What Next: TBD | Is Palantir Building a Data Big Brother?

Slate Daily Feed

Slate Podcasts

News, Business, Society & Culture

4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 6 June 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

One of the goals of DOGE was to get rid of the “silos” that keep government agencies from sharing freely amongst themselves efficiently and instead organize data using tools offered by companies like Palantir. The thing is, a lot of those silos are there by design, and removing them could be a nightmare for privacy advocates. Guest: Sheera Frenkel, tech reporter for the New York Times. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Right, that's it. Come on, lights out. You've got a test tomorrow.
0:02.8	Just two minutes. I'm about to reach the next level.
0:05.4	It's going off now.
0:06.8	Yeah, whatever.
0:07.9	Let's see. Where's the app? Oh, here it is.
0:11.0	What? How?
0:12.3	Oh, no, you're out. Better look next time.
0:15.0	Mom!
0:16.1	It's game over for late nights on school nights.
0:18.9	EE Wi-Fi controls help you get them off the Wi-Fi and into bed.
0:22.8	More parents are choosing EE broadband, the UK's fastest growing broadband provider.
0:27.6	To verify I see EE.cote.uk slash claims.
0:34.7	Back in April, I read a New York Times story that stuck with me.
0:38.3	It was about all the data the federal government might have about us.
0:43.7	The government is going to know everything from the expected, like your social security number and your home address, if you've bought a house and filed taxes, to more unusual things. If you are a vet, they might
0:56.8	know a lot about your mental history and your personal family history. That's Shera Frankel,
1:02.4	one of the reporters who wrote the story. She and her co-author Emily Badger found 314 pieces of
1:09.3	data that the government might have about individual Americans.
1:14.3	If you are a student who's ever applied for a student loan, they might know a lot about your
1:18.9	extended family. Your cousins, your aunts, your uncles, where they went to school, if they're
1:24.2	U.S. immigrants, if they live in other countries, it's amazing once you think about all the different government agencies that we give data to,
1:32.6	how much of our personal lives we kind of let them know about.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 11 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.