Hostage Scenarios and Surveillance Ethics

In this episode, we examine recent government contracts awarded to Palantir and discuss their implications for national security. Palantir has secured significant contracts, including a $480 million deal for the Maven Smart System and a $217.8 million contract from the Space Forces' Space Systems Command. We tackle concerns about data integration, government efficiency, and privacy issues while highlighting the potential benefits Palantir's technology could bring. Join us as we explore how AI-driven command and control capabilities could revolutionize government operations and why public fears may be misplaced.

Simone Collins: So , I looked up like what's been going on with Palantir, like the new government contracts. Yeah. And I am horrified. I'm genuinely horrified, but it's because I cannot believe the government has not already implemented this tech.

Like,

Malcolm Collins: I love what our fans, it's like, are you guys worried about what Palantir is and you're worried about the Yeah, I'm worried,

Simone Collins: like, is what is the new tech? There are two things that happened recently. In May, 2024, Palantir won a $480 million contract for the Maven Smart System, which is an AI powered prototype for military and intelligence applications with an expected completion date of May, 2029.

And in 2025, the Pentagon increased this contract ceiling by 795 million, bringing the total to over 1 billion, anticipating increased demand from military users for AI driven command and control capabilities. I absolutely want that for a government like, imagine how insecure you would feel if your government was doing nothing with ai.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, seriously.

Simone Collins: And then also a 217.8 million contract was awarded to Palantir, a sub, a subsidiary of it to Palantir, USG by the Space Forces, space Systems Command.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and also keep in mind how much for joint forest missions safe this is than going to like the NSA or something. Where, oh God, where they, well,

Simone Collins: it's just wasteful.

Like the NSA can try to do this. So a, another, another thing is that like people are, are freaking out about them because a lot of these deals, there are other deals too. For example, ice did a contract ice seize all the weapons

Malcolm Collins: they can get. I've seen the way people are freaking out about them, I know

Simone Collins: it's, they did a 30 million Palantir, did a 30 million deal with ICE to provide software monitoring visas and tracking deportations offering quote, near real-time visibility into migrant movements.

I'm like, wait, you didn't have that before? Are you kidding me? Like, what were you doing before? You know, and the Palantir's also in discussions with the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service to deploy its Foundry platform. And it, the Foundry platform of Palantir organizes and analyzes data.

So it, it, it enables the merging of sensitive data sets across agencies and why people are freaked out about the Foundry platform is that it's, it's. One central to many app palantir's government contracts, but it allows agencies to integrate data from various sources. So you can take financial records and immigration data and health records, which is

Malcolm Collins: exactly the thing that led to nine 11 was not being able to integrate.

Yeah, no, not enough

Simone Collins: interagency communication because there's so, 'cause they

Malcolm Collins: had knowledge that this was going to happen. Yes. When people

Simone Collins: weren't talking with each other because they're idiots and Palantir fixes this. And so you, you put this all into a central system for analysis. And you know, when you, when you have this adopted by the Department of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services the New York Times fierce, this created a master database by merging sensitive information like bank account numbers and student debt and medical claims and disability status.

But I'm like, yes. Why don't we have

Malcolm Collins: official database of that, that we need that? Yeah.

Simone Collins: How, how do we not have that? Like it disturbs me. 'cause I guess I was, you know how I always like take the most charitable interpretation of someone, right? Yeah. Like I'm just, I assume that they're doing their best work.

And so I assume that like if I apply for something with the government, that they're also aware of all, like my tax payment status, my social security status. They're aware. Nope. Nope. They have no idea. Like they're just like 17 different Simons in the US government, and none of them are integrated data wise.

They have no idea what the other Simons are doing. You know, one Simone could be a felon who this guy doesn't know. Like, I can't believe that. And this is how you end up getting, for example, illegal immigrants voted, this is how you,

Malcolm Collins: or, or social security payments going to people who are like 500 years old, you know?

Yeah. Like

Simone Collins: the, how are we not, like we need more Palantir that just like, you know what, actually just end the US government Make all, make it 100% Palantir. Yeah. Like, I'm, I'm done. Like contractors. It's the only one I trust. No, like they, they're competently run. Alex Karp is like. Extremely dedicated to the company, to the cause.

I think he's created a very enthusiastic, can we like shut

Malcolm Collins: down, like Boeing, for example. Like that needs to end. Okay.

Simone Collins: I know, I know. Like of all the organizations that I'm like super cool with having a little, little too much pow like guys I mean, a point that JD Vance had made in an interview with a comedian recently who was like, well, I'm freaked out about all this is, is JD Vance is like, listen, like.

Every major corporation has levels of data, information on you, on your purchase history, on your thoughts, on what you're saying in your own home that put all of this to shame. Like if you're worried about big brother listening to you, then maybe you shouldn't like have all these smart devices in your home.

Maybe you shouldn't have a smartphone sitting live next to you all the time, not sitting in a far cage like it's already happened. But this isn't in the hand even of the US government that ultimately wants the best. You know, no China's

Malcolm Collins: getting all this information, I assure you. Yeah, no, China. Yeah.

Simone Collins: You've got TikTok on your phone, China ccp, ISS listening. They know what's going on in your life. They know that you're menstruating right now. They know that you're a little bit irritable. 'cause if you're seasonal allergies, but the US government can't even figure out if you're dead or not. It's

Malcolm Collins: your personal menstruation notifications that is, that is what's going on right now.

And I'd, I'd be really excited if I heard Palantir getting like a big drone contract or something. 'cause we need to get way better. No, the

Simone Collins: more the merrier. Like genuinely I'm reading this and getting increasingly concerned of like, wait, they weren't doing this already. Like mods have been asleep this whole time.

Like I really do feel a lot of, why wasn't

Malcolm Collins: I out there murdering people? Like honestly, I don't understand.

Simone Collins: That's the,

Malcolm Collins: you know, do you want me to try to split this out and make this a micro episode to see how it does?

Simone Collins: You can, you can just throw it out as a, like a weekend bonus or something. That's what I was

Malcolm Collins: thinking.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I just, I, I think people have a completely what's the word? Dysmorphic, understanding of data security and, and privacy. And they're like, oh, yo. Like, oh, just like my Alexa knows him, like chat GT knows everything. There's this new meme where you, you ask chat GT to like make a picture of who they think you look like based on all of your queries.

And it, like, everyone's really entertained by the cartoons created because they're like so spot on like that. You, you have no idea the level of granular understanding that Google has about you, that Amazon has about you, that DoorDash has about you. Oh, absolutely. That, that your local grocery store has about you.

If you have a loyalty number or even if you're using the same credit card number, like this is just like so ridiculous. We need governments. Like, I'm genuinely concerned if the US government is not integrating AI and drones into absolutely everything that it's doing. And as, as Dan Driscoll has pointed out, the Secretary of the Army and as JD Vance have pointed out like warfare.

So for

Malcolm Collins: clarification, Dan Driscoll's a personal friend of ours and has been for a long time, and he was appointed Secretary of the Army continue.

Simone Collins: Warfare is fundamentally changing.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Alexander k Cruel, who is a great daily, almost daily newsletter like shared this meme at one point showing, well, no, he has

Malcolm Collins: a a half great half insane pro Ukraine propaganda.

Well, yeah, he was section for Ukraine,

Simone Collins: but I mean, he was excited about this with Ukraine because you know, this moment where recently Ukraine drove in just a bunch of normal tractor Yeah. Like tractor trailer trucks full of drones. No one realized, and they took out a bunch of military assets in Russia and he, he put this like Alexander Crowley that created or used a meme that showed like a, a US aircraft carrier, like UK aircraft carrier, like all these aircraft carriers, like, so incredibly expensive.

And then like, like a truck, a tractor trailer. Like now this fundamentally changes warfare. We have to use ai, we have to be able to integrate data on like, everything from like banking data to your health data to everything else to like.

Malcolm Collins: So many people abuse the government right now because government workers don't care fundamentally.

Yeah. And we have an episode that I was gonna do on that showing, well, it's thought, just not

Simone Collins: caring. It's, it's that

Malcolm Collins: AI incentivized does care, like AI will actually like attempt a task. Like if, if at the DMVI knew I was gonna be dealing with an AI clerk versus a human clerk mm-hmm. I'd be so much happier.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Well, and, and you know, we've, we've visited Palantir's offices. We even created fan art for Alex Carp one, one time. Remember when we made the full body

poster, Alex Carrp Art Company? Yeah.

Every encounter I've had with Palantir and its staff has been incredibly positive.

Malcolm Collins: Competent.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, no, but also passionate like they're, they actually, and there are lots of people in, in every government, you know, who are very passionate about, you know, protecting their country and doing a good job.

But the incentives at Palantir, I think are better aligned to actually create good outcomes. They are really excited when they make it possible for someone in, in the US military, for example, to, to end a battle before it begins. You know, to, to e extremely reduce the amount of collateral damage. Yeah.

Palantir has come under a lot of fire recently because of their, their, their use in Gaza, for example. And they're like, clearly okay with. Helping Israel. So like, that's gonna get them in trouble. Why shouldn't

Malcolm Collins: they? I I, I will never understand why if, if the, if the hostages haven't been released, Israel has Comp Blanc to do whatever it wants.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Is it? Well, yeah. And as long as,

Malcolm Collins: and, and if, and if, if Greta Hamas is to go out there and, and complain, why isn't she asking for the release of the hostages? You know, that is like, and it, you, you want me to like, let my daughter be continually griped by, you know, these people and not do anything about it.

Just be like, oh, I guess I'm giving up on her. You know, like, we've seen what these people do to their hostages.

And I'd point out that we have seen what these people do to their hostages. People like Greta Thornberg and the other people on her selfie boat have not seen what they do to their hostages because when the Israeli forces offered to show her video of what was happening, she and the rest of the people on the boat absolutely refused to watch any of it.

So this just shows that from my perspective, it's not like she has seen, what's happening on one side and what's happening on the other side. She's just like, I don't care what's happening to Jews. I just don't care. I don't care that there are still people down in tunnels that this is happening to, that these are your sons and daughters and that that is why you are continuing to fight.

I don't care. They get to do whatever they want.

Like this isn't like they're in some nice room or something. They're being starved and graped to death. Like this is mortifying. And the fact that you even would consider that you wouldn't do literally everything was in your power to get the hostages back.

Just to me it shows like when you consider that those hostages could be family members, shows a lack of humanity in an individual they have a right to do whatever. They feel they need to do until the hostages are released.

And if you're like, well, , but what about all the other people who are being hurt and all of those other people being hurt should be doing everything in their power to get the hostages to be released. Because at the end of the day, what you're asking me to do is to tell somebody who knows that their daughter is being.

Treated as an S slave, , and could be for the rest of her life if you don't get her released to not do anything in their power to get her back. And I can't ever ask of somebody,

Because I couldn't ask that of myself. If somebody came up to me and they're like, Malcolm, you've already murdered, you know,

50,000 .

People just trying to get your one daughter back from the grape caves. , You should stop now. You know, it's just a one girl I'd be like, I'm sorry, that's not how this works.

It's my daughter.

And then of you said, well, yes, but some of their kids are heard as collateral damage. I'd say, I'm not going to stop until my daughter is out of the grape cave. That's it. Period. And so I wouldn't ask that of anyone else. I.

okay.

Simone Collins: But bringing it back to Palantir, basically. Okay. Sorry. Every argument that people are butt hurting about, I, I, it just really doesn't concern me at all.

Like, I'm not worried about it. I mean, one, the executive order on data sharing. In March, 2025, president Trump signed an executive order mandating that federal agencies share data. I didn't realize Palantir was involved with this. I was just stoked about it when I heard about it. But of course, Palantir is involved 'cause Palantir is the tech substrate that enables the data sharing to happen efficiently.

But anyway, this, this is what makes people fear that there's like a, a master list of personal information with untold surveillance power, which we should have. And, and the, the foundry platform of Palantir is obviously what's gonna make this happen. So one, they're, they're afraid of that the, the, the data sharing, oh, I'm sorry.

Our government's functional now. How dare we? Okay, so that's a, that's argument one. I don't care. I I am, I'm alarmed that we're not doing it already. Issue two is immigration enforcement. How dare we enforce our immigration policy? Again, Palantir's work with ice, particularly in, for deportation tracking, has drawn a lot of criticism even from former employees and activists who argue that it could lead to mass surveillance and human rights violations.

And there are 13. 13, okay. 13 former Palantir workers who condemn the company's role. Also, these are former workers, so they might just be like fired for not doing their jobs. Were

fired for incompetence.

That, that are, that are concerned about the company's role in supporting Trump's immigration policies citing violations of its founding principles, which are probably something like, I'm clutching them so tightly.

I know. So like one, no, like. W the US has a right to enforce its laws. Like, don't, yeah. Don't, don't come at me for that. You know

Malcolm Collins: what, you know what I wanna see, I wanna see the government shut down the NSA and replace it with Palantir. The NSA has no business existing anymore. Yeah. It's policy,

Simone Collins: I think.

Yeah. Palantir could do. I mean, so, but keep in mind Malcolm, that, so the, the big data centers, like a lot of what NSA just does is raw data collection, which is useful. Palantir uses that data. So I'm, I'm a, like, I I say keep, you know, keep

Malcolm Collins: some of it. No. NSA employees have repeatedly been shown to violate the interest of the American citizen.

Yeah. They, they, they're like, oh, you're just saying half

Simone Collins: Palantir. Do what the NSA does now.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Take over all those data centers. Oh, NS a has, they, they have people doing like searches on like former girlfriends and stuff like that. They've been caught with this. They have people, you know, as I said recently, all of this ink trans propaganda and like a trans cult there that's been enforcing, it's a message on everyone.

And I've heard no story like this from Palantir employees. No, definitely not.

Simone Collins: No. None of every experience we've had with them has

Malcolm Collins: been none of this you know, the

Simone Collins: height of professionalism and, and motivated altruism. So then the, the fourth argument is the classic one of just like the, the ethical and the privacy fears, which, you know, you know how I feel about how much

Malcolm Collins: pe you're paying you, Simone, for this, by the way.

Simone Collins: Not enough. Right. How, how much are we getting from Mossad? Just not enough. I actually, I think I did find a Palantir apologist on YouTube, and I'm like, are you being paid by them? Like, what's up with you? But he just actually seemed, I think he was more of a stock enthusiast and we can get to that too.

Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. The Palantir stock thing. Yeah. Well,

Simone Collins: yeah. Palantir stock has surged over 70% in 2025, driven by these contracts of the Trump administration's priorities. So it's, it's the s and p 502nd best performer. Yeah. I think it's gonna have some stands because of that, and I don't think, yeah, I mean, yeah, kind of they are being paid because, you know, they, their stocks have gone way up if they were earlier holders.

Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah.

Simone Collins: It's, but it's, I mean, it's on that front, it, its valuation is too high. It's 200 times. Times forward earnings. At its current valuation, it's, it's not, that's not a sustainable price. Like I think it's, it's way over inflated because of all this. And like to your point right with stocks is once something becomes pervasively discussed and people think it's a good asset, like it should be dead to you, you should have sold it already.

You know, like that is not when it's interesting. You want things that don't look interesting to anyone when, you know they're undervalued anyway though. So back to the ethical and privacy risks. So obviously there are people who warn that Palantir's technology could be used to build a police state infrastructure, especially given that it can process biometric data, social media activity, other personal information, and just combine it all together to create these amazing footprints and profiles.

Mm-hmm. But to JD Van's argument, like I said earlier, this is already happening. From companies.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I I, I'm sorry. Do you want the police state to be run by China and private corporations, or do you want like, any degree of accountability within it? Right. Yeah.

Simone Collins: People argue that they, they're, they're worried about the lack of transparency potential for algorithmic bias or data breaches.

Malcolm Collins: Palantir verse in sa in China. Yeah. I'm like, I'm sorry. Like you're,

Simone Collins: you're probably the same people who freaked out when TikTok was gonna be shut down. Like, I didn't see you complaining. Then. This is kind of like people freaking out when we suggest a medal of motherhood. But like, they also encourage most of the socialist policies that I.

Were, you know, popular in post Imar Republic, Germany, so whatever. Right. And then of course the final argument is that like, oh, well they're like, they're too close. Like the political, like Trump isn't, well one Trump derangement syndrome, like Trump is involved. So it's gotta be bad. And also Peter Thiel is involved, so it's gotta be bad.

And, and there are some former app Palantir who are working with Doge and they just, oh, this is so incestuous. But like, oh, I guess it's just, 'cause maybe there aren't that many competent people in the world each other. Yeah. Oh, competent people work in important jobs. I'm so shocked. By this. It's a collusion.

Collusion. So yeah, I just like, it's, it's insane to me that people are having these freakouts and people have created these long YouTube videos about how Alex Karp is a demon. And I'm just listening to them and I'm like, I'm so concerned about Palantir's, lack of power right now.

Speaker 3: Money, please.

Speaker 4: Oh, no. No. There's no money.

Speaker 3: Money, please, money. Please.

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