Name: Concerns with Palantir, AI, and the Big Beautiful Bill
Uploaded: 2025-06-21T17:45:04.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Concerns with Palantir, AI, and the Big Beautiful Bill' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-06-21. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Concerns with Palantir, AI, and the Big Beautiful Bill' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-06-21. Transcript available.

is there a tech lobby yeah there's a tech lobby let me tell you one of the
things that
it's been in the news that i know you've discussed palantir right and the the
contracts that they're
getting 113 million dollars to create this database on americans and i you know
i know
you asked someone yeah yeah i did i mean i asked jd vance about palantir
because i'm scared of it
right yeah um this is just on my thing that's so crazy dude we're like this
bananas um i asked jd
vance about palantir because i'm scared of it i felt like he gave kind of a
political answer to me
right which is no judgment i did that's what i felt like uh i want our
listeners to know why i'm
concerned um well one of the reasons is that palantir got a 795 million dollar
contract with
the u.s army for the maven smart system which is using artificial intelligence
tools for data fusion
and target identification uh and then a 30 million dollar contract from the u.s
immigration and
customs enforcement to develop an operating system that identifies undocumented
immigrants and tracks
self-deportations um so one of the things that's going on is that it feels like
to me that they are
asking palette or they are they've granted palantir the opportunity to create
this overall database and
that is one thing that jd did talk about so maybe he didn't give that just a
political answer
he said he believes that it's just an overall database where like um the local
police department
will now um have the them in the irs every irs everything will be synced up so
that if you're
involved in something in the world everything will all the databases will be
linked right now i felt like
he would maybe know more about it because he has a relationship with um this
guy peter thiel
or uh who is one of the founders of it or something but i don't know if that's
true right um and maybe
he didn't give me a political answer i think it felt i don't know you know what
maybe it's just it wasn't
the exact answer i wanted right and so that's why i'm kind of framing it like
that um so yeah i don't
want to say that it just felt yeah i think it wasn't kind of what i wanted to
hear but that's
also part of diplomacy right it's like i learned that recently it's like
everything is you're not
going to get everything right nobody gets everything but anyway that's what it
said is this overall
database and to me i'm thinking dude if they have an overall database right and
they know every they're
going to know everything to me it feels like they that that they'll just have
this like all your
information your bank card your blood type um they'll know if you prayed this
morning they'll know
just by like biometrics or whatever if you've hit your knees they'll know um if
you're feeling hopeful
they'll know all of these things right uh what are things that we don't see
coming from this
palantir deal do you think that those fears are realistic what do you think
well i'm concerned let me
tell you what how i see the facts first of all i don't want to dunk on the vice
president because i
i saw some of the interview and i love the fact that you have people here of
different viewpoints
but he's got a particular view i mean peter teal founded uh palantir peter teal
also i mean it's
public record put 15 million dollars into his campaign campaign yeah we talked
about that to make him
that said so i'm not saying i'm not questioning him i'm just saying he's got a
view of a relationship
with palantir and uh and uh we we've got to figure out what are the objective
facts i mean
the palantir was founded by peter teal and it was founded by cia's incutel
right this is what funds it
cia is what do you mean the cia has a venture capital firm oh called incutel
incutel they gave the
money initially for palantir okay there's certain things that palantir does
that are important to our
country they're using ai for military applications so that our fighter pilots
can identify targets
right we need certain things to make sure that we're the leading military in
the world the problem
is on this database that they're creating about americans right and here's what
they can do they're
not collecting the data they keep saying i'm a data aggregator that means they're
creating the program
the software where the government puts in the data your financial records your
health records
your employment records they can buy your social media records and they put it
in and palantir spits
out uh information now let me give you a concrete example of why this could be
dangerous let's say
you're a comedian you know you know comedians right uh my guess is before you
became theo von
there were times where as a comedian you did shows that made you maybe five
thousand bucks a night and
maybe then you'd go a while and not make anything or make 500 bucks right you
got good shows bad shows
it's oh yeah i mean we made 25 yeah 100 bucks yeah for sure and you i'm sure
you have still have
friends who are in stand-up comedy and uh who have good nights and bad nights
now palantir this database
suddenly flags and does an algorithm and if someone's having uh income here and
there they
say well is this person a risk for tax evasion and suddenly they're getting audited
because they're
making a predictive model that comedians stand-up comedians should be making 70
000 a year and this
person isn't disclosing their income are they a risk we don't know with palantir
are they target what
their algorithm is targeting are they targeting ordinary people who have
incomes that are variable
or they tag are targeting the billionaires who are evading taxes it's just a
black box we don't know
what data of your friends or my friends is being collected and what whether
they're actually creating a
database all we need to do is have transparency i have three simple things that
i think we should be
able to get get consensus around your data should not be collected without your
consent you need to know
what data of yours the federal government has the federal government should not
have any of your
data that they don't absolutely need to provide you a service and then when palantir
we should know
what their algorithms are what are are they doing this to get audit people who
are like making 50 grand
because they're accusing them of tax evasion are they targeting their
algorithms on the very rich or on
ordinary folks what if you're what if you have a social media post that says
things that are
critical of the government is that information now the government has it's like
a whole black box
yeah it's very scary um it's very scary too because what if a another country
says hey uh
palantir you're our friends why don't you target these people in america so we
can start to bring
them down right why don't you start to adjust their scores hey why don't you
why do you why don't you
not um why don't you make it so that it makes it look like these people have
already paid their taxes
if they haven't you know i'm saying like right there's just all these little
things that could be
plausible based on whoever owns the information like whoever owns palantir
whoever owns that algorithm
is going to be able to basically puppeteer so many things that could be
possible and even if they're
not doing it there's the fear that they could be there's the fear they could
and there are no laws
right now right we need laws saying show us your algorithms have an audit of
the algorithms who are
you targeting how do we make sure that you're not using this in a negative way
and basically like
americans should know what data people have about i agree i agree with you 100
man and i want to say
those also and i don't want like a company like palantir to think like you're
bullying me or you're
doing this or that they just happen to be the company that has been picked and
it's a scary time
it's already so scary with like technology everything happening so fast um it's
spooky and you have a
nuanced view look i have a nuanced view there's things that palantir does that
are important for a
military like just saying oh palantir is all bad would be uh unfair to the what
they're doing
on the pandemic they helped with distribution or what they've done on the
military the point is
though this american database building is scary and trying to predict whether
someone is being a tax
delinquent or not trying to predict if they're going to be a financial risk
trying to figure out
a profile on them and what we need i i really blame the lawmakers because what
we need is the laws to
protect people's privacy to protect uh people's data like to protect the the
use of these algorithms yeah
i agree 100 and we're going to get to that i know you have the the internet
bill of rights and so we're
going to get to that in a second um yeah this is the push i want to say this
the push has put a key
palantir product called foundry into at least four federal agencies um
including dhs hhs
and others widely adopting foundry which organizes and analyzes data paves the
way for mr trump to
easily merge information from different agencies the government officials said
and that's what jd vance
said when he was here right he was saying um and i'm reading that off of uh the
new york times give or
take what you think about them um but uh that's what jd vance had said that he
thought it was just
this overall compiling this kind of aggregating of information right he didn't
think it would get
super specific so i do you know i don't think he it felt a little politically
but that also could just
be what he exactly believes and that could be exactly what's happening um i
think the the there's
just a lot of fear with it a lot of it says in here also creating detailed
portraits of americans
based on government data is not just a pipe dream the trump administration has
already sought
access to hundreds of data points on citizens and others through government
databases including
their bank account numbers the amount of their student debt medical claims
disability status
uh etc so this will just i mean i think this whole thing just goes further down
that line
and i don't even of just like knowing everything about everyone and i don't
even think that it's
it's republican or democrat i just think it's where we are in time right now um
with technology and
that it's very scary uh and that you can start to see how big the uh tech lobby
is i want to say this um
one thing about palantir though that a lot of people have had issues with uh is
what they're doing
in gaza right with ai targeting and this is off of i i read this online and so
that makes it probably
uncredible but uh allegedly palantir software is reportedly used by the israeli
military to help select
targets in gaza its data mining and ai systems can process intelligence reports
communication intercepts
and surveillance data to generate lists of potential targets in a matter of
minutes a process that
previously took hours um lavender and habsora uh which are two of the they're
kind of i guess programs or
overall idea names um and have sore means the gospel uh investigations indicate
that two ai systems
lavender and habsora are at the core of this collaboration lavender assigns palestinians
a threat
score based on metadata social media and movement patterns these systems
reportedly operate with
significant error margins and their recommendations can be enough to authorize
deadly strikes sometimes
with minimal human oversight gaza is described as a live laboratory for these
ai technologies where
new systems are trained tested and refined in real-time combat conditions
before being marked globally as
battle-tested solutions i think that's where a lot of the fear is it really is
if that can happen there and
this they're capable of that then how do i know if when i'm walking down the
street
that some decision i made years ago or something a bullet's not just going to
fly out of anywhere and
go through my head from a drone or something you know that i think is is the
big fear about this and i
think some people don't even know it i think the big fear with technology is
that crazy for me to say that
no i i mean i don't think it's crazy to fear that machines should not control
human beings right i mean
we look technology can do a lot of good it can do a lot of bad but the key
principle here is are human
beings going to be in charge from what you described it looks like that ai is
being used they're selecting
targeting and the biggest negative in that whole paragraph you read is without
human oversight i mean you
still need a human being saying okay wait we're not just going to go do strikes
because ai tells us
there's a risk there's some women and children there let's not have those
strikes there's a hospital
there right and i think that one of the things we need to adopt for the united
states is there has
to be a human being making decisions before any military use any military
strike yeah at least give me
the fat guy with the donuts sitting there and be like nah forget it nah nah nah
he's like it's like
we're now going to be we're celebrating we're celebrating he would i rather
have a human being
right because there's some compassion there's so i agree that there's some
sense of guilt ai is not
going to feel guilty ai is not going to feel a compassion area is not going to
have any accountability
ai doesn't even go to sleep at night how can you trust something that doesn't
even go to sleep at
night right you know that doesn't even give god a chance to rebuild the inside
of it while it's
resting that's pretty beautiful yeah i do not understand this man you talked
about an internet
bill of rights right which you tried to uh pass i'm guessing or tell me about
that tell me a little
bit about that experience and why do we need that do you feel like we already
answered that or no i could
go do it briefly i mean i okay there's a guy tim bernersley you should have him
on sometime tim what's
his name tim bernersley he is the founder basically of the world wide web he's
one of the people who
made the internet the internet oh and uh i'm sure he was like knighted or
something and uh you know so
he and i talked and we came out with this internet bill of rights uh when you
remember that facebook
cambridge analytica scandal where people lost their data on facebook and
profiles were made and basically
it said in this country no one should take your data without your consent agree
and you should know where
your data is i mean there are other parts of it but it's like pretty simple you
own your data you
control your data and you should know what's happening with your data and i
think it and by the way you
should be compensated to some extent for the use of your data if you if you
consent there should be a
data dividend in this country and i think that is not a partisan issue uh it is
an issue that's going
to become increasingly important with things like this database that may be
being made like you should
know do you know theo right now what the government knows about you do you know
if there's a profile on
you do you know like what if that database is wrong i know that i'm trying to
think of what else
uh i don't know yeah like you should you should know you should be able to
consent you should be
able to get something deleted if they have an incorrect information and what
that applies to the
government and it applies to big corporations i don't want google having some
profile on rocona
i mean so we introduced this in 2017 2017 congress to this day has not been
able to prep to introduce or
pass any internet bill of rights there are no protections you know when josh holly
you say
there's no protections oh you just mean there's no protections for people i
mean no protection of
people josh holly once and i there are places where i actually agree with holly
he had mark zuckerberg
stand up and apologize to those parents to those parents i saw that and someone
said to me you know
what he should have also done he should have had the whole congress stand up
and apologize the problem
isn't just these tech companies it's the congress we've we've had this stuff
going on for 10 years
and congress has not passed an internet bill of rights and one of the things i
say is
like i know these people i know they i know how they think they're going to run
circles around you
you got to hold them accountable have the tech guy saying hold them accountable
why won't they do it
the same reason as before well i want the tech companies doing who's lobbying
who's lobbying against
the big tech it's it's the uh it's tech lobbying it's internet service provider
lobbying
it's these lobbyists and they don't want uh and we haven't i mean can you
imagine this country that
has a constitution that is a country founded on freedom and we don't have any
federal legislation
saying you own your data
Thank you.

Concerns with Palantir, AI, and the Big Beautiful Bill

is there a tech lobby yeah there's a tech lobby let me tell you one of the
things that
it's been in the news that i know you've discussed palantir right and the the
contracts that they're
getting 113 million dollars to create this database on americans and i you know
i know
you asked someone yeah yeah i did i mean i asked jd vance about palantir
because i'm scared of it
right yeah um this is just on my thing that's so crazy dude we're like this
bananas um i asked jd
vance about palantir because i'm scared of it i felt like he gave kind of a
political answer to me
right which is no judgment i did that's what i felt like uh i want our
listeners to know why i'm
concerned um well one of the reasons is that palantir got a 795 million dollar
contract with
the u.s army for the maven smart system which is using artificial intelligence
tools for data fusion
and target identification uh and then a 30 million dollar contract from the u.s
immigration and
customs enforcement to develop an operating system that identifies undocumented
immigrants and tracks
self-deportations um so one of the things that's going on is that it feels like
to me that they are
asking palette or they are they've granted palantir the opportunity to create
this overall database and
that is one thing that jd did talk about so maybe he didn't give that just a
political answer
he said he believes that it's just an overall database where like um the local
police department
will now um have the them in the irs every irs everything will be synced up so
that if you're
involved in something in the world everything will all the databases will be
linked right now i felt like
he would maybe know more about it because he has a relationship with um this
guy peter thiel
or uh who is one of the founders of it or something but i don't know if that's
true right um and maybe
he didn't give me a political answer i think it felt i don't know you know what
maybe it's just it wasn't
the exact answer i wanted right and so that's why i'm kind of framing it like
that um so yeah i don't
want to say that it just felt yeah i think it wasn't kind of what i wanted to
hear but that's
also part of diplomacy right it's like i learned that recently it's like
everything is you're not
going to get everything right nobody gets everything but anyway that's what it
said is this overall
database and to me i'm thinking dude if they have an overall database right and
they know every they're
going to know everything to me it feels like they that that they'll just have
this like all your
information your bank card your blood type um they'll know if you prayed this
morning they'll know
just by like biometrics or whatever if you've hit your knees they'll know um if
you're feeling hopeful
they'll know all of these things right uh what are things that we don't see
coming from this
palantir deal do you think that those fears are realistic what do you think
well i'm concerned let me
tell you what how i see the facts first of all i don't want to dunk on the vice
president because i
i saw some of the interview and i love the fact that you have people here of
different viewpoints
but he's got a particular view i mean peter teal founded uh palantir peter teal
also i mean it's
public record put 15 million dollars into his campaign campaign yeah we talked
about that to make him
that said so i'm not saying i'm not questioning him i'm just saying he's got a
view of a relationship
with palantir and uh and uh we we've got to figure out what are the objective
facts i mean
the palantir was founded by peter teal and it was founded by cia's incutel
right this is what funds it
cia is what do you mean the cia has a venture capital firm oh called incutel
incutel they gave the
money initially for palantir okay there's certain things that palantir does
that are important to our
country they're using ai for military applications so that our fighter pilots
can identify targets
right we need certain things to make sure that we're the leading military in
the world the problem
is on this database that they're creating about americans right and here's what
they can do they're
not collecting the data they keep saying i'm a data aggregator that means they're
creating the program
the software where the government puts in the data your financial records your
health records
your employment records they can buy your social media records and they put it
in and palantir spits
out uh information now let me give you a concrete example of why this could be
dangerous let's say
you're a comedian you know you know comedians right uh my guess is before you
became theo von
there were times where as a comedian you did shows that made you maybe five
thousand bucks a night and
maybe then you'd go a while and not make anything or make 500 bucks right you
got good shows bad shows
it's oh yeah i mean we made 25 yeah 100 bucks yeah for sure and you i'm sure
you have still have
friends who are in stand-up comedy and uh who have good nights and bad nights
now palantir this database
suddenly flags and does an algorithm and if someone's having uh income here and
there they
say well is this person a risk for tax evasion and suddenly they're getting audited
because they're
making a predictive model that comedians stand-up comedians should be making 70
000 a year and this
person isn't disclosing their income are they a risk we don't know with palantir
are they target what
their algorithm is targeting are they targeting ordinary people who have
incomes that are variable
or they tag are targeting the billionaires who are evading taxes it's just a
black box we don't know
what data of your friends or my friends is being collected and what whether
they're actually creating a
database all we need to do is have transparency i have three simple things that
i think we should be
able to get get consensus around your data should not be collected without your
consent you need to know
what data of yours the federal government has the federal government should not
have any of your
data that they don't absolutely need to provide you a service and then when palantir
we should know
what their algorithms are what are are they doing this to get audit people who
are like making 50 grand
because they're accusing them of tax evasion are they targeting their
algorithms on the very rich or on
ordinary folks what if you're what if you have a social media post that says
things that are
critical of the government is that information now the government has it's like
a whole black box
yeah it's very scary um it's very scary too because what if a another country
says hey uh
palantir you're our friends why don't you target these people in america so we
can start to bring
them down right why don't you start to adjust their scores hey why don't you
why do you why don't you
not um why don't you make it so that it makes it look like these people have
already paid their taxes
if they haven't you know i'm saying like right there's just all these little
things that could be
plausible based on whoever owns the information like whoever owns palantir
whoever owns that algorithm
is going to be able to basically puppeteer so many things that could be
possible and even if they're
not doing it there's the fear that they could be there's the fear they could
and there are no laws
right now right we need laws saying show us your algorithms have an audit of
the algorithms who are
you targeting how do we make sure that you're not using this in a negative way
and basically like
americans should know what data people have about i agree i agree with you 100
man and i want to say
those also and i don't want like a company like palantir to think like you're
bullying me or you're
doing this or that they just happen to be the company that has been picked and
it's a scary time
it's already so scary with like technology everything happening so fast um it's
spooky and you have a
nuanced view look i have a nuanced view there's things that palantir does that
are important for a
military like just saying oh palantir is all bad would be uh unfair to the what
they're doing
on the pandemic they helped with distribution or what they've done on the
military the point is
though this american database building is scary and trying to predict whether
someone is being a tax
delinquent or not trying to predict if they're going to be a financial risk
trying to figure out
a profile on them and what we need i i really blame the lawmakers because what
we need is the laws to
protect people's privacy to protect uh people's data like to protect the the
use of these algorithms yeah
i agree 100 and we're going to get to that i know you have the the internet
bill of rights and so we're
going to get to that in a second um yeah this is the push i want to say this
the push has put a key
palantir product called foundry into at least four federal agencies um
including dhs hhs
and others widely adopting foundry which organizes and analyzes data paves the
way for mr trump to
easily merge information from different agencies the government officials said
and that's what jd vance
said when he was here right he was saying um and i'm reading that off of uh the
new york times give or
take what you think about them um but uh that's what jd vance had said that he
thought it was just
this overall compiling this kind of aggregating of information right he didn't
think it would get
super specific so i do you know i don't think he it felt a little politically
but that also could just
be what he exactly believes and that could be exactly what's happening um i
think the the there's
just a lot of fear with it a lot of it says in here also creating detailed
portraits of americans
based on government data is not just a pipe dream the trump administration has
already sought
access to hundreds of data points on citizens and others through government
databases including
their bank account numbers the amount of their student debt medical claims
disability status
uh etc so this will just i mean i think this whole thing just goes further down
that line
and i don't even of just like knowing everything about everyone and i don't
even think that it's
it's republican or democrat i just think it's where we are in time right now um
with technology and
that it's very scary uh and that you can start to see how big the uh tech lobby
is i want to say this um
one thing about palantir though that a lot of people have had issues with uh is
what they're doing
in gaza right with ai targeting and this is off of i i read this online and so
that makes it probably
uncredible but uh allegedly palantir software is reportedly used by the israeli
military to help select
targets in gaza its data mining and ai systems can process intelligence reports
communication intercepts
and surveillance data to generate lists of potential targets in a matter of
minutes a process that
previously took hours um lavender and habsora uh which are two of the they're
kind of i guess programs or
overall idea names um and have sore means the gospel uh investigations indicate
that two ai systems
lavender and habsora are at the core of this collaboration lavender assigns palestinians
a threat
score based on metadata social media and movement patterns these systems
reportedly operate with
significant error margins and their recommendations can be enough to authorize
deadly strikes sometimes
with minimal human oversight gaza is described as a live laboratory for these
ai technologies where
new systems are trained tested and refined in real-time combat conditions
before being marked globally as
battle-tested solutions i think that's where a lot of the fear is it really is
if that can happen there and
this they're capable of that then how do i know if when i'm walking down the
street
that some decision i made years ago or something a bullet's not just going to
fly out of anywhere and
go through my head from a drone or something you know that i think is is the
big fear about 