WW: Hey, and welcome back to Unlimited Hangout. I'm your host
Whitney Webb. The past few weeks have been very eventful for
American politics to say the least. But today we're going to
focus on Peter Thiel, the man behind Donald Trump's recent
vice presidential pick J.D. Vance, and has now outsized
influence on now very likely second Trump administration. As
noted in a recent article published last week on unlimited
Hangout, Thiel is responsible not only for Vance's relatively
short political career, as well as his once rocky but now cozy
relationship with Trump, but also for Vance's venture capital
career that preceded it. Thiel, in my opinion, is one of the
most misunderstood billionaire political donors and kingmakers
in the United States. And I would argue that's by design. He
spent a small fortune to frame himself and have others frame
him as a libertarian and as anti state when his business
decisions, particularly those that made him a billionaire, as
well as many of his investments point to him being of a very
different political persuasion. His biggest companies from
PayPal to Palantir incubated close ties with intelligence
agencies From their inception, aiding and abetting financial
and other forms of incredibly invasive and warrantless
surveillance against innocent Americans. His investments
include companies tied to foreign intelligence that are
now taking over us 911 Call Centers to hoover up all of your
data from your smartphone and give it to law enforcement, as
well as companies ushering in an era of AI powered mass murder
currently being piloted by the Ukrainian military. And now the
IDF in Gaza. What will Thiel's influence which was already
significant during Trump's first term, be an unlikely second term
particularly with his protege J.D. Vance as co pilot. Joining
me today to discuss this and more Stavroula Papps Stavroula
is an unlimited hangout contributor who also contributes
to several other sites, including propaganda and focus
for doctress and the gray zone in addition to her own substack,
the link to which we will be putting in the show notes. She
is based in Greece and is also a comedian and a media PhD
student. Thanks so much for joining me today. Steph, really
great to have you back on unlimited hangout.
SP: Thanks so much for having me looking forward to it.
WW: I am too because not a lot of people in alternative media
write about Peter Thiel, but you definitely have any written some
great ones for unlimited Hangout. So happy to get into
that later. But first off, I think, you know, for our
listeners, it would be good to give a quickly established the
connection between J.D. Vance and Peter Thiel, which is the
subject of a recent article that we put out last week on
unlimited Hangout, as I mentioned earlier, entitled "The
Man Behind Trump's VP Pick, It's Worse Than You Think." So in
that article, I discussed how Peter Thiel first recruited J.D.
Vance into his circle, while Vance was a student at Yale Law
School. And shortly thereafter, Vance joins Peter Thiel's
investment firm, one of several, but the one he joined was
mithril capital. He worked there for two years before joining
revolution ventures, which is from one of the AOL cofounders
and running it's Rise of the Rest Seed Fund. And Vance later
created his own venture capital firm called Narya. Capital,
which was heavily backed by Peter Thiel, as well as Google
CEO Eric Schmidt, who's actually a major donor to Biden has been
paying a lot of staff in Biden's White House like illegally, even
though it's been widely reported on nothing was done about it.
And he basically directs not just the entire Science and
Technology Policy of the Biden administration, but also of the
national security state by leading the National Security
Commission on AI pretty crazy. And he and Thiel, a Schmidt and
Thiel, rather, are both key members of the steering
committee of the Bilderberg conference, so they obviously
agree on a lot more than they don't at least behind closed
doors like is the situation at Bilderberg. And after that,
Thiel donated heavily to Vance his political career which
launched during the 2022 election cycle. He gave $15
million to Vance's then Senate campaign. And that was the
largest donation ever given to one Senate candidate ever. So
that's pretty significant advance when he ran for office,
and that cycle was a never Trumper I believe, comparing
Trump to Hitler and things like that, which was popular among
some Republicans at the time, of course, now is not and Peter
Thiel was the person that accompanied Vance to Trump's
Mar-a-Lago to sort of smooth over that rocky relationship.
And then it was to also connect advance to a lot of other
prominent Silicon Valley donors, including David Sacks, who was
part of the so called PayPal Mafia, along with Peter Thiel.
And now another PayPal co-founder, who created PayPal
with Thiel Elon Musk, had was a big factor in Trump's election
of Vance for VP along with David Sacks as well. And yeah, I feel
like it's pretty clear and not just from my reporting, but also
from you know, reporting pretty much from Everywhere people. As
soon as the pic was announced a lot of reports came out,
discussing expressly the close relation relationship between
J.D. Vance and Peter Thiel. And people have been calling him
essentially a protege of Thiel. So I guess it now would be a
good time to sort of get into Peter Thiel himself and why he
matters, as well as perhaps a discussion of Peter Thiel. Other
protegees, which Stavroula and I have both written about, well,
rather, you've written about Sam Altman, I have not expressly but
he is an important one to keep in mind because of his role, not
just of in OpenAI, but also with World coin and the project that
that hopes to develop into. But we've both written about Palmer
Luckey, as well, who's behind the defense contractor, Anduril.
So I guess there's a lot of different ways we could start
talking about Peter Thiel. I know Stavroula that you've done
some work on his political philosophy and outlook. And I
think that's probably a good places to start. So what can you
tell us? Sure.
SP: And I think that this is a great place to start. Because
when people are discussing Peter Thiel, okay, a lot of people
will comment that he's libertarian, but I don't really
think anything he actually does is in line with the supposedly
libertarian belief, right? Yeah.
WW: not agree more. Yeah, like,
SP: it's just, it's just not in line with that. Actually, I
think the best way to really summarize his worldview is when
I was doing research for this podcast episode, I had found a
video clip where he was essentially saying, technology,
he viewed technology as an alternative to politics. Okay.
And the quote was essentially along the lines of I still can't
believe he said this. No, I totally can. But it's a wild
quote, he essentially was like, you know, in politics, you have
to beg and plead with people to convince them to do things your
way. But what if we, you know, what if I didn't do that, what
if I and the few people who unilaterally agree with me,
could change things through technology, right. And so he's
essentially saying, For this reason, I see technology as this
amazing alternative politics. And to me, this type of quote,
explains pretty well, what he does, because if we see what
he's done over the last, you know, however long a couple of
decades now, really is that he has really prioritize putting
his name over essentially everything prominent in the tech
industry, through Founders Fund, you know, through his venture
capital firm, he's essentially given rise to some of the
biggest names in tech, including Stripe, SpaceX, Anduril,
Palantir, Meta, OpenAI, etc. You know, he's really decided he's
going to throw his weight that way. And, you know, if he helps
found one of these companies, or if he gives them a substantial
amount of money, I'm I'm sure that he's bought, at least in
some respect, he's bought some amount of loyalty from them, and
some amount of influence from them forever, right. And so I
think that he kind of understands or the way he
understands this is that if he can invest in technology, if he
can make things happen that way, he can essentially become very
powerful and do things his way. And I think that that's a
reasonable way to describe him. Now. I think when researching
for this article, I think Newsweek had said that he and
Schmidt were two of the most influential figures at
Bilderberg steering committee whatsoever. I think the person
that had written a biography on Thiel had described him as one
of the most powerful if not the most powerful person on earth.
And so what we have to understand is whether or not
technology as an alternative to politics is ridiculous. It
doesn't really matter. Thiel seems to have done this
successfully. And, you know, another thing that's worth
pointing out is that he just consistently has so much money
to burn. And I would actually argue that he's essentially
applying the principles of venture capital to politics and
geopolitics as we know it. You know, we're, yeah, we're, I
think, you know, if we see venture capital is something
where, okay, I'm a venture capitalist, I have a lot of
money to invest in companies. I know the vast majority of them
will fail. But a vast, the small few that will succeed will give
me extremely high rates of returns on my investments. He's
not just seeing this about the financial game. He's seeing this
to the extent that he can obtain political power. And I think in
this respect, it's important to bring up Thiel's Fellowship,
which is I think, $100,000 to college age students. About a
very young age people that he essentially says to these
people, look, if I give you this fellowship of $100,000, you can
develop whatever idea you would like, I want you to do this, but
you have to drop out of college. So he's essentially, through
that he's been able to find people like Vitalik Buterin, and
the founder, the founder of Ethereum, right, or the creator
of Ethereum. So he's been able to kind of pick out very young,
bright minds this way. Give them money to establish these maybe
very successful ideas. And perhaps, I don't know,
necessarily exactly the relationship between the two,
the Tarik and Thiel right now. But I'd have to imagine that if
Thiel gives you this fellowship, he's essentially making this
career happen for you. It's going to be very hard to speak
out when he does something that you disagree with politically,
and I think that when it comes now to the Vance appointment,
for example, what we're also seeing is that Thiel, like
Schmidt is also very interested in gaming, the standard
political sector so that he's on both sides have deals at all
times. And, you know, just he just wants to be on both sides
of everything. And with this Vance appointment, it's my
understanding that he Schmidt and many other like Marc
Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz have, you know, they're
much more likely to support this ticket now that he's come out,
Trump has come out and picked advance. So what we're seeing is
though, even if to reject standard politics, he's still
going to gain both sides. He has the money and the influence to
be able to do it. And I think it's just snowballed. Right? So
many major companies are now kind of in his debt, let's say
because he's helped them to this extent.
WW: Yeah, I think that's definitely fair to say,
actually, the last article I wrote, which I co wrote with
Mark Goodwin for Unlimited Hangout, talked a lot about a
network that functions somewhat similarly to the Thiel
fellowship and how a lot of these Well, we in that article,
we talked about the crown fellowship at the Aspen
Institute, and also this endeavor network that sort of
sponsors focuses on sponsoring, you know, startups in the
expressly in the emerging world. And it's also deeply tied to the
Pay Pal network, and how through that, specifically endeavor,
they've developed these companies that are now partnered
up directly with eBay and PayPal, and are basically going
to be the rails on which this new financial system we're being
herded to runs on on Latin America. So you know, it feel I
would argue, as part of this wider network of influence, but
he's sort of spent a lot of money I feel like in a lot of
has bankrolled a lot of people on alternative media. And also,
I would assume, in mainstream media as well, to sort of frame
him as this libertarian figure, who's anti state and sort of
more like, right leaning. But when in reality, if you look at
a lot of you know, what he's done, he's definitely serviced
the national security state, regardless of the
administration. And has, like you said, sort of positioned
himself to essentially play both sides, which you can see also in
his, some of his protegees companies, Palmer Luckey, for
example, Anduril, you know, promotes what they've done
during the Obama administration has praised by administration
for giving them a bunch of contracts and a bunch of money.
Right, and then at the same timeframe themselves, as you
know, America first and Palmer Luckey, is now a big Trump
backers, particularly vocal after the J.D. Vance appointment
as well on all of this. So I think, you know, it's fair to
say, you know, whichever of these to connected companies,
you know, whoever's in office, they definitely like to cater to
either side. I think that's why, like you pointed out in the
recent article, clear view, a guy this facial recognition
startup that has taken all this, all these pictures off of like
Facebook, for example, which Peter Thiel essentially also
helped set up brags about sending AI, you know, helping
identify almost like 1000 people present at the Capitol on
January 6, some of whom have gone to prison. As a result of
that, obviously, that's a sales pitch, not geared toward Trump
supporters, obviously. And then Palantir itself has close ties
to people like you know, Biden's top intelligence official, Avril
Haines, a longtime consultant of Palantir. Alex Karp talks about
how he's used Palantir to stop the far right and Europe, how he
is. His deepest worry about the United States is the rise of the
quote unquote, far right in the United States, while at the same
time you have Trump framing himself, as you know, being in
the libertarian camp or more right leaning, and of course,
now much more in the in the Trump sphere than perhaps
previously. And you know, as I mentioned in the intro, and also
in my recent article, Peter Thiel was a huge part of the the
early days of the Trump administration, particularly its
transition team with an outsized influence over the Pentagon,
which resulted in quote unquote, Bonanza of contracts for
Palantir, during the first Trump administration, so I think we're
likely to see that again. And as far as the claim of this being,
you know, a libertarian and anti state guy, you know, not just
for the fact that he's given the state some of the most powerful
and Orwellian. And like, horrible weapons and its
arsenal, both like literally and figuratively. He's also been
pretty open that he views competition in the free market
as a bad thing, and basically says that his business, or the
way he approaches business, is to find a niche in the market
and to corner that market dominated and create a monopoly
because competition is bad for profits. And you cannot be a
free market libertarian and believe that, right? You're
basically, you know, saying you want a monopoly build. And if
you look at Peter, how Peter Thiel has set up his companies,
whether it's PayPal or Palantir, getting right in bed with the
national security state from the very beginning, so that they can
help you build and maintain those monopolies and not come
after you for having a monopoly. That's not part of their
wheelhouse, essentially. So I would not call that libertarian
at all. You know, it's definitely, at best technical
fascist, I don't know if you want to comment on that or have
anything else to add?
SP: Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, I suppose I would agree that
techno fascist is probably the best way to turn this
regardless, I just kind of ignore how Peter Thiel describes
himself in terms of libertarian, I just kind of ignore that
label, because I understand what else he's doing in the respect
of, its what you pointed out. I mean, he's definitely assisted
the surveillance state in a number of ways. You know, in
previous decades, I would say that, you know, he, he seems to
be quite on that, to be honest, considering, and we could get
into this if you'd like. But I think it would be worth pointing
out to people listening his role in total information awareness,
for example, where he essentially helped facilitate
LifeLog, Facebook, essentially, is what it is. And then as well,
as you know, Palantir is exactly that. I mean, it really, it
really is about significant data processing, data manipulation.
And I think if we look at some of the other things he's funded,
such as Carbyne911, that is another mess in terms of
surveillance, where I think, I mean, you've done more reporting
on this than I have, but my understanding of Carbyne911 is
that it's essentially this Israeli intelligence,
intelligence linked company that Thiel has also funded, that if
you make a call to it, it can extract any and all data from a
consumer smartphone. And so this is kind of a way to just super
juice up surveillance, let's say and I suppose the end goal of
that is to be able to try to build smart infrastructure, like
light post stuff like this that would eventually be able to call
the authorities and seven person being able to do that, you know,
and I think ClearView AI is definitely worth talking about
in that respect in terms of okay to do regardless about what
Thiel says, of his libertarian beliefs. i Why would he fund
something like ClearView AI? This is definitely telling us
he's not actually interested in freedom, at least as average
people see it. And I think what's really scary about
ClearView AI, and I think you've alluded to this is that I think
ClearView AI is essentially using the war in Ukraine as kind
of this way to try to come back or have this like, public
relations moment where it can normalize its image, because
obviously, it had been banned from a lot of the private sector
in the past simply because it freaked people out, a normal
person would see that ClearView AI is just scraping social media
for your face. And it's storing that data, a lot of people would
say I dislike this. And I think ClearView AI, it's the same
thing with January 6, it's been able to say see, we've been able
to use this war time moment in Ukraine to be able to help out
the Ukrainian military. See, it's okay to use facial
recognition technologies because when it comes to a crisis, or a
war or something like this, it's actually very useful. Don't you
want Ukraine to win is essentially what they're trying
to say with that. So just Peter Thiel's overall track record of
assisting these projects that are definitely about
surveillance, um, you know, tells me very much that he's not
actually interested in anything libertarian and I think what's
important to say about that, is that okay, maybe ClearView AI is
operating a lot and Ukraine right now, but that stuff is all
going to come back to the United States. states or, you know,
just the private domestic sphere, generally speaking, I
think um, the other thing that's worth pointing out is Thiel's
support of Aduril in the sense that Anduril is currently doing
this whole surveillance wall in America that can detect people
from like, almost three kilometers away. I mean, just
them, you're learning the tech to build this stuff that's
definitely going to be applied in the private sector and the
domestic sphere, right?
WW: Yeah, I think that's definitely true. And they are
deploying it or getting ready to deploy it on the domestic
sphere. I mean, people need to keep in mind that a lot of the
stuff that was originally piloted as part of the war on
terror, and of course, Palantir is privatized version of one of
those programs, which you mentioned earlier, Total
Information Awareness, the intent of that was always to
have it come home to roost and have there be a war on domestic
terror. They tried to sort of gin up support from that, during
the mid 1990s, after the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing. And
the target of that, quote, unquote, war has generally been
veterans, militia members, American gun owners, and
generally, those tend to be sort of right leaning pro
constitution. Conservatives, right. So what we've seen here,
in my opinion, through Thiel, and also, you know, through
other people that are sort of, you know, Allied in this same
sphere now is sort of to get the people who are to be targeted by
the surveillance to essentially sort of cheer it on. And, as far
as you know, like Anduril's virtual wall, goes that they're
building, you know, this has been framed as the solution to
the mass migration issue with the United States. Even though
it's been deployed for several years, and really has done
nothing to stem the tide of, you know, migrants that are crossing
over the US Mexico border, and you have Democrats for a long
time, you know, promoting the idea of a virtual quote unquote,
smart wall as opposed to a physical barrier. That was their
answer to Trump's first campaign promise or main promise, right?
During his first campaign of building a physical barrier, and
then when Trump was in office, he abandoned the policy of
building a physical barrier and instead became a major advocate
of the smart wall. And the smart wall construction has also
continued under the Biden administration. And I think,
with Trump on the campaign trail this time around, talking about
a how we desperately the United States desperately needs a
biometric entry exit system for the country. Anduril has been
setting it up, ClearView AI has the facial recognition tech. And
they're not just going to roll it out on the border, it's going
to be all ports of entry. And I think there's going to be some
tie in there with the DHS effort to institute the new REAL ID
requirements for people. And we've seen people that have, you
know, claimed to be against this kind of stuff like Ron DeSantis,
for example, promoting and pushing through digital IDs for
Floridians already the Florida smart ID and all of that I think
it's very likely that we're going to see a big push for
that, under a second Trump administration with with these
Thiel funded companies are playing an outsized role in
these systems systems to come. And unfortunately, this is a
global agenda, which again, I would like to remind people of
Peter Thiel's connection to Bilderberg where a lot of these
global policies are sort of developed behind closed doors,
of course, not the only place, you know, the World Economic
Forum annual meeting, and there's, you know, in several
other conferences they have, where these things are sort of
planned out and discussed. But you know, this is something that
is in line with the UN agenda 2030 Sustainable Development,
global goals, particularly SDG 16, which Interpol is the
implementing partner of and they created their global policing
goals. And the United States and pretty much most countries in
the world are members of ember, Interpol, and are implementing
this biometric digital ID system globally. And we saw, you know,
a lot of the beta testing for that being run under, you know,
during COVID, web with vaccine passports and all of that, but I
think these agendas are being going to be sold, you know, more
to Trump's base, you know, as we go into this election in the
United States, and it seems like it's being framed as a solution,
not just to the migration issue. But also it seems like the voter
ID thing is going to be, you know, the idea of having
biometric ID to vote as opposed to like, if you wanted voter ID
wanting like a physical Id like a driver's license or something
like all the ideas we've had before. You know, there's been
pushes from this within the Trump campaign. And I think it's
very much in line with what you're seeing these Silicon
Valley, big tech oligarchs building, and unfortunately, I
think, you know, they've, they're able to frame it to
people on the quote, unquote, left and they're able to frame
it to people in the quote unquote, right. And I think
Thiel in particular is a big part of that - selling this
technology in this this these technocratic solutions to people
on the quote unquote, right, based on whatever, you know,
problems are bothering them the most. And what concerns me too
is that I mean, if you think about Anduril in their virtual
border wall, you know, as you've written about Anduril also, you
know, doesn't just create drones for border surveillance, they
create drones that murder people, and they're increasingly
becoming, you know, taking humans out of the role of
decision making. And there's also major efforts within this
space. And this military intelligence, Silicon Valley
complex that we have to also put the tech in soldiers bodies and
all of this. So I know you've written about that extensively.
You know, what do you see this system building? I mean, I don't
think it's going to stop with just, you know, drone drones on
the border that are, you know, just watching people and
identifying people's faces with clear view AI or any other
number of potential facial recognition algorithms. I think
it's likely to expand into something, you know, much more
Orwellian and potentially deadly. What are your thoughts?
SP: Sure, I suppose I can talk a little bit in terms of
surveillance, but also, I can talk a little bit about these
Thiel backed companies role in wartime, or at least how it's
playing out in Ukraine. Would you like me to do a little bit
of both? Yeah, sure. I think it'd be great. Okay, that sounds
good. I think I think what's really critical is, if anybody's
interested in this topic, obviously, I've done some
reporting on it. But it's really worth your time to do some
reading about how AI is currently being implemented on
the battlefield, or at least what plans a lot of these to
back companies and not to back to mean, it's not only Peter
Thiel, companies that are doing this type of thing. But I think
what's really critical is that a lot of the major companies that
are acting in Ukraine are Thiel backed. And we've already talked
a little bit about ClearView AI. And I think that that company is
really important to talk about in terms of the surveillance
component, and the normalization of facial recognition
technologies and wartime and domestic capacities. But you
know, if we think a little bit about Anduril and Palantir, and
their work with AI powered machinery in the worst space,
that it I find this stuff to be really shocking. And I really
don't think that it's being discussed enough in, in the
public sphere whatsoever, to be honest, because if we look at
some of the current contracts, like Palantir has, for example,
or projects that they're working on, um, you know, one project,
for example, I could tell you a little bit would be Palantir is
artificial intelligence platform for defense. And you can look up
their demo online. But essentially, what's happened
here is that Palantir has used essentially, its its skill is in
data, data synthesis, data collection, processing, and
whatnot. So they're essentially saying, Look, we have this
ChatGPT, like chat bot, you can interact with where our software
gives you the information, it's collected about, let's say, your
enemy, that's three kilometers over there. We're compiling for
you suggestions based on the data that we've collected, about
what you can do about this target. For example, our Chatbot
is now suggesting you could hit them with this drone, do you
want to do that the person on the other end could hit yes. And
then it would essentially execute that, for example.
That's one of the more prominent things I would suggest people
look into, for example, I think a lot of people that are working
on military AI are working on similar models where AI is being
used to power military targeting, which is also being
done. Unfortunately, in the Gaza Strip, right, where the gospel
and lavender systems are both being used towards AI targeting
that can select targets much faster than human intelligence.
Yeah.
WW: How do you feel about the accuracy of that targeting? Is
it more efficient and more accurate than human targeting as
proponents have claimed? No,
SP: I in fact, I think it's not funny, but it's a little bit
funny how unreasonable the technology is in terms of some
of the accuracy. It's my understanding that a lot of the
tech isn't necessarily super accurate. And I think what's
also it's not, it's not, first of all, but what's important to
say on top of that, is that I don't really think like in
Israel, for example, I think a lot of the people that are using
these AI powered devices, you know, it's often claimed there
is a human The loop which makes it more safe, which is such a
joke, but essentially what's happened in practice is that no
one operating these AI powered systems actually goes and
checks. What is being suggested as the military target. They're
just going along with what the software is suggesting, oh,
this, this AI powered targeting system is suggesting I hit a
family. I don't know that because I'm not even I'm not
even going in and checking. Right. So no, it's not accurate.
And I think what's really dangerous about some of this is
that in the case of Israel, for example, I think it's kind of
easy for them to use this. Ai made me do it type angle. I
don't know whether that would hold up in a court of law, not
that Israel cares. But this type of stuff is really dangerous,
because I think they're trying to say, they're trying to say
that this depersonalizes war, in the sense that maybe humans
aren't doing so much of it anymore, but I think it's all
they're doing dying. Oh, they're doing the dying, that's for
sure. They're definitely dying. But this is kind of a way for
people that are using these machines to essentially say, Oh,
see, we're using the software, that means not so many people
will die. That's not actually true. But I think that they're
going to try to use this later to skirt accountability. Right?
WW: Yeah, it gives them plausible deniability, because
between the decision and the person, there's the software,
and they can blame the software. And I think this is the plan,
not just for AI as well in the military, but also efforts to
put AI in charge of major aspects of governance, and
there's a push for that as well. So if the government makes an
unpopular or catastrophic decision, you know, they can be
like, Oh, well, this is what the AI said, and it's so much
smarter than us, or, you know, think that's like the Eric
Schmidt argument that AI is like, so superior to human
decision making, that it can't explain how it reaches its
decisions to people. And that's like a sign of it being super
intelligence. But really, it becomes this reliance on
computer says, Yes, computer says now, and the people that
are supposedly in the loop, um, are just essentially executing
with these algorithms, you know, in software programs are telling
us and I think that's why it's so important to pay attention to
the people that are funding and actually coding or funding the
coders of the software programs, because they're the ones that
are essentially deciding how those algorithms work. And
there's not a lot of really testing on them, there's a lot
of sales pitches that tout a particular figure of accuracy,
but those are not independently vetted almost all of the time.
And sometimes, you know, the figures they promote are low in
terms of accuracy, you know, 75% on the sales pitch, or something
like that. And if it's life or death decision making, like
Shouldn't it be as close to 100 as possible? I mean, 75 is
pretty bad, honestly. Yeah, um, for some of these, and I think
it's important to keep in mind too, as far as you know, the
Gaza situation goes, it's been known for a long time that it
you know, Israeli surveillance of Palestinians, has been
extremely overreaching for a very long time and includes a
lot of, you know, surveillance, you know, sort of Palantir style
of sucking stuff, sucking up really every aspect of a
Palestinians online activity and using that to profile them, and
how much of that profiling just from their regular online
activity has been used to decide who lives and who dies. And when
you consider that this is an area that's tightly densely
populated. There's a lot of interrelation someone could be a
cousin of a Hamas member, but not actually have anything to do
with them. Is that enough to get them on the kill list? Given
what we've seen in Gaza, it certainly seems that way. And it
sort of goes against the idea of framing this as a more just more
efficient war. But that's been the sales pitch, but I think
it's, um, you know, honestly, just a sales pitch and very,
very, you know, divorced from from the reality. And I think
this is very concerning, because there have been calls, which
have grown in recent weeks for Donald Trump to put someone like
Erik Prince in charge of the Pentagon, and Erik Prince is,
you know, best known for being the Blackwater founder, where he
essentially ran a CIA death squad in the Middle East during
the war on terror, but has since somewhat rebranded and gone
around sort of arguing that the US Military Industrial Complex
privatize its wars. And he rightly does point to the fact
that the military industrial complex complex is bloated, and
incompetent and very corrupt. But that doesn't mean that, you
know, perhaps putting in some of these leaner defense startups,
like Anduril, for example, or using Palantir software like is
being used in Gaza, or you know, any of these other companies
that we've been talking about, they're being framed as leaner
and more efficient. That is exactly the Anduril sales pitch.
So if someone like Prince does get in the Pentagon and
privatize off the wars, to quote unquote, fight the deep state of
the military industrial complex, like is this actually going to
be any better? And I certainly think that's not the case. I
think you know, we were losing the rhetorical battle here, if
it becomes about AI powered Imperial wars, instead of no
more Imperial wars, I mean, I think across the left and right
in the United States, it's been very clear for some time that
people are tired of the Imperial wars. And so the idea of framing
them as leaner and cheaper, because of AI, they're going to
be aI powered, misses the whole point, it should be no Imperial
wars, because we know when these wars are waged, they create
increased instability increase, you know, political violence
against Americans and other people in the Middle East. It's
not in the US National. And I mean, just so many examples of
how it's just gone horribly, horribly wrong. And why are we
going to continue doing them with AI, especially if that AI
we know isn't accurate and killing innocent people, it has
the exact same result, maybe American soldiers aren't dying,
because it's drones on the battlefield. But is this really
what the best we can do? And like what we want it honestly
seems to me, you know, just sort of like a hoodwink, because the
same systems have, as you and I have, you know, sort of touched
on earlier are going to be deployed back in the United
States for the purpose of surveillance and domestic
control. Because the war on terror and war on domestic
terror have always gone hand in hand. And that's why, you know,
the United States has been just as surveilled as the rest of the
world, by US intelligence. And you know, Palantir profiles,
Americans as well, profiles them of subversives, puts them on the
CIA's naughty list in case the continuity of government
protocols are ever formally invoked, and things like that,
you know, this is really not the kind of stuff that people should
be supporting. But there's a lot of support being drummed up for
it right now, unfortunately, because you know, every four
years, people that would know about the human, a party in the
left, right paradigm in the US seem to forget and start, you
know, playing Team sports again. But unfortunately, when it comes
to this whole idea of like aI powered warfare, really what it
enables isn't a more efficient war. I mean, I guess the only
way it makes the war machine more efficient is that it can
kill more people more quickly. Is that what we want?
SP: Yeah, that's the that's a great way to summarize it. I
think that in that, I think, actually, it's really important
to point that out. I mean, this type of tech, if it's allowed to
go on in this private, Ultra, hyper privatized way, which this
possible, Trump pick would suggest, right? I mean, they
seem really interested in making the most destructive technology
possible. And I think AI power tech is explicitly slated to do
that. And I think Anduril, for example, has created this
lattice operating system that can, I think, it allows the
operator to command like hundreds of drones at once. So
sure, it may be cheaper for you to buy this type of equipment
than actually train soldiers to do XYZ. But what it's really
causing is it's paving the way for just mass robot powered AI
war. And I find that to be very dangerous. And I think that if
we put if politicians unfortunately, continue to push
for this type of, let's say, further privatization of the
space, but also not really prioritize actually rethinking
our relationships with war generally, which seems to never
actually be a consideration or a talking points, you know, it's
only going to become more and more destructive. Right. I think
that it's also just too bad. We're dealing with, again, now
that it's election time, we're seeing, okay, the whole Joe
Biden dropping, dropping out is this other fiasco, but, you
know, do I think Trump, Kamala Harris, or J.D. Vance are
actually interested in reconsidering America's war
policies in a meaningful way? No, I really don't I understand
that J.D. Vance has questioned at Ukraine. But in terms of his
support, or sorry, I support his discussions, I guess, his
support of Israel, but also his discussions about what he would
want to do to Iran where I guess he would punch them hard is what
he said, you know, unfortunately, we're dealing
with an overall status quo where no one is questioning, or a lot
of people at the very top are not questioning any of this.
We're, you know, unfortunately, by dealing with the electoral
system in this matter, we're dealing I guess, we're just
dealing with the continuation of the system. And now if you plug
AI in, it's slated to just make things all the more destructive.
I mean, I'm definitely concerned about it. And it definitely
concerns me that Trump is being depicted as this anti
establishment candidate, especially with Vance's
appointment because going back to Thiel, I think that that is
essentially as far as I see it. I see it as kind of a ticket for
the military industrial complex. Next, or a ticket for Silicon
Valley. That's the way I see this extensively. And I don't
think I think that anybody who wants to support Trump really
needs to be mindful of Thiel's support of J.D. Vance in this
way. Because what it could mean is that much more influence for
someone like Thiel, who is very much interested in steering the
direction of technology to his favor. When it comes to war,
again, that just means we're dealing with a very destructive
environment that really, I think we're reaching kind of a point
of no return, depending on where these technologies can go.
WW: Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. And I
definitely agree with your characterization of the tickets.
But I would consider people who want to back to the quote
unquote, Silicon Valley ticket that people keep in mind that
Silicon Valley in the military industrial complex, and really,
it's more of a military intelligence industrial complex,
don't leave out the intelligence agencies, they kind of tell the
military what to do sometimes. But, you know, they they're
fused Silicon Valley double is contractors for military, the
military, and also intelligence agencies. And that's
particularly true of this. You know, what I've called for
years, the Thiel verse that includes, I mean, other people
call it the PayPal Mafia, but I feel like to verse sort of
encompasses aspects of PayPal Mafia, and also the Thiel
protegees, and Thiel fellows and all of that. And, you know,
they're all in to sort of promote a new version of the
military industrial complex. And again, I think it's a false
dichotomy to sort of be like, pick this one version of the
military industrial complex, and this slightly different one, you
know, there, you're essentially getting the same thing at the
end of the day, but something I'd like to ask you, since it's
come up a few times, and I know you've written pretty
extensively about Peter Thiel, or rather, companies he's funded
or backed or co founded and their role in Ukraine. So a
major, you know, political issue right now is American funding
for the war in Ukraine, particularly, obviously, for the
backing the Ukrainian side. And even though Vance may have voted
against that, do you think it's likely in an upcoming potential
second Trump administration that Peter Thiel's influence could
prevent the you know, sort of turning off the spigot for the
Ukrainian government since some of these tailback companies have
become or, you know, to founded companies have become so
intimately involved in the Ukrainian war effort?
SP: I think this is something we'll have to see play out. Um,
you know, the way I do see it is that a lot of candidates, a lot
of political candidates, and generally speaking, we'll be
quite clear about their stance, one way or another, like J.D.
Vance is clearly telling us he would like to have a
reconsideration as to whether Ukraine receives funds from the
United States moving forward. But you know, as far as I can
tell what J.D. Vance says Now, versus what could happen if he
becomes Vice President, could be two very different things. And I
think we can say that based on in general, there's a wide
disparity between what politicians say before they get
into office, and then what happens to them once they're in
office. And I think in this respect, again, I think we can
highlight a little bit of Thiel's just wide backing of
Vance throughout his career. Obviously, they're they're very
close. And so when we understand Thiel's companies receive you
know, these companies Anduril, Palantir, ClearView AI
definitely benefit from the war in ways that are difficult to
calculate and articulate but definitely in big ways, they're
essentially able to use Ukraine as a testing ground. Is Thiel
going to want to say goodbye to that testing ground considering
how much it would help his companies? I don't know. I would
have to imagine if he really wanted to try to influence
affairs regarding the war in Ukraine to probably can just
simply based on the fact that he's it's not just Vance. He's
helped. He's helped fund a number of successful Republican
congressional candidates. He has clear influenced the United
States Government at a number of different levels. So I would
have to assume that if he really wanted to force a change in that
perspective, regarding the Ukraine war, he would probably
try to do it. But even if he weren't successful, I think for
Peter Thiel, this is as far as I can see it. I do think that this
is a bit of a long game for Thiel. Again, I do think that he
thinks like a venture capitalist. So even if Palantir
and your real ClearView AI aren't able to continue exactly
what they're doing in Ukraine. There will always be new law
opportunities for them to be able to test out various
technologies elsewhere. And I think unfortunately, that's just
the very powerful nature of the life. I suppose Peter Thiel
lives, he has so many companies right now that, you know, are in
some way indebted to him, just simply due to his help. And so
even if these companies cannot continue their gaming out of
things in Ukraine, they will be able to succeed in other ways.
And even if something happens to them, he will always have new
companies that he has worked to back that will take on something
else. So I guess my short answer is I would be curious to see if
this changes or advances stance on Ukraine changes in relation
to his relationship with Thiel. But even if it doesn't, and even
if there is actually a reconsideration about the United
States role in Ukraine, I think that Thiel will still be
successful simply due to just the amount of money influence
and power he has over today's largest tech companies.
WW: Yeah. So I absolutely agree with that. And I think we're
obviously going to have to see what happens. But my feeling is
that, you know, even if they do end up keeping the promise to
reduce or end American assistance to the Ukrainian
government, I think it's really likely they're going to have a
war pop up somewhere else where they can send the money to, in
the case of an upcoming Trump administration, it's most likely
to be ran at the end of the day, I think. And if you consider how
Ukraine even started, you know, it started soon after the
Afghanistan war had been, you know, closed down by the Biden
administration. And I think, you know, the, if you look at how
Afghanistan function for a long time, I mean, I think the best
way to sort of sum it up is this a relatively old now, Julian
Assange, quote, we're seeing the point isn't a successful war.
It's an endless war, just because of, you know, all the
money laundering that has gone on in US wars, arms,
trafficking, other types of trafficking, etc, etc. And, you
know, various other geopolitical objectives that are accomplished
when the US goes to war somewhere. And I think, you
know, the fact that Afghanistan after 20 or so years, you know,
gets wound down and they start up anyone, I think it's most
likely that if they do choose to wind down Ukraine, something
else will emerge elsewhere. And I think a lot of the bellicose
rhetoric about Iran specifically, you know, from
Trump, and also now Vance, even though just a few months ago,
before he was to be pick, VP pick, he was talking about like,
no to war with Iran, it's on Quincy Institute speech or
something. Um, it just shows you how quickly these people get in
line when they, you know, are in sort of the top echelon of
American politics. And if we recall how Trump the Trump's
biggest donor in his first term, Sheldon Adelson, you know, this
was the guy that is the reason John Bolton was Trump's National
Security Adviser. His big thing was preemptively nuking Ukraine.
Oh, yeah, it's insane. So I think, you know, unfortunately,
you know, a lot of donors that Trump has now have similar
views, maybe not necessarily as bad, but there definitely is a
lobby, you know, that's backing Trump, and there has been a
lobby for some time in the Republican weighing heavily
promoting the idea of going to war with Iran specifically. So
considering that, you know, you know, there's the Gaza war, and
that's likely to expand Well, beyond Gaza, you know, there's
been talks for months about it, involving Hezbollah and
expanding to limit Lebanon and then expanding into a whole
regional thing. You know, I think there's a high risk of
that, and I think that's something that people should be
aware of. So maybe, you know, again, I think people shouldn't
just be like, Oh, as long as he ends, you know, assistance to
Ukraine, that's enough, it should really be no more
Imperial wars, that create all this international instability.
But again, the instability benefits a lot of people with
ties to Trump, a great example would be Larry Fink, and
BlackRock, which I know, You've written about also having a role
with Ukraine. But, you know, they tend to sort of come up and
sweep up a lot of distressed debt and assets in war torn
countries, and also not war torn countries, but you know,
countries that are, you know, not exactly stable for other
reasons, like Argentina, for example. And, you know, I think
that stuff is also important to consider as well. Anyway, moving
on from that, I do want to sort of come back and talk about some
of the steel founded companies and how they're sort of
facilitating this push into predictive policing, pre crime,
really, all of that, you know, I recently tweeted out and
resurfaced some links to articles that I've reported on
previously, back when I was a reporter for MIT Press news
during the the first Trump administration about in the
aftermath of the El Paso Walmart shooting Trump calling on big
tech to develop software to surveil its users in order to
stop shootings before they can happen, or you know, easily can
be applied to stop crime before it happens. And given that the
Republican stance generally has been where the tough on crime
party, I think there's a real threat of that stuff sort of
being supercharged under a second Trump term. And I think
Thiel's influence there is noteworthy as well, since
Palantir, since its earliest days was sort of set up to
develop into this pre crime platform that through data
mining and profiling Americans based on their online activity
and other activity that's available, you know, deciding
who may or may not be a threat. And being able to classify
people that way, you know, ultimately feeds into the idea
of predictive policing, which is something that Palantir has been
piloting in the United States since at least 2015. I believe,
they started piloting it, I think in New Orleans, and later
expanded beyond, but they've been criticized for some time,
particularly, as far as their relationship with the Los
Angeles Police Department goes but also elsewhere, for piloting
a lot of this predictive policing in low income
neighborhoods of predominantly racial minorities, for some
time, and I've written in the past that Palantir is a very
race aware and honestly race obsessed company, which is an
interesting, I should say, interesting and quotes,
component of the company. If you're interested on that, I
will put my article that talks about that specifically in the
shownotes. That was an article I did on Palantir as part of the
warp speed and race series during Operation warp speed. But
unfortunately, that's actually pretty relevant to the pre crime
discussion, because a lot of the pre crime stuff is being fused
with healthcare, and healthcare data. And Palantir also,
basically runs most of American healthcare data. And that was
something that happened again, during the Trump administration
during COVID-19. Through the creation of these databases,
like HHS, HHS, protect the Tiberius software marketed by
Palantir, to HHS. And there's, you know, that continued, again,
under the Biden administration, as well, they renewed all of
those contracts for Palantir and healthcare data, and actually
expanded them, they now include the CDC, and are gonna go on for
another several years, and probably be renewed by whoever's
the next president sort of underscoring that this is a
bipartisan agenda. And there's sort of this idea of, you know,
using pre crime, to, we're sort of combining the concerns about
mental health, with concerns about pre crime or preventing
crime. And we're in, you can sort of see them come together
in Palantir. And also some of these programs that were being
pitched during the Trump administration that I've written
about before, like the safe homes program that was supposed
to be the flagship program of this Harpa agency, the health
care focused and DARPA agency that was being pitched very
heavily to Trump during his first term. And actually, Biden
made that agency, it's called ARPA H, they just moved the age
to the end, but the safe homes program was going to suck up all
these all of this data from you know, consumer electronic
devices. So including wearables, so like Fitbits, Apple Watches,
also Amazon Echo, you know, the Alexa products, Google Home,
Apple TV, all of these things, as well, as you know, observe
the public online activities, like what you post on social
media, and use AI to profile that to identify if people had,
were showing early signs of neuro psychiatric violence, and
then could sort of be triaged, like it's a healthcare thing,
either, you know, go to see a court ordered physician or house
arrest or preventative detention, which means going to
prison without trial, essentially. So all sorts of
things are being developed by these companies. And I think
it's, you know, even Orwellian. Selling it short, honestly, you
know, I don't really have a lot of faith, unfortunately, because
of Trump's first term, that this stuff is going to slow down, or
be, you know, implemented slow, more slowly under a Trump
administration than any other administration. I think,
regardless of what party wins in November, you know, it's
ultimately, Silicon Valley, and its fusion with the national
security state is going to be the winner. But Steve, Rola, do
you have any insight into sort of this effort to sort of bring
healthcare and and policing together or any sort of comment
on that setup and its, you know, its threat to privacy and
freedom? I
SP: mean, I think the primary thing that needs to be said
about it is that clearly nothing is nothing is exempted from this
surveillance effort. Right. Nothing is exempted from that
and it's my understanding regarding like, COVID data,
those systems they still have like that. COVID data on them,
they're not going to get rid of it. But I think my my, my take
away from it is that they, they want to collect information on
everything. That is become normalized through companies
Peter Thiel has founded and you're right to point out that
Palantir specifically plays a major role in a lot of this. I
think a critical point here that's worth making is that it's
just become so normal that we have this public private fusion
and all these arrangements, right. I mean, I suppose it's
fair to simply say that Palantir is kind of a CIA front anyways,
but sure, it's just, it basically is a CIA fraud. But
you know, what's happening is that it's just normal for the
government to say, I'm going to work with Palantir on this, it's
okay, that Americans healthcare data is, um, you know, seen or
utilized by this company in this way, no problem. It's kind of a
similar thing with okay, this is a separate conversation, but
it's a little bit similar with Oracle, where Oracle, again, I
think it also has significant intelligence ties that would
need to be discussed, but Oracle in recent years has been
working, I think it literally has a partnership with Palantir.
Right now to operate cloud software for governments across
the globe, I don't know to what extent that has become the norm
or not, but they're kind of working on that as well. But
what we're seeing is that it's okay for the government to, to
partner with the private sphere. But actually, in these two
examples I just referenced, it looks like these private
companies are actually at least heavily intelligence and fluids.
It's all bleeding together. And I think that the bottom line is
that civilian data in any capacity, whether it be health,
whether it be I don't know about your private life in some way,
considering the capacity of surveillance systems. Everything
is okay to capture in this sense. And I think people like
Peter Thiel, through his financial support of things like
Tia spinoffs, aka Palantir, aka Facebook, he, they've normalized
this type of thing. And so now, I think, unfortunately, anybody
in any country, but definitely Americans can now anticipate
that their data is now subjected to mass collection by
authorities, and then that's just mine through companies at
all times.
WW: Yeah, definitely makes sense to me. Um, as far as Palantir,
being a CIA front goes for people that aren't aware just
want to throw some info out there for people in case they
haven't read, you know, my past work or someone else's work on
Palantir and their their beginnings. So Palantir is first
funder was the CIA's and que tal, the CIA was their only
client. For the first I don't know, four or five years of
their existence as a company. And from 2005 to 2009. They made
their top engineers made over 200 visits to CIA headquarters
in Langley, Virginia. And since then, they have been a continual
contracting partner of the CIA, as well as now every single US
intelligence agency. There's 18 of them now, if you add if you
include SpaceForce. And, you know, probably can't really get
any deeper ties than that. And again, as I've noted before, in
my work, Palantir was the effort to privatize total information
awareness, which was really housed at DARPA. It was being
run by an Iran Contra criminal from the Reagan administration
and John Poindexter, but he was doing that in close
collaboration with the CIA. And so the CIA helped the
privatization effort as well. And that's why you have in Q
tel, involved, and I think it's one of many examples, we're sort
of like this, quote, unquote, new right, that includes figures
like Trump and Peter Thiel, and maybe even Erik Prince as well
and some of these other people. If you look at who they
associate with, it's that consistently, you're going to
find a lot of connections to the Reagan Bush era. You know,
people like Ed Meese Reagan's Attorney General, were was a big
adviser to Trump during his first presidential run. For
example, Peter Thiel created Palantir with the help of John
Poindexter and also Richard Pearl, one of the architects of
the Iraq War from the George W. Bush administration, Erik Prince
teamed up with Oliver North, probably the most famous name
from the Iran Contra scandal of the Reagan era, to pitch Trump
on creating a private CIA and something that I've you know,
been warning about. And also my colleague, Mark Goodwin and I
had been warning about on interviews that we've done
together as sort of this effort to sort of into in terms of the
public private partnership like you brought up sort of move
people out of the public end of that and into the private end of
that. So instead of having public private partnerships like
we've been having, you know, for for decades now, moving into
just And of taking the public out and having just the private
and acting like it's going to be fundamentally different when in
practice, it's not. And I think this is a big play that they're
sort of testing out in Argentina right now under Malay. And I
think, you know, sort of Trump's stance on CBDCs, for example, I
think is part of that too. It's not going to be public sector
issued programmable sir bailable money, but he's definitely okay
with private sector issued programmable sir bailable money
if it's coming from people like Jamie Dimon or, you know, some
other, you know, major figure on wall street that runs a
significant, you know, retail and commercial banking
operation. And I think also, a lot of, you know, the theory and
for example, which as you've noted in past reporting, has
significant Peter Thiel ties is very easy to make programmable
answer bailable. And there's even efforts to do the same with
the Bitcoin Blockchain through groups like rootstock that came
up in previous reporting about efforts to sort of create this
carbon market and impose it on Latin America and have it run on
on the Bitcoin Blockchain that, you know, unlimited hangout
reported on previously as well. So what are your thoughts on on
that as it relates to currency? And how do you sort of see the
same network fitting into those designs?
SP: Yeah, that's, that's a good question. And I have done some
crypto related reporting. I think unfortunately, what I've
learned through a lot of my reporting is that a lot of
digital finance infrastructure is something that the power
elite in some way are definitely trying to exploit in any way
possible. And it's kind of my personal belief that most
cryptocurrencies maybe they were compromised politically in some
way from the beginning. But what we're seeing, especially with
something like Ethereum, for example, is that, you know, for
example, it's proof of work to proof of steak switch has made
it quite easy to compromise, generally speaking, hmm. Which
means that, you know, a number of whales I think, is what
sorry, crypto experts, I'm, I'm trying in this in this. But, you
know, a lot of whales are essentially trying to, to buy up
a lot of Ethereum stakes so that they can have a direction over
it right in the future. And I think that unfortunately, even
if these digital payment infrastructures are built in
ways, where perhaps the founder was actually maybe trying to
build something that couldn't be corrupted, it's clear that the
powers that be are trying to find any route through that they
can and that's important, I think, to point out what's
happening with Bitcoin as well. Absolutely. You know, where
people are trying to corrupted if they can do so. I think I
think also it's worth linking this back to Thiel, I think
what's worth saying is that he's been interested in digital
finance or digital financial structures, infrastructures for
a long time. And I think that this is a clear power grab, I
have the quote, pulled up here. But I think he literally said
something along the lines about Pay Pal being about replacing
the US dollar, right. So he's saying, I, I'm going to build
financial infrastructure that replaces what we have, which
means I, if I run Pay Pal have essentially an amount of power
and influence over society that's quite difficult to to
explain really, right. I think he's more powerful than
countries if he's able to be successful in this regard. And I
think that that's just, unfortunately, what a lot of
these elite people backing some of these currencies are,
unfortunately, trying to do with it. And I think what's
frustrating about that, and just going back to crypto generally,
is that a lot of people that are interested in crypto are
interested in decentralized finance because they would like
to have financial freedom and financial privacy. So what's
happening is people are, you know, a lot of innocent normal
people that are interested in these infrastructures.
Unfortunately, that's been corrected by people like Thiel
and a lot of people that are trying to break into the crypto
space that are clearly trying to use this infrastructure for
their own ends. I think if you'd like I can connect this a little
bit to Worldcoin because Altman Sam Altman OpenAI Sam Altman has
also been trying to break into this space because apparently,
they all see this kind of utility, let's say where if you
have this financial infrastructure, it becomes
prominent, let's say and a lot of people use your
cryptocurrency. You know, depending on how far it goes,
you could kind of, I suppose subvert or displace the
financial system as we understand it, right. So I think
that that's what I've noticed in a lot of my crypto related
Reporting. But if you'd like I can talk a little bit about
Worldcoin because this is, again, very connected to Peter
Thiel, because Peter Thiel and Sam Altman, of course, are very
close. When I was reporting on my Worldcoin article, I had kind
of learned more about the relationship where it sounds
like they're very, very close friends. You know, and I think
Thiel has brought Altman a couple of different times to
Bilderberg, for example. Obviously, Thiel had also, if
you look at Founders Fund portfolio, a Founders Fund also
has assisted the the rise of OpenAI. So obviously, they're
very good friends. I don't know necessarily what they talk about
all the time. But I think that that close knit relationship is
really critical to talk about when we discuss anything that
Sam Altman does. And I think that Sam Altman like Thiel, I
don't want to talk about these people like they're completely
out of touch with reality, but was, when we look at what Sam
Altman is proposing with something like Worldcoin, he's
essentially proposing a number of kind of weird things. If
people are interested in reading my article to learn how weird
Worldcoin is, I encourage it. But he's essentially saying, if
we can get everyone a world ID through scanning their irises,
which means there's proof that they are human, that means that
we can have a cryptocurrency Worldcoin, become this prominent
all encompassing currency that everyone uses. And then if AI
becomes prominent, and that if AI becomes profitable enough, we
can then distribute the winds or the profits of AI to everybody
through a UBI. Right, it sounds ridiculous. Again, I'd like I'd
direct people to my article, and I think Worldcoin has kind of
played down the UBI claims more recently. I think right now,
they're just trying to convince people to please scan their
irises so that they can get a world ID and that they are now
siphoned into this infrastructure in some way. But
essentially, what I'm saying is that Peter Thiel is working with
people like Altman and other tech billionaires that are very
interested in these types of projects that if they do become
successful, they would force actually fundamental questions
of governance and how society or society operates. Because Sam
Altman wants billions of people to sign up for Worldcoin. If
billions of people sign up for Worldcoin and Bill, you know,
and Worldcoin becomes a prominent currency. That means
traditional financial structures or infrastructures are being
challenged in a critical way if they're not being made toast,
right. So to me what I'm seeing through not just Thiel's own
actions, but through the actions of people that Thiel has
supported like Altman, is that there's just a constant. Um,
let's say, let's say it this way that I think there's a constant
effort to develop these projects that if they are successful,
could overturn everything. I don't think that there's any
real democracy in this Worldcoin is proposing that we operate not
we live our lives with its cryptocurrency and that we
receive money through Worldcoin, you know, these, they're
essentially saying our infrastructure should be the
center of society, literally the center of society, not just the
center of money. They're proposing these types of things
that really, no one on earth is really being asked about truly.
What's also happening with Worldcoin is, again, people
aren't really being asked, what's happening is that people
are being given free crypto to scan their irises. And so maybe
if you have money, it's easy to be like, I'm not scanning my
eyes and your weird orb thing. But you know, I think it's taken
off, for example, in Argentina, because people need instant
money. So they know that if they go to one of these orbs, they'll
get about $50 of Worldcoin crypto, okay, well, even if they
don't try to use the system infrastructure ever again.
Worldcoin has that and Worldcoin has added another person to
their infrastructure. So they're kind of imposing. They're
imposing themselves on people in this way that's not really
democratic. And I think that that goes back to who Thiel is
and who a lot of these tech billionaires are. They're not
actually interested in having reasonable conversations as to
what the ramifications of their technology are for everybody.
They're essentially saying, okay, Hopefully people will take
interest in this, hopefully this takes off, therefore, we will be
able to expand our product and then from a political angle, get
whatever political gain comes from that.
WW: Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment. And I also think
that, you know, essentially, I feel like projects like
Whirlpool, and basically what they're doing is trying to be
the sort of like the private sector entity that is pushing
the same thing that like the UN is pushing in terms of like
biometric digital ID, intertwined intimately with a
digital wallet, which is like a key part and really, arguably,
like the foundation of the whole thing regarding the sustainable
development goals and agenda, 2030, and all of that. So if you
don't, you know, if you're like, for example, on the American
quote, unquote, right, you don't like the UN, the UN's part of
the NWO, etc, etc. But you'll be more receptive to a private
sector entity pitching that, you know, particular policy, right,
or offering that as a product. And if you look at how the
digital ID stuff has been set up, through the UN through like
public private partnerships, like ID 2020, which is now
merged with another public private partnership about
digital ID that's also sponsored by essentially all the same
people in the UN, they push this whole idea of interoperability,
and the way they're going to implement, it isn't going to be
like this one global system of biometric digital ID and finance
in you know, wallet tied together. Initially, anyway,
it's going to be sort of like a mosaic of all these different
private sector vendors, but ultimately, the data that can be
harvested from that digital wallet, and that digital ID that
goes with it can be exported into the same formats, and then
those formats can be exported and sent to a centralized
database somewhere. And I think that's essentially what we're
going to get and Worldcoin is obviously lobbying to be a
significant part of that at some point in the future, but they're
framing themselves, you know, however, they think, you know,
with whatever talking points that are more likely to stick,
right. So I think that's why they've sort of shifted away
from the UBI pitch that they had initially, when they thought
that UBI people might be receptive to the idea of UBI.
Now, there's criticisms of UBI. And they're, you know, sort of
in this Thiel network, so they want to appeal to people that,
you know, don't like that stuff, right, and don't like dei and
all of these things. But you know, I think that's, that's
part of the the play here. And I think people need to keep that
in mind, digital ID is going to be imposed on people as sort of
this, it's going to seem like it's decentralized, but only the
public facing part is decentralized, the back end
where all the data goes and like the centralized database is
centralized. And there's so much of this happening not just for
digital ID, but also in, in the FinTech world, where it's really
decentralized in name only. And they're they're trying to really
take all of the crypto infrastructure and make it that
way. And I think what you mentioned earlier about Pay Pal
is very interesting, as far as to having talked about replacing
the dollar because PayPal has launched their PYUSD Pay Pal,
stablecoin, dollar stablecoin that's meant to compete with
like Tether, USDT and USDC circle. Which by the way, USDC
was actually originally a Sam Altman idea that was posted on
his blog some time ago, the idea of making a USD coin $1
stablecoin, that could be programmable and all of this and
it was emailed to Trump sec, Treasury Secretary Steve
Minuchin, by Jared Kushner, Trump's son in law was like, Oh,
look, we should probably do something like this, you know.
And, you know, as Justice Trump's about to come in, for a
second term, you have all the stablecoin legislation being
written about to be passed and who's on the Senate Banking
Committee, that's going to play a huge role in deciding the
winners and losers of post regulation. It's J.D. Vance is
one of those figures, along with you know, people that have co
written a lot of the legislation like Cynthia Lummis, for
example. And again, I think it's important to to consider J.D.
Vance and his upcoming influence as it relates to that and also
consider that right off of the right on the tail of the RNC
convention, is the Bitcoin Conference will trump will be
speaking Erik Prince is having dinner hosted in Nashville
around the same time you know, like a lot of these guys are
going to be there. I will not be I was there last year, but I'm
not really not really sure if I want to go to RNC 2.0 this year.
and also have some other reasons why I'm not doing but I'm
definitely going to be interesting to see what Trump
says about Bitcoin, it's very likely there's going to be an
effort to yoke Bitcoin to the US dollar, since Bitcoin sort of
functions like digital credit, and can enable, you know, it can
do a lot of things. But unfortunately, in the hands of
these people, you know, there's talks about them using it
basically as a sink for us money printing and inflation, and
allowing, you know, quantitative easing and all this
irresponsible central bank policy to go on forever, because
you can just use Bitcoin as a sink for all of the
hyperinflation that would normally result from it, as
opposed to actually being a you know, something that will end
you know, Central Bank, irresponsibility or government
fiscal irresponsibility, it's poised to become its biggest
enabler in the hands of these people. So I would can consider
anyone interested in these topics to give those things.
Keep an eye on those things going forward. And one thing I
would like to add about Pay Pal, too, is that, you know, early
on, you know, some big Wall Street guys, like the former
head of city, during the 1990s talked about, you know, if I
wanted to, you know, get into the business of surveillance,
surveilling people, you know, I'd make a bank like I've used
finances because he was talking about like city back in the 80s,
and 90s. And saying, like, we have so much data on people's
transactions, we know they're getting a divorce before they
even do, because like, you know, their soon to be ex wife is
blowing out their credit card, and all of this stuff, like
they're able to surveil people more effectively than anything
else. So the idea of, of that, combined with how, you know,
Peter Thiel and the other people that created PayPal, did so in
direct connection with intelligence agencies, talking
to them as they were setting up PayPal, and trying to sort of,
you know, make that happen. And now they're trying to make this
dollar stablecoin and are poised to have it be really the the
king made stablecoin of this new legislation. I think people need
to pay very close attention to that, especially when you
consider that all all the different things we talked about
today, all these different pieces of Peter Thiel and his
different protegees in like money in defense, and like all
of these, you know, US law enforcement and just all these
different sectors. I mean, it's amazing, and terrifying, really
the empire that these people have been able to develop. And
again, you know, Peter Thiel is a huge part of it. But really,
the PayPal crowd in general, which again, includes Elon Musk,
I know a lot of people love him, but remember, he's a pentagon
intelligence contractor, building brain chips. So people,
I don't know, need to stop worshipping the billionaires,
man. I don't know. If sometimes I feel like Batman was just
propaganda for billionaires, like the billionaires are gonna
save us all and they're secretly superheroes at night. You know?
I don't know. Because it's, if you actually look what they're
doing, that's not what they're doing. But the narrative they've
put out has sort of like hypnotized. So many Americans, I
feel like to think that they're like, you know, these superhero
esque figures. I mean, you see that with musk so much. It's
really unsettling. Maybe they'll do it with Peter Thiel, and
he'll become a superhero now, too. I don't know. Anyway,
sorry, I got a little rambley there at the end. But is there
anything you'd like to add to some of the stuff I brought up
as it relates to either, you know, py, USD or, you know,
stablecoins or you know, anything about the digital ad?
Worldcoin stuff? Well, I think,
SP: I guess one comment I have about stablecoins. And I think
you've said this before, but I really feel that it bears
repeating is I do think a lot of people have kind of understood
the dangers regarding something like a cbdc, right, that the
central bank would be operating this and that it would have more
centralized access, at least to your finances. And in the case
that money becomes programmable, who knows it could shut things
off or otherwise manipulate things. I think that people are
increasingly starting to understand the dangers of that.
I'm not saying we shouldn't be on alert, because we should. But
I think unfortunately, it's it's kind of what we said. I think
once these things are kind of spun off in a private sector
direction, like stablecoins, I think, unfortunately, it's
harder to convince people. Look, you know, do you really want the
private sector to be able to do the same thing? I think,
unfortunately, that's going to have to become a major talking
point. And I think unfortunately, this point has
not been driven home in the way it needs to be. I think that
anybody who is thinking that stablecoins are decentralized
shouldn't be mistaken. I mean, I think that that's another
problem is that I think decentralization as a word in
terms of finance, generally speaking, I think a lot of
things claimed to be decentralized when they're not
actually decentralized. And if people aren't careful, this
stuff is going to be rolled out in a wide Spread weigh, as
you've noted, a lot of stablecoins are essentially
competing to capture, let's say, the market for stablecoins and
what governments may or may not choose to use as like the US
dollar stablecoin or other countries, stablecoins, etc. I
think unfortunately, some of that is going on with critical
without critical discussion without critical debate. And I
find that to be a significant problem. And I think that a lot
of tech billionaires are kind of aware of this vaguely or not
vaguely like they're very aware of this. And so I think that
that's why a lot of effort has gone into creating private,
digital financial infrastructure. They understand
that that can give them a lot of power. But who can really do a
lot about it right now?
WW: I think those are some good points. Well, I guess it's
probably best to maybe wrap up there because we've been going
for for a bit. Is there anything else you'd like to add on the
topic?
SP: I suppose my only real comment is that, you know, if
people are portraying themselves as anti establishment, it's
really critical to ask you know, questions, especially
considering you know, J.D. Vance can portrays himself as anti
establishment. Thiel has really helped his rise. I think,
something worth pointing out is that Thiel has helped fund a
number of media companies, including rumble, including, I
guess, Tucker, Carlson's new media company, as well. And so
when we see things like that, it makes me question to what extent
this type of how do I say this? You know, it makes me question
to what extent any of this can be trusted. And I think a lot of
seeing a lot of quote unquote, alternative media become
completely uncritical of J.D. Vance and Trump, I, I fear that
there won't really be a lot of critical coverage of this
appointment, considering Thiel funding, right. And so I'm in
general, kind of, I don't want to say jaded, I don't like to
say it that way. But it's definitely disheartening to see
that people aren't really critiquing this in the way that
they should. And it's the same thing with like, Elon Musk. I
think a lot of people felt that he's done a couple positive
things with Twitter X. But the reality is that x censors quite
a lot, right? And I think, unfortunately, a lot of people
are blinded to that, because they think Elon Musk has somehow
stood up to the establishment. In reality, I think journalists
are getting censored more on X than ever. So I think if
somebody portrays themselves as anti establishment, please think
twice. I mean, if there are connections like to behind it,
all we can really say is, look, at least be critical moving
forward. I don't know. I am disheartened by a little bit of
that, to say the least. But otherwise, no, I think this was
a great discussion.
WW: Well, I can understand feeling disheartened about it. I
think this particular billionaire faction has spent a
lot of money trying to influence independent media coverage of
them, and to sort of paint them as, as rogue billionaires, when
if you look at what they do in their companies and what they've
done, you know, that definitely is not the case. As far as Elon
Musk goes, I think people need to keep in mind that he was he
wanted to buy Twitter, he said was to verify all humans, that
means linking a government issued ID to your Twitter
account. And he also his goal is to turn you know, he's already
done, it turned Twitter into X with the goal of having x be, he
says half of the financial system. So there's, they've been
gobbled up obtaining all of these money transmitter
licensees, and now a majority of US states, it's only a matter of
time until they try and become a bank as well. And I think
there's been efforts to sort of, you know, rope in a lot of
people in independent media, because of the X monetization
thing, which by the way, I do not participate in and was given
a blue check against my will because of a follower count. And
I don't even have Twitter premium. This was something that
Elon Musk chose to do to everyone. So a lot of people
that were critical of blue, check Scotland without asking
for it, just want to make that really clear, but getting people
that are, you know, on independent meter in independent
media dependent on money from x are like, you know, oh, look how
much money I'm making on X, you know, you're going to alter your
speech and, you know, self censor, choose to not cover
certain things that may not make Elon happy or might affect your
monetization, right. And also, it also helps to sort of onboard
you as an influencer and then help onboard other people onto
you know, using x as some sort of like financial app, right,
which is ultimately the end goal there. And it's very similar
when you consider you know, we talked about with Worldcoin,
this idea of like, linking your ID to your digital wallet and
all of that. It's very clear. I think that x aims to be Do
something quite similar in that regard. And then, you know, you
consider the brain machine interface and all the Pentagon
spy contracts and all of that, you know, I definitely would
consider people to be very, very, very wary of what's going
on there. And but I also think part of the disheartening thing
is it has to do with the manipulation of social media, we
can't really trust what we're seeing anymore. The algorithms
are so manipulated, we know that for more than probably like 15
years now, but at least 10 years, the US military again,
Musk is a good contractor for them, has been heavily funding
how to manipulate Americans, what people generally really
around the world on social media framing it as a new Battlefield,
the US Air Force in one, you know, one program, they said
that the goal of the program was to control people through social
media, like, you control drones, right. So that basically just
like hypnotize people, I mean, I mean, I will see read that. So I
think a lot of what we see on social media now, and remember
the big competitor to Twitter, what is Facebook, which Peter
Thiel essentially made, right? I mean, because he was the first
early out, outside investor, and without him Facebook would not
exist, right. So, um, you know, these things, manipulate our
perceptions. And so, you know, we're told that what we see,
there's the opinion of people, but these are manipulated
algorithms. A lot of them are bought accounts, the military,
just the US military alone, but definitely other militaries too,
have also invested 10s of million dollars in developing
highly sophisticated bots, OpenAI is ChatGPT. Again, Sam
Altman, Elon has supercharged all of that this is a perception
manipulation machine. And I think those of us that try and
be level headed and objective, regardless of what the hype is,
or who's an office or who's running for office, whatever,
you know, can be disheartened by the stuff. And I think part of
that is also by design, because these people have profiled us.
And remember, when Facebook was, got caught manipulating people's
newsfeeds to try and manipulate them to make them feel sad and
depressed, I think they tailor the algorithm to you and your
user profile, and they manipulate you whoever they
think is most effective for their purposes, right. So I
think that's important to keep in mind. And again, anyone
listening, please take that to heart, if you want to stay sane
between now and like the election in the US, probably
like Be careful about your like social media consumption,
because again, it's there to manipulate perception. And when
you successfully manipulate perception, you manipulate
people's behavior, which is ultimately what they want. And
that's a big part of the Eric Schmidt, Henry Kissinger AI book
is about how AI is ultimately a tool to manipulate perception,
and also to diminish us cognitively. So that we become
dependent on AI and can't function without it. And when
you consider that Eric Schmidt and Peter Thiel or buddy, buddy
at Bilderberg, and all of these Silicon Valley guys are building
the tools for that. And the AI algorithms doing that, to us,
this is something that needs to be considered. And I think
people need to take responsibility for how they use
these products and how they, you know, use these mediums or
social media or whatever. Not saying don't use it at all. And
maybe for some people, it is the right choice. Other people can't
do that because of work, whatever, you know, I kind of
fall in that category, at least right now. But I definitely will
not be linking a government issued ID to my Twitter account,
ever. But you know, I think people need to sort of keep this
stuff in mind. And because, you know, there's a lot of
perception manipulation going on, it sort of reminds me back,
like, in the first time Trump ran for president, there were
all those polls from the mainstream media that were
saying Hillary's gonna win 98% probability, it's hopeless for
Trump. You know, that was a perception manipulation
campaign, they do this stuff all the time. And our dependence on
social media makes it easier than ever for them. And this
perception of Twitter acts as like the Free Speech platform.
Now everyone is free to talk, like you said, That's not true
at all. And if anything, the algorithms are more manipulated
than ever, because it's not like Pentagon contractor, Elon Musk
is going to say no to the Pentagon using all their
sophisticated bots and their perception, manipulation weapons
that they've developed expressly for social media, he's gonna
allow them probably to let them use them more than they were
previously, you know. So again, important to keep in mind hard
to keep a level head these days for some people, but I think
several your reporting has definitely been important in
that fight. And I definitely commend to you and appreciate
your work. Very happy to have you contribute to unlimited
hangout. Is there any well? Where can people find and follow
your work and support you?
SP: Well, first of all, thank you for saying that. I suppose
the main thing I do, I do have x I will say I can give my handle
for that. It's just my name. I don't really tweet there so
often, the more because I've kind of not enjoyed the
platform, but the main thing is that people can I just don't
enjoy tweeting like I don't, people need to log off. But the
main thing So the main place that people can find me is my
sub stack where I do publish, I publish a newsletter where I
cover the intersection of geopolitics and technology. And
then I post my other reporting updates there. So that's just a
rule a pax.substack.com. So that's probably the best way to
follow my work. Otherwise, I don't know, send smoke signals
or something. I should probably be easier to find than that. But
that's a good place to find me. Yeah.
WW: All right. Great. And thank thanks so much for a great
conversation. And thanks for everybody that tuned in to
listen to this podcast. Please share it widely if you found it
informative. Hopefully you did. And a special thank you as
always, to the people that support this podcast and support
Unlimited Hangout and help me allow us to publish people like
Stavroula, who were just again, couldn't be happier to have a
contributor like her and also my work and those of everyone else
that contributes to Unlimited Hangout, and of course, this
podcast itself so thanks very much and catch you on the next
episode.