I apologize in advance for disturbing your sleep.
Honestly, I want to bring some levity to the situation, but holy cow that was hard last week (when we recorded) and that was BEFORE we started talking about war with Iran.
But this isn’t a news podcast. We’re interested in the plodding forces of power, and last week, while we were all watching troops march into California and debating the latest political theater, something much more significant was happening in the shadows.
Or not the shadows, out in the open. But like any good con artist, Trump plays the sleight of hand like a pro.
And you have to wonder what is such a big deal that sending troops to attack your citizens (maybe a slight exaggeration, but that’s how it felt) is the distraction.
The real story is that the current regime has dedicated nearly $1 billion to a company called Palantir, a data analysis firm founded by Peter Thiel that specializes in "finding hidden things.”
What hidden things?
Well, that’s the question.
The "hidden things" they're looking for aren't terrorist plots or foreign threats. We don’t know what hidden things they are looking for; we only know where they are looking.
They're looking at you—your government records (all of them), bank records, medical history, driving patterns, social media likes, sexual encounters, Pokémon history, and even what your smart refrigerator knows about your grocery habits. They're combined into one massive surveillance apparatus that would make the dictators of yore drool with envy.
In this week's episode of Masters of Influence, Joe and I explore how we’re careening toward creating the most powerful surveillance state in human history.
We start with a story from 1976 Communist Romania, where even the most paranoid dictator could only manage to put one agent watching one person at a time.
Today? Your phone has 1,000 times more processing power than the supercomputers of that era, and every device in your house watches you 24/7.
The scary part isn't just that this technology exists—it's that we're handing it over to people who have already shown us exactly how petty and vindictive they can be.
What’s also scary is the rise of AI in making key decisions. We talk about a case in Wisconsin where Mr. Loomis received an outrageous sentence for a minor crime, thanks to an AI.
And nobody knows why.
Can preemptive policing be far behind?
And this is in a world where a reporter gets fired from ABC for calling Trump "a world-class hater" (honestly, I suspect some people thought he meant it as a compliment), what do you think happens to the rest of us when they have access to every aspect of our digital lives?
What if everything you ever said was fed into an AI, that those in power could query to determine whether you are a supporter or… well, not?
Enter Palantir's "Foundry" system, which is being deployed across federal agencies right now, today—Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Social Security, and the IRS—creating a master database that combines government records with everything they can buy from private companies.
Your Amazon purchases, Alexa recordings, car's GPS data, browsing history, all of it.
This isn't conspiracy theory territory. This is happening in broad daylight, with public contracts and open conversations. Even Palantir employees are quitting in protest, warning that combining all this data "significantly increases the risk of misuse."
But here’s the thing: it isn’t a done deal, and we’re not helpless. Understanding how power works is the first step to challenging it. And increasingly, I see people waking up, asking questions, and taking action.
Democracy is work, and maybe we’ve coasted comfortably for a while, but it’s time to take action, and good people are starting to do so.
Listen to this week's episode. Share it with someone who needs to hear it. And then let's figure out what we're going to do about it.
Because, if we don't act now, we'll wake up in a world where dissent isn't just discouraged—it's impossible.
Talk soon, Jeff
P.S. - We also touch on some breaking news from this week, including the assassination of Democratic legislators in Minnesota by someone impersonating a police officer, and a fascinating development in the bond markets that suggests the world may no longer see America as the "safe haven" it once was. Heavy stuff, but essential to understand.
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