Peter Thiel’s REAL Plan For The US Surveillance Border Wall (Derrick Broze on Redacted)

Investigative journalist Derek Brose joins us now. Derek, great to have you back on the show.

Thanks for having me back, Clayton.

So your new investigation, you know, lots of focus, of course, on these flock cameras. That is the story of the day. And then, of course, data centers that are working hand in hand with these flock cameras and, you know, capturing and storing all of these massive video files. Of course, But your new investigation has uncovered another layer of this story that involves Peter Thiel. It involves the surveillance state. It involves the US border. And of course, the concern about the US border, about having this sort of biometric scanning at our border, was all part of the plan with the Trump administration from the very beginning, it appears. So maybe you can walk us through what you've uncovered and why really no one but you is talking about this part of the story. And I wanted to give you the floor. to talk about this. So the floor is yours, my friend.

Thank you, Clayton. So yeah, as you said, there's lots of concern, I think rightfully so, about flock cameras, automatic license plate readers, and other types of surveillance. But there hasn't been attention lately on the types of surveillance that are rolling out in relation to the fight against illegal immigration. And I think no matter what people's opinions on that particular topic you know, where they land on that issue. I think people understand the concerns about the increase of militarization and surveillance, not only along the border, because as we're going to talk about here, it's not just at the border. And most people, when they think about, you know, the Border Patrol, ICE, they think about things that are happening all along the Mexican border for the most part. But as we know, in the post-9/11 era, the Customs and Border Patrol believe that they have a 100-mile Constitution-free zone where they are essentially allowed to do whatever they want. And so I found the This latest report from the Government Accountability Office, the GAO, which is, you know, fairly well known, I would say, for those who are politicos and pay attention to this stuff, but probably the average person doesn't really know about them. And they've been around for decades. It's essentially the auditing department of the federal government that puts out annual reports that Congress is supposed to review. Sometimes they make no difference, but nevertheless, the reports are out there and they put out information that is relevant to the average person if people were only paying attention. And in this latest report, they outline how we are going to see a tripling of the number of what are called automatic surveillance towers along the border. They currently sit about 800, and over the next 7, 8 years, we're going to see them triple to nearly 3,000. And this is largely coming from— there was some previous funding, you know, from the Biden administration, but it's largely coming from Trump's big bill that passed last year. He loves to call it the Big Beautiful Bill. I have become in the habit of calling it the Big Brother Bill because of these types of funding that was included in it, and it included massive increase of funding for not only these surveillance towers but for more automatic license plate readers along the border and other things of this sort. And as I said, it's not just about people who are crossing in from Mexico. It is the borders, you know, all around the country, all the way up to Canada and on both coasts as well. And if you think about that, if you think about this concept of a Constitution-free zone, which I think is should be ruled unconstitutional if it ever makes it to the Supreme Court. If you think about that, that is such a broad landmass that it absolutely includes Americans living in different towns near and close to the border. So when these surveillance towers are being installed, that means average people, law-abiding people doing nothing but living their lives, are now being surveyed by these towers, which they say are ostensibly about just, you know, looking for illegal immigrants, but clearly are doing more than that. They're able to watch people as they go to school, as they go to work, and as they live their lives. And I think that's where it starts to become more clear that, from my perspective, this is really about, you know, really kind of expanding that surveillance state. It's not just about stopping illegal immigrants.

So maybe you can walk me through some of the technology here. They're called Enduril towers. Is that— am I pronouncing that right?

Yeah, so Anduril is one of the main companies who is contracting with the US government for this, and they've been around, you know, for, for years. They are another Peter Thiel-funded company, and, uh, they, they along with Palantir, Oracle, um, SpaceX, and a few others, actually in 2024, they came together and essentially created a new partnership saying that they want to be kind of the new class of military-industrial complex contractors. So, you know, most of us are familiar with names like Raytheon and, uh, Northrop Grumman and those sort of old school ones which are still around. But this is kind of the new class of technocratic military industrial complex contractors that want to become that new wave. They want to be the ones leading the charge, and they really are starting to do so. And this is largely because of their technology, particularly their artificial intelligence AI technology. And so Anduril, they are not only the ones who are providing these automatic surveillance towers, these ASTs, But they're also providing the AI software that goes along with them. It's called Lattice. And this Lattice technology is being used not only by the Border Patrol, but other departments of the US government. And essentially, it's, you know, it's the next wave. It's saying this is not just a camera, 'cause these cameras, they have radar, they have thermal, you know, they're equipped to the max with all the types of technology, which in a perfect world, if you could trust government and they genuinely were just trying to catch people who are breaking the law and sneaking over the fence, You might say, okay, this is useful technology, but understanding what we do about the way the government really operates and, and maybe some of their larger goals, it starts to become more worrisome. So not only do they have these different types of radar and thermal technologies, but then when they get equipped with the AI software with Lattice, this makes them even more powerful, more able to scan vehicles and to not only just scan the vehicles and look for license plate like we've seen with flock cameras, but to scan and to determine the number of people who are in the car. I've seen reports from years ago, which I think are now current, saying that their goal was eventually to have these cameras be powerful enough so that they could see the person sitting in the backseat. And, you know, so they could see right through the car, see the license plate, see the driver, and see how many people are in as clear as day, you know, as clear as you and I are seeing each other right now, dozens and dozens, hundreds of miles away. And so the AI software is just making these tools even more powerful. And I think that that makes it even more worrisome, right?

Yeah.

Right? Because now we're also— Anduril is not only partnering with Border Patrol on this particular technology, but they're also making autonomous drones. Their first US-made, Ohio-made autonomous drones recently rolled off the factory, out of the factories a couple months ago. And they've signed contracts with the US Defense Department for $200 million, I believe was the most recent one. So they are increasingly becoming a major partner with the US military, with the Defense Department. and with the government and the Border Patrol.

So one of the big concerns about 6G technology going forward is that it's incredibly invasive. I mean, it can see through walls. President Trump famously a few months ago was sort of joking about, but very excited about 6G technology, its ability to sort of scan through anything. I imagine, well, I don't know, I mean, but maybe you can talk more about the type of scanning technology and tracking technology how they're able to, you know, what kind of thermal cameras, what kind of— are they using some sort of a 5G or 6G scanning technology that's able to see right through cars and vehicles and trucks?

I, I didn't see anything specifically mentioning 5G or 6G when describing this technology, but I do believe that that'd be a part of it because, you know, I actually produced a documentary on 5G back in 2020 and trying to warn people that the 5G networks and now the 6G networks and eventually 7G, even though they're not talking about it yet. These are really the backbone for this world of the internet of things and the internet of bodies that we know that they're trying to build. And of course, when they say that internet of things, they simply mean like on the commercial level, they mean your smart fridge, your smart toaster, your smartphone, all these sort of different devices become interconnected and they create what they call the internet of things. But at the same time, when we get to the military, level, 5G and 6G really are the backbone for these advanced technologies, absolutely artificial intelligence, and for autonomous drones and for autonomous vehicles of different types. Because in order for those, those technologies to operate, they need to have these faster networks. And 5G and 6G has low latency, which means there's— the signals are extremely fast. But also along with that, one of the major dangers and concerns in terms of EMF exposure for the average person is that they have to install more towers everywhere for them to operate. So while they're promising that this 5G, 6G world is going to include what Trump was describing, the ability to be able to see through walls, which they already have technology like that in other ways. In order for them to have that capacity, they're going to have to increase the number of small cells and wireless towers around the country, which Trump has largely been a part of accelerating under his first administration, during COVID before he left office, and in this second term as well. So I wouldn't be surprised if the sort of backbone, the foundation of these automatic surveillance towers and the way that they're operating, that they are operating operating on 5G and 6G networks.

I mean, how detrimental is 5G? Maybe just— I mean, this is like a sidebar question here, but how detrimental are these technologies to our health? Um, and how invasive are they, 5G? And then I, you know, I'm really worried about what's going to happen with 6G. And I have anecdotal evidence from different people I've interviewed who described being near some of these 5G areas where they're just like— it feels like waves of energy sort of hitting their bodies. Some people are susceptible to it, or more susceptible to it, I think. Other people say, oh, you're just crazy, you're just crazy. And people say, I can't sleep at night. There's increased anxiety associated with this. So maybe you could just speak to that a little bit.

Sure. So there definitely are people who, who report electromagnetic sensitivities. And I think it does impact all of us to some degree, but it does appear that some people are even more sensitive. And, you know, I'm friends with some of these people, they walk into a room, if there's Wi-Fi on, or if everybody's got a cell phone in their pocket, you know, they'll start having headaches and have to kind of rush out of the room. So there are some people who are more sensitive, but even to the average person, the major problem with the expansion of 5G and 6G and so forth compared to the previous technologies— just so everybody understands, when we're saying 5G, it just means 5th generation. So if you go back to the early '90s, that was 1G, the first generation of early phones, car phones, these sorts of things. And every 4 to 5 years, they— the cell phone companies and the government, they'll kind of move to the next frequencies, the next spectrum. And so you get 2G, 3G is about the time we start getting smartphones, 4G you start getting video downloads and pictures and that stuff. So it's just continued to advance and it will eventually get to 7, 8G, etc., because the technologies continue to accelerate. The major problem with the shift from 5G to 6G and 4G to 5G and so forth is what I mentioned before, is that they have to increase the number of towers. And so when I was back in Houston and I was trying to raise awareness to this because Houston, a lot of people don't know, but Houston, Texas, back in 2018, October 2018, the CEO of Verizon, he came to Houston and him and the mayor and other officials, they had this big press conference and they announced that Houston was having the first, the world's first 5G customer and they, uh, a 5G network into this couple's home and they made a big deal about it. And I was there at the press conference and I asked both of them, can you tell us, you know, what are the pleaded ignorance. But the fact is that there have been reputable and credible studies going back to the '90s and court cases where people have tried to sue the telecoms related to people who were in the early '90s and didn't think cell phones were any, you know, any problem. You know, those big old phones people used to have in the early days, if you were businessmen, people were using those against their head for, you know, hours and hours a day because it was the latest technology. And many of those folks did get brain tumors and have since tried to sue the cell phone companies. There's one case, in fact, that has been going on for 20 years now, and it still has not reached a verdict. And the man who originally sued, he's now dead from the brain tumor, but his family is continuing to fight that case. So there has long been, you know, rumors and whispers about cell phones causing harm. And of course, big wireless, the telecoms, one of the biggest lobbies of telecoms is called the CTIA, the Cellular Telephone Internet Agency, and they've been around since the '90s. The more you look into them, you start to see that big wireless funds much of the major media. They have partnerships with the New York Times, with Washington Post, Verizon. You look at the FCC, Federal Communications Commission, like for example Brendan Carr, who I know you've talked about on the program. Brendan Carr, Ajit Pai, some of these officials, they're all former lawyers for Verizon Wireless, for AT&T. So those are the people that are supposed to oversee these networks. And so you can go back much like with the vaccine conversation in 1996, the Telecommunications Act. they passed that Telecommunications Act saying that local bodies, so your town, your city council, your state even, has no ability to make rules related to health regulations. So you can argue and say you don't like the way it looks and they'll make it look like a tree for you, or they'll turn it into, you know, a fake cactus or something like that. But you're not allowed to go to the federal government, to your local government, and believe me, I've tried, and say I have health concerns. Even if they believed you, the law according to 1996, as well as recent rules that have been passed under the second Trump administration essentially make it illegal for anybody to even argue that there are health impacts, because as far as they're concerned, that's just, you know, that's garbage science. There's no truth to it. But I encourage everybody who wants to know more about this to look into Dr. Martin Pall, P-A-L-L. I interviewed him for my documentary, The 5G Trojan Horse, and he is one of the leading voices speaking out about the impacts of 5G, as well as Bluetooth, as well as Wi-Fi. And so, you know, here at my house, like I'm speaking to you right now, I'm wired in. I'm not on Wi-Fi. We unplug our thing, our, you know, our networks every night before bed. I do take it pretty seriously, and it can mess with your sleep. And of course, as probably many people hearing this know, if you don't get proper sleep, your body can't heal, your, you know, your organs, everything can't repair and get you to an optimal state. Well, when you're constantly being hit by, you know, either your cell phone next to your head trying to connect to the tower or the Wi-Fi network running all night, that does cause disturbances in your sleep. And there's so many other areas, but the, you know, the major concern is that as they build these 5G and 6G networks, they're going to need to install towers. In their own words, according to the FCC, this is not my claim. In their own words, every 200 to 500 feet, they have to install new towers or they put them on existing towers, what are called small cells, which are about the size of a backpack. And they're claiming they're gonna have to have like 500,000+ of them in the next few years in order for these 5G networks to operate. And that's essentially, Clayton, like that's something we've never seen before. Like we're going like just rapid exponential growth in a way that human beings have never been exposed to. to. So it pretty much is a live experiment.

I have so much more I want to talk to you about. I want to talk about not just the border, because to me, that's just the Trojan horse you mentioned, but really what's going to happen into these other communities and the Americans that live near these border towns, like how much of the— how much of what they're doing is being surveilled as well, being caught in this sort of dragnet? What is going to happen with this data? And I want to go even more deeply into this idea of these like little 5G network setting up all along the street and 6G as well. So just, uh, we're gonna take a quick pause and we'll be right back with our friend Derek Brose. All right, we're back with investigative journalist Derek Brose, his new piece about the Peter Thiel-funded company, um, that's putting up all of these autonomous surveillance towers along the US-Mexico border. So you— the plan according to your reporting is roughly 2,300 towers By the year 2034. I mean, this, it sounds more like a— because you see the wide open wall, you know, you've seen the videos being shared on social media over the past few days where there's just like wide open border wall, people just can walk through it. I think that maybe that's part of the plan. So we're building like an— it seems like an AI surveillance wall instead of an actual physical border wall. Is that what Americans were promised, like a physical border wall?

That's absolutely part of the plan. And this is— sometimes it's been referred to as a virtual wall, a biometric wall, a digital wall. And this is an idea that both Trump and Joe Biden were a part of expanding. You know, this goes back to— I think in my, uh, in my piece we include from Trump back in his first administration where he talks about this. I mean, this is the thing is, for anybody who was paying attention to him, he didn't make any of this secret. He said, we're going to have a biometric entry and exit system. We'll have it by air, by land, by sea. And so he had been been saying this for a long time, that this was something that he was going to do. And then during the Biden administration, we saw many of these same technologies and the same expansion of using surveillance tools like facial recognition cameras, automatic surveillance towers, license plate readers, etc., instead of building a physical wall, which is what, as you, as you point to, Clayton, I think many people believed, um, was going to happen. And instead, there's just, you know, like you said, there's these open spots where clearly they're not trying that hard on this whole physical wall front, which then creates sort of a problem reaction, a classic problem reaction solution, right? The people see that, oh my God, look, the borders are wide open. Why is nobody doing anything about this? Well, they propose their solution. Let's put surveillance towers all along the border. Let's put more tracking equipment and facial recognition and these sorts of things. Oh, by the way, these extend further than just the border. We can actually see you even if you're 20 miles from the border or 50 miles and so forth. And I think this is another example for me of how this sort of baton of tyranny gets passed back and forth between one party and the other. Of course, lots of people were concerned about the border during Joe Biden's administration. He was helping expand the— this type of technology, and then Trump comes back into office promising to fix it. Well, the way he's fixing it, as I mentioned earlier, the big beautiful bill allocated billions of dollars towards this project, towards creating more surveillance towers, and towards doing— I think it was $2.5 billion to ICE for AI systems and $30 billion for so-called digital modernization efforts, which includes biometric systems, AI. So it's, it's all about creating that virtual, that digital, uh, wall. And I will say, even during Biden's administration, there was, if I remember correctly, 20 or 40 different organizations that sent a letter to the Biden administration. Not that these letters make much of a difference, but they sent a letter and they said, you know, you're continuing— they literally told him, you are continuing Trump's policies. We are calling on you to end these biometric measures and these sorts of things. It didn't have any impact. Biden went forward with it, and then Trump picked up you know, picked it up and continued on with his big beautiful big brother Bill. And, uh, and yeah, so I mean, that to me is what the ultimate goal is. And, and I would think— I'm sure we'll see some comments there, and sometimes I think maybe people think it's silly and kind of a jokey thing. They'll say, oh, the, the cameras or the walls aren't meant to keep people out, they're meant to keep us in. I don't think that's so much of a joke. It seems like that feels like maybe that is part of the purpose. Not only to— sure, it might have the impact of catching some illegal immigrants trying to sneak through, But it will also have the impact of furthering the surveillance police state that we know is being built in the United States.

Right. Because how many, how many law-abiding Americans are going to be caught up in this sort of data detection dragnet? I mean, that's, that's the concern. And so this is not just to me at the border. This is going to start to spill further and further and further into the United States. they'll, they'll pitch it as we're able to stop all of these things. And now we're going to bring this sort of like a pre-crime network into the United States. So maybe you can talk about some of the border towns near these cameras. So it's not just a wall. It's not just a zone. It's, it's— I imagine it would affect the, the small towns that live right along this border, right?

Absolutely. And, you know, as somebody— I— so I live in Mexico. I'm in central Mexico right now speaking to you. But my family is in Houston, Texas. And so I cross back every 3 to 4 months or so to visit family. And actually, while I was doing this reporting, I found out that the town that I crossed through, which is called the Anzalduas Port and Bridge, and on one side you have McAllen, Pharr, a couple other small Texas towns, and then on the other side you have Reynosa on the Mexican side. And I found out that that port that I've been crossing, that bridge that I've been crossing, was one of the first crossings to start testing out facial recognition cameras over the last few years. And I had noticed when we crossed through that there's a sign, you know, if you, if you happen to catch it, that says if you're in lane 1 or 2, you're going to be subject to facial recognition. If you want to avoid it, you got to try to get all the way over, you know. And, and anybody who's crossed the borders know how busy they can be and how difficult it can be to try to cross over 5 lanes of busy traffic. And, and also, in their eyes, maybe if you want to avoid the facial recognition, that makes you more suspicious to them, right? So, um, that was an interesting piece of the puzzle to find out that I've been crossing through one of these areas where they're testing out this technology But absolutely, lots of these smaller border towns in Texas and even some bigger places like Laredo, McAllen, you have all of those towns along there. They are being kind of subject to this. And this is, this has been, I think, a subject of concern for, for years where folks in the border towns, anytime you're near a border town in Texas or any other Arizona, New Mexico, etc., California, you're very likely to see a Customs and Border Patrol agent driving around or going out to get coffee or something. And nothing against them, but the fact of the matter is because these towns are so close to the border, those agents essentially have carte blanche to do whatever they want. You know, they're supposed to be a federal agency where their only jurisdiction is on the border. And when I think of the border, I think about you're looking at the Rio Grande and you're physically at the border. But because of this Constitution Free Zone, which has continued to expand over the last decades, they, they could pretty much pull over anybody even though you're, even though you're 20, 30, 40 miles away from the border. And in fact, when I cross into Texas I'd go through the U.S. border, show them my passport, and then we continue on. But within about 30, 40 minutes away from the border, there's another checkpoint, which as far as I'm concerned is unconstitutional. They have another checkpoint. They're well away from the border, but anybody who's driving through there is subject to it. And you're pretty much, you know, there's no way around it. The road takes you straight up there, and it's not always a huge hassle. They just say, are you an American citizen, and check your passport. But again, that was a big part of the reason for the Constitution and the Fourth Amendment, that we weren't supposed to be stopped and have our papers checked, you know, just as we're traveling around. But the US government argues that because of the national security concerns related to the border, that that takes precedence over our rights. And so if you live in a border town, these are kind of normal things— being subject to surveillance and not really knowing if you're being watched because there's some, you know, virtual wall nearby your home, or potentially being harassed or bothered by some Border Patrol agent, some customs agent, because they think you might look suspicious, things like that. So for people who've been living in border towns, this is probably What does Peter Thiel say about this technology? I mean, I think that he thinks this is the wave of the future. I mean, this is why he's investing in companies like Anduril. This is another one of his big pet projects. I think from the beginning, I don't remember if I put the numbers in there, but he invested it through one of his funds called the Founders Fund, which is one of his main vehicles to investing in big companies like this. And this is just, to me, it's just a sign of like the Peter Thiel influence. I know we've talked about this on past episodes. I've done reports on the number of Peter Thiel affiliates and associates. I call them acolytes who are in the second Trump administration. And it's at this point in the 20s of different people in different adminis— different positions. But then there's people like, and there's companies like Anduril who are not officially part of the government, but they're contractors with the government. And so I think this is exactly why Peter Thiel funds these companies. Companies because he knows that they're going to be the wave of the future, that their AI technology is going to be very powerful. And now that he happens to be, you know, his, his mentor JD Vance is vice president, right? I mean, that just shows you how far up his reach has gone. Um, Trump and him don't have as much of a public relationship as they used to, but I would not doubt that behind the scenes there's still a lot of communication there. And, uh, and yeah, so I think this is perfectly in line with what his vision is, which is the technocratic vision of using technology to micromanage society. And a big part of that is AI, that they want AI to be— particularly their AIs— to be in charge and to be running the show. And I kind of touched on this briefly earlier, but one of the other major concerns with this type of technology, especially as I mentioned that, uh, Anduril has recently— I think it's called the YFQ-44A model, really rolls off the tongue— it's an autonomous drone known as the Fury, uh, recently started being produced in Ohio. And so, as I said, autonomous drone, just like we have autonomous surveillance towers. That means it's not being operated by a human being. That means it's being operated by artificial intelligence. Now, they're not at the point where that artificial intelligence, as far as we know, is being the one to decide, kill that human, take, you know, kill that target. There still is, as far as we're told, a human being that has to come in and say, okay, you know, shoot that missile or whatever, what have you. But these drones are autonomously flying around, and they are starting to roll off the the factory lines in Ohio. And that is coming directly from Anduril. And of course, Anduril is just one of these companies. But that is why Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, a lot of these other technocrats are investing in these companies, because I think this serves their purpose of trying to build a world where, um, you know, the voters don't really have power, the politicians really have less and less power, the business class has less power. And instead, it is these technocrats, these engineers, these so-called experts using their technological tools to micromanage society. And I think we can all kind of understand how scary of a world it'll be if these people get their wish to have autonomous drones and autonomous towers making life and death decisions.

Do you think the technocrats are really who are running the United States of America?

I definitely think they're a, they're a big piece of the puzzle at the moment. I mean, and they also happen to be strong Zionists, as we know, with Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, like these, these folks, Palantir and others. They've put out open letters just saying that, you know, Peter Thiel said he doesn't think it's his job to question the Israeli government. And so I think that the technocrats are partnered with the Zionist cabal as well as other different groups. You know, in The Pyramid of Power, my documentary series and book, I really tried to look at who are, who are the they that are at the top, right? And from my perspective, I think it's a bit more complex than people might want it to be and just say, well, it's just this one group, it's just the Jews, or it's just the Jesuits, or it's just the Masons. I think it's a, it's a roundtable of roundtables at the top. And so you have different groups with different interests, much of which often align and sometimes, you know, differ. But 100 times out of 100, they're going to choose to align with each other if it means to maintain their power over the rest of us. And so I definitely— modern-day technocrats like the Elon Musks and Peter Thiels and Alex Karp and so many others we could name, who are unelected, who use their wealth, their influence, and their technology to shape the world around us whether we want it or not. And you could talk about Bill Gates and geoengineering programs and stuff like that. They are the modern-day technocrats, and the original technocrats of the 1930s, that's what their dream was. They said they were going to use the machines, which I think we would call artificial intelligence today, to micromanage society. They talked about things like energy credits. They talked about being able to micromanage society and allocate resources for specific states and countries. And I believe we've talked about this as well previously. You can look at the original 1930s technocratic map, and it describes the US, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Greenland, all becoming one massive landmass known as the North American TechNate. And it just so happens to be that those are the places that Trump has been talking a lot about since he's come back into office, about wanting to take Greenland, maybe purchasing Canada, going, you know, of course into Venezuela and things like that.

So I really think that what we're witnessing is just a sort of modern revival or a continuance of the original technocratic vision So stay right there, Derek, because I want to talk more about the data collection piece of this, where that data is going, what modeling are they putting together. Also, maybe we can talk about this population control idea because of these techno— you know, these, these technocrats at the top who want this population control and fewer people to control, you know, uh, through whatever sort of disgusting system that they're setting up for us. So I have so much more I want to talk to you about. All right, we are back with investigative journalist Derek Brose talking about this Peter Thiel-funded company, Anduril, which is tripling the number of autonomous surveillance towers along the US-Mexico border. But it really is just a Trojan horse for what's going to roll out around the rest of the United States. Can you talk more about these autonomous drones? So I've seen videos of these things sort of landing on top of these different towers. They sort of land, recharge, do what they're going to do, then take off. Are there human beings, or is it purely AI that's running these drone systems? And what sort of data are they capturing? And then is that data then being stored, I imagine, through some data centre, some sort of AWS-backed Palantir data centre? And some of my own reporting a few weeks ago, speaking to sources at Amazon who told me that AWS, of course, is providing the backend infrastructure for Palantir. And a lot of this Palantir build-out data center stuff, they have their own modeling on top, but really all of this data is being captured and they need, that's why this massive expansion is happening. They need places to store it, whether it's video files or others. Maybe you can just talk a little bit more about these drones. What do they look like? Have Americans already seen them flying over their homes? What sort of things are they capturing? It's terrifying. Yeah.

Yeah, there's definitely, I think, these types of autonomous drones already over American cities. They are not, I would say, making the calls in terms of, you know, launching missiles just yet, at least not over American skies. But they definitely are operating and have been operating that way in the Middle East. Now, as far as we know, there is still a kind of protocol where a human being, you know, let's say a general or something, has to come in and make the final call. in those situations to say, okay, let's go ahead and launch that missile from this Predator drone. But increasingly they are being run purely on AI. And this is kind of the dream is like that if you don't have to pay an AI— a human being to sit there and play with the joystick and potentially make mistakes, if you just have an AI that can run 24/7, 365, well, that's one less person you have to pay. And they believe they will be eventually more precise than human beings, right? And in some ways, I think this is going to be proposed as a solution to the outcry we've witnessed over the years where people have said, well, look at this drone strike, it killed some innocent civilians, or look at this missile, for example, with the Iranian schoolgirls, right? Well, those are the sort of perfect test cases where the government, the military could come in and say, look, we admit, we acknowledge we've made some mistakes, but this AI is testing at 99.9%, you know, accuracy, which none of them are. And so we are gonna hand over the job to these autonomous drones. There will still be a human being, you know, watching and witnessing whatever, Maybe making the final call. But I think this is, this is really a dangerous world we're going into. And if people want to know what these drones look like, at least one of the ones, the ones I mentioned with Anduril, look up Anduril, look up the Fury. I mean, they are not very big. If you've seen a Predator drone, which is kind of more long and cylinder, this one is kind of more of a triangular shape. And there's a few different designs that they have out there. I don't think they are flying over American cities just yet. I mean, that's as far as what they're publicly admitting, right? Who knows what might be be a bit more covert or under the table. But, uh, that is definitely the dream for them, that they say that these drones are going to be able to fly over American cities to catch criminals, to monitor for illegal activity. And I should say that years ago I did reporting on some of these planes, which are not completely autonomous at the moment, but they were being remotely controlled. And these planes were, uh, called DRT, which is basically a cell site simulator, which is a device that can gather up all the cell phone data from anybody within range. And so years ago, when I started investigating that and how the police and different law enforcement agencies were using these cell site simulators, which are sometimes known as Stingrays, I learned about the ones they have in planes, that they already had planes flying over American cities that were being remotely controlled. And these planes were outfitted with a Stingray, but in the planes they call them DRTs, and they were a bit bigger. And basically they could fly over American cities and just fly these patterns and you could track them using, you know, flight tracking websites. People were able to locate and say, this is a remote-controlled plane. It's not flying, you know, from an airport. It's just flying back and forth all day, just running these different, these different pathways. And in the process, they're scooping up all kinds of data. Now, the police and the military may claim that, well, these are classified operations. We can't tell you what they're doing, but you better believe that in the process, they're scooping up all kinds of data. And as you asked, where does that data go? Whether it's automatic surveillance towers, whether it's remote drones or even human-controlled drones, that data is either going to go to some database that the police or the law enforcement control. But as we talked about previously in our conversation about data centers, the other missing piece that a lot of people I don't think are fully grasping yet is that the reason the data centers are rapidly expanding is because of the rapid expansion of data collection related to surveillance tools. So you've got flock cameras, you got facial recognition, you've got Stingrays, you've got automatic surveillance towers, you've got just basic internet data collection and cell phone data collection. All these things combine to be a whole bunch of data that needs to be stored somewhere, and it is going to these data centers, these data centers where then that data is analyzed and, and puts out reports by artificial intelligence that goes out to, say, a law enforcement agency or to a private company. Some of it may be innocuous and they're just trying to sell you more ads because they notice you drive the same, you know, the same pathway every day to work and they notice they could sell you an ad for the local McDonald's that's on your way or something like that. But in the worst-case scenario, it is information that's being gathered about us, being collected and stored and then analyzed. And I think the big concern that I know my colleague Whitney Webb and others have warned about for years is that we end up in a Minority Report type future where something you've done in the past could then later be used against you in the future, right? So maybe you're doing something now that isn't illegal, you're saying something that's not illegal or not hate speech, but then in the future, after that data has been collected and then analyzed by some autonomous AI, later on they come back and say, hey, well, 10 years ago we have information here, data stored that shows that you did X, Y, and Z, and that is now a crime, so we're gonna hold that against you. It might sound crazy to some people to imagine that, but I don't think we're that far off from that.

Well, you have different organizations like the Frontier, um, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which, as you write in your piece, says this is like a dumpster fire of human rights, like this data collection. But other groups as well, um, civil liberties groups, of course, have come out and said this is a violation of civil liberties. Others are saying this is definitely— even members of Congress saying this is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, our Fourth Amendment rights, illegal search and seizure. unreasonable searches. So, I mean, I'm not asking you to be a constitutional attorney, but do we have any rights? Are we able to fight back on a large scale and sue these people out of existence, whether it's Flock or these other companies who are gathering up my personal data based on my movements? Oh, Clayton likes to go get a coffee at this place on a regular basis, and he travels this way, and now we have all of this data that we're collecting, and he didn't— he didn't allow us to collect this data. Just he happens to be on a public street.

Yeah, this is concerning to me. This is, I think, one of the— you don't have to be a constitutional attorney, I'd say, to understand how dangerous this is getting. I did a recent report on the border as well, related to a separate issue, but it's, it's, it's related here. And that is about the rights or lack of rights we as Americans have when it comes to our cell phones. And so there was another court case that confirmed that according to the government and to the courts, what they believe is that the Border Patrol agents have a right to go through your phone without a warrant. They said that this is considered to be routine and reasonable and protected under the Fourth Amendment. The ruling specifically said that if they want to do what's called a forensic search, which is where they take your phone— let's say you're flying in from across the border or from another country, or you're driving across, and for whatever reason they suspect you or they want to bother you They say we need to go through your phone. Now, most people would probably think, hey, hey, Fourth Amendment, Constitution, you don't have a warrant. It doesn't matter. They're going to sit there and laugh in your face and say, we're the feds, we're the Border Patrol, we're, you know, we have this, this right. Give me your phone or we'll basically take it from you. Now, the courts have ruled that if they do what's called a forensic search, where they take your phone and they basically connect it to this device that then downloads everything on your, uh, your phone, that they need a warrant for that.

That.

But if they're just doing a manual search, which means taking your phone and holding you and detaining you until you give them your password and then let them look through your phone, routine and reasonable and thus allowed under the Fourth Amendment. So the, the reality is that Americans increasingly have less and less rights as it relates to the border because, again, the government will argue that national security concerns and the need to secure the border trump your uh, Fourth Amendment and your constitutional rights.

I mean, they're just stripping away our rights left, you know, left, right, and center. And we're sort of blindly walking like sheep into the slaughter, I think, right now. Um, you know, I was struck by all of the, the folks from England that came over for the World Cup in the United States, and they were posting videos about they can't believe Oh my gosh, we and you know we in the UK we've become so soft. They took away our guns. They've taken away our rights. Like these Americans are strong. Like hey, we're we're we're very quickly slipping and losing all of that, and we're just allowing it. I mean, do you think? I mean, what we're seeing right now at the border is really sort of just the test bed. It's like the petri dish.

Absolutely.

For this.

Absolutely. I mean, I think we're, we're one false flag event away from them expanding this to the entire United States. Like, right now it's 100 miles. And just encourage anybody. In fact, in my article, I include a little map that came from the ACLU where they show what 100 miles within the border looks like. And you can see the major cities that includes Houston, Baton Rouge, that includes lots of— includes L.A., San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Portland, Boston, New York City, Philly, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Chicago, all of those major cities are within that 100-mile Constitution-free zone, because it's not just the Mexican border. As I said, it's from the coast, it's from the Canadian border. So when you look at that red line tracing around there, and even in Alaska includes Anchorage down to Miami, that includes all of those major American cities. So if something was to happen, whether real or staged, and that they said it happened because somebody snuck in through the border or something else, then I would not doubt there would be politicians you know, in a race to see who could call for erasing the Constitution, not only within that 100-mile zone but deep into the heartland of America. And it wouldn't take much for them to strip that away. And, and as we know very well, Clayton, that fear is a powerful motivator. And if they can scare the crap out of people into them thinking that, uh, well, terrorists are out to get them, or domestic terrorists, or whatever they want to call it, then— and maybe they blame it on the Iranians, probably, you know— that then there would be people who would probably be supportive of this, just like we saw after 9/11. And I want to believe as we approach the 25th anniversary of 9/11 that more and more people have woken up to this agenda and that these threats don't work as well as they, they used to. And I think partially that's true, but again, I do think fear is a powerful motivator. And with the right false flag event or staged event, they could, they could get enough Americans demanding that something be done, something must be done. And yes, if that means I must give up some of my freedoms in order to feel safe again, then please do it.

By all Do we have any rights to be able to reach out to these companies and say, hey, whatever data you have collected on me, I want it all deleted?

Well, this is one of the other major problems with this outsourcing of what used to be government tasks. For example, surveillance and the government's protecting the border and things like that, is that the more they are outsourcing these tasks to private companies, so-called private companies— I say so-called because, as you know, many of them, like Palantir, they received their seed funding from the CIA's, uh, venture capital firm In-Q-Tel, and they also are getting subsidies and things like that. So it's kind of hard to say they're totally private. But the more they outsource to these firms, that means it becomes difficult for the average person to get that data. Because if this was just purely being done— let's say that these surveillance towers were being produced, created, and ran by Border Patrol and by their own AI software— that means that you and I could file FOIAs, we could file open records requests and say, you know, give us more details. And instead, since this is a private company that is running the AI, that is running these, uh, these programs, it becomes a lot more difficult and almost impossible because you can't FOIA a private company. You can't FOIA Palantir. You can't FOIA Anduril. So I think that's another reason that we're seeing this kind of this merger of the public and the private so that it becomes more and more difficult for people like us and journalists and activists to find out what's exactly Well, we can't FOIA them, but maybe we can just sue them.

Some massive class action lawsuit. Of course, you know, how far does that go? They have—

Well, if there's some, some whistleblower out there, whistleblower out there that wants to reveal and let us know, then that could open the door. Because if we were able to find out, hey, here's all the ways that they've been using and abusing your data, yeah, sure enough, that could open up to a class action lawsuit. So, you know, shout out to anybody working at Anduril with a conscience.

Yeah, please reach out to Derek. You know where to find him, American Vagabond. You can find Derek on Twitter easily, on X. You can find us here at Redacted pretty easily. So any whistleblowers who want to come forward, we'd love to talk with you about that. Um, I want to take a quick pause and then get you out of here on this next segment, but I do want to talk about the Trojan horse of these items that are sort of the Internet of Things that are in our house. And I did touch on it earlier, but I wanted to follow up on this 5G and then 6G technology and these little towers that I believe are going like in all of our houses, um, you know, not just these massive towers but these small little sort of femtocells that'll be set up inside of our houses. I want to talk about that in a second, um, so we'll just take a quick pause here. All right, we're back with investigative journalist Derek Brose. I want to talk to you about the Internet of Things. Everyone gets really excited about the launch of the new HomePods, you know, that Apple's rolling out in the next few weeks with some new AI features. They're going to have the new chips inside so they're going more powerful, they'll be able to handle the new Apple intelligence and all of that. Then the new Alexa devices, the Amazon devices out there, everything is connected to the internet. I mean, how invasive do you— people joke all the time, well, like, oh, we're, we're just having a conversation in our home. And then they open their phone to go to Instagram or something. And then suddenly there's an ad there for the mattress that they were just they were just talking about with their wife in their house. Like, I know it sounds like a conspiracy theory, but I think these things are so incredibly pervasive in our lives, and it's really, really troubling. And I think it's only about to get worse.

Absolutely. I hadn't even heard about these Apple HomePods you're talking about, but it's not surprising to me. Yeah, I think that this is, you know, personally for me, you know, everybody makes their own choices, but I don't have any of those devices in my home. And I was having a conversation with a friend recently on whether or not there should be some sort of you know, full disclosure when you walk into somebody's house, 'cause you might not realize, oh, by the way, I have an Alexa listening to you right now. I've got the Nest over there and I've got the smart fridge. Because yes, the truth of the matter is all of those devices are listening. People think that when they say the magic word Alexa or whatever else, that that's when it turns on and starts listening. But of course, in order to hear you say that, it needs to be listening at all times. And we can go back to 2017, 2018, When there was first leaked documents out showing that the Samsung smart TVs also had microphones that were listening all the time, I think they all have them now at this point. So you should probably assume that any smart device, whether that's a toaster, a fridge, a TV, or any of these digital assistants, that they are listening full-time. And it is definitely no longer a conspiracy that when you talk about something in what you think is private with your wife, your husband, your friends, and you go to your social media and see an ad for that, it is because, yes, your phone is listening, your other devices are listening. And I think that's something that more and more people need to be concerned about and also maybe not just blindly accept, because in many ways what I realized over the years is we have these different things that we're talking about today— automatic surveillance towers, facial recognition— that are being rolled out by the government, by these big tech companies, and that is a concern. And at the same time, many of us are sort of acquiescing and voluntarily walking pretty swiftly right into this surveillance state by choosing to put these devices into our homes. You know, nobody's putting a gun to your head and saying, go buy the latest, you know, smart thing and smart home device. Many people out there, probably people even listening to this show, are going out there and putting those devices in their homes. And I understand there's the convenience, there's certain, you know, there's certain benefits to this, like with the Ring doorbell cameras. Somebody steals a package on your home, maybe you get to see it. But the reality is that we are kind of helping create the surveillance state that many of us are concerned about, not only in our own homes, homes. But when it comes to the Ring doorbell camera, that's not just facing your— that's not just your front door, it's also facing across the street to your neighbor, whoever else might be there. Again, there's times when they can prove to be useful, but there's also programs that the police departments are starting to now access those Ring doorbell cameras. Amazon and other companies are also trying to get into this, this game. So the more that we embrace these things, the more we are voluntarily creating that surveillance state, and it often 1984, how in the book the main character, he talked about how they had telescreens on the wall, and this was just like a basically a flat-screen TV on the wall. And he described how you never knew if it was listening or watching, so you just had to live at all times like it was watching and listening to you at all times. Well, they never describe how those telescreens got there. Maybe we sort of assumed they were put there by Big Brother, but maybe not. Maybe people voluntarily put them in their homes, and then eventually they just became the norm. And then, as you said, you never knew when they were listening. And, you know, the other— just one final point on this that I think is perhaps the next level of these kinds of invasive measures. There are people like myself who have theories— they're theories right now because we haven't confirmed them— that there probably exists some type of technology. I don't— I'm not smart enough to know what the mechanism would be, but some type of technology that is also able to, as crazy as it sounds, detect our thoughts. Because I'm sure I'm not the only one that is said, look, not only have I not said anything out loud, you maybe you had a thought or maybe you started to type something and then a moment later the same thing happens. It pops up in an ad somewhere and it's not even something you said out loud. I've talked to many people who've said they've had similar experiences that they were just thinking about something. They were thinking about a product they might be interested in or thinking about, you know, some topic and then when they got on their social media, they saw ads about that. I can't prove that that exists. I can't prove that we're there. But I won't be surprised if in the next few years, the next Edward Snowden comes out and reveals that that's been happening for a long time as well.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think with AI, you're going to have these like predictive ads that are going to be based on your data that they've been collecting, tailored to you specifically, that will speak to an experience you've had in your life, and it'll know about you. It's not even going to be just a general blanket ad anymore, like buy Doritos. It's going to be, you know, you know, hey Clayton, remember that time and, you know, when you were 16 years old and your friends, you snuck out and you grabbed a bag of Doritos? Like, how did you remember that story? You know, like, yeah, because you said it somewhere, or it's been picked up in some sort of a data collection, or you wrote about it in a blog post. I mean, who knows where they're going to pull this information from. But you bring up the Ring doorbell. I mean, before we let you go, I just want to— I do want to talk about this 5G thing, but the Ring doorbell thing is interesting because was, you remember during the Super Bowl, there was that ad, Jamie Siminoff, the founder of Ring Doorbell came out and said, you know, if you lose your pet, right, it was like, we're gonna turn your Ring doorbells into like a, basically a blanket protection for your neighbourhood. Like if, you know, we lost our dog, like, and they sort of couched it as, like, you know, if you lose your dog, well, now the neighborhood, everyone has a watchful eye with your Ring doorbells, will be able to save your dog. You know, that was how they sort of pitched it. Um, and I, I know Jamie personally, um, friends with him going back many, many years, the founder of Ring before it was sold to Amazon. So I think his intentions are probably good. I don't think he intends to create like this nationwide surveillance network, but I don't know, I haven't asked them that question, but that seems to be what's being created here, like a private national video surveillance network with all these doorbells that we— I think we'd be ignorant to think at this point that the government doesn't have access to it. I mean, you mentioned police being able to access it.

Absolutely.

But Amazon Web Services provides the backend infrastructure for the CIA. I spoke to a source at Amazon just a few weeks ago who was explaining to me how they build out these data centers for the CIA, and Amazon specifically builds it out, and they turn the keys over to them like halfway through the process. And so, so, and Palantir too, all built on AWS. So if Amazon owns Ring, they have this cozy relationship with the CIA. It's just hard for me to believe that the government doesn't have access to everyone's doorbells in the United States at this point.

I think you're on the right track, Clayton. And I would also mention that Amazon came up with their own facial recognition software years ago. It's called Rekognition, but spelled with a K, if anybody wants to look that up.

Yeah.

And they haven't, as far as we know, outfitted Ring with Rekognition yet, but I don't think we're too far away from Amazon saying, hey, by the way, we're now going to, you know, package Ring with this Rekognition software so we can more easily detect criminals. And if somebody steals your dog or steals your package, et cetera, And you're also correct that they are partnering with different government agencies. The next report that I'm working on is kind of a two-part, a second part to this surveillance towers one, is about this facial recognition database that the government has that I hadn't heard of till recently. It's called HART, H-A-R-T. And as part of that, it's backed by Amazon. It's exactly what you're describing, like they're using Amazon Web Services to operate it. So these big tech companies, Amazon, Meta, you know, You know, Palantir, all the ones we've named—they're a big part of rolling out this this surveillance system. And right now, some police departments are saying it's a voluntary system where if you want to, you can choose to give the police department access to your Ring doorbell cameras in case they you know can use it for something useful. But I wouldn't be surprised if in the long term those things, whether they become mandatory or as you said, they already sort of have access without us knowing about it. In many ways, again, we are creating the own our own surveillance state by choosing to participate in these.

Back in, I would say, yeah, 2016, I was speaking with an executive at a major telecom company, and he just sort of started spilling the beans to me. There was no alcohol involved, but he was just telling me that, hey, um, forget Wi-Fi. Like, in the future, most of the homes— because he would do these build-outs all across the country— and he said, you know, people are going to basically not really have Wi-Fi in their homes anymore. It's going to be cellular. And you're going to start to see— he said, next time you're walking down the street— and this was like 2016, 2017— so next time you're walking down the street, whether it's in Morristown, New Jersey, or wherever, just look up on the poles and you'll see small little cellular nodules, basically. So mini cell towers that will be able to provide super fast cellular 5G connectivity. And this is when 5G was just starting to kind of start rolling. And so these businesses will just have 5G. There won't be Wi-Fi. You won't have to worry about going in and getting a Wi-Fi password anymore. He's like, this will, this will seem so archaic in a few years. Trust me, this is what's coming. And pretty much everyone in their own homes will have these sort of mini 5G or 6G towers, little femtocells. I don't know if that's how you would describe them. But so you will not have like, you know, you You won't get Comcast Wi-Fi anymore. You'll just have AT&T cellular 6G in your home. And so you'll come home from work, you won't have to switch over to your Wi-Fi network. It'll just be ubiquitous from the drive home. There will not be a switchover process anymore. It'll all be like this cellular technology. I'm just curious your thoughts on what happens next, this move from 5G to 6G. And do you think there's any truth to that?

I absolutely think that there's truth to that. I think that that's one of the ways they're going to, you know, pacify a lot of the people who have concerns, whether they're related to surveillance or health concerns with 5G and EMFs more broadly, because everybody wants Wi-Fi, right? People want to just have access to the internet everywhere you go. And like you said, how much more convenient would it be if you didn't have to switch from network to network and it was just you were always plugged in? You know, a lot of people— I've heard some people say Wi-Fi is basically a human right at this point. People expect it everywhere they go, especially in first-world countries. And, uh, and yeah, what you described there in terms of having these small cells on all the towers and eventually maybe in people's homes is 100% what is happening and what has been happening. As I mentioned, back in Houston when I first started to pay attention to this, I was going to Houston City Council meetings and I was asking questions about this. For dozens of times between 2018, 2019, 2020, trying to bring them information about all of these concerns. I was talking with local residents who were having these small cells attached to towers within 200 feet of their home, or within 200 feet of a children's school, or within 200 feet of a church, and they were getting ignored and denied and turned down because the telecoms, big wireless, they have a huge influential lobby that is often overlooked. And not to mention the same technology that 5G and 6G operate on, millimeter waves, that same spectrum can be used as a military weapon, like for crowd control. People are familiar maybe with the LRAD sound cannons, you know, where they turn on this frequency and it can bust your eardrums if you don't run away immediately. A lot of the same technology can be used in different ways. And so there are others who have concerns that once these networks are installed, Sure, it'll provide free Wi-Fi and connected all the time, but that these networks can also be used in other very detrimental ways, not to mention the surveillance and the health concerns.

Oh, I know. It's so crazy. It's like thinking about where we can escape from 6G technology as it rolls out. I don't know, up in the mountains of Alaska or something like that at this point. I'm not really sure, but it's going to be ubiquitous and it's terrifying. Well, thanks to your incredible reporting, Derek, for being on top of this and trying to, you know, trying to educate all of us about where this is headed. I think we need to all stand up right now because we're slowly eroding our rights, and we're just handing them over to this technocracy. And we're just— we're giving away our basic freedoms. And we're going to wake up one day and realize that it's just too far gone. And there'll be really no way back from it because we've just slowly, slowly eroded it, all under the guise of safety and convenience. And it's, it's great that you'll have your Ring doorbell that can find Fluffy, you know, if he gets out, and the whole neighborhood can, you know, snap to attention. And but, you know, it's— we're giving up these— we're giving up our personal liberties at the, at the hands of these terrible tools, I believe. Um, and the thing is, like, I'm a uh, I'm not a Luddite, you know. I, I do appreciate technology, you know. And, uh, so I, I'm sort of torn about most of this stuff, you know. It's really— it's the convenience, the excitingness, you know, exciting nature of it. But it's like, yeah, I always have to pull myself back now and ask, like, what's the deeper question here? Like, why, why are they pushing this on us now? Because they're— it's, it's much bigger than just, like, having the convenience of a personal computer. So I don't know, I could wax poetic about this all day. But any final thoughts, Derek?

Well, just, you know, to that thought you just said there, I mean, I love tools. I love gadgets. I used to love going, you know, hanging out at the electronics store. And I've been waiting for this when I was younger, waiting for this futuristic world. And now we're arriving here and I'm terrified. So I definitely share that concern with you. Like, I love what the tools are potentially capable of. And I have to balance that with my understanding of who is in charge and who's running these tools. Because as I said earlier, if we had a different world with benevolent people in charge of these tools, then maybe humanity could be advancing much, much further. But instead— and I know you've reported on this as well— instead they're suppressing other technologies which could help us advance, and they're using these current technologies to, to monitor and surveil us. So I just want to mention, if anybody wants to find this report, it's at thealastamericanvagabond.com. And if you're curious about my documentary on 5G, you can find it at theconsciousresistance.com. So thank you for having me on, Clayton.

Derek, always great to have you, my friend. Thank you for your incredible reporting as always. Um, yeah, keep doing what you're doing. Thank you so much.

Thank you.