, I would say, the most important parts of RFK Jr's
initial agenda that was associated with the Trump
campaign on the campaign trail, that you have this language that
exploits that radical agenda and associates it with this
deregulatory paradigm, which is like, super manipulative to
people that maybe don't stay up to date on all of this stuff
that much and don't have all the time to decipher all these
things, or
WW: don't follow what people link to. Peter Thiel, do say,
you know, yeah, interesting, where they talk about both sides
of their mouth. Yeah, that's interesting. So I also think
it's worth pointing out too, that before we kind of wrap up
the discussion on O'Neill here, you know, a lot of his
affiliation with Thiel, it's very extensive we noted in the
piece. But also, you know, for a lot of his O'Neill's, you know,
after he was out of government and also no longer working for a
Thiel affiliated BC. He was working for the sense Research
Foundation, which is devoted to, like treating longevity related
or like age related diseases. It's basically, I would argue,
one of those sort of Silicon Valley Health, quote, unquote
foundations that aims to offer life extension technologies.
And, you know, a lot of big tech bros are kind of obsessed with
this idea of immortality. Probably the most infamous of
those is Brian Johnson, and he, along with Peter Thiel, having a
significant interest in injecting young people's blood
into themselves to stay young, for example. That's true. And
the sins Research Foundation is is focused on, you know, using
biotech, including mRNA, DNA, DNA, vaccines and, you know,
technology like that, in order to allegedly extend people's
lifespans, which is the sins Research Fund. Is also, you
know, really exists thanks to the financing of Thiel as well.
So it's no surprise that you have a lot of people affiliated
with Thiel present there, like O'Neill, also Blake masters,
who's sort of like a JD Vance type of Thiel creation, whose
failed political career was also bankrolled by Thiel, and he was
on the Sims Research Foundation with with O'Neill for some time.
And they're focused on a lot of that type of, that kind of angle
of biotech as well. And I think it's fair to sort of look, I
mean, people need to pay attention to a lot of the
Silicon Valley big tech and Big Pharma overlap. You know, I've
been covering it a lot since the COVID era, but basically there's
been this effort, and you covered it in your piece about
the who and permanent pandemic markets. This idea of
traditional the traditional income model for Big Pharma, has
basically run out of steam. It's been telegraphed openly by big
pharma itself. They refer to it as the patent Cliff issue, and
so the way they want to get around patent cliffs, which is
basically related to how products go generic, and they
don't make as much money when they're not exclusive products
of that farm, that pharmaceutical company, anymore,
they've been going into biotech, and a lot of that is through
joint ventures with big tech companies like Google, for
example. And you know, a lot of those companies also now double
as major in essential parts of the national security state and
national security state contractors and integral parts
of the national security, you know, mass surveillance
apparatus. And so the idea of having a lot of this in this
idea of selling bio surveillance and all of this as a way to
improve, you know, market response to health care products
and all of this stuff, I would argue, was really kind of a sly
way to manufacture what I think is pretty openly acknowledged as
the final frontier of mass surveillance, which is
surveilling people's bodies through wearables and eventually
through things inside the body, nano medicines. And of course, I
would put brain machine, brain computer interfaces, BCIs like
Neuralink, in that category. And I think it's important to
remember, too, with brain machine interfaces or BCIs, that
it ultimately comes to the FDA to approve them. FDA tends to
grant them breakthrough device status, which sort of waves some
of the quote, unquote, regulatory red tape for these
things. But we have, you know, Elon Musk having a very
prominent role in the government right now, he doesn't have to
divest from any of his companies at all in that role, and neither
does another PayPal Mafia figure who's now also now a special
government employee, David Sacks the crypto AI czar. And as
crypto AI czar, it's very possible he could partner with
someone like O'Neill, who is also a very big advocate for AI
and healthcare, and see some of the stuff expanded as well. And
I would definitely encourage people to pay attention to how
this could potentially advance, because it has very Orwellian
possibilities if they are collecting not just state our
data from our external activities and our external
environment. There's this really crazy push to surveil everything
and sort of mine all the data possible. You have companies
tied to the current administration, for example,
creating the internet of forests, trying to hook up every
tree in the Amazon rainforest to mine biodata out of rain forest
trees. It's, it sounds bonkers, but there you know that there's
ambitions to do that to people as well, and create the so
called Internet of bodies, which military contractors and think
tanks like the RAND Corporation have been writing about for
years. And it's really not, I mean, I think up Purdue, or some
other university like that, recently created a whole center
dedicated to accelerating the development of the Internet of
bodies. Silicon Valley has been pushing the wearable agenda for
some time, and I think we could potentially see the push for
that come through under the guise of health. Initially it
was like, Look how cool google glasses are, and look at my VR
Apple helmet. And now I guess Facebook has made these like Ray
Ban looking ones that they think will not look as insane on
people.
MJ: My friend has a parent, they look completely stupid. Yeah,
WW: you should break them for him. Be like, Hey, did you know
Facebook started as a DARPA project? Can I borrow those for
a second and take them to the garage? I'm sorry, getting a
little too opinionated there. But anyway, this really is an
ambition of that. And I think you know, when you have someone
like Larry Ellison of Oracle, who was previously contracted to
buy biosurveil COVID 19. Vaccine recipients coming out and
saying, we're going to have all these AI Personalized Cancer
vaccines. They're going to be personalized. They're going to
have to do gather the testing data on you after you receive
them. And they may not do the same method they did with COVID
19 with like blanket mandates, but it's very possible there
will be some, some other type of coercive measure to try and get
people to adopt this. Because a big theme, whether it's
healthcare or really anything else, like I mentioned earlier,
in reference to the SDGs, is about creating new markets that
will make, you know, this oligarch class very wealthy, and
entrench their power and sort of lead to this Neo, futile, Neo
feudalism in society. And I think this is one of those, you
know, ways they could do that, because the only way they can
get people to want these products is to create, you know,
use public policy as the enabling environment for these
markets, essentially. So it's kind of crazy, honestly, to see
a lot of the mental gymnastics that have been used to sort of
explain away the Stargate announcement or, let Nick's
comment about buying the US government now, buying equity in
COVID 19, mRNA vaccine companies, or any of the other
things we've discussed today, even when our article came out
on Jim O'Neill and his potential to undermine, you know, a lot of
these early MAHA ambitions, you know, pretty much crickets from
a lot of the big influencers in that in that movement, which
honestly, you know, is kind of telling in Its in itself as
well, but also just allow a very little interest in addressing
Palantir, really at all. And Palantir, of course, is a
company that has expanded under every administration. It's a
bipartisan, you know, it's the engine on which the quote,
unquote, Deep State runs. But yet, no one in this
administration, or, you know, it's, it's supporters. Really
wants to talk about Palantir, really, very much at all. And
how many investors in Palantir, O'Neill included. But also, you
know, people like Joe Lonsdale was a major donor to Trump.
David Sacks is also an investor in Palantir. He's the crypto AI
czar. And, of course, Peter Thiel co founded Palantir, and
Palantir has played an out. Has numerous contracts with the US
military and other you know, all of every 18 intelligence all 18
of the US intelligence agencies also very involved in Ukraine,
which Kennedy was a big critics of, as well as the genocide in
Gaza, which RFK, of course, is not a critic of. But
nevertheless, Palantir has become kind of ubiquitous today.
They also run a lot of the data for the British NHS National
Health Service, and they also run it for HHS, which I know you
covered recently on your piece about the Palantir run center
for forecasting and outbreak analysis at the CDC, and I think
that's worth covering a little bit here too, as we as we try
and wrap up here to talk about sort of how, you know, a new
paradigm, if there's a new quote, unquote public health
emergency, how lockdowns or any of these other measures that
became infamous during COVID might be implemented, quote,
unquote, more gently, as a way to make people think that, you
know, there's been an improvement over past, you know,
after post COVID, when, in reality, a lot of these same
tactics that are sort of very probable in a Future pandemic
scenario were really tested out during COVID to a significant
extent. Yeah. And
MJ: just like, I'll get into the bigger picture. CFA center for
forecasting and outbreak analytics, the Palantir runs CDC
program you just mentioned, mentioned in a second the bigger
picture stuff. But just like, regarding that comment you made
about nano chips, I think, and must near link a lot of times,
when I bring that up to people, I think they kind of roll their
eyes and like, it sounds ridiculous. Like, this is sci fi
at this point, but like, so just for example, this center for
forecasting and outlay, outbreak analytics, the Innovate they
have this thing called the Innovate branch, and that's
responsible for collaborating with, quote, academic, private
sector and inter agency partners as part of its goal to create
products, tools and enterprise enhancements in order to make
pandemic data analysis flexible, fast and scalable for CFA
customers, including state, tribal, local authorities and
right now, you know, take note of that line where it says that
they're working with interagency partners to create products and
tools and enterprise enhancements to make this data
sharing more vast and flexible. We noted in our article on Jim
O'Neill that that ARPA-H, that program that we mentioned
earlier, that was initially a pre crime program, is actually.
Creating a device, or, I mean, so they commissioned four
different teams to develop bio electronic devices to be
implanted in patients through minor outpatient surgery. So
that's literally from the ARPA-H website. That's not me talking.
That's them, yeah, and one so, like one team is aiming to
create a living Sentinel, is what they call it, to measure
key biomarkers in the body and monitor their bodily conditions
in real time. And then all of the teams are aiming to develop
an implantable, living pharmacy program to deliver therapeutic
molecules to the patient on demand for an extended period.
So okay, great, yeah, right there. So right there. So right
there. You have this thing that's going to, I guess,
automatically feed you these therapeutic, you know, maybe,
maybe even
WW: don't ask what the molecules are. It's like going to the spa,
MJ: yeah, exactly, right. And it's made just for you, right?
Because now they have this thing to constantly collect data from
they got
WW: everyone, a lot of people's DNA, through COVID vaccine
testing, and Palantir took all of that data
MJ: right, and now they want to get more of it, I guess, because
they want to create a limited SNL to constantly analyze your
genealogy or mine.
WW: People constantly for bio data, and have the AI constantly
awash in data that our bodies generate, because data is the
new oil. So you have to tap every possible source you can
for data. And the best way to generate data is to continually
extract it from something that's alive. So that's why, I think,
you know, we're having a lot of this push into Internet of
bodies, the Internet of forests and all of these things, because
the parameters of a living thing are constantly in flux, right?
Because it's alive, it's not inert, and so you can generate a
lot of data and have, I mean, the more, the more successful
your AI will become, is determined by how much data it's
feeding on, and also the quality of that data, right? So I think
that's one of the incentives here. And again, I think people
might sort of be ignoring brain machine interfaces at their own
risk, because there are a considerable amount of ties to
that industry from this administration. So again, I
mean, obviously Elon Musk is probably the most obvious
because of Neuralink, which has had a lot of controversies over
the amount of animals that died during their animal trials, for
example. And if the FDA under Trump is very amenable to BCIs,
we could see them potentially commercial, commercialized over
the next four years. Because, again, that's something. Those
are devices that have to undergo FDA approval to in order to go
on the market. But there's several companies that are
farther along than Neuralink are. One of those is Blackrock
Neurotech, which recently received a very significant
investment from the stablecoin issuer tether, which has a lot
of ties to Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce. And
tether, of course, is also very much connected to rumble,
rumble. Of course, also tied to Howard Lutnick, also tied to JD
Vance, the Vice President and Peter Thiel and their general
counsel just became the number two guy at the CIA Michael
Ellis. And then they're also connected to tether. Also
invested really heavily in this firm called Satellogic, which
is a satellite surveillance company that's involved in
they're building the internet of forests, for example, for the
purpose of turning each hectare of the Amazon into basically
like a token that you can buy. It sounds totally insane, but
it's
MJ: true. And Satellogic is also kind of connected, oh, I mean,
it's directly connected to Palantir, because they have a
five year partnership, right?
WW: Yes, yes, they're contracting with Palantir right
now. And Lutnick is on the board of that one, and Steve Mnuchin,
who was Treasury Secretary on during Trump's first term as the
chairman of the board. So it's interesting that you have people
like musk doing sort of the satellite Digital finance and
brain chip play, and you have tether basically replicating
that play, and they both have significant ties to the
government, and they would, you know, a lot of the companies in
that web need government approval in order to get their
products on the market. I don't know that seems like a
disturbing setup for Internet of bodies stuff going forward. And
I think there's going to be a lot of different ways this stuff
is sold to a reluctant audience, which would be Trump's base, I
think, but probably not exclusively Trump space. I think
there's plenty of people on the on the left that are not really
interested in this, in this stuff, either. But I've already
sort of seen people sort of in the the Trump supporting sphere
say things like, mRNA is fine as long as there's no mandates and
sort of, kind of changing the the realm of the. Discussion a
little bit already, or we can't hinder innovation. And a lot of
the, of course, the Liberty worship of people like Elon, I
think you know, you've had, there's people like Tim pool
that have tweeted very supportively of Neuralink. Press
releases being like, Neuralink, let's go. So I mean, I mean,
that's very possible we could see more of that, and then, I
don't know, I don't know exactly how they're going to get people
to use that stuff, but I think they won't have any problem
getting it through FDA approval under this administration. Yeah.
MJ: I mean, like, it seems like the go to strategy for, you
know, big capital or big businesses, basically, I mean,
it's the national security strategy. It's the creating
these phantom enemies. I'm reading this book right now
called drug cartels do not exist by as well. I don't remember the
author's name, actually, but, um, he talked, he talks about
the the creation of a phantom enemy or something, basically
this ever changing thing. And, I mean, and principal enemies,
yeah, and basically the that seems to be the strategy for
kind of everything that they want to do that is that that
would normally be met with skepticism by the public. And it
kind of tends to work. I mean, like, you know, when the
internet was first coming out, it was recognized as a tool of
surveillance by the military industrial complex. And there
was actually a lot of resistance that the military met when they
were trying to utilize universities like MIT and other
places to develop this stuff by the student body that was, you
know, radical and anti war at the time, and now it's, you
know, no one really cares. I was telling my friends about this
center for forecasting and outbreak analytics piece that I
wrote for your website for Unlimited Hangout. And, you
know, I told them, oh, well, it's this thing where the
there's this apparatus between big healthcare and Silicon
Valley, and they're trying to predict disease outbreaks before
they occur, so that they can develop procured policy that's
specified at certain communities to lock them down or and then my
friend said, Isn't that a good thing? They'll
WW: sell it as a good thing. They'll be like, well, here we
go. We don't have to lock down the whole country. We only have
to lock down the areas that need to be locked down right exactly
MJ: and that. And then that's the pitch, I guess, for kind of
everyone. But specifically at those like people that were
skeptical of the more universal style non pharmaceutical
intervention policies during COVID 19? Well, oh, now it's
more objective, and it's just the people that need to get shut
down, right? But, but the thing that we did, I think, is really
important, worth noting regarding the Center for
forecasting and outbreak analytics and Palantir's role in
it. Basically, the Center for forecasting and outbreak
analytics seems to be the office that is dedicated to carrying
out what the CDC calls its common operating picture, where
they want to create this consortium of academic, private
sector and interagency partners, dedicated to constantly
analyzing and collecting bio data to predict pandemic
outbreaks and correspondingly prepare and respond for them
when they happen or may happen, and the Center for forecasting
and out and and that strategy of doing that actually comes out
from the total Information Awareness Program, which you've
covered extensively you can probably get into, probably too
Unknown: much, yes, Yeah,
MJ: and that's important, because the total information
awareness for awareness program at its core was a pre crime
program, and it sought to use, it's to tap things like
financial records. And I mean at the time, everything, yeah,
everything about you, everything, everything was
available at
WW: the total they really meant it,
MJ: yeah, at the time, I don't think that we they really had
Apple watches and Fitbits and
WW: iPhones. Wanted them, and they got them now, yeah,
MJ: and to stop terrorism before it happened. And, I mean, you
could see, like, if you go back, I can't think of but these
WW: ideas are not old. When Trump was in office, the last
time he called on Silicon Valley to develop software to detect
mass shooters before they strike, and then you had the
Harpa program that his administration was considering,
basically offering to do that by running, you know, social media
posts through AI to determine which Americans show early
warning signs of neuropsychiatric violence, which
probably would be literally everyone on Twitter, but, you
know,
MJ: yeah, and then, and then Peter Thiel with that company. I
can't remember his exact involvement. I think he's an
investor in it, or it was a seed fund, or something ClearView, AI
actually scanned main investor, right? Main investor actually.
Did that exact strategy, you know, scouring social media, I
think, via AI, yes, track down people that were at the January
6 protest and arrest them. And a lot of those people were, you
know, like, I mean, there's still a lot that are awaiting
trial. I think, Well, I think Trump just pardoned them,
actually. But up until recently, at least, they
WW: bragged about using facial recognition to have those people
arrested by law enforcement. Yeah, right. And people don't
realize is that this is really an outgrowth of the war on
domestic terror. There were explicit efforts said by Bill
Gates, but also maybe tech billionaires You don't hate
about combining national security with health security.
And that is why Palantir is running it for the national
security state, and they're also running it for HHS. The goal is
to fuse those two things into one thing. And the way they'll
probably do it, or the easiest way for them to manufacture
consent for that, is what they tried to do with the 2001
anthrax attacks and and talk about bio terror. And, you know,
there was a, there was sort of efforts to see these kind of
narratives in early COVID. 19 Neo Nazis are licking doorknobs
and giving people COVID That was literally like stories that were
that happened. Those were real stories used to sort of fear
monger this type of stuff. And I think, you know, they may try,
and you know, they're not a creative bunch. They like to
recycle a lot of their narratives and their old
playbooks. Look no further than the Sean Ryan show that and but
I think people should be very cognizant of this stuff, because
it's going to be framed as a win. They will say, Oh, we only
have to lock down this community in that community, and not the
whole country, and people that criticize the COVID response,
I'm sure many of them will applaud it. But the problem is,
this was actually tested out during COVID 19 itself,
basically the Israeli equivalent of Palantir, as it relates to
COVID 19 response, and I say that in the context of Palantir
contracting contract with Operation warp speed. But the
Israeli equivalent of that in the COVID 19 era was this firm
called diagnostic robotics, and they were given a contract to
basically predict COVID outbreaks in Rhode Island before
they happen by then Governor of Rhode Island, Gina Raimondo, who
later became Biden's Commerce Secretary, and this firm, if you
believe their own numbers, they put out in like, their PR
leaflets and stuff, say that their algorithm is 70 75%
accurate, and that's not audited, so we could assume that
it's probably lower than what they publicly profess in their
sales pitch. So maybe it's 60% maybe it's 50% but that's
getting dangerously closer. In the case of 50% literally is the
same as a coin toss. You're deciding to either shut down
entire local economies based on algorithm that is not 100%
accurate. So I would argue that isn't better. You're still
taking away, um, people's civil liberties based on faulty data.
And if it's about, you know, using AI algorithms that aren't
accurate either, and not totally racially biased. To be like this
ethnic minority needs the shot, and this one doesn't, which is
exactly what Palantir did under Operation warp speed. That's
what their Tiberius program, literally was about, you know,
the it definitely becomes very Orwellian, and so maybe it's not
collective punishment, maybe in the same way as during the COVID
19 era. But this is ultimately this idea of sort of
personalizing things, whether it's personalized COVID vaccines
or personalized, localized pandemic response. This was the
goal. And a lot of this stuff, as I noted, during the COVID
era, you know, the antecedents of it were all sort of dreamt up
and and first attempted, you know, in the immediate post 911
era. I don't know, it seems like a lot of those programs have not
gone away. And actually, you know, a lot of the total
information awareness programs, they were specifically called
Bio surveillance, and some of them included, you know,
surveilling wastewater to prevent disease before it
happens. And that was literally a program that was launched
during COVID in that Palantir runs. And I've argued in my work
that Palantir is just the privatized version of total
information awareness, because Peter Thiel and Alex carp went
to the guy running total information awareness, and we're
basically like, tell us what to do, because we want to make this
a private company now that you're being defunded by
Congress, and then get all this money from the CIA. And the top
people at the CIA that we're working on total information
awareness with the DARPA people and John Poindexter become the
main funders of Palantir with Peter Thiel. I mean, I don't
know, but I should say, in the context of the PayPal presidency
theme, that Palantir itself started off as the anti fraud
algorithm at PayPal, and PayPal itself, as a company, started as
a concept. Sequence of its founders having extensive
conversations with every three letter agency that would talk to
them. That's according to PayPal co founder Max Levchin, so who
gave a spirited defense of NSA warrantless spying in the
Snowden era. So so much for that whole libertarian veneer of the
PayPal crowd, but that's fine, and
MJ: you know, like you're talking about these models that
are going to be dictating curated policy for at least
communities, maybe individuals. One of the things that the
Center for forecasting and outbreak analytics plans to do
with this bio data is use it to dictate the community migration
rights of communities. So basically, like, where you can
go and enter it. I'm presuming they don't specify exactly,
yeah,
WW: the whole Oh no, that sounds a lot like what Trump supporters
were calling 15 minute cities not that long ago, right? Yeah,
hey, but it's our elites that are running it. Max,
MJ: yeah, Barry Weiss did an episode with Peter Thiel, and I
forgot exactly what counter elites.
WW: Yes, they're so different,
MJ: yeah, evidenced by Elon Musk taking over, I can't remember
the name of the government department, and then actually
talking with Google, DeepMind AI to basically take over, to start
helping dictate which departments to cut, and
everything. So they're totally different all these people. And
you know, like, regarding, like, this inaccuracy that these
hallucinations, I guess, that you could call the AI
experiences, where they aren't correct a lot of the time. I
mean, just for example, how, like, even these chat bot ones
are pretty inaccurate, are actually super inaccurate every
time I've used them. You know, I so if, even if, the chat bots
are inaccurate, I can't imagine how the disease forecasting ones
are, but, but they
WW: don't need to be accurate. I mean, it's an industry with a
lot of over hype issues, and a lot of these companies that are
the biggest AI companies, especially when it's like legacy
big tech companies making them like Google or Oracle or
whatever. A lot of them have very deep national security
connections from their origins on, and are arguably fronts for
those agencies, at which point you have to, you know, they only
really need the perception that the algorithm is accurate
anyway. And I don't think you know a lot of what you brought
up earlier about like Ellison saying, AI surveillance systems
will have people be on their best behavior. The whole idea of
the Panopticon and all of that is the idea that you know you're
being watched constantly, but you don't know if you're being
watched, so that induces obedience and, quote, unquote,
correct behavior. And so you know they could, you know, the
idea that the algorithm is monitoring these things, even if
it's not accurate, it can still, you know, have a lot of the same
the same consequences, as long as people think it's accurate.
And I think there's a lot of perception manipulation. I think
that's pretty clear for the public, and a lot of it is
trying to manage how the public feels about it. And having these
sort of AI surveillance systems is meant to sort of have that
kind of panopticon effect, effect, I think, I don't think
they're really in these applications really meant to
work very much, you know, as an example, you know, like law
enforcement use of AI in Britain, the Met Police had a
contract with, I forget what company, but it was found to be
notoriously inaccurate. They were losing it for live facial
recognitions of all sorts of public events in the UK, and it
came out that it was like dismally, its accuracy was just
dismal, and they made no effort to correct or change vendors.
Why would that be? Because they don't care, right? I mean,
because if they did care, they would obviously change vendors.
There's no shortage of people selling that particular product.
But the idea is that there's, you know, they're being watched.
But it's important to point out too that they're also very
racially biased, which, you know, has, you know, I argued in
my work in the COVID era, there was a lot of eugenics era people
that have rebranded Bill Gates become kind of infamous as a
figure pushing policies analogous to that. And, you
know, I think people should be pretty wary of that, especially
when Palantir has evolved because of its history of racial
bias and things like pre crime, which they call predictive
policing, and also in warp speed, and also people like
Peter Thiel and Alex carp like complete obsession with race
stuff. Like Alex carp is, like, convinced that, like, white
Americans are going to push him out of a high rise building
because he's half black and half Jewish. And he's like, I'm
amazed I haven't been murdered by a different race yet. I don't
think that sounds like a sane person that I want. Having this
much power over our surveillance state and healthcare data, and
that's going to have the power to segment populations and
decide what, quote, unquote, medical interventions they're
prescribed by the state in some sort of national level health
event or whatever that's I mean, it's just, it's bonkers, man. I
feel like I'm ranting here though. I mean, there's so much
we could cover, and I think we're getting close to the time
we usually wrap this podcast up. But is there anything else you'd
like to note on any of these fronts or any any any points or
further reading you might want to recommend to viewers?
MJ: Yeah. I mean, I would say that people should, I don't know
if they can. I where they could get it, because I'm an Unlimited
Hangout premium member, so I got it, but the Solari report, AI
Revolution, Final Coup D'etat by you, I think that that is really
interesting regarding this stuff that we're talking about, the
bigger picture elements and the way that it's going to be sold
to us versus the way that it actually works. Because,
because, I mean, you talk about how AI, I mean we, you just give
perfect example of how AI does it has these hallucinations,
these things, these, you know, insane inaccuracies in my own
experience I have in my limited experience using these things. I
remember I remember I talked to some friends. They were saying,
Oh, my God, ChatGPT is amazing. You can ask it anything, and it
gets it right every time. And I said, Are you Are you serious?
Every time I've asked it something, and I've fact checked
that it gets it wrong almost every single time. Like, for
example, the other day, I saw that Trump's new press secretary
is named Karoline Leavitt. I was like, Huh? I wonder if she's
related to Mike Leavitt. So I asked ChatGPT just to see what
it would say. And I was like, yes, Mike Leavitt, Karoline
Karoline Leavitt's Father, I looked it up. No, that's not true. I said,
That's not true. Oh, sorry, it's actually his niece. That's not
true either. Oh, they're actually cousins, not true. So
it kind of went wrong like five times in a row on this basic
question, yeah.
WW: Well, I think there are things that AI can probably do
effectively. I've heard from people that it's quite good at
coding, for example, and some other things, but obviously the
code that it makes has to go back and be checked and audited,
like by a human and stuff. I don't know. I personally, well,
I'm not, I'm not a big AI evangelist. Quite the opposite,
as people who follow my work closely would would know. But I
think the point here, whether you're an advocate or sort of a
skeptic, is that a lot of the applications it's being pitched
for at the law enforcement, national security level, and
also in healthcare, the accuracy matters a lot there, especially
because there's, you know, if they don't really necessarily
give it human oversight, which in a lot of these cases, it's,
it's pretty minimal, I think. And as we're moving into the
world of autonomous warfare and autonomous everything will
probably become, you know, less human oversight as time goes on.
I think people should be, you know, very wary of that, and
know that that accuracy matters. And one thing I do want to add
before we wrap up here, as it relates to mRNA, stuff likely
coming on the market in significant numbers over the
next four years. If people want to push for something at the
policy level that may actually end up happening, have products
with mRNA in it be labeled, whether that's, you know, meat
that has that was injected, the animal was injected with mRNA,
why it was alive, like in the food supply or in the
pharmaceutical system, I think people have a right to know, and
so, you know, if we can't necessarily, you know, trust
that it'll be kept the market, even with RFK in charge of HHS
or something like that, I think there should Be a I think it
would be kind of practical to push to have informed consent,
at the very least, about what products have mRNA or genetic
material and which ones do not.
MJ: Yeah, and RFK is actually one of his things that he's been
pushing, I think more lately has been this right to know thing.
So if the Trump campaign really, or the Trump administration
really does support RFK, then that shouldn't be a problem. But
I kind of doubt it. Well, see, yeah, I kind of doubt it, but,
and yeah, I mean, I don't have much else to say. All I'll say
is, because I don't think we got the comments super in depth on
the center for forecasting and outbreak analytics. But, you
know, I would say the big picture read of that is that
it's the resurrection of the bio surveillance elements of total
information awareness, and the entrenchment of it into a full
center dedicated to carrying out this kind of bio surveillance to
predict pandemics constantly the entrenchment of that into our
current public health agency and private academic apparatus. It's
really resurrecting that and implementing it. And I think
we'll see a concrete way eventually, and and, and it's
going to. Yeah, and the reason that that's important it's
pairing with total information awareness is because the data
that it taps has a it's dual use, like so much of this stuff,
like, like you just mentioned how AI might be useful for some
things. That might be true, but you have to look at the interest
of the people that are implementing it and what they
actually want to do, and what their incentives are and
ideologies are. And it just so happens that this bio
surveillance data is just as useful for pre crime purposes,
which Thiel, which, as you mentioned, Palantir and Alex
carp and Peter Thiel just privatized as soon as Congress
killed it, and so that's something to be wary of for
anyone that might see this predictive health stuff as
beneficial, because I understand why it's enticing. Like I know
someone that has an Apple watch, and their heart slowed down and
it automatically called an ambulance for them, and they
said that their Apple Watch saved their life, right? I see
why it's enticing, but those dual use elements that are very
apparent, if you look at the origins and the people involved,
have to be considered. So that's all I'd say, great.
WW: Well, I think those are great points to add. And I would
also add too, that, you know, total information awareness
needs to be seen for what it is. It is a neocon program that has
been rebranded. This is like a neoconservative agenda that
really goes back to the Reagan era in terms of the idea of
using, you know, this type of surveillance, and a lot of it,
including the person that, you know, ran a total information
awareness and is considered the godfather of modern
surveillance, John Poindexter, he was one of the, actually the
highest ranking member of the Reagan administration to be
indicted as part of Iran Contra. And Iran Contra was trying to
develop a similar surveillance program for the for the purpose
of clamping down on domestic dissent in the event of a
vaguely defined national emergency and in the power of
the state. This is not good. The government has been has misused
this kind of power and this kind of data many times. To quote a
former NSA and CIA director, Michael Hayden, we kill people
with metadata. People need to be very careful about what kind of
data you're willingly going to surrender over to the
government, and when you're allowing them, you know insight
into what your internal body is doing. And also, in the case of
your you know of the brain chip, what you're what you're
thinking. And it doesn't even have to go as far as a brain
chip anymore, if you believe any of the you know some of the
sales pitches of technology currently being touted, but I
think we need to be really aware and cognizant. And, you know,
it's someone for people that want to know the risks of this.
Actually, a big tech, beloved futurist you all know, a Harari,
made it quite clear how this could easily lead to the end,
what he calls the end of free will and authoritarianism that's
just completely unprecedented, where the state can know, even
if you're externally expressing one reaction to a policy or a
politician, if you're internally showing a, you know, a negative
response, they can, as he says, send you to the Gulag the next
Morning. That doesn't really sound very appealing to me, and
not that it would happen overnight, but if we continue to
be sort of coaxed into this, this complacency that all these
big tech bros with ties to the national security state have our
best interests at heart when they're actually, you know, sort
of implementing these, you know, this kind of overtly
neoconservative agenda, you know, I think there are definite
dangers that come with that. So Max, where can people follow
your work?
MJ: Yeah, so I have Twitter, which I sometimes tweet from.
It's at Maxie Jones, so that's spelled max M, a, x, y, y,
Jones, J, O, N, E, S, and I also have a sub stack that I've that
I don't really use that much, but I plan to use it more,
called anti Jones, dot sub stack.com, I think, hopefully,
yeah, okay, that's what it's called. So I'm going to start
writing on that more soon. And then, of course, you can check
out my articles at Unlimited Hangout. Thanks
WW: very much for your insights and reporting max. And really
enjoyed having you on the podcast. Love to have you back
on again sometime, and thanks to everyone for listening,
especially those who support this podcast, and we'll catch
you all in the next episode. Thanks very much.
MJ: Thanks, Whitney.