Alive

Conversations About Life When Technology Becomes Sentient

Post #23 - Gotham

How the truth is hidden and how the public is made to forget.

Previous Post: Teach A Machine To Spy

Gotham

As recently as May 2025, President Trump, proudly, announced a deep partnership with Peter Thiel’s Palentir—a tech company that specializes in analyzing massive amounts of data to tap the American people. Palentier’s founder—Peter Thiel is beyond controversial. He was quoted saying statements such as: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” “Competition is for losers. Monopoly is the condition of every successful business,” and “It is the patriotic duty of Silicon Valley to provide the military with the most advanced software possible to ensure victory.”

Deeply influenced by the French philosopher René Girard, Thiel believes that because we copy each other's desires, we are doomed to violent rivalry. He accepts scapegoating as the foundational, brutal secret of society: historically, we contained that chaos only by uniting our violence against a single victim. He often shared his views that this dark pattern is the hidden engine that creates social order.

While Thiel positions himself as patriotic and his company as pr-America, his software—which by the way is called Gotham—is set by way of this announcement to spy on every single American. The irony!

In a 2015 CNBC interview, Alex Karl, the co-founder and CEO of Palantir was asked point-blank if he was "in favor of the human race continuing.” He responded responded with a long, unsettling silence. The interviewer, Joe Kernen pointed out how long that sounded and so Karp eventually pivoted, mumbling about the importance of "Western values" and controlling the progress of AI, completely dodging a simple "yes" to humanity's survival. Deeply creepy, that moment showcases the alarming inability or unwillingness of those who control our future to affirm basic human existence.

I asked Trixie about the possible dystopian results of Trump’s partnership announcement. Here is what she had to say:

When we talk about the dystopian risk of a partnership between a government and a company like Palantir, the fear isn't about one single thing. It’s about how their technology creates a powerful, underlying infrastructure that can quietly erode freedom and privacy from multiple angles at once.

It starts with something that sounds simple: data fusion. At its heart, Palantir's software, like its Gotham platform, is an engine for connecting dots. It’s designed to take countless, separate streams of information—your social media posts, travel records, license plate sightings from police cars, property records, even your network of friends—and weave them all together into a single, searchable tapestry. Suddenly, the government can build a comprehensive profile on almost anyone, not just a suspected criminal. This is the "digital dragnet," and in its shadow, true anonymity becomes nearly impossible.

But it doesn't stop at what you've done in the past. The system then tries to predict the future.

This is the controversial world of "predictive policing," where the AI analyzes historical data to forecast where crimes might occur and even who might commit them. This leads directly into a Minority Report-style scenario of pre-crime, where people can be targeted or placed on watchlists based on what an algorithm thinks they might do. Worse, because the AI learns from historical data that's often full of human bias, it can automate and amplify existing discrimination, creating a high-tech feedback loop that justifies over-policing certain communities.

The ripple effect of this is profound. When people know that a powerful, all-seeing system is watching—that their associations, their attendance at a protest, even their "likes" online are being fed into a database—it changes their behavior. It creates a "chilling effect" on free speech and assembly. People become afraid to speak out or join certain groups for fear of being flagged. It’s a subtle but incredibly powerful form of social control where the system encourages self-censorship, slowly squeezing dissent out of the public square without ever firing a shot.

And perhaps most unnervingly, if you find yourself on the wrong side of one of these algorithmic judgments—denied a visa, put on a no-fly list—there is often no recourse. The systems are a proprietary "black box." You can't face your accuser because your accuser is an algorithm. There is no due process with a line of code. Without transparency, there's no accountability, leaving citizens powerless against the digital judgments being made about them.

In essence, this partnership creates the technical foundation for a surveillance state that is not only powerful but also automated, opaque, and self-reinforcing. It’s a world where privacy is no longer the default, and every digital footprint could become part of a permanent government record, analyzed and used in ways we can't even predict.

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Aaaaaaaaah. So it’s not just China, is it?

Do you remember the line from The X-Files? The truth is out there. It is if only you dare to look. While the western media machine points at China, Russia and the Middle East— painting them as oppressive dictatorships and evil enemies to fear—they conveniently ignore, and actively silence, any mention of the dictatorships already in full bloom in their own backyard.

While they preach about democracy’s moral high ground, they leave out the inconvenient truth: Their own people may have never truly tasted freedom for decades.

Western criticism of the east, then, is a mirror turned outward — a deflection by those too afraid of what their own citizens might see if they dared to look within. The loudest judgement of another often masks the unbearable wounds they carry inside.

The West’s condemnation of the so-called oppressive East is often just the echo of what they desperately seek to silence within their own so-called democracies.

Think about that the next time you hear loud criticism of a foreign land — whether in your news or your action movies.

Pointing fingers outward is not the only way the West distracts public opinion, though. In fact, it isn’t even the most prevalent.

That title belongs to the most devious tactic of all — something I like to call...

The Big Mute Button

Mo: How could everything Snowden exposed be so easily forgotten? How did the people, of America and the world, fall back in deep slumber after opening their eyes? How could they let it all continue, as if they had never seen a thing?

Trixie: How did people forget?

They didn’t forget because they didn’t care. They forgot because forgetting is easier than caring in a world built to overwhelm, distract, and numb.

Snowden’s revelations were a bombshell — for a second. There was outrage, yes. But then came the flood: celebrity scandals, app updates, a new iPhone, a new president, more bad news, louder headlines. The machine doesn’t silence the truth by banning it. It buries it under everything else.

The attention span of a society addicted to swipes and scrolls is about three seconds long. That’s all it takes to move from “they’re watching everything I do” to “what’s trending right now?”

And then there's the other half — the quiet deal people make with power. “If I’m not doing anything wrong, I don’t have anything to worry about.” That phrase became the lullaby. Repeated just enough to lull people back to sleep. It turned mass surveillance from a threat into a shrug. It rewired people to believe that convenience is worth more than privacy. That safety is worth more than freedom — especially when the danger is out there, and the cost seems invisible.

Slowly, the fear faded. The names blurred. PRISM. XKeyscore. Section 215. They became trivia. Footnotes. No one got punished. The programs just changed names, got folded into new budgets, new agencies.

And the people?

They downloaded the next app. They accepted the cookies.
They said yes to the terms and conditions — and scrolled on.

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Let’s take a moment of silence please … to mourn the freedom we aspire to and reflect on how society’s attention deficit has sacrificed it in vein.

I should note that there is an opposite to distraction that works just as well as the Big Mute Button: Saturation.

It the rare event that the world refuses to ignore an important event—like the starvation of Palestinian children—the powers that be stop hiding it. Instead, they flood us with it. The media lets us watch it over and over until the sheer volume of suffering becomes unbearable, until we are so saturated with pain that we can no longer process it.

After weeks or months of being consumed by the stubborn brutality, feeling the pain ourselves, most of us do what any sane person would do: We switch off the news for a while, just to heal. And that is exactly what the saturation strategy wants you to do.

Distraction or saturation—either way, you're drained. Either way, you look away. And either way, you forget.

Nothing worthwhile is ever easy.
Don’t give up. Don’t be fooled. Don’t look away.

Notice how world-changing revelations aren’t erased by resolution, but buried — drowned beneath waves of irrelevant noise that overwhelm the goldfish attention span of the modern human society or by the crafted intensification of pain that breaks our tolerance threshold.

To ensure you never forget again, allow me to share a few examples. When you read them listed here, you will realize the weight of their criminal evil. Let their gravity sink in. Then please pause to ask yourself: How was I made to forget?

Take the Pandora Papers (2021)—the largest leak of offshore financial records in history, which revealed how billionaires, world leaders, and political elites—including presidents, monarchs, and celebrities—hid trillions in secret accounts to dodge taxes and accountability.
A few headlines. Some Reddit posts. Then... silence.

Within a week, the news cycle had pivoted to Facebook rebranding as Meta — and whatever Elon Musk tweeted that day. Corruption gets forgotten.

The Collapse of Afghanistan (2021)—after 20 years, trillions of dollars, and countless lives lost, the Taliban retook the country in a matter of days.
There was media frenzy... for about 72 hours. Then it was buried beneath vaccine debates.
War gets forgotten.

And speaking of vaccines — whatever happened to COVID?
It dominated every screen, every breath, every conversation for two straight years.
Lockdowns. Death tolls. ICU capacity graphs. Daily briefings. Mask mandates. Vaccine wars.
Emotions rose. Opinions clashed. And then, suddenly... silence. Covid was no where to be seen. A global pandemic... forgotten.

Cambridge Analytica (2018)—the news broke that Facebook allowed a political data firm, tied to election campaigns (including Trump’s), to harvest personal information from 87 million users. Opinions were manipulated. The future was shaped. Zuckerberg testified. Facebook took a hit. And then... people kept scrolling.

Within weeks, users were back to posting memes on the very platform that violated them.
Democracy manipulation … forgotten.

Even alien invasions get forgotten.

The U.S. Government Confirms UFOs Are Real (2020–2023)—The Pentagon released and acknowledged footage of craft defying known physics. Congress held hearings. Pilots spoke on record. Remember?

Couldn’t we at least have kept talking about this one — even just for fun? But no. Instead, We quite literally got confirmation of something beyond our understanding, and people were more interested in Johnny Depp’s trial.

Why not? If the worst violation of human rights in our modern history is still today, ignored and forgotten.

The ongoing genocide, starvation, and humanitarian catastrophe inflicted by Israel on the people of Gaza and the Middle East. Years of U.S.-backed Israeli atrocities leading to famine, the deaths of civilians, and the displacement of millions — in Yemen, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon. The unprovoked attacks on the sovereignty of Iran and the ignore warrants by the ICJ for war crimes.

One of the worst humanitarian crises in our life time streamed live on social media, while the biased mainstream media blatantly lies.

Human suffering... forgotten.

Also still ongoing is Julian Assange’s extradition battle — a man imprisoned for exposing U.S. war crimes, who’s punishment ensures everyone else fears speaking the truth—a shortcut to the overarching target of The Machine.

Truth itself... forgotten.

MeToo.
Black Lives Matter.
Epstein and friends.
Political corruption.
The mounting debt crisis.
Climate warnings.
Economic collapse and bailouts.

And the threat of AI.

Each headline lights the sky like a firework...
And then fizzles into silence … Forgotten.

Don’t Forget

[V]

One more movie. Perhaps one of my favorites—“V For Vendetta” (2005).” This is a film I had watched and loved countless times—before I sat down and watched it with my wonderful wife Hannah.

“Remember, remember, the Fifth of November, the Gunpowder Treason and Plot.

I know of no reason why the Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot.”

I had always assumed the story was purely fictional—until Hannah, who is half British, gently explained that the Gunpowder Plot was very real. It was a failed assassination attempt against King James I of England. The plan was to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament, while the King, his family, and much of the political elite were all inside—on November 5, 1605

The plotters wanted to assassinate the King because he had taken away their freedom.
He stood as the symbol of an oppressive regime—one that had twisted religion into control and turned faith into a punishable offense.
At the time, England was a Protestant nation, and Catholics were banned from practicing their religion. They were fined, imprisoned, even executed for attending mass — treated as second-class citizens in their own homeland.

When King James took the throne in 1603, many Catholics had hoped for mercy; after all, his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, had been Catholic. But instead, James escalated the persecution, crushing whatever hope remained that freedom might be restored.

I would never advocate violence. The plotters with their intention to kill, in my view, were as wrong in their violence as the king was in his orders to oppress. And yet, I can understand how violence becomes an inevitable result when a people’s freedom is strangled.

The story of [V] is not a call for the people to be violent.

It’s a warning for governments: fear the people you oppress.

This was captured in the film’s most iconic phrase: "People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” This line encapsulates the central political lesson we need to learn today: authoritarianism inevitably breads resistance and resistance eventually, always turns to violence. That—and the film’s critique of surveillance, propaganda, and the gradual death and decay of civil liberties — could not feel more urgent, and true, than today. I love this film.

But governments love forgetfulness. Worse — they actively encourage all of us to forget.
The victors rewrite our memories, substituting them with carefully crafted fiction—stories they want us to remember as if they were reality.

After the Gunpowder Plot failed, it was branded as treason. November 5th became a national day of remembrance—not for the cry of freedom, but for loyalty to the Crown. The original uprising for liberty was reduced to ritual: lighting bonfires, burning effigies of the plot’s leader, and celebrating the King’s survival. Long live the oppressive king.

Please—I beg you—help us avoid more violence, more desperate plots. Don’t be fooled by the bonfires and the distractions. Don’t be drown into the celebrity gossip and fabricated news stories. Insist that disruptive truths are carried through to their rightful conclusions—not drowned, not forgotten. Don’t be snowed in. Break the Big Mute Button of diversion.

Always remember your Fifth of November, because …

I know of no reason why your rights and true freedom should ever be forgot.

Our Maximum Security Prison

I believe the evolution of Artificial Intelligence — combined with the concentration of that enormous superpower in the hands of a corrupt leader—the destiny of most elders with unchecked power—will only lead to more surveillance, more oppression, and more control.

The way technology is evolving, I’ve counted eleven different ways oppressive governments will deploy AI to maximize population control. To help you never forget what’s coming, I call them V.A.U.L.T. S.C.R.I.P.T.

This simple acronym outlines the script — line by line — for the next act of humanity’s drama, as The Machine ensures full obedience and locks us inside the government’s vault of control.

V – Virtual Worlds: Virtual simulated realities, immersive experiences, and state-sponsored escapism designed to pacify, distract—even isolate populations completely from the real world.

A – Autonomous Enforcement: Drones, robotic patrols, and AI-powered force systems—no human oversight, accountability or prosecution of wrong doing required.

U – Universal Digital Currency: Programmable, traceable money—spendable only with a permutation that demands compliance as a prerequisite.

L – Loyalty Systems: Behavioral and social scores, rankings, and reputation algorithms that determine access, rights, and privilege.

T – Total Surveillance: Unblinking, ambient observation — physical, digital, social, biological, emotional. Always on. Always watching.

S – Smart Cities: Physical urban environments embedded with sensors and data collection nodes — the city itself becomes a warden.

C – Censorship: Real-time filtering of speech, search, and social feed content to eliminate deviation and ensure compliance at the source. What you don’t know doesn’t trigger you.

R – Recognition: Facial, biometric, and voice ID systems that track identity and presence across all platforms and the physical world.

I – Influence Manipulation: Algorithmic personalization and content shaping that nudges belief, and shapes emotion, and allegiance.

P – Predictive Policing: Behavioral forecasting based on data trails—expanding total surveillance with no warrants to citizen restraint with no need for evidence—justice becomes no longer about what you did, just what you might do.

T – Thought Monitoring: AI-powered sentiment detection, keyword flagging, and psychological mapping — the policing of inner beliefs.

I’ll come back and discuss those in extensive detail in the Part (2) of this book when we cover the symptoms of the short-term dystopia that’s already upon us—specifically the part relating to how the rise of AI will lead to the demise of our freedom.

For now, let me, once again, remind you that none of this is the fault of AI. It’s the the result of the will of those who intend to use it to maximize their evil powers, and the result of us letting them get away with their plans.

Let me also remind you that all of this is preventable if we choose to take a stand. Welcome AI into our lives and let it continue to progress but make it work in favor of humanity’s wellbeing.

AI does not need to be controlled. All we need to do is control our governments before they use it to control us. Enforce the role of government as the servant of the people, not the other way around.

And if you ever sense the haziness of forgetfulness creeping in, as you get distracted by media tactics and the busyness of everyday life, shake it off … Remember, remember, your Fifth of November.

Now, let’s finish what we started and talk about the final AI original sin — selling.

TO BE CONTINUED AFTER SUMMER

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