Do you ever feel like you're being watched? Just asking questions.

We're told modern surveillance tech will track criminals, illegal aliens, and terrorists while protecting the privacy of innocent Americans. You've got nothing to worry about if you've got nothing bad to hide.

Today's guest says that's not true. His latest book, The Triumph of Fear, documents the history of the modern surveillance state and the ways in which it's been leveraged since its inception to target not just terrorists and criminals, but political dissidents.

Patrick Eddington was a CIA analyst from 1988 to 1996, but resigned and wrote Gassed in the Gulf, a book alleging that the agency helped cover up the existence of Gulf War syndrome, caused by exposure to chemical weapons.

He joins Just Asking Questions today to talk about the power and reach of the modern surveillance state, the growing influence of the AI-powered data firm Palantir—cofounded by Peter Thiel—in the Trump administration, and what can be done to "tyranny-proof" America.

Mentioned in this episode:

"Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos," The White House

Palantir contract modification with ICE

"The Scouring of the Shire," an open letter by a Palantir ex-employee

"Palantir Is Not a Data Company," by Palantir

"American Big Brother," by the Cato Institute

"The Triumph of Fear: Domestic Surveillance and Political Repression From McKinley to Eisenhower," by Patrick Eddington

Alex Karp, director of Palantir, address to the Economic Club of Chicago on May 22, 2025

"Why This Palantir Cofounder Left California for Texas," The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie

"Purpose-Based Access Controls at Palantir (Part 1)," by Palantir

Davos 2023: A conversation with Palantir's Alex Karp

Chapters:

0:00—Introduction

2:20—President Donald Trump's executive order "eliminating information silos" is paving the way for a national, unified surveillance database

3:58—Did the Department of Government Efficiency have a "hidden motive"?

12:08—Why the surveillance bureaucracy keeps expanding with little resistance

14:04—Ex-employees have signed an open letter against Palantir. What does it mean?

25:34—What does Palantir actually do?

27:55—Could Palantir actually protect civil liberties?

29:02—What could happen if Palantir's tools fall into the wrong hands?

37:52—Why creating a centralized database is a civil liberties nightmare

42:53—Palantir's CEO Alex Karp on why they defend the West

47:00—Why Eddington wants to take federal law enforcement out of the executive branch

50:32 - Why federal law enforcement has always been politicized

55:17 - The lessons of COINTELPRO's surveillance of activists

55:17 - What was "total information awareness"?

1:10:28 - What is a question Patrick Eddington thinks more people should be asking?

Transcript:

This is an AI-generated transcript. Check against the original before quoting.

Zach Weissmueller: Do you ever feel like you're being watched? Just Asking Questions. The ostensible purpose of DOGE was to cut waste, fraud, and abuse in government. But what if there was also another purpose hidden in plain sight—to make it easier to track your every move?

Of course, our government would never outright say that. We're told modern surveillance tech will track criminals, illegal aliens, and terrorists while protecting the privacy of innocent Americans. You've got nothing to worry about if you've got something bad to hide.

Today's guest says that's not quite true.

His latest book, The Triumph of Fear, documents the history of the modern surveillance state and the ways in which it's been leveraged since its inception to target not just terrorists and criminals, but political dissidents. Patrick G. Eddington was a CIA analyst from 1988 to 1996 but resigned and wrote another book, Gassed in the Gulf, alleging the agency helped cover up the existence of Gulf War Syndrome caused by exposure to chemical weapons.

He joins us today to talk about the power and reach of the modern surveillance state, the increasingly prominent role that AI-powered data management firm Palantir, co-founded by Peter Thiel, is playing in the Trump administration, and to offer some ideas about what should be done to tyranny-proof America.

Patrick, thank you for coming on the show.

Patrick Eddington: It's my pleasure.

Zach Weissmueller: Trump issued a curious executive order, and I'm gonna read a little bit about that. The aim seems to be to create a kind of unified national database. It says here that the goal, the purpose, is removing unnecessary barriers to federal employees accessing government data and promoting inter-agency data sharing.

The name of this executive order was Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos. It goes on to say about these information silos, "agency heads should take all necessary steps to ensure federal officials have full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, data, software systems, and information technology systems. This includes authorizing and facilitating both the intra- and inter-agency sharing and consolidation of unclassified agency records."

It says that, "this is to ensure the federal government has unfettered access to comprehensive data from all state programs." So it also is kind of going into the states and saying that the federal government should have unfettered access to state programs that receive federal funding. So I'm trying to put all this disparate data in one place. What kind of problems do you foresee with this approach?

Patrick Eddington: "One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them." I'm a big Tolkien guy, in addition to being a big