Shaun Newman Podcast - #1053 - Hakeem Anwar

Episode Date: May 13, 2026

Hakeem Anwar is a technologist, educator, entrepreneur, and privacy advocate. A former software engineer in Silicon Valley — where he built web and mobile applications, including health-related software — he grew disillusioned with Big Tech’s surveillance practices and left corporate life in 2019. He then dedicated himself to activist movements, running technology infrastructure for the Freedom Cell Network and The Greater Reset to help connect people globally around freedom and sovereignty. In 2021, Hakeem founded Take Back Our Tech, an educational movement that provides free guides, articles, and resources on using privacy-respecting, open-source technology. At the same time, he launched Above, a privacy-first company where he serves as Founder and CEO. Above develops de-Googled phones, secure Linux laptops, and private communication services (email, encrypted chat, VPN, etc.) designed to make digital sovereignty accessible to everyday users — from tech novices to activists. He is recognized as a leading voice on digital privacy, surveillance resistance, and building technology that empowers rather than exploits people.Watch the Cornerstone Forum 26’https://shaunnewmanpodcast.substack.com/Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: [e-mail] Expat MoneyExpatmoney.com/SNPGet your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500

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Today's guest is software engineer and founder of Take Back Our Tech and Above Phone. I'm talking about Hekeem Anmar. So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Hekeem Anmar. Sir, thanks for helping on. Sean, it's great to be here.

Now, you've got to tell me a little bit about yourself and the audience, for that matter. You've never been on the podcast before. So for audience members, tell us a little bit about who you are. Sure. So my previous career, I was a software engineer and I was working for really big companies at the height of my career, building web and mobile applications. And the whole time, I was feeling very unfulfilled. I was kind of open to alternative thinking by that point and just was like, what is this that I'm actually building? And then when COVID rolled around COVID-1984, I realized, well, okay, I guess I'm building a prison. That's what I'm here to do. And I decided not to build a prison around myself.

I quit my job. I started helping activist movements like the Freedom Cell Network, which is a really large mutual aid network. And then just this pulled me further and further into realizing that I could help people with their tech needs, being more private, being more secure, having more independence in that realm. So I've been doing that with my educational initiative, take back our tech at take back our tech.org where I've been writing for free for the past,

five years on how you can switch to Linux or how you can take back your privacy or even just get educated about how any of this stuff works. And then there's enough demand on resources and just making it easier. So we did launch a company off the back of that called above, abovephone.com. We make privacy phones that are degougled. We've brought our own Linux operating system and there's laptops that you can start using right away. We also have a suite of different communication services from anything from email to video conferencing to search engines and more so yeah in a nutshell that's that's what i do if i pull you back to covid-1984 when you're sitting there as a software engineer and you're starting to look at things and you say we're building i'm building my own prison

could you break that down just for a normal guy on this side who probably doesn't fully understand what a software engineer means by that yeah absolutely i mean so all the company at that time. I stayed in New York for a little bit of time, enough to see the rise of remote work and the rise of different platforms like Zoom. And I began, so it was like, oh, okay, hey, we could have started to work from home years ago, but now that there's this pandemic here, we're all going to work from home. We're all going to use digital tools. We're not going to come into the office because it's a safe thing to do. And like for me, it became super obvious when they started cracking down and talking about things like curfew and all these rules and monitoring people with contact

tracing, which took a few months for that to happen. But I saw it happening. And I was like, okay, this is just a way to impose these rules and to gather more information on all of us. Because if we're not going out in the world and meeting in person, then that means we're operating online. And that's what's happened today is that there's been this rise of technology, but it's also increasingly isolated us.

And I think ultimately this is a bad thing. So with our company, we're trying to keep the heart, the humans behind the technology. It's not technology first. It's humans first. And really, the technology should be a thing that you only turn to when you really need it. It should be community and relationship supported first. So, yeah, we try to keep that ethos and everything we do. Humans first.

What a wild, wild premise. when you talk about remote work, Zoom, contact tracing, all those things, you know, you fast forward to 2026. And, you know, I'm starting to see with what's going on in the world today. I don't know if the world would say this, but I'm starting to see more and more of like COVID 2.0 with energy crisis, right? Remote work. You know, we're all in this together. You should work from home and limit, you know, the use of fossil fuels or, you know, you shouldn't travel as much because it's going to put a strain on the global supply and things like that. Do you see the same things coming from a tech perspective of, you know, trying to monitor people's usage of, you know, whether it's automobiles or just trying to control people?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, if you want to see the future, look at the problem. past and unfortunately the cycles of history are getting super condensed. So this thing that we thought we were done for it for years ago is now resurfacing. I think just last week, the Indian Prime Minister, Emote, that's exactly what he was telling his citizens is that, oh, stay home, use your car less, all these different types of things. And we've seen that types of messaging in Europe and in different places as well. And that ultimately is dangerous. and leading us towards this road where we have this 15-minute AI-powered city where everything is being captured and consumed and potentially being fed into these AI data centers, which can then build insights about us at individual level, but also as a societal level.

And so that's why the AI and the data center conversation is really at top of mind at everything I'm doing right now. I've just putting the finishing touches on a report I've been working on for the past six months about AI data centers and the threats they pose to the environment, but also to our individual psyche. I've seen this firsthand from people, you know, people that I collaborate with and work with, and even people in general is that they offload and delegate all of their critical thinking, reasoning, and memory to AI. And that is super, super scary because they just become an automaton that says, Oh, hey, look, this is what the AI said. And it's really, really scary to see that happen in real time. So again, it's going back to the human first. And to add on to that, I'm not an AI purist.

I'm not one of the Luddites who say that, all right, get rid of all the AI and we'll be okay. Now, I think that there's more of a middle ground where you can use AI with awareness. So what that looks like is, all right, do I have any dependency to any giant companies or data centers? Can I remove that dependency? Can I work with AI to the point where it's not actually removing my critical thinking ability or reasoning? Am I actually learning along with it or is it doing all the thinking and speaking for me? Right. So I do think that there's a middle ground.

And that's what I'm trying to find in the report and the work and the work that I'm doing. Well, speaking of data centers, I feel like, you know, if you've gone back, I don't know, you wouldn't have to go back 10 years, but certainly a couple of years ago, it wouldn't have been a topic that I think most would have even thought about, but it started to become very public. You're seeing governments talk about it. I think it's Donald Trump. You can correct me if I'm wrong that talked about, you know,

basically data centers got to find a way to create their own power because they're going to be such a power sink of how much power they need to operate in different things like that. I know here in Alberta, there's talk of data centers. and I guess, you know, walk us through it because, you know, like, I don't even know if I fully understand. Like, I get what a data center I think is, but maybe the concerns you have on data centers as a whole. Because you point out, you're like, well, there is use for tech. We just need to be the ones operating it and not offload everything we think as human beings to it. But if you're going the opposite way, what is the fear you have or the concern you have moving forward with data centers or other tech?

Yeah, absolutely. I was just on a call yesterday with a group of Canadians, the Life Force Network out of Canada. And so there might be some nice cross-pollination that happens between you, your audience, and them. But they were telling me about Kevin O'Leary's new data center outside of Alberta, Grand Prairie, and a bunch of other ones. And so, like, Kevin O'Leary wants his to be the largest data center in the world. And it's like, Kevin, did you not get the memo that U.S. big tech CEOs are just trying the same thing. They all have these massive egos. And, you know, the Trump administration is it's encouraging this.

So it's like if you look at what Open AI, Oracle, Amazon, Google, Google, Meta, and X have spent since 2025, they've spent about $2.4 trillion. So, you know, $2.4 trillion. That's a ridiculous amount of money. To put it in perspective, that's 44 years of the United States national highway investment. So 44 years of developing our freeways. Or with that same amount of money, you could have built five separate coast-to-coast high. high-speed rail lines. You could have completely transformed how we move around the country,

which I thought, you know, I think that there's some merit to an idea like that. But no, instead we're investing it in data centers, and that just goes to show you how hyped up these big tech companies and investment firms are around this. McKinsey estimates that another $5 trillion will be invested in data centers by 2030. So if you look at the map I built at AI datacenter.org, AI datacenter map.org, you'll see that there's already 4,500 data centers, about 1,600 of those are still planned. So we still have more to go. And what we're seeing is that the biggest of these data centers are actually using more power than an entire state, which is really, really crazy to think about. But that is, that is, that is, That is the case. Hakeem, did you just say they're using more power than an entire state?

Yes. So there are data centers that are using 17 gigawatts, which is more power than an entire state, right? Like a good way to think about it as a gigawatt, which is your power capacity. This could a single gigawatt could supply roughly from 700,000 to a million U.S. homes, right? So that's a good way to think about it. So a lot of these data centers, you're going to hear 10 gigawatts or 12 gigawatts. Like the numbers just keep getting higher. And so you have to think, okay, there was actually a million homes being displaced by the amount of power those data centers are using. So what is the end goal of that of mining everybody's data, storing everybody's data? Like, what is the end goal if you're sitting there looking at that thought process? like the race of $2.4 trillion put into it, and another $5 trillion to go into it by 2030, the race is to get there so that you can control people?

Yeah, I mean, it doesn't make sense in a way because there's not, they don't have the, even though they say that there is a demand, they don't really have the demand that they need. Like people are using AI, but they're not using it for everything that they're doing every day. And so I think that's why companies like Google and Apple have had to force AI in on their phone. So Apple's doing that with Apple intelligence.

Google is doing that with Google Gemini. And these have been turned on on your phone by default. Or if you're using a laptop, a Microsoft computer, then you have co-pilot, which was enabled overnight a year or two back. And it's now just a part of the operating system, right? These things, they show up. there's no way to disable them. They are simply there. They're embedded.

It's the new normal. So my theory, I mean, I have a few theories on why this is happening. And the first is what you were, you know, alluding to is consuming real-time feeds from billions of devices. Right. So they already had a lot of, a lot of this data already. But they didn't really have a way to ingest sentiment or like how people were feeling. And now they have that ability because you can. you can listen to someone's voice or you can look at how they type a message and you really get a

sense of who that person is through that. So being able to create this unified surveillance network of people, having greater insights to who someone is, what they like, what they don't like. And because these new embedded AI layers are already active on your devices, everything you're doing on your device is potentially being fed into it. So that's one big aspect of it. The other aspect is, you know, the pandemic was the first, it was a giant financial transfer. So it was billions of dollars being transferred from individuals into the hands of a few small companies, the vaccine manufacturers, the medical supply companies. So it really centralized the money supply.

So generally, we're in a kind of a bad financial state. your average person is in a bad financial state. However, there is one thing that we still have access to, that is power and that is water. Those things are particularly, they're accessible enough, right? Our utility bills aren't crazy. So I do think that it's the final frontier of pricing out, water and power. We already see this happening to make it so difficult that it just becomes difficult to live. And we get into this place where we can't own anything, we can't own farmland.

It becomes too difficult to run farms because there's not enough water, all these things. So it's kind of that last push over the edge for our natural resources. Well, you're speaking close Schwab terms and you'll own nothing and be happy. And when you first heard that, or I don't know about you, but when I first heard that, I'm like, how will they possibly get to a point where they could make people want that? And what you're pointing to is with power and water, you're like, while you price it out of people's excessive,

you're pointing to accessible. It's accessible right now because it's relatively cheap. And if you make it so expensive, then you have the problem. Nobody can afford it and you walk in with a solution mode. We'll pay for everything. And you guys be subservient. and now you get to live and have everything and we'll just take control of everything.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, there's many creative things they can do. So it's like, yeah, owning's too hard. Hey, here's this rentoid package. So, yeah, you know, I expect to see us trending into that in the coming years. But, you know, I think the important takeaway is like we still have a voice. We still have power. there have been, there are people waking up to at least this data center issue in the United

States. They're pushing back. There's this community in Texas and San Marcos, Texas that pushed out a $2 billion data center. And it's like, it's like really, it's like driving us to be more aware of what's going on in the local level and to even participate in local politics. I don't really, like for me personally, I don't really see the point in voting in elections. It seems like it's always a someone who turns to be out to be a really silly evil villain, like right after they get elected.

That's always been the case. You mean they say whatever they want to get elected and then they do whatever they want once they're elected? Yeah, I know. I keep falling for it. Like, what's the deal? You know, so it's like these national elections don't really matter. But, you know, some of these, I've like what's part of this report that I'm writing, I tried to trace the legal life cycle of a data center.

and there are ways that you can catch it, but you really have to be tuned in to the local level. You said, roughly, they want to be able to monitor how people are feeling. Okay? And two things I wrote down that come to mind when I'm like, why the heck would you want to know that? Well, you could sell more.

If you want people to consume your product, you need to know what product to feed them, essentially, right? Because in theory, you could get to know Sean so well, you know he likes this brand, that and oh wait he's worried about this so we'll start populating that i mean i don't think i'm speaking at a turn for any listener if you have a smartphone and you talk around it enough all of a sudden what you've been talking about starts populating on your phone i assume that's just like the basic step of of learning how a person operates and trying to feed them what they want so you

can sell more would that be a simple way of putting it yeah absolutely at the surface level you know And what the most socially acceptable level, it's going to be used for advertising. I think Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has already said, you know, he's talking about this billion dollar ad industry. And he said that, yeah, there aren't going to be any humans involved in the future. It's literally going to be, hey, there's this product I'm trying to sell. The AI will generate an ad. It'll put it out there.

It'll get some feedback, right, by how people respond to it. It'll iterate and it'll continue to get better and better. no humans needed at all for the entire process. So yeah, we, man, you can see, just on that thought, Hakeem, you can see how quickly it'll be adopted. You think if you're selling whatever you're selling and you populate it into an ad revenue scheme and you see results, you're only going to use it more, not less. That's, that's kind of the scary part about this is, you know, some people that I talk to, it's like, yeah, you know, I know it's an ecological danger, but I feel like I'm going to be left behind if I don't use it.

And so I feel like, you know, the best thing I could do right now is help people realize, hey, maybe there is a best of both worlds. Maybe you can use it without having a reliance on these big tech companies. And like, that's like what I was mentioning earlier is we have to find that balance between maintaining our own human creativity. But if there are things that are like super monotonous or, maybe things that we don't know about. Like the fact is, is that a lot of this work for,

that has been done on AI, the energy and time we have spent is we already have seen value from it. Like there have been models that have been trained in democratized. They've been given out. You can already run them on your computer or your phone. In fact, they run on our above phones and in our above books. So if you, you can use software like LM Studio and download local AI models to your machine and you can start chatting with those right away. In fact, maybe later I can

even show you my friend Mike's model, Mike Adams, who has been, who has trained his AI in a bunch of natural permaculture, survival skills, and essentially homesteading information. And it can just tell you anything from like digging a well to native plants in your area. It's really, really cool. Yeah, well, any tech that's used, I'm not in the right way is probably the poor way of saying it, but with those intentions that you're talking about with Mike Adams, all of a sudden it becomes extremely useful. And you're like, man, that's, huh, I could get behind that. I think what myself and others fear is going through COVID-1984, you go, we're worried about the control.

They're going, you know, you're seeing it at, I don't know, get on a plane. and fly or go internationally and do that and see the different ways. You know, you hear about digital currencies and different things like that. And you're like, well, that didn't get. Like I mean, here in Canada, everyone knows bank accounts were frozen. And if your money supply wasn't, say, in a bank, you wouldn't have to worry too much about it.

But I think most people are worried about with not only data centers, but the tech in general. What controls are they going to put in place on us so that we can't be who we want to be? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, this topic with control, it ties into digital ID. And I've done a lot of work on digital ID as well. And absolutely, right? It's integrating itself into every aspect of government.

I think in Canada, there's no federal-level digital ID app, but the states have their own digital ID app. And in some cases like British Columbia, you automatically get signed up for it. If you want to drive, it's just part of the process. Was it the BC health card? That's what it used to be called. And now it's something else.

Absolutely, it's trickling in. And eventually, like, you know, digital ID is just the first component of something called digital public infrastructure, which was a term coined by the United Nations. and this digital public infrastructure will take this foundation of the identity. It'll combine it with different payment systems. And then the last piece is the information exchange.

So essentially, when digital ID is published and they're going to start encouraging people to use it, which from what I've seen for my research worldwide, it looks like that year is 2027. I think a lot of things are going to happen in 27, but more, more importantly, digital ID will be pushed on people in that year. So it's like, okay, here's a system that exists. It's integrated with your local government. There you might get offers just the same way we saw with vaccines. Hey, free burger and fries with your vaccine.

Oh, my God, right? Don't you want to take it now? These fries taste great, Hakeem. You should try them. You get it free. Come on. What's the big deal? Miocharditis, yeah.

Yeah, so like, you know, you're going to see these things again. You're going to see these like little temptations. Digital ID, use it at these retailers, get 20% off, get, you know, get 3,000 CBDC credits or whatever it's going to be. You're going to start to see things like this as they try and like push your behavior to start using these things. And you really need to have the backup plan. So I think for, well, go ahead. Sorry, apologies on interrupting. I just think, you know, I come back to if you have good options, you'll make good choices.

And so I think what we're getting to is solutions or things people can be doing. But before we hop that, I just want to come back to this. This is the first time I'd heard it. Digital public infrastructure. And you mentioned that there's layers to that. Could you walk me through the layers that people should be, or, or, you know, people are going to be exposed to before we walk into some of the things people can do solution-wise. Yeah, absolutely. So if you want to talk digital ID, you've got to know about digital public infrastructure.

So what it does, it combines identity, payments, and information exchange. And this is something that's happening everywhere on the planet. I tried to research every country that I could. Every country is doing this, even countries in South America, even countries in Africa, which don't have money for people to purchase phones, but they still have their own versions of this. They have electronic IDs, right? So I see it as a digital caste system where different things are going to be walled off based on something that looks like a social credit score. And we can look at different programs to see how they work. One example. is Brazil's system, which they already have their, it's the first complete program in South

America, which required everyone in the country to start converting their national ID into a digital credential. And then what this digital ID, where this lives, is actually stored on a blockchain. So it's a, you know, it's a data structure that underlies cryptocurrency. And so your digital ID is stored on that blockchain, meaning that it can't ever be changed or removed. And this blockchain also synchronizes six different government registries. So taxpayer data, legal entities, construction, economic activity, tax and debt, and all this system updates daily. So, you know, how this digital public infrastructure will likely work is you'll see your local government offices incorporating, incorporating DPI.

So you'll start to see, all right, hey, now this is integrated with your digital ID. Oh, it's so much easier to apply for a loan. Oh, wow. Or hey, you can file your taxes online. And what this is doing is creating that unified network where everything is managed as part of your digital identity. And it also means if you fail in one area, like this has already happening in Brazil. If you fail to pay your debts, do you think your construction loans are

going to be approved? Or do you think you're going to be able to create a new business? Or are you going to have these leeways? And the danger is, is once digital ID works its way into every aspect of society, anything from payment at stores or for renting a place as it is in India, you have to give your digital ID, your AdHAR number, in order to even rent a place. from someone. Once you get a black mark, then that reflects badly on you. It's like a, it's like a de facto social credit score. And so that's where that's where this is going. China and India are already roughly like this. There's other places that are taking it even further, like in Russia, where the digital ID is integrated into the CCTV cameras of the Moscow metro. And so they use

digital ID to select which men have to go off to fight the wars, right, in a draft. So they pick that in a lottery. And if you're the lucky winner, then the CCTV cameras in the metro will actually recognize your face and report it to the police. And then you'll be picked up off the street. So pretty, pretty harrowing example of how digital ID can be used. But, you know, that's the way we can see other countries doing it. And we know that governments learn from each other. So I think right now people they learn from each other with all the worst ideas. Yeah. Oh my.

That's a terrible idea. All the anti-human ideas. Yeah, absolutely. You know, and so we have to do everything in our power to opt out of these. And for people right now, that's avoiding your biometric identity being collected with your legal identity. If you give two of those things at once, it creates a digital ID. It creates basically the master key for your identity. Once you hand those over, you don't have to install an app on your phone.

You don't have to do anything. That ID can be used without you actively having to do anything. So that's what people need to watch out for in the coming years. You know, I just go back to the word you said, digital credentials. Right? To me, I'm like, oh, that's probably already here. And I just haven't been paying close enough attention. because it doesn't sound that bad.

It's just a digital credential. You know, I wonder, is there any stopping this Hakeem? Because, like, you know, maybe this is a poor example, but I think of like, you know, I remember how this is going way back for me in my lifetime. Like, everything was done by cash. You bought everything in cash. And now, you know, I watch people have everything on their phone, right? They just plop the phone down and everything's there.

And I'm like, man, is there any way we avoid, you know, like when there's such a mass adoption already of like, oh, this is it. This is awesome. I just click and boom, it's easy. And, you know, the people that are probably listening to this are sitting there going, yeah, until the next COVID happens, whatever that looks like. And then they have more control over what your ability to say anything about it because they can shut everything off because it's all. digital. Like, is there any slowing this down? You know, I've made peace with the fact that this gets to happen. You know, it's like an evil mastermind. It's like these group of people, they're just not

going to stop. They're obsessed with this. And unfortunately, like, at a certain level, you have to accept that some people just want to be slaves. And that's where, that's where their consciousness is right now. And so there will be a group of people that live in these 15-minute cities and basically become slaves, maybe under a better name.

I think that has to happen because we need to have these dualities, the world, the universe operates in dualities. So there will be really, really locked down, tightly controlled areas where the people living in China right now, they

celebrate how safe it is they celebrate how safe it is and it's a safe place prison and is also a safe place in a way everything is very very secure you're very safe um so people will find themselves in these scenarios but at the same time i think that i think that we're at the edge of these systems collapsing as well and they're not necessarily going to be able to spread over the entire earth and there will be pockets of freedom but that all depends on your choices today If the global financial system shut down today, would you be able to purchase what you needed in cash? Can you say, hey, I have my top 100 people in my community that I could reach out to and I've made agreements with them.

Hey, no matter what happens, let's be able to exchange without digital ID, without digital currency, without COVID passports. Can we have those agreements with each other? So I think that, you know, that's probably the most important thing that anyone could be doing right now to prepare. Well, let's let's let's, let's, I agree with you, actually with, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of foregone conclusion. There are going to just be people who adopt this and think safety at any cost is worth it. And okay. So talk to me about solutions then, whether that is your above phone or. wherever you want to take us. I'm curious, you know, your insights into it are fascinating, right?

What have you come up with as like, here's some things everyday people can do? Well, thank you. I appreciate that. And the first thing I'm going to share with you is the AI Data Center Map. So I've got it pulled up on my screen here. This is AI datacenter map.org. And after popular demand, I think I'm going to expand it to Canada. I didn't realize how bad it was there. So stay on the lookout. I'm going to do more stuff for Canada. This is about 4,500 data centers in the United States.

If you click on the area of a map, you get to see how much power is being displaced and how much water is being displaced. And you can kind of begin to calculate how much your power and water bill are going up. You can also predict when the next data center, where the next data center might be built. Why? Because data centers need access to power lines. So this is the power grid of the United States. And you can see that, hey, it's no accident.

These data centers are all next to power lines, right? High voltage power lines that can support the amount of power that they need. Right. So you can look at your local area and you can. see, hey, is there a lot of power lines available for people or am in a location next to these high-voltage power lines? And you'll begin to see kind of a pattern. The other thing you can look at is the major U.S. aquifers. So there's also a relationship between the data centers and where they sit on the aquifers. So that's something interesting to note. One thing to note, too,

is an aquifer, this massive body of water that's sitting underneath the ground. It doesn't identify as American or it doesn't identify as Canadian. You know, it's just, it's just there under the ground. So the things we're doing on our side of the border are going to affect you guys and vice versa. So you can kind of begin to see what aquifers are being impacted by which number of data centers and where the dangers might be. So here in Alberta, if these Puget Sound aquifer systems expand over the border, I need to go look at the maps to really tell. But you can you can begin to see the impact of your local aquifers and where they live. And I think that, like, for me, this is kind of, I mean, I believe in God and I believe that nature is an integral part of God.

It's basically, it's infinite amount of creation that is happening. And I think that nature just wanted to remind us, wanted to remind us that, hey, I'm here, I'm supplying you with water. Pay attention to me, because if we take it for granted, then we have really evil, people trying to suck up all the natural resources and trying to hurt the environment, trying to hurt, make life harder for all living things. So it's to pay attention and maybe that means to get involved with a local conservation group. That's what I've been seeing in the United States. It's the local conservation groups that have been the most successful at pushing back against these data centers. They've caught them in the really early stages of zoning. So this is when they

change from agricultural land to industrial land. They've caught them at those cases. They've voted, voted them out in city council or the county commissioner's office, and people have gotten really, really involved. So, I mean, that would be one piece of homework for you today is what is your local water conservation organization? Is there one? And can you go, can you go check them out, see what's up, have a meeting? And then you'll actually have a, you'll have a voice as this thing rolls out. So that that is the first solution. You talked about the amount of power going to the data centers. How like I assume they need water for cooling is my guess.

Yes. Can they not why would they do they need a large amount of water? Why can't they reuse the water? So or is that not a thing? Yeah. Yeah. I mean so so so So the question is, do we trust them to report on their water usage? People have been rightly so. They've been freaking out about this. And it depends on the cooling technology. Some of the bigger data centers have started to say, hey, we're going to be reusing the water, but it does require some additional water to keep it going as the water can get

polluted with metals and different things as it passes through the system and you don't necessarily want to continue to use it for cooling. But this water does at the end of the day, these data centers, the racks within these data centers, to give you an idea of how hot they are, there is hot as the surface of the sun. And I'm not kidding about that. There is hot as the surface of the sun. Yes, within one magnitude of the surface of the sun. So it's, It's crazy how hot these things get. They're some of the most complicated pieces of technology because they're performing a trillion trillion operations per second.

So if you think about how hot that is, and that's just one rack, that's just one rack out of a data center that has hundreds of thousands of these cards, then you can see, all right, it's gonna vaporize a lot of water. And what usually ends up happening is they let some of that out into the atmosphere.

Now, the thing is, is what I've seen from looking at Google's sustainability reports and the different sustainability reports of these big tech companies, is they're not actually measuring their water. They're not even measuring the water. Like, you know, we have a smart meter on your house that probably measures electricity. Well, on their well, or their municipal water supply, there's literally not even a meter. They don't bother to do it.

And there's been surveys showing this. And if you look at the sustainability reports of any of these companies, you'll see in the fine print, hey, for some of these, when we don't have the data, it's just an estimate. Okay, so my question is, and how many cases is an estimate versus actual data? And they will not mention it to you on the report. So they really downplay how much water they use. They're not making accurate measurements.

And so when they'd say, hey, where you were using the water for cooling, I say, okay, well, measure your water first. And then let's see, let's see how much water you're using. So, you know, with that, with that being said, I'm sure some of these data centers are starting to use less, but it's, it's ridiculous. I mean, Google used 16, what was it? 16 billion gallons.

Sorry, that might be 10 billion gallons in a year, right? This is a ridiculous amount of water. and there are more of these things being built. So I just say, yeah, the number, the number is only going to increase. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I think the one thing that we can do is stop using technology that justifies these data centers. And that's every big tech service today.

That's every single big tech service today. That's Google Cloud. That's Google Drive, Gmail. All of these things are powered by AI. You don't have a choice to turn it on and on. off. Okay. So opting out of some of the big tech services. Walk me through. I'm curious about your phone. Like I'm, walk me through this. So yeah, let me start by showing you our laptop, which this is a completely open source laptop that has no connections to Microsoft, no connections to Google, no connections to Apple. It's using an open source operating. system that we built based off of Arch Linux, which means it can do anything your computer can do,

but it does it privately. And it's also a lot faster because it doesn't have a bunch of AI layers in the background running. So, for example, you can install the apps that you might be used to using. So let's talk about things like Spotify. I don't recommend you use Spotify, but you know, you can use it on this computer if you want. Speaking of Spotify, why don't you recommend using Spotify? Well, they censor their artists, those speaking out against the genocide happening in Gaza. They don't pay the artists.

The artists get a very small sum based on what they're streaming, so they're not fair to artists. And yeah, I mean, it's used to, it's, they are diminishing voices, critical of mainstream narratives. And you, the reason I ask about Spotify is so the podcast, what I've been noticing, and I noticed this two years ago, and I couldn't put my finger on it.

But you're, you're pointing to it is that I'm like, something's going on with Spotify. I stare at the analytics. I'm not a number, I shouldn't say that I'm not a numbers driven guy. It's just not why I do the podcast. If all of a sudden,

tomorrow, you know, the audience went down to one person or something. I'd be sad, but like, I enjoy talking to people. But I do check in on the numbers from time to time. And I'm like, something strange is going on right now. And that is, I feel like it's, well, the one year, I swear, I was trying to hit a million downloads in a year. And I was doing the calculations.

I'm like, oh, I'm going to hit it by this day. And if I just keep doing this, this is where I'll hit it. And then that day came and passed, I'm like, what is going on? And it's almost like it curbed that. And I took everything in my being to hit it. And I'm like, what just happened? What was that? So I started having listeners, go pick a random episode, tell me about it.

And so we landed on like episode, I don't even remember now, 42. And we all went and listened to it so that I could look at the numbers populating. Because I could see how many downloads are on it. and it didn't move. I'm like, that's weird because I've had like 40 some people go listen to that specific episode so that we could track

that it was going up because obviously, you know, it's on how many people tune in and listen and actually engage in it. Okay, well, unless all 42, which isn't possible because I was one of them, lied to me, we all went and listened to the same episode

and saw zero movement off of it. So I've been skeptical about Spotify for a couple of years now, but I haven't been able to put my finger on it. You bring up the first one. I don't recommend downloading Spotify because there are things in the background that are not good. Am I like you're almost giving a little bit of concrete evidence or thought process to my paranoia. Yeah, I mean, you know, your intuition and your your observations are valid, right?

there's thanks to AI part of this is part of the reason why it's so insidious is that it can categorize us very very easy so if you know the Sean Newman podcast which by the way congratulations on a thousand episodes that's amazing shout out to you but if they categorize your episodes as kind of anti-establishment then yeah they don't they don't really want you to grow your channel. Spotify has a lot of vested interest in stakeholders that just want to promote the mainstream. So then my next question, sorry to pull us completely off script, you did it by bringing up Spotify, is if you're talking to a podcast or which you are, where would you say here's your best platform to start pushing it on or growing or where would you go?

Yeah, well, I think the thing is, is that podcasts are actually, they're an open protocol. So Spotify doesn't own podcast, Apple doesn't own podcast. It is an open protocol. The name is escaping me right now, but I know this one. But like, so with any of our devices, there are different apps you can use to consume podcasts. And guess what? They're free. they don't even have ads in them and you can do everything you could normally on a normal podcast listener right like Spotify or whatnot so on the phone which i'll show you in a second we have this app called antenna pod on the laptop we don't have an app but there's you know you see i search for podcasts and there's a few that come up and i can go ahead and install them here so there are what i would start recommending to your

to your listeners is for them to use a different client entirely. So they should be able to use, there's many different alternatives out there to Spotify and to get them to start consuming your podcast another way. So I'll show you on the phone here in a second. Let me plug it in. Okay. So on the phone, we have this app called AntennaPod,

and I'll search for you on there. So this will, let me search for your podcast here. There we go, the Sean Newman podcast. So boom, there you have all 1,00050 of your episodes. And then I can just subscribe to it. And what's really cool is this one with Pepe Escobar. You can actually download the entire podcast to your phone. You get the whole file, right?

So it's all about changing our relationship with our content creators. So this app is called antenna pod. If you have an Android phone, you can go ahead and download it right away. If you have an above phone, you'll be able to use it privately. And realistically, Android phones may not be able to use this app. After 2027, Google is starting to enforce new rules because these apps are just too good. they're costing Google and Apple and the rest of them advertising dollars and they're giving you everything for free and they're giving you your privacy so you know this is why I encourage people

to start using tools like the above phone and the above book so the above above phone I feel like every well I'm pretty sure every listener you know has a phone right I mean that the days of just having a landline out on the farm have long since gone everybody's got their smartphone they're carrying around. It's above phone. Can you can you just show me it on the screen? Like can is it like is it just a typical phone or is it something different here? Yeah, this is this is the phone. That's what I'm showing you on screen right here. Yeah. So it's using existing hardware. And what's different is what's on the inside, which is the operating system that it runs. So instead of running the normal Google.

Android OS, it runs a open source version of Android that has been hardened. So that means it's been made extremely private. It's using new hardware security features, which we can go into, which essentially means that no one was going to be able to break into your phone, even if they just steal it right out of your hands. As long as it's locked, no one will be able to break into it. People who are now dealing with customs are having to, you know, become aware of this reality that normal phone, if it gets taken out of your hands,

it is possible for people to extract all the data off of it. So it's giving you your security back. The other thing is that this phone does not connect to any third-party big tech companies. So no Google, Apple, Microsoft, none of those, which those companies are responsible for 80% of the surveillance out there. The last thing is, is you can still do everything that you would normally do. And it works with your existing cell network. So if you're currently using Rogers, Tell Us, or Bell in Canada, you can continue to use those.

You can just simply switch your service to this phone. And if you wanted to download an app, is there an app that you like, you like to use, Sean? That's a good question. What do I use? I don't know, probably X is the place that I frequent the most. X-Corp, yes. So yeah, so you can still get those apps on above phone. You get an additional amount of privacy because you have control over your permissions.

You can literally tell it, hey, I don't want you have access to my entire device. I'm just going to give you access to this folder for pictures. You can give it selective contacts. You can even cut apps off from the internet. Of course, in X's case, it would not work at all. Now, I just want to show you one thing. So on this app store, you can actually go in and look at how many third parties are in a particular app. So with X, we have three Google advertising and analytics platforms embedded into it.

So this is just going to show you the collusion between the tech companies. And you can use this to make an informed decision about which apps. apps you're putting on your phone. So previously, there used to be ways of visiting X or consuming Twitter using open source apps. Now that's no longer the case. It's getting harder to, but you can still have these big tech apps on your phone. One last thing, and then I'll take more questions, is you can actually put X on a completely

separate container of your phone. So this is, I'm switching over. to it right now. You probably couldn't see it too well, but this is like having a phone within your phone. So now X or your social media, you can see I have WhatsApp and Google Drive in here are completely separate from your main phone. They can't see anything on your main phone and they live in this little sandbox. So you can begin to separate out your life like that, which really helps for privacy and for your peace of mind. Well, the obvious question I feel like maybe I'm skipping a few is if somebody wants to buy this,

where do they go first off? Like, I assume there's just a website. Yes, it's abovephone.com. Let me bring that on the page here. Abovephone.com. And so we do phones, we do laptops, we also do tablets, and you can use code Sean Newman for $50 off, any device. We've got a, the phone I was just showing you is a Pixel 9 Pro Excel. It's,

um, these prices are in USD. We also have some cheaper phones that that work just as well. They have all the same features. They're just, forgive me, Hakeem. I can't see the prices. What, what is a brand new phone worth? Yeah, the brand new phone. We have the pixel 9 that starts at 1099 USD and then our 9 Pro, which is 1499 USD. So these phones are on the pricier side, but with each phone, you do get a lifetime of support. You get email and chat support. You also get a free 45-minute call with a real-life person. So in the sense that you actually want to use your phone and you want to be fully equipped

to handle anything that life throws at you. above is able to support. So we've been around for five years. We have over 7,000 customers now using our phones and laptops. So we have a really good track record of helping people with their devices. Here's our laptops. This is our Quantum 15, which this is a computer that I'm using currently. And this is one that's set up to run local AI.

And it works really, really fast. Now, these other computers, they also run local AI, but they're just a bit slower. So if you have any questions on that, you can chat with us. You can chat with real live people right here, not AI. I'm happy to answer any of your questions and help you with a transition. I'm just going to ask a really dumb question. And I know that you're the guy who's developing this all. So I assume I know your answer.

But if you're switching over, right? Like majority of people, I know there's some Samsung. and et cetera users. But majority of people seem to run in, I run into, run Apple. So you go like change is difficult for people. Now, I'm not, I'm assuming there's lots of people in the science, they're like, oh man, this sounds right up my alley.

When you're switching from an Apple to above, is there like user shock of like, it takes a little bit and, you know, after a month or two, you're just like, oh, no, it's, it's relatively the same. the security options on it are just above and beyond and you're going to really enjoy that. Can you walk somebody who's, you know, contemplating like, well, maybe I would switch over. That sounds really interesting. I just, I get set in my ways.

Is it a simple transition or is there user features, that type of thing that you're like, yeah, there's going to be a little bit of a, you know, a month or two transition. Yeah, I mean, it's like, it's like anything else. It's like going from the grocery store to growing your own food and, luckily, it's a lot easier than growing your own food. There is going to be a shift. I won't lie about it. It's going to be a different mental model, a little bit of a different way of thinking.

But the thing that we've learned from this community, this amazing community of people who have taken the jump with us is that the shift is worthwhile. Like, can you really put a price or a time on your peace of mind and feeling safe around your phone and being secure? some of those things are just priceless. So the transition for most people, especially, let's say someone who's like super plugged into the Apple ecosystem is around a month, right? That's fully to start feeling comfortable with everything that's going on in the phone.

But without a doubt, you're going to have some of the best support that is available to you in the industry. There are not many teams like mine that are one staffed by human support people. that are based in the West. We also have people based in Europe. We also have people based in Mexico. But just you're going to get this level of support that is unmatched because we really want you to use the phone.

It means nothing to us if you just put it on a shelf and forget about it. So you're going to have all of these resources at your back. We have videos and knowledge bases and guides as well. So it is going to require a little bit of effort from your side. I wish it could just be plug and play. But if you wanted plug and play, then maybe you ought to stick with the AI. On the phone, I think people realize that Apple does things to their phones

in order for them to move on to the next version, right? You can't just buy an Apple, I don't even know, seven. I mean, you can probably. but you know like the operating system all the different things that you're you're mentioning with an above phone could you use it for 10 years in theory or you're like no it's going to probably every three years you need to upgrade a phone does that make sense yeah I yes so these phones especially our newest phones have update cycles till 2032 2031 so you're getting a good of seven years of life, six to seven years of life out of these phones. So those are, that's just the

updates. They'll continue to work after that point. And yeah, so this is a phone that does not break down because there aren't all these layers of crap being sent by Google or by Apple. The planned obsolescence, you're referring to, right, which is just geared to get you to upgrade to the next phone. So. Yeah, to spend money. Yeah, I mean, and that's what. what you'll find, whether you're using our phone or a laptop, is that, hey, these devices, they're not going to be the latest and greatest, but they're going to be just as fast, just as powerful as anything that you get from the store. And they're going to run better, and they're going to run faster because the software doesn't bog them down.

That's fascinating. Yeah. If there was any other tech, I think you've mentioned a few different ones, right? Majority are most of it being like the big companies, but like if you're like to the everyday average person, you should really consider getting off of a couple of things, right? Like the phone is something we all have. But is there other things, you know, when you think, I don't know, I'm thinking in my head right now, email or I don't know, maybe there's a couple other things out there. You're like, you should really strongly consider doing these things to help improve your privacy? Like, does anything pop to mind for you? Email is a very big one. Yeah, the farther you can get away from the big providers, the better. And so there are a lot of

smaller providers. We offer an email service. There's also alternatives. No, I don't recommend ProtonMail, but there are many places where you can get an email service. And yeah, I would just recommend moving to a smaller provider. For one, many of them are not consuming your emails with AI. But for instance, if you get our email service, which is this is our above suite, this is an optional set of services you can get with the phone. It works on the phone. It works on the laptop. It'll even work in your web browser. So not only do you get an email, but for $100 a year, year you'll get encrypted chat. You'll get an internet phone number, a US or Canada number that you can start to call people without using a SIM card. You'll get a VPN service to protect your identity online.

You'll get an email and calendar, which is private. You'll get a file sharing service. You'll also get a video conferencing tool so you can have group calls with people. So we have ways that you can actually replace your reliance on phone numbers. You'll also get a search engine and a knowledge base that shows you how to use everything. So, yeah, check that out. That's above suite. You can go look on our site under Shop Suite for info, or when you check out, you'll see an option to buy it along with the phone.

And this is, I don't know, you know, this has been a few months in the making, Hakeem, of you coming on the podcast. I wasn't sure, you know, I'd watched a bunch of your stuff. I was like, oh, kind of curious what this is going to be like, because I've been curious about tech. You've got my mind going a mile a minute on this side. If people want to find out more or get in touch with you or your team, where would you send them?

Yeah, absolutely. Go to abovephone.com and hit the chat button in the bottom right hand side. I'm actually blocking that right here and just start a conversation with us. Yeah, we've got people on Monday, Friday, 9 to 5 p.m. So we'll be able to answer any questions that you have. And one really nice thing is these are all people in the movement. It's not employees working at a call center in another country somewhere. These are all people I handpicked from within the movement.

And they all believe in the same values that you do, I'm sure, as a listener of this podcast. So check that out. And also, if you think that we should hook Sean up with a phone so he could try it out himself, let us know in the comments. give us some engagement share it with your friends cool akim thanks for hopping on and doing this very nice meeting you and best of luck in in the you know days weeks months ahead sean yes thank you for for having me on it was great it was great chatting with you thank you for the work you're doing and um yeah here's to breaking going above all these controls we're seeing