The Thiel-Verse with Stavroula Pabst

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.

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.

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.

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?

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?

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?

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.

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?

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?

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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,

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.