Annie Jacobsen does not have an official personal YouTube channel, but she has appeared widely as a guest on major podcast and interview channels discussing her investigative books on national security, nuclear war, and biological threats. [1, 2, 3]
Popular YouTube interviews and appearances featuring Annie Jacobsen include:
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Stock: Getty Images
Americans are reviving the lost art of fixing their possessions — and pushing back against a culture of buying and tossing things.
Repair Cafés are popping up in libraries and community centers across the country, where volunteers are helping people mend their broken toasters, busted zippers and family heirlooms for free.
Why it matters: Most of us have too much stuff. Fixing what we own instead of throwing it away is a simple way to save money and cut waste
Zoom in:In Houston, Axios’ Shafaq Patel got her mom’s sewing machine fixed at the local library’s Repair Café. Volunteers told her that people have come in with jewelry, clocks, lamps, stuffed animals and more.
In Des Moines, Axios’ Linh Ta had a torn backpack strap stitched back together at another library Repair Café.
In New Paltz, N.Y., volunteers rewired an antique fan, restored old family photos and replaced clasps on necklaces, AP reports
Zoom out: In today’s modern, disposable culture, many people have lost the ability to repair household goods, a skill that was once nearly universal, engineer Peter Counter told AP. He’s studying Repair Cafés as part of a doctorate at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham, England.
“The idea that you can fix your own stuff has receded because the skills are not being passed down. … If you want something fixed, it’s almost certainly cheaper to go buy a new one
“ Repair Cafés are helping preserve those disappearing skills.
More than half of volunteers are over 60, according to a global survey, giving younger visitors a chance to learn from those who grew up fixing stuff.
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Huge numbers of kids are turning to AI for schoolwork and emotional support — habits that are linked to poor mental health and suicidal ideation.
According to a new survey by the mental health advocacy group JED Foundation, 90 percent of nine to 17 year olds have used an AI chatbot. The majority of them, 58 percent, said they use AI for schoolwork. And nearly the same portion, 57 percent, said they also use AI when feeling sad, stressed, lonely, or overwhelmed.
“It seems like just a few years ago, no one was using” AI, Anne Maheux, a developmental psychologist at the University of North Caroline, Chapel Hill, who wasn’t involved in the work, told Oregon Public Broadcasting. “And now it seems like roughly the same number of kids using it for homework are using it to get emotional support or help with coping.”
Sometimes, their AI interactions go beyond emotional support. More than one in 10 students, or 12 percent, said they used AI for friendship or companionship. Other studies paint the same picture: in a survey last year, nearly one in five high schoolers said they or a friend have used AI to have a romantic relationship.
AI as an educative — or cheating — machine may be in part intertwined with its emotional support. A 15-year-old named Arjun Sharda, in Texas, provided a typical example.
“With tests, for example,” he told OPB, “I was so scared of failing one of my first chemistry tests on conversions and moles that I kept asking ChatGPT ‘Will I be OK? Will my GPA still be fine?’”
If children and teenagers using AI for support is the norm, the question becomes what this dependence on the tools means for their mental health. At such a vulnerable and formative time in their lives, it’s critical that they’re receiving the right guidance and have people with whom they feel safe to discuss their emotions with. But as we’ve often seen, AI often only provides an ersatz substitute of the latter, acting as a sycophantic confidante that can exacerbate or confirm a user’s worst neuroses, in a phenomenon that many experts are calling AI psychosis. The advice it does offer can often be bad or dangerous. In extreme cases, some users have even taken their own lives after extensive emotional conversations with a chatbot.
The JED survey, on this front, found some alarming links.
“We were able to look at how young people are using AI and then how that correlates separately with indicators of well-being, history of suicidal ideation and attempts, and poor mental health,” psychologist Kayla Anderson, vice president of research and evaluation at the JED Foundation, told OPB.
“When young people are using AI, when they’re in emotional distress they’re more likely to report poor mental health and well-being outcomes,” she said, while also reporting a greater history of suicidal thoughts and attempts.
Anderson cautioned, however, that there isn’t enough evidence to establish causation.
“It’s unclear, based on these data, whether AI use is contributing to poor mental health and well-being, or whether students who are already in distress in certain ways are more likely to turn to AI,” Anderson said.
Maheux, pointing to other research, suggests that both may be true.
“So kids who do have worse mental health are seeking out AI to help them,” she told OPB. “But that AI use may be exacerbating those mental health challenges instead of helping.”
AI chatbots, in a sense, may be acting like emotional training wheels — only they’re so addictive that the people who depend on them never want to take them off. As a result, they never develop the skills to handle the daily stresses of life, leaving them vulnerable and unprepared.
I’m a tech and science correspondent for Futurism, where I’m particularly interested in astrophysics, the business and ethics of artificial intelligence and automation, and the environment.
New AI methods investigate clearer depression and schizophrenia subgroups from small, noisy trials, using model abstention to boost interpretability and improve patient stratification.
Artificial intelligence tools often used in drug development today were not optimal for stratifying psychiatric trial populations, shared Joseph Geraci, PhD. A recent study evaluated how artificial intelligence could characterize patient subpopulations from small clinical trial and trial-like data sets, with 2 goals: to reveal new information about major depression and schizophrenia, and to show that stratifying a patient population and identifying the factors driving each subpopulation was highly nontrivial.1 A cancer data set was also analyzed, and specialized tools provided a measurable lift to standard models.
Standard machine learning algorithms classified and modeled well when objects were relatively simple, such as sports teams or images of cats and dogs, but patient populations presented greater heterogeneity and noise. Labels such as responder, nonresponder, and placebo responder were also less clean than image labels. “The complexity is that the labels themselves are not completely reliable because there’s so much phenomenon loaded behind it,” Geraci said. His mathematical methods were designed so a model could remain honest about which patients in a small data set actually adhered to their labels, allowing researchers to learn from them.
Published: November 16, 2009Last Updated: May 28, 2025
On November 5, 1941, the Combined Japanese Fleet receiveTop-Secret Order No. 1: In just over a month’s time, Pearl Harbor is to be bombed, along with Malaya (now known as Malaysia), the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines.
Relations between the United States and Japanhad been deteriorating quickly since Japan’s occupation of Indochina in 1940 and the implicit menacing of the Philippines (an American protectorate), with the occupation of the Cam Ranh naval base approximately 800 miles from Manila. American retaliation included the seizing of all Japanese assets in the States and the closing of the Panama Canal to Japanese shipping. In September 1941, President Roosevelt issued a statement, drafted by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, that threatened war between the United States and Japan should the Japanese encroach any further on territory in Southeast Asia or the South Pacific.
Could Pearl Harbor Have Been Prevented?
A look back at the intelligence failures and oversights that led to the successful Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
1:56m watch
The Japanese military had long dominated Japanese foreign affairs; although official negotiations between the U.S. secretary of state and his Japanese counterpart to ease tensions were ongoing, Hideki Tojo, the minister of war who would soon be prime minister, had no intention of withdrawing from captured territories. He also construed the American “threat” of war as an ultimatum and prepared to deliver the first blow in a Japanese-American confrontation: the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
And so Tokyo delivered the order to all pertinent Fleet commanders, that not only the United States—and its protectorate the Philippines—but British and Dutch colonies in the Pacific were to be attacked. War was going to be declared on the West.
Yesterday, National Women’s Council told us “they are a members based organisation” and “they get their mandate from their members” But its members are not ordinary women. They are 200+ NGOs receiving €345million* from Govt:
Yesterday, National Women’s Council told us “they are a members based organisation” and “they get their mandate from their members” But its members are not ordinary women. They are 200+ NGOs receiving €345million* from Govt: ActionAid Ireland €𝟭,𝟭𝟵𝟵,𝟮𝟬𝟵 Age Action €𝟭,𝟯𝟳𝟱,𝟵𝟳𝟬 AkiDwA (Akina Dada Wa Africa) €𝟲𝟯𝟰,𝟬𝟬𝟬 Alcohol Action Ireland €𝟮𝟴𝟳,𝟴𝟰𝟵 Amal Women Ireland €𝟲𝟯,𝟲𝟵𝟱 (Cuan funding only) Amber €𝟵𝟲𝟭,𝟬𝟴𝟲 Amdalah Africa Foundation AMDAF €𝟱𝟭,𝟲𝟯𝟬 (period ending 4 January 2025) An Cosán €𝟯,𝟬𝟵𝟬,𝟮𝟮𝟬 Aoibhneas Domestic Abuse Support €𝟭,𝟴𝟯𝟬,𝟯𝟲𝟭 AONTAS €𝟭,𝟴𝟵𝟱,𝟵𝟮𝟭 Ascend Domestic Abuse Centre €𝟰𝟮𝟵,𝟰𝟬𝟯 (Cuan funding only) Barnardos €𝟮𝟮,𝟱𝟱𝟵,𝟬𝟬𝟬 Belong To €𝟴𝟳𝟬,𝟭𝟮𝟴 Bodywhys €𝟱𝟱𝟴,𝟮𝟬𝟵 Bray Women’s Refuge €𝟵𝟬𝟵,𝟬𝟰𝟰 Cáirde €𝟮,𝟯𝟰𝟮,𝟯𝟬𝟰 Childminding Ireland €𝟯𝟰𝟬,𝟬𝟬𝟬 CKU Centre for Counselling and Therapy €𝟭𝟲𝟭,𝟱𝟰𝟱 Community Law and Mediation €𝟰𝟯𝟵,𝟮𝟵𝟯 Community Work Ireland €𝟯𝟮𝟯,𝟵𝟯𝟭 Coolock Development Council €𝟭,𝟭𝟰𝟭,𝟰𝟯𝟯 COPE Galway Domestic Abuse Service €𝟮,𝟬𝟵𝟰,𝟯𝟬𝟵 (Cuan funding only) Cork City Childcare Committee €𝟳𝟮𝟴,𝟳𝟵𝟰 Cork Sexual Violence Centre €𝟱𝟳𝟵,𝟴𝟳𝟰 Cultúr Migrants Centre €𝟱𝟰𝟭,𝟴𝟳𝟵 Derry Women’s Centre £𝟮𝟯𝟮,𝟲𝟲𝟬 Disability Action NI £𝟮,𝟲𝟰𝟲,𝟯𝟱𝟰 Domestic Violence Advocacy €𝟳𝟯𝟬,𝟬𝟬𝟱 (Cuan funding Donegal Intercultural Platform €𝟮𝟬𝟬,𝟬𝟬𝟬 Donegal Travellers Project €𝟭,𝟭𝟲𝟬,𝟳𝟯𝟬 Donegal Women’s Centre €𝟲𝟬𝟰,𝟱𝟴𝟴 Doras Buí €𝟭,𝟯𝟳𝟵,𝟮𝟴𝟵 Dublin Rape Crisis Centre €𝟯,𝟰𝟱𝟵,𝟲𝟲𝟴 Dublin Wellwoman Centre €𝟮,𝟰𝟭𝟬,𝟬𝟴𝟯 DVR Domestic Violence Response €𝟮𝟵𝟯,𝟴𝟮𝟵 Early Childhood Ireland €𝟭,𝟲𝟯𝟵,𝟯𝟱𝟳 Empower €𝟲,𝟭𝟴𝟳,𝟬𝟳𝟮 Exchange House €𝟮,𝟮𝟲𝟴,𝟰𝟭𝟰 Féileacáin €𝟮𝟱,𝟬𝟬𝟬 (Central Bank funding) FIT Fastrack into IT €𝟮,𝟲𝟳𝟬,𝟮𝟭𝟳 Friends of the Earth Ireland €𝟭𝟱𝟬,𝟳𝟯𝟮 Galway Traveller Movement €𝟮,𝟭𝟭𝟳,𝟳𝟯𝟭 Haven Horizons €𝟮𝟴,𝟯𝟯𝟵 Immigrant Council of Ireland €𝟲𝟳𝟰,𝟯𝟴𝟱 INAR Irish Network Against Racism €𝟭𝟮𝟴,𝟮𝟯𝟵 Inchicore Family Resource Centre / St Michael’s Estate Family Resource Centre €𝟭𝟱𝟱,𝟴𝟵𝟭 (Cuan-funded) Inclusion Ireland €𝟵𝟳𝟵,𝟲𝟬𝟲 Independent Living Movement Ireland €𝟱𝟰𝟯,𝟬𝟱𝟭 Irish Cancer Society €𝟭,𝟴𝟱𝟲,𝟬𝟬𝟬 Irish Council for International Students €𝟴,𝟯𝟵𝟯,𝟳𝟭𝟮 (includes scholarship administration) Irish Cycling Campaign €𝟭𝟭𝟬,𝟴𝟯𝟴 Irish Girl Guides €𝟱𝟳𝟭,𝟭𝟮𝟭 Irish Heart Foundation €𝟭,𝟬𝟮𝟯,𝟭𝟵𝟱 Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed €𝟭,𝟭𝟳𝟬,𝟬𝟲𝟴 Irish Penal Reform Trust €𝟮𝟱𝟴,𝟭𝟴𝟬 Irish Refugee Council €𝟯𝟯𝟴,𝟯𝟭𝟱 Irish Traveller Movement €𝟭,𝟬𝟯𝟭,𝟴𝟮𝟮 Laois Domestic Abuse Services €𝟲𝟬𝟰,𝟲𝟭𝟲 LGBT Ireland €𝟰𝟬𝟮,𝟰𝟯𝟲 LIFELINE Inishowen €𝟳𝟰,𝟯𝟱𝟴 Limerick Family Planning Clinic €𝟰𝟬𝟭,𝟬𝟬𝟬 Longford Community Resources Roma & New Communities CDP €𝟭𝟱𝟬,𝟬𝟬𝟬 (annual programme allocation; year unspecified) Longford Women’s Link €𝟮,𝟭𝟬𝟯,𝟱𝟱𝟱 Love & Care for People €𝟭𝟳𝟰,𝟲𝟮𝟰 (2025) Marie Keating Foundation €𝟭𝟲𝟯,𝟰𝟯𝟬 Mayo Rape Crisis Centre €𝟮𝟵𝟴,𝟱𝟭𝟯 Men’s Development Network €𝟭,𝟴𝟭𝟰,𝟱𝟯𝟲 Mental Health Reform €𝟱𝟯𝟮,𝟳𝟱𝟲 Merchants Quay Ireland €𝟴,𝟮𝟯𝟲,𝟲𝟲𝟰 Mercy Law Resource Centre €𝟭𝟰𝟳,𝟭𝟯𝟱 Migrant Rights Centre Ireland €𝟱𝟲𝟬,𝟴𝟳𝟭 (2025; includes EU funding) Migrants Centre NI £𝟵𝟭,𝟳𝟭𝟬 (year ended March 2025; partial public funding, Northern Ireland) MOVE Ireland €𝟵𝟯𝟮,𝟴𝟮𝟰 National Adult Literacy Agency €𝟮,𝟰𝟱𝟯,𝟴𝟱𝟭 National Traveller Women’s Forum €𝟯𝟯𝟱,𝟳𝟳𝟴 North Leitrim Women’s Centre €𝟯𝟲,𝟲𝟯𝟬 One Family €𝟭,𝟱𝟰𝟰,𝟰𝟵𝟲 OSS Cork €𝟮𝟴𝟱,𝟱𝟲𝟯 (Cuan funding only) Outcomers €𝟮𝟱𝟲,𝟵𝟴𝟲 (2025) Oxfam Ireland €𝟲,𝟵𝟳𝟯,𝟬𝟬𝟬 (year ended March 2025; Republic of Ireland reporting entity) Pavee Point €𝟯,𝟮𝟯𝟵,𝟬𝟴𝟰 Performing Arts Forum €𝟮𝟳𝟬,𝟵𝟬𝟬 Relatives for Justice £𝟭,𝟱𝟲𝟳,𝟵𝟵𝟮 Roscommon Women’s Network €𝟮𝟴𝟲,𝟯𝟮𝟴 Ruhama €𝟭,𝟵𝟭𝟴,𝟯𝟮𝟲 Safe Ireland €𝟭,𝟰𝟮𝟲,𝟱𝟵𝟰 Saoirse Domestic Violence Services €𝟮,𝟵𝟲𝟭,𝟱𝟮𝟲 Saol Project €𝟭,𝟭𝟭𝟳,𝟮𝟴𝟰 Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality €𝟯𝟴𝟵,𝟭𝟲𝟵 Sonas Domestic Violence Charity €𝟯,𝟬𝟵𝟮,𝟮𝟴𝟭 Spunout €𝟯,𝟮𝟮𝟳,𝟳𝟱𝟰 St Catherine Community Carlow €𝟮,𝟬𝟭𝟱,𝟱𝟭𝟰 Technological University of the Shannon: €𝟭𝟴𝟲,𝟭𝟭𝟰,𝟬𝟬𝟬 (whole-university public income) TENI Transgender Equality Network Ireland €𝟮𝟯𝟱,𝟭𝟳𝟲 (includes €𝟰,𝟳𝟵𝟬 from the European Commission) The Shona Project €𝟭𝟬,𝟬𝟬𝟬 The Unforgettable Women’s Network €𝟲𝟱𝟬 (2021; historical figure) Tintean €𝟲𝟳𝟲,𝟰𝟭𝟬 Treoir €𝟴𝟳𝟲,𝟮𝟯𝟵 WALK €𝟭𝟮,𝟭𝟭𝟯,𝟳𝟴𝟬 West Clare Family Resource Centre €𝟰𝟯𝟲,𝟬𝟴𝟭 West Cork Counselling and Support Services €𝟭𝟰𝟵,𝟬𝟴𝟳 Wexford Women’s Refuge €𝟭,𝟲𝟮𝟮,𝟬𝟲𝟭 Willow Domestic Abuse Services €𝟭,𝟲𝟵𝟴,𝟲𝟮𝟬 Women for Election €𝟭𝟵𝟮,𝟮𝟬𝟭 Women’s Aid €𝟭,𝟲𝟵𝟳,𝟰𝟬𝟭 Women’s Collective Ireland €𝟮,𝟮𝟮𝟲,𝟯𝟵𝟳 Work Equal €𝟭𝟴𝟭,𝟳𝟬𝟬 *the above is a list of 107 organisations receiving at a combined €345million in 2024. *Technological University of the Shannon is included here which receives €𝟭𝟴𝟲,𝟭𝟭𝟰,𝟬𝟬𝟬 as it whole university public income. *there are an additional ~100 entities that may also receive Govt funding but its unclear from accounts. The point I am making here is that the NWC is an essentially an aggregator of hundreds or NGOs & Govt funded organisations. It does not represent normal Irish women who have no involvement in these orgs. Great questioning from
*the above is a list of 107 organisations receiving at a combined €345million in 2024. *Technological University of the Shannon is included here which receives €𝟭𝟴𝟲,𝟭𝟭𝟰,𝟬𝟬𝟬 as it whole university public income. *there are an additional ~100 entities that may also receive Govt funding but its unclear from accounts. The point I am making here is that the NWC is an essentially an aggregator of hundreds or NGOs & Govt funded organisations. It does not represent normal Irish women who have no involvement in these orgs. Great questioning from
Palantir harvests battlefield data that Ukraine pays for ‘with blood’
The US company is using Kyiv’s unique war data to train its controversial technologies. Listen (10 mins)
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meets Palantir Technologies CEO Alex Karp in Kyiv, Ukraine [File: Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP Photo]
Months into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp became the first chief of a major Western Big Tech company to personally visit Kyiv.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in June 2022 that he was “delighted” to receive the support of such a company in the fight against Russia “on the digital front line”.
The Florida-based software development firm’s partnership has paid off.
Ukraine has since become the first nation in modern history to systematically collect battlefield data, a crucial asset for training military artificial intelligence (AI) to recognise patterns and make predictions.
The trove of real-world combat data obtained from video and sensor feeds over four years of conflict is helping Ukraine monitor, predict and respond to Russian attacks with the help of Palantir’s products.
Yet observers say the data is also boosting the capabilities of the United States corporation whose technologies are implicated in human rights abuses, including in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, raising questions about the growing leverage that private tech corporations are acquiring over sovereign states.
A ‘strategic advantage’
Palantir was founded in the aftermath of the 2001 attack on New York’s World Trade Center to help the US defence industry build a single data environment from which to monitor and respond to incoming threats.
To reflect such a mission, the company was named after a stone in JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings that grants powers that border on omniscience.
Yasir Atalan, deputy director of the Futures Lab at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said Palantir makes “different forms of data talk to each other”.
In the military context, data from missiles, radars, the automatic identification system (AIS) and open sources is gathered on one screen, offering a “larger view of the battlefield”, Atalan said.
Similar solutions are available to governments for civil purposes, including border control, health services, tax and revenue – and mass surveillance.
With more data, systems use statistical learning to recognise patterns to make accurate predictions, enabling military systems to make split-second, automated tactical decisions.
Under this premise, large datasets based on real-life scenarios are coveted by companies aiming to outperform their competitors.
“Good battlefield data is extremely rare and hard to come by,” Elke Schwarz, a lecturer focusing on digital technologies at Queen Mary University of London, told Al Jazeera. Because of its scarcity, “those with access to [it] have a strategic advantage”.
Data originating from Ukraine may not be directly applicable to another conflict but is still crucial for training, Schwarz said.
“Building a system that correctly identifies a tank, for instance, requires a large volume of tank images, ideally in all kinds of weather conditions,” she explained.
Similarly, large volumes of behavioural data – information on how people react to a given scenario – are key in tracking, profiling and predicting human activity in mass surveillance systems.
Ukraine’s invaluable battlefield data
The pinnacle of the collaboration between Palantir and Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence came in January with the launch of a specialised software platform, the Brave1 Dataroom, which uses battlefield data to train artificial intelligence for military applications.
But prominent figures in Ukraine’s defence sector have questioned their government’s decision to share the country’s valuable asset with a private tech company under undisclosed terms.
“Ukraine has something that no other country in the world has,” Valerii Markus, a serviceman and former chief sergeant, wrote on Facebook. “We are paying with blood for data that someone else can convert into capital, international influence, and big money.”
The company maintains it does not acquire customer data.
In an emailed statement to Al Jazeera, it said that “customers own and control their data”.
Palantir’s software helps them “integrate and analyse their existing data sets,” the company said, adding: “Palantir never uses or retains customer data for its own purposes.”
Schwarz, at Queen Mary University London, said Palantir does not need to possess the data to benefit from it. “Rather, it works with the data that is made available,” she said.
Civil liberties and data protection
Palantir’s technologies, contracted by private clients and government agencies around the world, are known to have been implicated in human rights abuses.
Its core software platforms, ICM and FALCON, facilitated the administration of US President Donald Trump in detaining and deporting thousands of people, including asylum seekers, since January 2025. Amnesty International found the company aggregated massive amounts of data, built detailed individual profiles to track migrants and asylum seekers and assisted with deportations, contrary to its obligations to avoid causing or contributing to human rights abuses under international law.
The company has also assisted Israel in its war in Gaza, which a United Nations inquiry found bears the hallmarks of genocide.
Last year, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese found “reasonable grounds” to believe Palantir provided AI platforms used for battlefield data integration and automated decision-making in the war that has killed more than 74,500 Palestinians since October 2023.
In the United Kingdom, the National Health Service (NHS), police, military and local councils all signed multimillion-pound contracts with Palantir to integrate user data, but the agreements have been met with public backlash.
Nonprofit organisation Corporate Accountability launched a campaign against the 330-million-pound ($440m) contract between the NHS and Palantir to provide a new data platform. The watchdog warned the company is “at the heart of the dystopian marriage of Big Tech, the surveillance and detention industry, and rising fascism”.
Palantir in April published a 22-point summary of Karp’s coauthored book on X, which was widely criticised for promoting an authoritarian, antidemocratic worldview by questioning the efficacy of liberal democracy and arguing that some cultures produce vital advances while others are regressive.
Fatimah Shaikh, Corporate Accountability’s deputy campaigns director, said, “Palantir is not a corporation we can trust” to hold British citizens’ sensitive personal information.
“We should all be able to get medical care without fearing for our safety or privacy,” she told Al Jazeera.
Ilia Siatitsa, senior legal officer at Privacy International in the UK, said tech companies like Palantir blur the line between military and civil applications. They are also opaque about how they use customers’ data by virtue of their involvement in national security, she added.
Siatitsa argued the company could potentially use personal information to train its products – including those with a military application – without explicit consent from the users.
“If my data is going to be feeding into a war machine, I want to know about it,” she said. “I need to have the choice, not only [as a matter of] privacy, but also from an ethical point of view.”
In June, Britain announced it was reviewing the NHS’s data contract with Palantir after parliamentary pressure.
Growing dependencies
Private tech companies are supporting military and civil infrastructure, to the point where governments may become reliant on them to conduct military operations or run national services, experts say.
Anna Nadibaidze, researcher at the Center for War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark, said the balance of power has been shifting.
“We’re used to state armies, nations’ armies being the main players,” Nadibaidze said, adding that now those players are reliant on products supplied by the private sector. “So what if they choose to not supply this infrastructure any more?”
She argued Elon Musk’s SpaceX offered a valid example.
Ukraine has come to rely heavily on the company’s Starlink satellites for communications on the battlefield and effective warfare, but in late September 2022, during a pivotal push by Ukraine to retake Kherson from Russia, the tech billionaire suddenly provoked a communications blackout.
Amid tensions between Washington and Europe, several countries are now refraining from using Palantir’s products. France’s Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu in June said domestic intelligence services would ditch Palantir’s products in an effort to avoid “strategic dependency”. Germany’s military also said it would no longer use the company’s products.
Spanish publication El Confidencial revealed in July that Spanish authorities quietly instructed state-backed companies to avoid signing new contracts with Palantir, citing concerns that sensitive national security information could be exposed.
Palantir’s reliability as a partner has also been called into question in Ukraine after the company finalised in September a strategic partnership with Nebius, a Dutch company founded as an offshoot of Russian technology giant Yandex.
Denys Shtilerman, chief designer and co-owner of Fire Point, a Ukrainian defence-tech company that develops and produces UAV and missile systems, said “the very same Palantir that works with Ukrainian combat data” had struck a deal with Yandex cofounder Arkady Volozh.
Volozh’s description of Russia’s war as “barbaric” has not eased Shtilerman’s concerns.
“Our combat data is not free raw material for Western technology corporations. It is a strategic asset of the state,” he wrote on X in a response to Kyiv’s collaboration with Palantir.
“Ukraine has paid for it with blood. We have no right to simply hand over the most valuable asset we possess.”
How Silicon Valley giants are turning into war contractors | All Hail the Military
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JOE’s Ava Santina Taking down “clickbait joker” #TuckerCarlson over his proclamation that the #Trump Administration is on the verge of dropping a nuclear bomb on #Iran Focusing on key question: Will the Trump Administration return to conventional strikes across Iran or will it return to talks for a settlement? Is power of #Israel lobby facing in US? Recorded November 3, 2026
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Zoom out: In today’s modern, disposable culture, many people have lost the ability to repair household goods, a skill that was once nearly universal, engineer Peter Counter told AP. He’s studying Repair Cafés as part of a doctorate at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham, England.
Repair Cafés are helping preserve those disappearing skills.
