The Problem With Jon Stewart - The ICE Age of Surveillance and Enforcement

Episode Date: January 28, 2026

Following the violent crackdown on protesters in Minneapolis, Jon is joined by investigative journalist Radley Balko and Joseph Cox, co-founder of 404 Media. Together, they examine the tools and tactics being used by ICE, explore how technological advances are being weaponized to hypercharge state power, and discuss what the merger of surveillance and immigration enforcement means for the future of civil liberties in America. This episode is brought to you by: SURFSHARK - Go to https://surfshark.com/jonstewart and use code jonstewart at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN! ROCKET MONEY - Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at https://RocketMoney.com/TWS. SHOPIFY - Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial and start selling today at https://shopify.com/TWS Follow The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart on social media for more:  > YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@weeklyshowpodcast > Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/weeklyshowpodcast> TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@weeklyshowpodcast  > X: https://x.com/weeklyshowpod   > BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/theweeklyshowpodcast.com Host/Executive Producer – Jon Stewart Executive Producer – James Dixon Executive Producer – Chris McShane Executive Producer – Caity Gray Lead Producer – Lauren Walker Producer – Brittany Mehmedovic  Producer – Gillian Spear Video Editor & Engineer – Rob Vitolo Audio Editor & Engineer – Nicole Boyce Music by Hansdle Hsu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Adobe Acrobat Studio, your new foundation. Use PDF spaces to generate a presentation. Grab your docs, your permits, your moves. AI levels of your pitch, gets it in a groove. Choose a template with your timeless cools those tunes. Drive, design, deliver, make it sing. AI builds the deck so you can build that thing. Learn more at Adobe.com slash do that with Acrobat.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the weekly show with John Stewart. My name is John Stewart. It is Tuesday, January 27th. And the polar vortex continues to lock in the shitty feeling that everybody has in America in this present moment where, although actually the way that the people have stood up, the resilience that everybody has shown in Minneapolis, the resilience that those who have said this is not an acceptable manner by which the government can do anything to the people.

and the pushback against the idea that those that are protesting against it are somehow against getting murderers off the street. Like all the lies and misrepresentations that the government is trying to force down people's throats have been exploded in the very specific disproving of their narrative by video. and that video is video that's taken by courageous people that have decided to protect their fellow citizens. And you can't be more proud of something than that. But how do we get an understanding of what are the mechanisms of how this is all occurring? That's the thing that I think we're going to talk about on the show today. It's sort of this nexus between state power and now kind of these overarching technological advances that are being weaponized and fed into state power and how that's being used to hypercharge

this entire deportation pursuit. I think we have got two people that are going to discuss some of the the real specifics of this through the companies that are being granted these, you know, hundreds of millions of dollar contracts by the government and the police department. that are facing a real uphill battle as, you know, they're seeing these militarized forces and don't want to be mistaken for that because those are, you know, the police forces live in those communities. They're the ones that are actually there trying to do the right thing by their citizens and these other more alien forces are coming in and, you know, creating the chaos. And we're going to do that with two real experts in this field. Radley Balco and Joseph

Cox. So we are joined today by two individuals who really have this beat covered in such a terrific way. Joseph Cox, co-founder of 404 Media and the host of the 404 Media podcast, which is really influential in terms of looking at kind of the tech world and how that intersects with what's been happening. And Radley Balco, investigative journalist, author of the book Rise of the Warrior Cop, militarization of America's Police Forces, the publisher of the Substact Newsletter of the Watch. First of all, Radley and Joseph, thank you for being here. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Radley, I've been reading your stuff for decades now.

And your work on kind of and consistent work on civil liberties, how are you experiencing this moment that you seem to have foreseen many, many years ago about this militarization of police forces and now this border patrol force that, you know, massed and up armored. Yeah, I mean, the interesting thing is I'm getting a lot of credit for having predicted this, and I don't actually think I did. It's actually, you know, when I've debated people from law enforcement about police militarization over the years, the debate is always, there's always been some common ground, which is that police, you know, exists to serve the public.

and, you know, keep the peace, and that, you know, it's bad for the military to be doing domestic policing, that that's not something free societies do. And, you know, we disagreed about methods and tactics and accountability and where that trade-off between civil liberties and public safety is. But there was always that kind of common understanding. And where we are now is you have an administration and its defenders who are just openly stating that these federal law enforcement forces, which are basically paramilitaries, exist not for public safety, but to carry out the will of a single person of the president. And you have a president who's just openly saying, we need the military,

marching up and down U.S. streets, doing, you know, day-to-day policing. And so, I mean, I think this is why you're seeing so many law enforcement officials also express a lot of alarm at what they're seeing, because we are just, in a completely new frontier at this point. And speaking to that frontier, Joseph, I think this is sort of where you come in because, you know, as Radley talks about the militarization of these forces and the roaming three at the behest of one man, they're also using the most sophisticated technology that has ever existed to help them geomap where their targets are. Is that been the focus of what you've been doing? Yeah, absolutely. And I've actually covered

the proliferation of technology among police forces as well. I've done that for a long time where there's technology that can track the location of phones or intercept text messages and calls, all of that sort of normal stuff. This is different. ICE is on like, and DHS more widely, to be fair, is on basically a surveillance shopping spree. They're getting all sorts of stuff like access through local cops to AI-enabled cameras. They contract cars. phone location data, map interfaces that bring up the location of all the immigrants they may wish

to target, even right up to like phone hacking technology, which is very powerful and very, very controversial. But if you can imagine it, there's a good chance ICE has also already imagined it and probably also got a check in the mail to buy that technology. Well, they've got the budget. I mean, this is something when you talk about the tools that they have, they have been given a budget that is larger than the military budgets of every country on earth, save the United States and China. Yeah, and they're clearly spending it. And to be fair, some of this stuff isn't even that expensive.

Like, you can buy data from a broker that can show the location of all the phones in a certain neighborhood and then track them home. And that's going to be, you know, tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's basically pocket change to them at this. point. And every day when I just scroll through U.S. government procurement records, that's all I do all day every day, essentially, trying to find interesting or scary stuff, there's always some sort of new purchase in there. Radley, I remember the quaint old days. You remember the quaint days when you'd watch a police show and they would, you know, you didn't read me by rights and then

they'd have to let them go. And like, there's all, you know, it's these little things like, but you have to ask politely to come in. You know, we're. seeing on the street, I'm seeing guys on the streets of Minnesota after the, the murder of these two individuals who were there saying to people on the street, didn't you learn your lesson? Like literally just wandering through the town is what's happening here. I want to talk about, let's talk about the arguments that are being made that are, I think, overly simplistic. The first one is, I guess you want rapists and murderers to go free then. So if you complain about the militarization of this, you're only, we have two choices in this country.

You can either have rapists and murderers go free that are here illegally, or you just have to allow a militarized police force to do what has been traditionally civil enforcement. I mean, the third option is you could elect them president and appoint them head of HHS, right? Right, right. referring to the rapists, yes. Yeah, exactly. Well done. But isn't that the point that they give this false impression that I think what most people would say in this country is we would like the police and ICE and everybody else to target people

who have committed bad crimes in a process that still honors our Constitution and the Bill of rights, what we don't want is what seems to be overly aggressive, poorly executed, trawling expeditions where five-year-olds and grandmothers and people of mistaken identity and people in target parking lots aren't getting the shit kicked out of them in an effort to satisfy Stephen Miller's bloodlust and his quotas. So, I mean, it was always going to be like this, right? When you look at the numbers during the campaign, the sheer number of immigrants that they were claiming that they were going to deport, you were never going to be able to get to that number by arresting the worst of the worst, right? Because to get the worst of the worst, those are the people who are not showing up for

court hearings, right? Those are the people who are in hiding. And so it takes investigation, it takes resources. It takes eight to ten men teams to go out and track these people down and arrest them. And so what you saw is very early on, you saw Stephen Miller's, there's There's a sort of infamous reported meeting that he had where he was screaming at people and saying, we need to be raiding Home Depot parking lots. We need to be casting these wide nets in the community. And the other thing that I think is really, you know, the really damning thing is, you know, for a long time, ICE prioritized the worst of the worst.

Like that was who we directed our resources at. And that makes perfect sense. When Trump took office in 2016, one of the first things he did was deprioritize going after the worst of the worst and prioritized going after migrants. So people who were here seeking asylum, people who didn't have a criminal record. Biden revoked that policy and then Trump, you know, then his first week of office last year put it back in place. And so they aren't targeting the worst of the worst. They are going out and getting whoever they can, wherever they can. They're going to places where, you know, every stereotypical kind of racist asshole thinks all the

illegals are, right? Those are the places where they're going. And they're doing it. very disingenuously. I mean, the idea that, and if you question it, they really do say, oh, so I guess you want rape, like, as though it is a binary. And Joseph, what has so, I think, stunned the nation besides the thing is the blatant lying. I mean, technology is a two-way street. Now that we have all this surveillance and video, but now we also see the citizens surveilling and the citizens catching a video that absolutely disprove the narratives that are

being put out by the government. Yeah, and I mean, that clearly applies to both of these shootings, right, where civilians and witnesses have been filming on their own mobile phones and doing their own form of surveillance. And I don't really want to think about what would happen if we didn't have those cameras in everybody's hands. They're clearly a very, very good thing. That said, the flip side when ICE officers or Customs and Border Protection officials use their own cameras, they have this facial recognition app on there, which even gets stuff wrong. They'll scan somebody's face, and we've reported a case where they pointed the phone at a woman's face. They were detaining, and it returned two different names. And initially, when I heard that, I thought, well,

at least one of those names has to be wrong. Everybody doesn't have two names. It turned out both were wrong as well. So there's a very strange irony in that civilians and witnesses are using their own cameras to figure out what is actually going on and posting out to social media, then we can all see it of our own eyes. And then some of the technology, in at least some cases, being used by ICE, apparently doesn't even work as advertised anyway. I don't know. I just find that a very, very strange disconnect. Do you think there's something, you know, because as we talk about it, when you think about the methodology of technology and using all these tools to track, it takes people out of the idea that they're human and puts them as almost prey. It feels like

by creating these databases, I think one of the issues that really has struck me about this is it would not be possible if you viewed these immigrants or these immigrants, or these worst of the worst as individuals. If you view them as individuals and with individual metrics of their cases and these are people we need to get, it's a very different mindset than when you begin to view it as a hoard of data and metrics. Yeah. I'll give you an example. There was some really interesting testimony from ICE and Customs of Border Protection Officials in Oregon. It came out in December, but I think the raid was in October. and they were talking about going to a neighborhood because it was, quote, target rich.

Like these are the terms of these people are using. They're not saying, oh, because there are a lot of high profile potential criminals there or something like that. Or even just using the word people. They don't use the word people. Never. They use the word targets and target rich. And that testimony was incredibly telling because not only did it describe some of the technology they were using, and we went on to write about that, all the Palantir stuff.

But hearing how they describe a particular neighborhood, exactly like you're saying, they're not describing them as people. It's going back to the quotas and all that, and this list of targets, or not even a list, just find targets. That's the goal. Hey, kids. How's your, what do you call it there? Search history going.

Yeah. Listen, you're interested in what you're interested in. What can I tell you? You know, we're sponsored today by Surf Shark, by the way, just as a way of discussing what we've just been discussing in an increasingly digital world. You've got to maintain that privacy. And the access shouldn't be complicated.

And that's where Surf Shark comes in. Surf Shark offers you a way to secure your digital life. Your VPN ensures your location doesn't dictate what you can see or do online. I'm not saying you're doing anything or seeing anything. My guess is you're just trying to get information about local flora and fauna. And you don't want people to know how interested you are in indigenous species. And that's why you need surfshark. They got coverage on 100 countries.

The only VPN to do so. It's got a hundred countries. I think there's only like three other countries. I think 100 is maybe a little more. I don't really know geography. They got all kinds of features to help you keep safe. web content blocker, access of parental control, email scam checker,

you can verify if emails or fishing attempts. I mean, the damn thing does everything. Go to surfshark.com slash John Stewart and use code John Stewart to check out to get four extra months of Surfshark VPN. That's surfshark.com slash John Stewart and use code John Stewart to get four extra months.

In your experience, you know, as you've watched, is this an utter change from the way, like, we talking about something that has nothing to do with policing, that has nothing to do with even the complaints that we might have about militarization? Are we in a whole different minority report kind of world here? I mean, I think we are. I mean, you know, one of the things that really struck me before Renee Good, there was a man in Chicago who was killed in a remarkably similar situation. He had just dropped his kid off at school. They rushed his car. He tried to get away,

and they shot and killed him and claimed that he had tried to run them over. He was clearly fleeing. He happened to be an undocumented Mexican immigrant, and so he didn't, you know, you didn't see the kind of swell of support and sympathy. But what really struck me was the press release that DHS put out right afterward. And I've written about so many, you know, police shootings over the years. And I've had lots of critiques of the way that the police departments, you know, they use what I've come to call the exonerative tense, right, which is like a gun was fired at a bullet struck. a person, you know, not a cop killed someone. And, you know, you can criticize that. You know, you can criticize the bias and the police investigations internal affairs. But at least, at least those press releases over the years have said, we promise a fair, thorough investigation, right?

At least there was some solemnity for the fact that someone lost their life, right? And what we've seen from this administration after these killings is just jubilation and joy. And, you know, they describe these, the guy in Chicago, they described him as a criminal, illegal alien. They don't refer to him as a person. I think they used his name once in the entire press release. And, and there's no pretense of, of a fair investigation. I mean, it is almost the way that they described the people, the way that they instantly pass judgment, you know, they're sabotaging their own investigation before it gets started, but that's because they never intended to conduct one anyway. Right. Well, they're conducting the investigation themselves. That was my favorite.

thing was, you know, it was very clear that all of the visual evidence showed that the narrative that Homeland Security was putting out was utterly false. And so the question was, well, who's going to investigate this? And they're like, oh, we'll do it. And the whole point was like, oh, okay, OJ. Well, I hope you find the real killer because it sounds like a very fair. Well, it's what scholars who study authoritarianism call performative lying, right? This isn't lying to cover something up or to get away with something. This is when you lie, in a way that everyone knows you're lying, it's a projection of power. You're saying we can get away with whatever we want. So in your mind, have we moved from this idea of like, okay, police forces

that may have been utilizing heavy-handed tactics or made mistakes into an entirely different are we talking about something different than what we were talking about previously? It's completely, we're in completely uncharted territory. I mean, these are paramilitaries. These are what strong, these are the kinds of things. it's the kinds of muscle that Trump has wanted, going back to his life in the private sector, I mean, he's always admired, you know, he praised the Tiananmen Square Crackdown, right? I mean, he has always admired these kinds of paramilitary forces that can do a strong man's bidding. And that's what he has.

I mean, you know, they use their legal justifications in court. You know, they know their case law. So they'll say, oh, things are, you know, crime is soaring here. There's an insurrection. Immigration officers can't do their job. But then in their down moments, like, you see what they're actually about. So Trump, you know, posted on social media a couple weeks ago that the reason he sent these forces into Minneapolis was because he thinks he won Minnesota all three times and local officials stole it from them. And that's why they're there, right? In Los Angeles, Christy Nome says federal forces are going to be in Los Angeles until they liberate the city from its socialist political leadership, right? I mean, that's those are the reasons why they're there.

It's retribution. And I even think, you know, Joseph, if you heard, and I don't know even if you heard this, but Pam, Bondi, you know, they said in Minnesota, look, this is untenable. Our citizens are living in fear. There's blood running through the streets. This is creating a war zone for, you know, the people of Minneapolis and Minnesota and general. And Pam Bondi said, well, we can make it all go away if you just give us not your murderers, not your rapists, your voter rolls. Right. An insane, disingenuous trade off, obviously.

And I mean, I echo everything that's just been said in that they put out these incredibly misleading incendiary statements. You simply can't believe what this agency says now, even to the point where that makes my job as an investigative journalist like a little bit more difficult. Of course, we're not relying on what DHS is saying. We have sources inside the agency. But even something as simple as, well, I have to go to DHS and get comment because, you know, even though that ice out of control, I still try to be fair, you know, and you just can't take a single word that they say on face value to the point where we've even thought about, do we even ping these people anymore? Like, do we even, when we're about to reveal a surveillance technology? What does access do for you? Yeah. Right, right. And, you know, I don't really have official access or anything like that. I just have my sources and my leaks and all of that sort of thing. But it's just this complete culture of lying where they've shown.

themselves as an agency, they just can't be trusted to present reality in basically any form. So let's talk about that as it relates to kind of the intersection between state power and corporate power. Because right now, that seems to be the nexus of something that has magnified this geometrically as opposed to, you know, in sort of a linear way. you know this new authoritarian force that is clearly lying about the facts on the ground is basically turbocharged by private corporate technology companies like Palantir that are allowing the government to explore in a really kind of obtuse way where it's not transparent in any way what about the nexus of corporate cooperation with this use of government power?

Yeah. I mean, the second Trump administration is obviously drastically different to the first. I remember in the first one, when we were covering surveillance companies or tech companies, they would be a bit wishy-washy. They didn't want to, you know, fully commit to anything. You even had, I think, Amazon stopped selling its facial recognition tech. to certain police forces, of course, around George Floyd and BLM and all of that sort of thing. I mean, the mask is off now.

All of those tech leaders were at the inauguration, at the dinner, Tim Cook giving Trump like a golden statue of an iPhone or whatever that was. I don't know. It was the saddest thing I've ever fucking seen. It was so sad. Yeah. And when you then look at the companies that are powering this, like Palin, I've got leaked material from Inside Palantir and other journalists have as well. The way they frame it is that, well, if we work with ICE, we can make their work more efficient,

accurate, fair, and all of that sort of thing. So that's how they justify it. No, no, we're protecting civil liberties by working with ICE. Even when you have, you know, the CEO of Palantir carp, right, who says we must defend Western democracy. we must defend Western values, while at the same time providing the technological infrastructure for the agency that now says it can go into houses without a warrant. You know, I just cannot square that circle. And I've legitimately tried.

I've read Karp's book. I read the new book about Palantir as well. And I'm really trying to join those ideas together. And I just can't because it just appears to be a complete far to me. Well, and it's undercut by their co-founder, Lonsdale, who comes out and says, well, this is an insurgency. this is and radley what is that and again we talk about corporate power but now you're also infusing corporate power with a kind of it's really ideological these these tech guys whether it's palinter whether it's feel or carp or lonsdale or jarvin who is the guy like these guys are all tweeting like

hey but white people are in trouble and christianity is in trouble and i'm not even sure the human race should not be transhuman and not, you know, even still exist, but we're still going to create all these tools. How can people not feel like we're in a dystopian sky net situation where the merging of authoritarian government power and unchecked, non-transparent corporate power that is manipulating all of our, How can we not feel like this is in some ways, you know, the beginning of an Avengers movie? I mean, it is.

I, you know, I kind of think if George Orwell had like written a book about Our Times, you know, his editor would have rejected it as, you know, a bit sort of heavy handed. You know, there's just there's just no. I mean, you literally have people, you know, Yarvin, you know, yearns for monarchy, right? Somebody posted something about 10 years ago. Trump's too soft. Where he talks about how, like, mentally ill people should be confined in, like, these tiny little spaces for the rest of their lives and shown, like, virtual reality so that they can live a fulfilling life, but locked in this room. And, like, these are, like, he is a, he has been cited by J.D. Vant. as a major influencer on Vance's political development.

I mean, we're like being run by the most, like, deeply dorky loser, like, 4chan message board is like, those are the people running the country now. And they've been, and they've been empowered. Joseph, you've been looking at this, you know, within Palantir itself, not at the executive levels, is their dissent amongst the people? You know, I remember there was always those emails that would get released every now and again from like the Twitter headquarters or something where people were like, man, I don't think this is such a good idea.

Yeah, the vibe is basically that. I would say that the leaks are rarer from Palantir than normal tech companies, you know, them from meta or X or something like that, because of course, you know, Palantir is kind of a big, big, scary company to a lot of people. And do they hire for ideological uniformity in the way that they accuse the left of doing at Twitter? I would say they're actually ideologically. diverse inside among the employees. Like, of course, I'm not really talking about the executives as you just laid out. But among the employees, you know, there are absolutely left-leaning

people inside the organisation. I don't obviously really talk about my own sources, but I will say that clearly people have been annoyed enough with what Palantir is doing with ICE to leak me, you know, and internal documents about it, internal Slack chats where Palantir executives are trying to fend their work with the agency and everybody's responding to it with emojis and all of that sort of thing. And let's be clear about what their work is. We should probably explain to people. Explain very quickly, what are the tools that these tech companies are developing for the government that they are using to help them in this Stephen Miller wet dream of a fantasy? Yeah. So it started last year when they got this leak and they looked through

procurement records. And it said that Palantir was working on complete analysis of target populations. A fantastically obscure term that says a lot. And also says nothing at the same time, obviously. So we continue reporting and like, oh, it's clear they're working on something. And to be clear, Palantir has worked with HSI, the investigations, arm of ICE that investigates cybercrime, child abuse, money laundering. They've done that for years. But now in Trump 2, they've pivoted to explicitly immigration enforcement. So we report that

and then we don't really know much until recently I got another leak of a user guide from ICE explaining something called Elite. And that's another acronym which I can't even remember where it stands for because it's also really complicated as it really saying anything. But basically I found that was being worked on by Palantir by looking around the net.

And it provides this map, interface where Ice can draw a circle on the map then brings up a list or little points of all of the potential targets there. Again, I'm using the word targets. You then click on one. It brings up their name, a photo. Where are they getting that? Yeah, what defines a potential target? Is it a Spanish sounding name? Is it a social security number? What data are they using to define these targets. So with the tool, ICE is able to sort of arbitrarily choose that. They can get a sort of message from headquarters or senior leadership to, we want to target this sort of population. Now, the leak I got doesn't say Somalis. It doesn't say that's what it. But it just lays out to

use it. The government made that pretty explicit. Yes. Yeah, yeah. I think people can draw the line. Right. But you then zoom in on the map, you click on a person name, a data birth photo, if they it and most importantly for ICE addresses and an address confidence score. So 88 out of 100, 99 out of 100 is this person's address. And that's so important because if you remember when there was all the doge stuff of all of this breaking down of the walls between different agencies, there is clearly data sharing going on where the guide I got... This all ties back to Doge. Potentially. All I was saying is that... the guide says some of the addresses at least come from the Department of Health and Human

Services, which I don't think people expect when they give their address to the Department of Health is going to end up in the hands of ICE or into this Palantir worked on tool that ICE is also using. So as I'm covering it as a journalist, as other people are as well, it does feel like we're all sort of doing one big jigsaw puzzle, but we're all coming with different corner pieces and that sort of thing. It's a weaponized Cambridge Analytica scheme. So here's then what, what is blowing my mind about this, if I can say, like, this is high-tech 21st century cutting edge biometric analysis to find their target things. So Radley explained to me then how these motherfuckers end up with a net at Home Depot or beating the shit out of the wrong people in a target parking lot. They're usually,

the most sophisticated information analysis and tools known to man that no government has ever had access to to get these things. And yet we see them out in the streets just like a hammer going like, get over here. Like, so what is the, what is the point of all that? The idea seems to me that this could be a targeted, precise, nuanced police action on the worst of the worst. but instead it's a ham-fisted run through a target parking lot. What is going on? So the targeted, you know, worst of the worst, using that technology to its capacity, you know, as worried as I am about all of that, if that was only what they were doing,

if that was their interest here, you know, I don't think a lot of us would be nearly as alarmed as we are. The problem is that's not the goal. The goal is to instill fear. The goal is to make entire immigrant communities to scare the shit out of them, to make them not want to live their lives, to make them tell their relatives to stay home because it's too miserable here. It is to scare people. It's to make them suffer. I mean, this administration has openly said that they want immigrants to suffer as much as possible because they want them to self-deport.

They want them to leave. They don't want to have to go through, you know, whatever due process they still, you know, are willing to afford these people. You know, that's expensive. What's up, kids? You know me as a gentleman, you know, who is nothing, if not incredibly organized. You know, as someone who has everything, really, you know, I'm like, what do you call it there, type A. I guess they call it type A. What is it when you're completely organized and you have keep, okay, all right, I am, I am not organized.

I am incredibly sloppy and, in fact, old, which is a terrible combination. And life is really, for the most part, 90% of life, is keeping track of things, bills, appointments, keys, subscriptions that you didn't even know you were paying for. I think I spend, I think maybe around $30,000 a year on Sirius Radio for cars I've never even had. That's where Rocket Money comes in.

The subscriptions you didn't even know you were paying for, Rocket Money's a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can. grow your savings. And by the way, it doesn't judge. It's not like you get notifications where Rocket Money's like, blah. Really? You're going to throw money down for that magazine? That's how old I am. I just made a reference to magazines. I don't even know if they have them anymore.

The Rocket Money can help you out here. It said budget goals. You get real-time alerts for large transactions, upcoming bills. It gives you a clear view of your financial picture. Checking, savings, loans, investments, all in one dashboard. Stop wasting money on things you don't use. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at RocketMoney.com slash TWS. That's rocketmoney.com slash TWS. Rocketmoney.com slash TWS.

I thought it was incompetence, to be honest with you. And by the way, Radley is with his dogs right now because there's a terrible storm where he is and he's had to have his dogs. And I saw them earlier on camera and I got to say, pretty adorable. You got some big old, pretty adorable dogs there. Yeah, we're in a hotel with a lot of other dog owners, so Oscar, here's some people outside, but it's okay.

Dog hotel. I think I saw that movie. But, you know, normally as a sort of skeptical but not necessarily a conspiratorial thinker, I generally try not to chalk up to nefarious intent what can be easily explained by incompetence. But their incompetence feels like we can't chalk up. It feels nefarious. So I'll say, I think there's a little bit of both. I think that they are, they've clearly lowered their hiring standards for these agencies. They've put Border Patrol in charge of these operations, which is pretty well known as being kind of the, was one ICE, former ICE person told me, you know, the FBI is kind of the varsity team. ICE and HSI are the junior varsity and Border Patrol is kind of like the drunken office softball team.

And like, that's basically who the administration has put in charge of everything. And by the way, if you're Border Patrol, what are you doing in Minneapolis? Is that so, are they guarding the border to St. Paul? Like, what are we doing? It's mission creep. But it's also because they, Border Patrol has a long reputation of being rogue, of being extremely abusive, of not having much accountability. And I think this gets to the second point, which that is who the administration wants in

charge of this. They want to inflict terror. they want to scare people. They want people to be miserable. They've flat out said, you know, the reason the reason for family separation during the first term is they wanted people to know that if you come to the United States seeking political asylum, we're going to rip your children out of your arms. We want you to suffer because we don't want you to come here anymore. And if you're already here, we want you to suffer because we want you to leave voluntarily. Right, right, right. And that's the way. So this is all sort of, it's of a larger plan, which gets us into sort of this idea.

it's a supposedly Republican conservative administration. And my understanding of conservatives has been limited government, pro second amendment. I mean, I'm watching every constitutional guardrail that is in place to prevent these kinds of abuses be thrown away by the people. who fetishize the Constitution, who bubble wrap their tour buses with we the people, who stand with the Gadsden flag, who do all the, the cognitive dissonance of all this is, is blowing my mind. Joseph, what's, what is the ethos anymore of this group? They certainly can't argue that they are pro-constitution.

and yet want one man to control the most sophisticated technology in the world to target these individuals. It doesn't make any sense. Yeah, I mean, they can't say their pro second amendment when apparently having a legal firearm that you are licensed to carry, apparently give some sort of justification for you to be shot in the street, so they can't say they believe that. The Fourth Amendment, when ICE buys this location data, they believe they don't need a warrant. They don't have to get a warrant to go to AT&T or Verizon like they normally would. Here, they just send tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to some data broker. And the legal rationale is that, well, if people didn't want to be tracked,

they would turn off location services on their phone. So they're willingly giving it up, even though nobody listening to this has any idea why I'm talking about because it's such an obscure technology that nobody reads about it or nobody knows about it, right, until we reveal it. So, of course, that's completely facetious and a farce as well. And then, of course, most worryingly, is the memo, the Associated Press verse reported on that, as I said, ICE believes it can now enter private property without a judicial warrant. And, I mean, there was already several red lines for me personally, obviously, before that point. But that is just absolutely nuts to me. You know, when I wrote the Warrior Cop book, I did a lot of research on the founding era and kind of why we have these traditions of not letting the military service domestic police and why we have a castle doctrine and all of that. And in part of that, I found archives from a Boston newspaper when the British had put troops in the streets of Boston to do sort of day-to-day policing. And you go through those archives and I just wrote about this on my newsletter. And you can find excerpts and they go on for years and years. But the descriptions, it was sort of like a social media feed of the time, like an old time.

You know, it was like firsthand accounts of like, like, you know, a soldier got into a script. Twitter by pamphleteer, sort of. Right, right. Yeah. But you look at the scenes described in those accounts and they are remarkably similar to what we're seeing coming out of Minneapolis. And I think that's in part because this is an age old problem of you don't have, you don't put the military in the middle of cities to police their own people. And, you know, the anger from the tension in Boston of having those soldiers there are why eventually will be to the Boston Massacre. But it is specifically why we have a second, third, and fourth amendment because you had soldiers who had these general warrants.

They had the power to break into anybody's home at any time to look for untaxed goods, right? Well, what's ICE trying to do now? They're claiming they could break into anybody's home at any time without a warrant to look for undocumented people, right? I mean, the parallels are so incredible. And as you said, I mean, the hypocrisy is just stunning because the conservatives are always pointing to the founding, always pointing to, you know, what a just and righteous cause the American Revolution has. If they had been alive at the time in Boston, they would have been accusing, you know,

Sam Adams and Paul Revere of being agitators and domestic terrorists. I mean, it's guaranteed. And insurgents, they don't understand. And by the way, like, love Donald Trump, say what you want, follow him blindly. religiously, whatever you want to do. But don't tie it to the revolution and patriotism because you guys are the Tories. You'd be the ones that were on that side. And you know what was, I think, the most galling to me. Look, I, first of all, I don't even know what the Republican Party or the conservatives even are anymore. I have no idea what sort of intellectual foundation they're standing on because

it doesn't seem to have any coherent value other than, what do you think, Donald? And then he says it, and they go, that sounds right. So what truly upset me was, to see them all talking about, I mean, this guy showed up with a gun and they quickly got off the like, he was brandishing it when the video there, but they're still saying, I mean, you're not allowed to do that

and they fetishize it. And I think what was galling to me is, you know, they're willing to suddenly challenge their Second Amendment rights in this instance. But when a bunch of kids were gunned down in a fucking like grade school at Sandy Hook or in Yuvaldi. Not a word.

Not a word about, hey, guns might be an issue. We might want to think about that. It took a guy holding a phone trying to protect a woman who had just been pepper sprayed for them to finally go. Maybe everybody shouldn't be armed. And that's the part that stunned me. Well, and Cash Patel said that, you know, don't bring a gun to a protest. Cash Patel offered to help Kyle Rittenhouse sue Joe Biden in the media for, you know, character assassination when, you know, he brought his guns across the state line.

I mean, Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, there was a guy in Texas during the George Floyd protest who texted a friend saying, I'm going to go kill a protester, who posted online in a forum, I'm going to go kill a protester. And then went out and killed a protester. And Greg Abbott pardoned him. I mean, he was convicted by a jury. And Greg Abbott pardoned him. That guy brought a gun to a protest for the specific purpose of murdering someone. And Abbott, because he was a right winger and killed a, turned out to be libertarian-ish protester, not a far-left protester, but Abbott, Abbott pardon him.

So it's all hypocrisy all the way down. And look, in Florida, DeSantis has been very clear. If you want to use your car as a lethal weapon on protesters, be my guest. Yep. Are we in a situation now, Joseph, where all of these tools, nobody cares what happens, as long as the tools of the state are used against people that they hate. Is that the philosophy now? Broadly speaking, it seems that.

And usually the carve out would be, don't worry, the tools are being sold to HSI. Again, the quote-unquote good guy is part of ICE, that sort of thing. But when you have data from the Kato Institute saying there's something like 90% of HSI officials who would usually be actually trying to catch the bad guys, and they get all the fancy tools. Now they're helping with immigration enforcement. I mean, it's like, again, the breaking down of data barriers between government agencies, and now you have the guys with the really fancy tools

trying to find undocumented people. I mean, some of these tools also, and I'll be very careful on the way I say here, because I haven't seen evidence it has been used against protesters, but the phone location data stuff, the company that sells that is called Penlink. It's a big U.S. contractor. they explicitly advertise their phone location tools to monitor BLM protests back when that happened. Now, that is the product that has been sold to ICE and to HSI.

But if they reverse engineer those products, for instance, there are certain products that can track ice. Those are being banned. Right. I've reported extensively on ice block being removed from the Apple App Store. I mean, Apple even removed an app that wasn't even reporting sightings of ICE officials. It was just an archive of videos from like TikTok and stuff of ICE abuses. And Apple took that down, which is going even a step further. There was no doxing, no surveillance.

It was just like, we would like to preserve videos. So in the future, we might be able to hold some people accountable, legally and justifiably. And Apple took that down as well. We have to hold so many things. in our head. You know, Radley, I'm sure you remember the 1984 Apple commercials where, you know, big brothers on the giant screen and all the people are watching and somebody takes a sledgehammer, throws it through and think different and all that. And now they're the screen. You know, the other, I mean, the other thing that I think is worth pondering here is the way that

they're going about recruiting people, right? I mean, they, I've written a lot about police recruiting and how they kind of select people at the very first stage in the process. And, you know, you used to be able to, you probably still can go to YouTube and type in police recruiting video. And you'll see this really kind of vast range of video. So, you know, what I think would be a productive video would show cops, you know, helping people in a community, right? You know, assisting people. But then on the other end of the- Like the Kendall Jenner Pepsi commercial.

They come out, but then they get a Pepsi and everybody's healing. Yeah, right. But you want to emphasize, like, the community service. service aspect of it, right? Well, on the other end of the spectrum, it's too many police departments their recruiting videos are, you know, blaring guitars, people, cops repelling out of helicopters, sicking dogs on people. You know, when that's what you're appealing to at the very first step in the process, I think that's indicative of a police agency that doesn't have the right priorities. And what we're seeing with ICE in these federal anti-immigration groups, you know, on social media,

how are they trying to recruit to people? They're appealing to blood and soil. narratives, they are making explicit references to white supremacist literature. I mean, some of that iconography that they're using. The iconography is not even an echo of fascism. It's, no, it's. They could be sued by Mussolini for copyright infringement. It's an amplification, right? And beyond that, though, I mean, you know, they're also, they're content creators, right?

I mean, I remember the first videos we saw out of Los Angeles, you saw ICE agents chasing this guy, this immigrant down the sidewalk, and then behind all the, they're ice agents, you saw another DHS employee carrying a camera running behind them to get it all, you know, on video for social media. Oh, like a copse episode. I see. Right. And if you think about like, like, who is watching these horrific videos that we're seeing,

like sitting at home unemployed and thinking, you know what? That's what I want to do for a living. Like that is, you know, that is. Well, I imagine. These people, they're excited by it. You've just been pardoned for your role in January 6th. You're having trouble finding another job. and you see this commercial.

I mean, that, the people that I've seen, and here's what is really troubling to me. Like, I know a ton of cops and fire, but, like, and maybe I'm too close to it. I have such love and respect for those guys, and I know what they're trying to do and help people in good hearts. And this makes their jobs infinitely harder

because of the way that people are viewing it. They're not separating any of the two out. And I will say this. I think that the flood of weapons into our streets and our inability to have any kind of sensible regulation of even the illegal weapons creates an arms race on our streets that inevitably leads to a militarization of police because they can't be outgunned. Like the insanity of our gun policy is what leads them to be in danger in the first place so they overly militarize, start to use this technology.

And now we're caught in this vicious cycle. all of a sudden, the one problem with it is a legally permitted gun at a protest rather than what has started this arms race. You know, I think the one way I would push back a little bit on that narrative is that, you know, I have talked to a lot of law enforcement people, particularly reform-oriented law enforcement people, and they're furious about what they're seeing. They're absolutely furious. I agree with you.

But I will also say that, you know, one of the biggest supporters of this president, one of the biggest supporters of opponents of gun control measures are, you know, police groups and particular police unions. I was going to say unions and sheriffs. I wouldn't, I wouldn't say, like, sheriffs are, they're political. Correct. And unions are relatively political as well. I don't know. I think the rank and file. I think big, big city police chiefs. Yes. Big city police chiefs are like, we got to get these guns off the streets. Exactly. Right. But the unions are extremely, and also the, you know, the NRA is one of the most absolutely pro-police organizations around, like, you know, they can't bring themselves to condemn,

you know, any of these shootings. I've also, I've often pointed out that, you know, one of the weirdest things the NRA ever did was they went to war with Colin Kaepernick. And, you know, Collar Kaepernick was actually a gun owner. Like, they could have actually made some inroads and, you know, but it was more important to them to sort of be this, you know, symbolic kind of pro-cro-cop organization. And I think that nexus is, it's hard to get around, I think. Well, it's also hard to get around if you are somebody who feels you see something wrong in your society, it's hard to get around what are the rules of acceptable protesting. So you can't go out there with an iPhone. You can't go out there with a whistle. You can't try and help a woman up who's been maced. You can't bring your car. You can't,

but you also can't kneel before a football game. Right. You can't kneel before a football game. Like what exactly is acceptable in this world? And Joseph, I want to ask you, and what are the, What are the guardrails to protect us against this consolidation? There is an unprecedented consolidation of tech power and government authority. And Congress is absent. And even if they weren't absent, they're so fucking overmatched. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, frankly, things do not look good.

You know, democratic lawmakers have tried to introduce some sort of guardrails on ISIS facial recognition apps. saying, hey, you can't roll out to local cops, which is what they wanted to do as well. All of those sheriff departments and those sheriffs you were talking about, they would potentially have ISIS facial recognition app on their phone as well, so they could use it. You know, democratic lawmakers are trying to rein that in. I don't. Frankly, I don't see that happening. Obviously, it's a group of six.

Right. However many. And then even going back a couple of years, ICE was told, hey, you're using some of this location data illegally, they basically said, we don't care and we're going to keep doing it. So even when there is internal oversight, you know, from inspector of, you know, the oversight bodies inside DHS and that sort of thing, it doesn't really mean anything. And that was when things were better a few years ago. So I have very little hope for that.

So folks, you know, I'm one of those people, the people are very annoying who are always saying things like, oh, I got this idea. I got a business idea. And I actually do have a business idea. It's actually for, you know how, do you have a dog? You know how like when you throw your coat on the floor, when you come into the house, and then all of a sudden you look, turn over it, and your dogs are sitting on it because they love topography.

They don't just love a mat. They like a little topography. So I've invented the crumple. The crumple is a blanket for dogs that you throw on the ground. And each time you throw it down, it gives a different topography. So your dog, it's called the crumple is the whole point. And the fact is, I haven't gotten it off the ground yet. It's not really, it's not even a prototype.

I'm just saying it's a winner. It's a winner. And, you know, look, maybe you're not hept to like how to start those business. Maybe you didn't go to school for computer science, you know, or any of those other kinds of things. But you can build your dream store online with Shopify. It's got an easy to use and customizable templates. Shopify's got everything you need to sell both online and in person. Marketing built in, create your own email, social campaigns.

And as it grows, the Shopify grows with you. Millions of entrepreneurs, household names are first-time owners, have, made the leap. So I'm ready. I've got the Shopify. I've got the online store. I've got easy to use. I just need somebody to make me the crumple because I'm telling you, man, crumples what's happening. Crumples the future. So in 2026, stop waiting and start selling with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash TWS. Go to Shopify.com slash TWS. That's Shopify.com slash TWS. Hear your first this new year with Shopify by your side.

Has Europe been more successful? I mean, I'm watching right now in the Iranian Revolution, they've gotten so much better at shutting off the internet, using the technological tools against people. Is Europe finding a way to be more proactive at regulating these abuses? Yeah. And not to get like too jargony, but it really just comes down to... Jargoned it up, baby. Let's go.

It really just frankly comes down to there is no federal privacy law in the United States. California has their thing. Illinois has a biometrics facial recognition one. There's no overarching law in the U.S. that could help with this. In Europe, you have GDPR, the general data protection regulation, which stops that melding of private companies. and state in such a way where they're just feeding off one another. Of course, surveillance still happens in the EU, but not to the extent where I'm Germany, let me go buy all of the data of my citizens, whereas that's just, that's the norm now in the US because you don't have that foundational guardrail, which then everything would spiral out from that. We don't

even have that. Which is so fucking mind-blowing because you think about what is their general reason detrow, which is we have to get the elites from being able to. able to run our lives. And by elites, they mean sociology professors or whatever it is. But the actual elites are allowed to run amok. Radley, is there any, is there any recourse? That's kind of what we're talking about. Because this is, I can't think of anything that's more elitist than the trillionaire, you know, tech class joining forces with a president that is granted total immunity by the Supreme Court and them joining forces to do whatever they want. Yeah.

You know, I think your questions about sort of reforms, and I'll let Joseph talk about the tech reforms because that's a little outside my wheelhouse. But in terms of police accountability, there are some very basic things I think that we could do, you know, assuming the Democrats take control of the House and the Congress, possibly the White House. I mean, currently right now, there is no real way to sue a federal law. enforcement officer if they violate your constitutional rights, whether they kill you, whether they beat you, whether they racial profile you. Do they have absolute immunity? That's what J.D. Vance

was saying is they have absolute immunity. So they, so Vance is wrong. They don't have absolute immunity from criminal charges. They can still be charged both federally and locally and with crimes, but in terms of civil liability. So if you sue a state police officer for violating your rights, say they beat you or kill your relative unjustly, you can sue, you can file a federal lawsuit under the Ku Klux Klan Act, called Section 1983 suit, but they have qualified immunity, which is hard to get by. But you can't, it can be surmounted. If it's a federal officer, you can't even, they don't even, they have absolute immunity. So it's another layer of protection. It's, it's almost impossible to sue them in federal court. And Congress could change that tomorrow. They could pass a bill tomorrow saying,

we're going to give federal police officers the same qualified immunity that state officers have, which is still pretty significant, but we're not going to make them completely and utterly above the law, which is, you know, insane. So, Radley, are they using ICE to get around that even qualified immune? Are they, is that what they're doing? Are they circumventing so that they aren't going to be liable? Yeah, they're not. I mean, they're these, that's what, that's what Stephen Miller, when he goes on and says,

have absolute immunity. What he's saying is nobody can sue you in federal court for civilly for damages, right? We're not going to charge you criminally in federal court because we support what you're doing. So it's not going to happen at the federal level. The best that you can owe for is maybe a state prosecutor or an attorney general could criminally charge these people, but those cases are going to get removed to federal court. And then the DOJ is probably going to be defending those people against local prosecutors. And so, you know, in terms of accountability, the only real thing that's left at this point is shaming and social stigma. Well, why do you think they're all wearing masks now, right? Because that takes away that last kind of vector of accountability that we have.

But the thing is what I guess what I'm saying, the hopeful part of this is Congress could change all this tomorrow. They could pass a law tomorrow saying, here's a way that you could sue federal officers and for civil rights violations. They're going to get qualified immunity, which is still great, but not absolute immunity. And that would be, I think, a really important step forward. And Joseph, you know, that's still, you know, the ice agent on the street, the, the perp that they're going after, the innocent person that they end up targeting. That's still a kind of old-fashioned analog interaction, human to human, face to face. Where can there be accountability in a world where we're not even sure, you know, when you're in the tech world, A, those guys aren't elected in any way, so there's no recourse there. and B, it's not really a consumer-facing business.

It's a government-facing business. So we don't even have consumer power. There is no Bud Light boycott of Palantir. I wouldn't have any fucking idea where they get their, you know, Tesla can go again, but as long as Elon knows, he's got a trillion dollars coming in for SpaceX. Like, what are the incentives? How do we in any way push back

on this dystopian new reality. Yeah, I have seen it when I'll post one of my Palantir articles and somebody will reply on social media. It's time to boycott Palantir and I'm just shaking my head. What are you talking about? That's not how this works. I'm not going to their store ever again. I think they're confusing with a Peloton or something like that probably.

I'm going to burn my exercise bike. But I mean, obviously to get to your question, there isn't much an ordinary person can do. and I'll just say as a journalist, it is really, really hard. It is now months and months and months into the mass deportation campaign. And only now are we finally figuring out, oh, that's actually what Palantir is building. It's the little map to find immigration targets, which of course we could have assumed, but now we only really know.

It is really hard to even get an idea of what is going on. And of course, these companies like that, obviously. And even, of course, they're not really accountable to the public. they're barely accountable to their own employees. When you have Palantir workers saying, yeah. When you have Palantir workers saying, hey, we don't like this. And they're saying this internally in Slack. We reported that and then why I just did another one recently as well.

They continue to defend the work. Like it would require like a tectonic shift inside the company to make any sort of change. Because frankly, they are making bank on this. It's tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars. Palletier stock is, you know, performing exceptionally well, right? I don't see any incentive for not even just the Palantyrs, but even the Metters and the Zuckerbergs as well. I don't see any incentive from them to disalign themselves with this administration. Hey, if there's another administration, if there's

another administration in the future, maybe. Oh, that's dark. Sorry, maybe those tech companies will then flip again. And of course, they'll expect us to just forget everything that they just did during the second Trump administration. But of course, they flip-flop. That is what these tech companies do. You know, these new tools, and I don't know this to be a fact, but my feeling is these are more explicitly overt political actors than even what you would consider defense contractors

who would send lobbyists to Capitol Hill, but they don't really give a shit who you are. They just know, I want more unaccountable money. I don't want to pass an audit. I just want you to keep feeding the military industrial complex. This is a new kind of appendage of that military industrial complex that feels much more overtly ideological. Oh, yeah, 100%. Like, gone of the days with, as you allude to, you know, Lockheed Martin, just doing their thing or whatever.

Come to a party. We have shrimp. We just sell the weapons, whatever. Now you have these very charismatic founders and owners. You know, there's Palmer Lucky of Anderl, which provides. AI enabled towers for the U.S. Mexico and the Canadian border. He's very obviously coming out. We need to defend the homeland. Of course, you have Karp from Palantir as well saying we need to defend the West. And Karp actually, you know, constantly beefs with Silicon Valley saying you guys have just made like food delivery apps for years. We're actually trying to make a difference. It's completely explicit now. Like it's not even a subtext. They have, I mean, there were

Adverts on bus stops, I think, throughout the United States for Palantir, trying to get more people to come join the company saying, you know, come and do something that actually matters. It's completely front and center from these people. It is an ideological business. It is not just making money for these people. Right. Like we never would have seen the CEO of Raytheon, you know, giving lectures about the Antichrist, right? I mean, this is, I think you're right. This is an entirely like different class. But could it be Greta Toonberg? I mean, let's be honest. You know what's so interesting about the media is the guy, like the guy giving the lecture about how Greta Toonberg might be the Antichrist and we're talking about Peter Thiel. Like, is this powerful, not transparent, a billionaire who runs these tech companies and you're like, if I'm making a movie about the Antichrist, not to be Joe Central casting,

but I think I'm going to go with the powerful billionaire guy as Antichrist, not the girl on a flotilla. doesn't feel as anti-an-christ-esque. We're only a year into this. You know, the one thing that I think has been demonstrated here is that this is an alien format to a lot of Americans and what you're seeing in Minneapolis and the people, and these are just, I know that the big word on the right is,

these are paid agitators. They're fucking regular people. with whistles. That's their technology. Out on the streets. And yes, maybe they organize on social media like most Facebook groups do

or signal chats or whatever it is. But these are not, you know, that's a lie. Well, I would, yeah, this is, this is my, my optimistic take, I guess, which is that,

you know, I've been doing a lot of reporting on immigration. It's not something I reported on a lot in my career, but that's required me to kind of bone up, but it's also required me to watch a lot of these really horrific videos that we're seeing, and I've taken in a lot of them, and it could be a little overwhelming sometimes, nothing compared to what the people were actually going through. But I will say that, you know, the thing that has just really inspired and invigorated me is exactly what you're talking about, which is I first saw it in Chicago,

because that was where I first kind of started, you know, covering this in depth. And going into the Facebook pages of these whistle brigades and these groups and seeing people, you know, that I went to college with who have never been political in their lives, who are now, you know, setting up online, you know, data spreadsheets for who's going to go to the local school to shopperone immigrant kids back home so they don't get arrested? Who's going to do the laundry for these immigrant groups who are afraid to leave their homes? Who's going to like get groceries for them? You know, there were spreadsheets about where people were writing down. when ICE was at home depot so immigrants who, you know, make their living in construction could go get supplies without having to worry about being arrested. I mean, I have found it, I mean, in Minneapolis, you had 50 to 100,000 people come out in zero degree weather, right, because they were angry about what ICE was doing to their communities and what it was doing to their neighbors. I mean, this is, it's, it's every, all the major elite institutions have just completely buckled. And it's been really,

disillusioning overwhelming disheartening to watch but man on the flip side of that watching people stand up just individual regular people putting their like bodies on the line putting their you know just defending their neighborhoods and their neighbors you know and it's been inspiring and it works right I mean look at what happened to bevino you know like it works but he's a cartoon character and you know getting rid of bovino reminds me of bombing a venezuelan drug boat where you're like okay you you've sacrificed a low level non-entity one thing i'll say about and and i'll ask your guys opinion of it i generally think and i'm not talking about in the nazi sense of blue we're just following orders but generally law enforcement follows the will of the communities like the police go to places as a quarantine to keep bad things away from the richer people, generally. And the abuses that go on there, people don't want to see and they don't want to know about. But the police themselves are not there to abuse.

They're there to just try and do the job that people have said. To get rid of Bovino is to suggest that the architect of this, Stephen Miller, the executor of this, Donald Trump, are somehow have been hoodwinked by, an overly aggressive force that has bungled what is a righteous job. And I just don't think that's the case. They have been given a quota to get rid of people and communities that are part of the fabric of community. Nobody's out in the streets trying to make sure that you can't find the rapists.

That's just not true. They're just trying to say, I'm sorry, man, I know this person as a human. They work hard. They're just trying to do what they do. Treat it as a civil matter, not a criminal matter, not a military matter. That's what it feels like to me. Well, it's funny because ICE has just cycled through all of these leadership changes, right? I can't remember how many there were, but there were like several, where we'll kick out this guy because he's not bringing in enough.

Then we'll bring in somebody else and that person's out. And then operations are moved, as you say, to Border Patrol. And now he's out as well. And of course, the Trump administration is distancing itself from it. Oh, no, no, we didn't want to do that. It's like, you're orchestrating this. Obviously, you wanted to do that. So, I mean, we'll see what happens now.

But they are, it seems quite desperately cycling through these leadership positions. And the system right now is incentivized to abuse. Right. They get these numbers. When you put a quota on human beings and you say hit these numbers, you've just incentivized to abuse. Radley, I know that probably not, that whole little speech might not have hit you exactly right. But go ahead. No, no, I think, look, I think you're exactly right about the system.

I also think you're exactly right that this is, you know, on some level, you have a president who's literally called immigrants. It said immigrants poison the blood of the country, right, who calls people out exercising their rights, domestic terrorists, and then who sends these officers who have been recruited with white nationalist propaganda out into these communities and tells them that they have complete immunity for anything they do. I mean, that's a recipe for violence, right? We should be surprised by what we're seeing. However, I guess the point that I was trying to get at is that I do think that people making themselves heard is working. It is forcing Trump to backtrack from his defense of the murder of Alex. Pretty. Yes.

It's forcing them to backtrack from that. And it's also, you know, look at polling. I mean, Trump had a healthy majority. I think it was plus 10 on immigration policy when he took office. I think he's at like minus 15, minus 20 now, right? These aren't sustainable numbers. They're going to continue to do it for as long as they get away with it. But I think it's encouraging and inspiring the way people are making their voices heard,

the way they're doing it even after they've been explicitly threatened. They're still out there tracking ICE agents. They're still out there recording them on their cell phones. And to me, that is far. I take such hard in that after watching all these lead institutions crumble in front of Trump. It's remarkable. And the tough thing for me is that public opinion only begins to move when we, We have explicit, not very nuanced evidence to the contrary of what they're saying.

And it really does make you wonder, like, if they'll lie that clearly to us when we're presented with very clear evidence to the counter, what are they lying about when we don't have the counter evidence and when public opinion can't be swayed because we haven't seen it as explicitly. And that's that's the tough part. Joseph, you know, as we wrap up, I think what Radley said is exactly right in terms of how we can be heartened by the people. In terms of the tech piece of it, the one thing that I think maybe could provide some optimism is, you know, what technology can create, technology can, you know, nothing can fight AI like AI. And surely

there must be people working. And you know what? And join me. We'll form a company. But to create AI to counter AI. Algorithms to counter algorithms. Information to counter misinformation. If you can engineer it, you can reverse engineer it. And we have to form

companies whose sole purpose is to design and utilize technology to unravel nefarious technology, no? Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of people who are either in government and they were laid off in these massive layoffs via Doge, and now they're doing investigations into data brokers and that sort of thing, and then they send me information. There's, of course, people inside these companies as well who say,

you know what, I actually don't agree with what our firm is doing, I'm going to push back against it. And then I do think most importantly, throwing back to it's the technology that every single person has, which is their mobile phone. This is a phenomenal tool. And, you know, we used to have to rely on maybe the New York Times verifying something or Bellingat, which does a lot of open source sort of verification stuff. When we see the videos of the shootings, sorry, you don't need that. You can just believe your eyes, despite what DHS is telling you. to do otherwise.

And that continues to be exceptionally powerful. Yeah, we were saying that, that Peretti actually was armed with perhaps the most dangerous weapon to a regime built on lies, which is something that can capture the truth. And, you know, I really appreciate you guys helping to set the parameters of what this moment is and how dangerous it is and where we can go in it. Any last thoughts from you, Joseph, on where this military industrial and now tech complex may be headed and then Radley on other things that people can do to sort of stand up to that.

So, Joseph. I would just say that the marriage between tech companies and states, I think, is going to become, maybe not a norm, maybe that's too strong, but it's just going to become tolerated by the technology industry. You even have Mark Zuckerberg, obviously CEO of Meta, welcoming back Palmer Lucky, who makes all these AI towers for customs border protection, welcoming him, welcoming him back in to now work on some sort of military product as well. Now, these agencies want technology. Again, usually they went to the Raytheons of the world, that sort of thing. It's now Silicon Valley. And like, I don't think that's going to go backwards anytime soon.

And if anything, I think these tech companies are probably going to think, well, we have several more years of this, at least. Like, why don't we lean into this? And I just think it's going to get way more aggressive. And it's almost a money laundering scheme. You know, they're getting billions of dollars from the government. And then they're turning around like Elon Musk and pouring hundreds of millions into elections to get these same people elected. And it really is, it looks like a corrupt money laundering scheme. Yes, to solidify power. And, I mean, that's an obvious point, but the gloves are off for these people where they can absolutely do that sort of thing. They've never had such a strong hand inside sort of the levers of government as they do today.

I mean, it's amazing for them, of course. Right. Bradley. I would just, you know, encourage people to continue speaking out for your neighbors, for the people around you, for your communities. and keep recording. You know, very early on when they started sending troops into Los Angeles and D.C., I was so heartened because you would see these videos of these immigration officers, you know, roughing someone up, and obviously that's very disturbing. But you'd see four, five, six people in the video that was uploaded,

also recording video on their phones. And that is, as you said, I think, a lot more powerful than weapons at this point because that's the kind of accountability. That's the only thing that's going to keep them accountable. That's right. Well, guys, I so appreciate you taking the time. Joseph Cox, co-founder 404 Media, hosts of the 404 Media podcast,

and Radley Balco, an investigative journalist who's been on this beat for a very long time, author of the book, Rise of the Warrior Cop, militarization of America's Police Forces and the publisher of The Watch, a substack newsletter. Guys, thank you very much. Thank you so much.

Thanks. Guys, my takeaway from the entire conversation, if I may, is that Peloton is about to get hit. by a very angry yet somewhat misguided boycott. Peloton Catch and Strays. I didn't really, you know, I actually found that conversation like very clarifying, laying out actually just how the tentacles between big tech and the sort of marriage with them an authoritarian state and like how it filters down into the militarization of this kind of

enforcement. I, it seems, I thought incompetent. but purposeful. Yeah, I was kind of counting on them being incompetent, and now I'm left with nothing. Well, it feels like a continuation of processes that were already in place of this circulation of tools and tactics that, I mean, we've talked about before we're born out of wars and ultimately trickle back, and they started talking about that a little bit, which I found really interesting. It does remind me a little bit of the times of, you know, when you think about,

tech titans and the marriage of politics. And you do think back a little bit to like Ford and the sort of the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and how he really also had these very similar blood and soil kinds of leanings and was also at the forefront of creating really like the modern proletariat in America and how that all infused into it. Because we're not used to

business leaders being this vocal. I mean, I don't know if you see on social media, but these guys are like Elon Musk, you can't go 30 seconds without him throwing a couple of like eyeball emojis on a story about white victimhood. Yeah. It's pretty wild. He's, quote,

looking into a lot of things on Twitter. Right. Or just throwing up like exactly true on shit where you're like, I don't think that's necessary. And it's always in one direction, by the way. He's not bringing up like a variety of crimes. No. He's pretty single-minded.

And for Elon, you would think like that sort of those like vocal white supremacy statements would be like at odds with his business because, you know, you theoretically want a consumer base. But luckily for these Palantir guys, it's right in line with their business interests. They don't even have to go out of their way. No. They're unaccountable to politics. They're unaccountable to consumers. They're only accountable to their own sort of weird utopian fantasies, which feels dystopian to everybody else.

Yes. But I do agree. Like, I don't know how you guys feel in terms of the optimism of it, but I do think it's still, this is alien. And I do think in the same way that it's hard to do a national strike in America because of federalism and there's 50 states and there's all kinds of different rules, it's also very hard to do like proper fascism in America for the very same reasons. Like we're not an easy place to control. Look, Greg Bovino, he got run out of Minneapolis by moms with whistles,

and I hope that keeps them up at night. Well, if that haircut doesn't keep them up at night, I don't think a whole lot else is there. I wouldn't say that the Congress stepping up part gives me optimism, the people stepping up to protect each other, it does. And also these fractures, which you touched upon in the Republican Party. And I was going to say even Fox News, seems to have some fractures in the sense that the main page is very much what you would expect coverage to be of this. But then individual reporters are really getting into the truth of it. And I saw one of their congressional reporters was talking about DHS's response internally.

And one person said it's a case study on how not to do crisis PR. DHS is wrong. We are losing this war. Right. We're losing the base in the narrative. See, I still feel like they. view it though as a PR war and not as a function of government overreach or authoritarianism or overly militarized like I think it's like fuck that video is just so clear we just we even we

even the experts in spin even the high priests of no principled we're just going to buckle down and get our talking points out there, even they go like, I can't polish this turd. Right. I just can't. And so they say, well, and then the tragedy here is we're losing the PR war. And I really think that's the extent of it for them. I won't be optimistic about it then, but it did seem. I don't want to yuck your yum.

It did seem like a step in the right direction. No, I get it. But I just feel like even like they've just been handed an assignment that they can't complete. And they'll go right back to completing the assignment as soon as the smoke clears. They're new leader. Right. That's exactly right.

And they'll pretend that getting rid of Bovino did it. And Stephen Miller will still sit back and sup on the rotting flesh of whatever it is he's trying to do to this country. That little troll. Man, motherfucker. Brittany, what do the people want to know this week? What do they want to know? I'm happy to help. Good.

John, do you think Barry Weiss will fix CBS News and finally make it fair and balanced? Oh, there's no question that she is on her. You know, look, the difficulty with all this, everybody's like, Barry Weiss is going to ruin CBS News. Like, I don't know about you, but like, did you watch CBS News? I'm like, I didn't. I mean, 60 Minutes is a great show. I hope she doesn't fuck up 60 Minutes. But like, the network.

Gillian's a big 60 Minutes fan. They do a really nice job. 60 minutes at times. They do some great stories. But like, are we all really like, we need you on that wall to fix network news? Like, network news is, is a relic. Like, I just don't think it's even a relevant addition to the information biome. What do you guys think? I look forward to Whiskey Fridays with Tony and to Coppaul. I was already doing Whiskey Fridays. So. Join me, Tony. But I just think it was one of those things

where like, how dare you ruin? Now, if you're talking about the morning show and 60 minutes, I think those are still viable cultural forces and can be, and I don't know what she's going to do with them. But, you know, and also the idea that making something fair

means making sure that MAGA has a voice. Like that, to me, it's just the mistake of not understanding what the problem with news is. The problem with news isn't there's not enough Republican or conservative voices. The problem is it's not focused just on corruption. It's focused on the binary of left and right. Like who gives a fuck?

Do corruption versus integrity? No? Yes. But where will they find the corruption? They'll find it at 60 minutes. She's looked in there and she's decided. That's exactly right. What else we got, Bernie?

John, at what point does it build? billionaire become a super villain asking for a friend. Oh, man. I think it's when they mistake their ability to make money for their ability to design the world. And it's the kind of hubris that, you know, that where even Icarus is like, too high. Like every one of these fucking guys, what's so interesting to me is how bored they are with everything, you know, they all want to go somewhere else. they want to go to mars they want you to live in the metaverse this world is being experienced by these billionaires at its highest level like this is as good as you can do

and they're not satisfied with it they're in their mind it it's that weird instinct of i will i will be the one to reverse engineer the human condition like I will be the one to break the bounce. Like, I want to go up to every fucking one of them and just whisper in their ear, death will be victorious. Like, it's such hubris. And I think it's when that hubris takes over

and you are surrounded by people who are just like, that's a great idea. Mm-hmm. And, I mean, you look at the folly. Like, it's wild. Go the fuck to Mars. And stay there. And you want to say like, go, leave already.

Go. Let us steal. If you're bored here, knock yourself out. But no, they have to stay because we all have it wrong. And they're the only ones who are qualified to redesign the human condition. Lauren, do you think when do you, is it just, is it when they get vested with their stock options? I'm not sure. I believe being a billionaire is completely ethical considering what that money could help.

maybe if you've made a billion dollars off selling your like Beanie Baby collection or something, but that's not really where this is going. I always feel like that's a failure of society, not that. Like, we're all sort of greedy in our own way. And it's a society in the same way where they're like, you know, there used to be a thing when people who are against the death penalty, they would come out and say, what would you do if, you know, one of your relatives was killed? And you're like, I would go over there and cut the person open and eat their heart in front of them while they were alive. You're like, but that's why we live in a society.

We live in a society because not every human impulse is necessarily the right or stable one, and we have to create some ground rules. So if we create a society where people can accumulate that kind of money, we also have to create a society where that money also we have to figure out how you redistribute some of it to create stability and prosperity that's sustainable. you know for for any of that shit all right brittney what else we got uh last one yeah no question oh but thank you thank you they just wrote thank you yeah no question but thank you more of a comment i wonder if we sent them something did they say what it was maybe it's one of those

wait was this did i go to their wedding did i give them something no you don't leave the house that's lovely Like, here's how, can I tell you, here's how I know how fucked up things are right now. 15 years ago, 20 years ago, as bad as it was, if people on the street were recognizing me, be like, hey, hey, hey, funny show the other night. Oh, I love that Bush impression. Funny. And now, if people see me on the street, they just do this. Hey. They like, they like whisper, like, keep doing what you're doing.

Thank you for your courage. And I'm like, it's really the same show. Same shit. It's very lovely. Brittany, how can they keep in touch with us? Twitter. We are weekly show pod, Instagram, threads, TikTok, Blue Sky. We are a weekly show podcast.

And you can like, subscribe and comment on our YouTube channel, The Weekly Show with John Stewart. Boom. All right, kids. As always, want to give big thanks to our lead producer, Lauren Walker, producer, Brittany Mamedevick, producer Jillian Spare, video editor and engineer Rob Vatola, audio editor and engineer Nicole Boyce, executive producers. Chris McShane and Katie Gray. We'll see you next week where hopefully the world will be healed.

All right. Bye-bye. The weekly show with John Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Bus Boy Productions. On Podcasts.