Not surprisingly, a few people viewed my research presentation of JD Vance through a prism of negativity. [SEE HERE] We have many new readers who are not as in-tune with the details of how the bad parts of the DC surveillance state work. So, let me take you behind the scenes a little and expand for context.
Nothing written about the data set, the facts within the JD Vance storyline, is incorrect. Everything is cited, accurate and factually true. However, when you get into the intent and consequence part, that’s when people start to become emotional. Some clarity is needed.
Commenter Freedom Ring provides a good example. FR says, “JD has an association with Theil [sp?] & Musk; this could be worded to be a positive or negative, but the article paints it as a negative.”
This is correct. The research article positions the relationship between JD Vance and Peter Thiel as a serious challenge, here’s why.
Since his original endorsement of Donald Trump in 2016, a good thing, billionaire tech executive Peter Thiel has expanded his company, Palantir Technology, to be the leading edge of a data-processing system. The Palantir tech is designed to use artificial intelligence (AI) to crawl through massive sets of surveillance data, phone data, facial recognition data, metadata (writ large) etc.
In essence Palantir Tech is receiving government contracts (Defense and Intel) to use the Palantir AI tools to analyze/filter a massive amount of electronic data, and take action based on results from the data, or what might be called SIGNIT (Signals Intelligence). There are billions at stake in this relationship.
In short, Thiel has a vested financial interest in providing AI surveillance filtration tools to the U.S. government.
Ok fine. That’s just a simple acceptance of what Thiel’s company does now. And Thiel recruited JD Vance back in 2012/2013 while at Yale law school, and personally financed JD’s entry into the world of politics in 2020/2021. I won’t repeat all the citations but suffice to say, without Thiel there is no Senator/VP Vance. Thiel leveraged his relationship with Donald Trump to get JD Vance the Ohio primary endorsement in 2022, and the rest is history. Fair enough. Nothing disputed.
Here’s where things get sticky….
Thiel’s company Palantir Tech provides the AI metadata analytic tools used by the U.S. government in their national security efforts. The government access to that metadata comes, in part, as an outcome of the legislative FISA authorization. As a consequence, eliminating, say… FISA(702) surveillance processes, is against the financial interests of Peter Thiel. If the U.S. government cannot access the dataset, the U.S. govt doesn’t need Palantir’s AI filtration tech. That’s just the nature of the relationship.
