by Tyler Johnson

In Philip K. Dick’s 1956 novelette “Minority Report” a group of psychics is used by the police department to predict future crimes. 

In J.R.R. In Tolkien’s classic “Lord of The Rings” the palantir stone is the magical crystal ball which allows the user to spy on others from distances. 

In our world Peter Thiel is the billionaire trying to bring these concepts from fiction to reality and it is anything but utopian.

Thiel founded the company “Palantir,” whose namesake is an on-the-nose reference to the fictional item. The function of the company is simple: Provide AI-powered software platforms to help organizations manage data sets. 

But these organizations aren’t the local computer store, and these data sets aren’t just any type of information. They are providing the systems that governments use to predict citizen crimes. They are the authors of an ai used to automate drone strikes. The United States, Israel, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, India, Canada, and Spain all have government contracts with this company.  

The entire shadow of our internet presence is to be collected and used against us. You may call it a surveillance conspiracy; they will call it marketing; and this is the problem with unchecked corporations. The U.S. government on our half has surrendered the information of Americans to Palantir and in exchange for what? We must ask ourselves , exactly who is this benefiting?

To understand who this benefits we must understand Peter Thiel, the Infamous billionaire who’s claimed “Freedom and Democracy are not compatible” and who has a passing interest in blood transfusions for eternal life.

 In a now viral interview with the CEO, he was asked the simple question: “Should humanity endure?” His answer to this was a vomit of stuttering and a plethora of pseudo-intellectual “Well, what do you mean by that” statements. 

Should we trust someone who can’t answer this question simply? Especially with the entire nation’s information? 

Current Vice President JD Vance thinks so. Vance had worked in Thiel’s venture capital firm and had 15 million dollars of his Senate campaign funded by Thiel. So whose interests does Vance really have at heart? Well, if we take the so-called “Philosopher behind JD Vance” Curtis Yarvin’s word for it, his interests lie in monarchy. 

Yarvin and the as well infamous British Philosopher Nick Land spearheaded “The Dark Enlightenment” movement. An ideology built out of an accelerationist view of the future. That democracy is dead and we must have a CEO monarch take hold of society. This belief also posits that humanity in fact will not endure and AI will create a singularity that we will not be able to come back from.

This may seem like something right out of another Philip K Dick novel but this is our current reality. We must not forgo our democracy to authoritarian lunatics. Palantir’s use of AI under these circumstances is even more alarming. While Thiel might not admit AI is bringing about the end of humanity, OpenAI (ChatGPT) CEO Sam Altman is, openly stating: “AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there’ll be great companies.”

Prioritizing company and corporation over the survival of humanity is the goal of these people. They are not populists. They’re no longer neoliberals. These are radical monarchists who are ushering in an era of dying democracy. This is the New Right.

 But we must remember AI is not sentient, omnipresent, nor metaphysical. It lies in data centers. Data centers which could be torn down and replaced with almost anything better. With Microsoft recently investing 1 billion into datacenters in Indiana, the chance to counter is closer than ever. It isn’t over once they’ve built them as long as we have the strength to fight, to protest, and to speak. These democratic ideals are what they intend on taking from us and no one person living in this country should stand for it any longer.

A sort of dark nihilism has gripped the youth of this country. You know them, the “that’s just the system” or the “nothing ever happens” crowd. But we have to keep in mind that this is not the end and there is no end for humanity in sight as long as we keep our democratic spirit. No longer must we relegate the decisions of infrastructure, labor rights, and civil liberties to the will of a few profit driven maniacs. 

This isn’t to say we need to drive our force behind the Democrat Party; truthfully, it’s quite obvious that the Democrat Party has failed us. These are people just as disconnected from who they’re supposed to be representing. Hundreds of miles away from their home states, sitting in Washington, with the same corporations who bought the other side, buying them.

But hope is not lost. With grass roots and anti-establishment Democrats gaining traction in cities like New York and Minneapolis, the term Democratic-Socialist is something progressives are starting to warm up to. With Zohran Mamdani’s looming victory over Andrew Cuomo and Omar Fateh’s endorsement by the DFL against Jacob Frey, it’s clear there is a shift within the party’s values.

Going forward as a country we need to understand just who we’re supporting and who’s financially supporting them. We must become the free country we so often boast of being — free of tyrannical surveillance and corporate lobbyists. We cannot let them tear down our homes for  their data centers. We cannot have our peace destroyed for their profit. We must stand and shout louder for every voice they silence. There is a future for us, but we are the ones who have to build it.