ACCORDING TO JEFF CHILDERS

Speaking of New World Panics, the New York Times ran a breathless warning about another potential virus, it’s latest Trump-aligned enemy number one, now that Elon has stepped back. The story ran late last week below the terrifying headline, “Trump Taps Palantir to Compile Data on Americans.” The subheadline pushed further: “The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work with the government, spreading the company’s technology — which could easily merge data on Americans.”

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I was immediately suspicious. After all, the Times has never come across a data surveillance operation that it didn’t want to run away with and marry in Las Vegas. These are the same folks who applauded when tech companies tracked our every move for “public health,” when the FBI monitored school board protests for “domestic extremism,” and when intelligence agencies flagged memes as national security threats. They practically gushed over predictive policing algorithms.

But suddenly it’s an apocalyptic threat because Trump sits at the terminal?

So let’s unpack the latest liberal-fueled panic, which has managed to leak into parts of the conservative commentariat as well. And let me say clearly up front: I’m a libertarian-leaning conservative who opposes vaccine passports, digital currency, and national driver’s licenses. But let’s not let the Times frame the narrative this time.

? Palantir is an unlikely villain in this global control story. For starters, it is a publicly traded company —anyone with a brokerage account can own a piece of it— and it’s subject to SEC disclosures, shareholder lawsuits, and the usual quarterly pressures. Not exactly the black-ops boogeyman the Times wants us to imagine.

Then again, BlackRock is also publicly traded, and that sketchy outfit oozes enough globalist megacorp energy to keep the tinfoil trade booming. As usual, the truth lies somewhere in between the talking points.

Palantir was co-founded by conservative mega-donor Peter Thiel, who once pledged to destroy the same media companies now raising the alarm. But on the other hand, Palantir’s CEO, Alex Karp, recently bragged in an interview that some of the company’s software “single-handedly stopped the rise of the far-right in Europe.” Not too good.

Palantir’s executive ranks brim with Obama-era intelligence officials. And it spent the pandemic quietly managing CDC logistics under the Biden administration. So yeah— there are good reasons to raise a skeptical eyebrow. And the Times, always able to detect a whiff of tyranny the moment a Republican retakes the White House, was more than happy to fan the flames.

? Let’s be blunt: what the media’s trying to torpedo isn’t “surveillance”—it’s DOGE. That is, Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency. Palantir’s project threatens the status quo—bureaucratic turf silos, operational redundancy, and sacred cows galore.

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Here’s what’s actually happening: the administration is expanding Palantir’s existing contracts with several federal agencies —like DHS, HHS, ICE, the IRS, and possibly Social Security and Education— to implement ‘Foundry,’ a software platform designed to help integrate and analyze otherwise disconnected federal data.

Foundry isn’t spyware. It’s a relational database platform with a user interface, built to help agencies see the big picture— like connecting Treasury’s tax data with SSA’s death records, or flagging overlapping benefits across programs.

To be honest, everyone assumed the federal government was already cross-referencing agency information. The real scandal DOGE uncovered wasn’t “too much integration”— it was total dysfunction. Retirement records were buried in a literal mineshaft. IRS computers were unable to verify that refund recipients were alive. There were massive gaps in agency coordination. DOGE didn’t reveal 1984— it revealed 1954.

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Let’s also be clear: Palantir isn’t collecting our data. It’s not deciding what to do with it. It’s a data processor, not a data controller or collector. The federal agencies define the rules, the sources, and the outputs, and the agencies provide the data.

Palantir was not hired to spy, but to clean house. The goal is to eliminate waste, fraud, abuse, and decades of bureaucratic fungus. The potential cause for concern —what is worth real scrutiny— is that once data is better organized, it’s easier to misuse. The same tools that catch duplicate payments or filter out ineligible recipients could, in theory, be used to profile dissenters, target political enemies, or perish the thought, supercharge immigration enforcement.

That’s why progressive critics are howling, frantically trying to gin up a conservative civil rights panic. They could care less about our privacy. What they really fear is that the invisible galleons —the ghost fleets of siloed bureaucratic control— might stop sailing. They are freaking out that the Spanish doubloons of federal spending will no longer flow quietly into their NGOs’ bank accounts under the banners of “social equity,” “outreach,” or “compliance infrastructure.”

The New York Times is not worried about surveillance. Don’t make me laugh. They’re worried about accountability.

To be clear, Congress has a critical role to play. It must ensure the right goals are being pursued —efficiency, transparency, fraud reduction— not mission creep, and that Americans’ privacy is protected at every stage. The problem isn’t that the already existing data is being better organized. The problem, and it’s not a small problem, would be if it’s abused. That’s where oversight, not hysteria, belongs.

For further reading from a less extreme take, or for balance, see this X thread published yesterday by Wendy R. Anderson, a former senior defense official and ex-Palantir executive.

In other words, even the Times’s headline —“Trump Taps Palantir to Compile Data on Americans”— is categorically false.

But at the same time, Palantir’s CEO grinned like a chimpanzee while boasting about influencing political outcomes abroad —by taking down conservative movements— which is definitely not reassuring. The modernization project is a must to help Trump finish what DOGE started—but so are transparency and congressional oversight. So, as I said, the Palantir story is both more and less than the hot takes suggest.