AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

We end today’s show looking at how the Trump administration has tapped Palantir, the data-mining company founded by billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel, to compile data on people in the United States for a master database, including a new $30 million contract with ICE to provide near-real-time visibility into migrant movements as it seeks to arrest 3,000 people a day.

We’re joined right now here in New York by Makena Kelly, senior writer at Wired, where her recent articles are headlined “DOGE Is Building a Master Database to Surveil and Track Immigrants” and also “DOGE Is Busier Than Ever — and Trump Says Elon Musk Is 'Really Not Leaving.'”

So, if you can lay out what we know about this master database and Palantir’s contracts with ICE? And let’s be clear, we just mentioned Musk leaving, but actually not really, right? Musk and Thiel founded PayPal together, these two billionaire bros., tech bros. And now Thiel’s company Palantir, what it’s doing?

MAKENA KELLY: Yeah, sure. So, just a few months ago, we started hearing about databases within DHS and IRS, SSA, across government, being linked together. The purpose, at the time, was very unclear. But from my reporting and reporting that I’ve done with my colleague Vittoria Elliott, we’ve learned that it seems as if this is a process to mix data from government agencies that immigrants often report to, so IRS and tax data, all these kinds of things that can track their most recent addresses and things like that into one database that already — you know, USCIS has a tremendous amount of data on anyone seeking, you know, any kind of — to immigrate into this country. And so, the Palantir process, with its software Foundry, basically becomes the window for all of this data and allows folks at DHS, and maybe even at other agencies — we’re not quite sure yet — to submit queries and to find information and link it together about folks all across the country.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what kind of checks are there on this merging of data systems?

MAKENA KELLY: Yeah, it’s a great question. I mean, at this point, we don’t really know for sure what the checks are. In some cases, these contracts haven’t even been signed yet. And it’s a big — right now it’s a big idea that is playing out within agencies, individual agencies. So, we’ve seen it, this unification of data process, happening at IRS. There’s been some discussion about bringing it to SSA and DHS. But it’s still very much cropping up in individual agencies, and we haven’t really heard exactly if there is some kind of master plan and how that could be regulated and what oversight would look like in this case.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And for those people who are not familiar with Peter Thiel and his Palantir Technologies, could you talk a little bit about his history and viewpoints? I mean, there was one article that said that he’s a big believer in Armageddon, and he has insisted that the enemies of the West will prevail unless software developers work more closely with the American government to produce AI-powered military capabilities.

MAKENA KELLY: Sure, yeah. So, Peter Thiel got his start, you know, decades ago, during the dotcom boom, with Elon Musk and David Sacks — many people who are now in the government. David Sacks now is this AI czar in the White House. And so, they made a ton of money building PayPal. And Peter Thiel has gone on to become a venture capitalist, investing in a ton of companies and co-founding Palantir, which he still interacts with and knows Alex Karp, the CEO, fairly well.

Palantir, you were discussing, like, how Peter Thiel was talking about American exceptionalism and wanting to become a most, you know, tremendously dominant military power. Palantir is the company to do that. It is the company that builds a tremendous amount of defense and military technologies in order to use drones to track people across the world for American military operations. And so, we’re seeing Palantir being brought not just in the military industry, but also the public industry, across a bunch of different agencies, as well as just different companies and businesses, as well. They’re starting to change not just from defense spending — right? — but into becoming an operation system for the entire government.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s talk about how this all works. We all have these images of the last few months of these young DOGE workers going into various agencies, sometimes forcing their way in, sometimes with police, and moving right into the area where they can download, or whatever it is they do with these databases, essentially, as you’re reporting, to centralize them. How does a private company get access to these databases? I also want to ask you — “Over the past few weeks” — you reported this in April — “DOGE leadership within the IRS … orchestrated a 'hackathon' aimed at plotting out a 'mega API' allowing privileged users to view all agency data from a central access point. Sources tell WIRED the project will likely be hosted on Foundry,” as you were describing, the software that was developed by Palantir. Talk more about this.

MAKENA KELLY: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: They get access and hand it to a private company?

MAKENA KELLY: Yeah. So, this is — I mean, this is done across government, with Amazon Web Services, Google. All kinds of different tech contractors are able to access this kind of data to build services for it. What you just discussed with IRS, this Palantir process in this creating a giant centralized database of, you know, Americans’ civil data was something —

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, all these workers are getting fired.

MAKENA KELLY: Exactly. And —

AMY GOODMAN: But they keep their information.

MAKENA KELLY: Right. At the beginning of the Trump administration, you had folks at the General Services Administration, people who are associated with Elon Musk. The husband is someone who worked at xAI and X.com, and then also Thomas Shedd, who is leading things over there, who is an ex-Tesla engineer. They said that their main goal for this administration was to centralize data all across government. Centralizing data is incredibly difficult, especially with the mass amounts of data that the federal government has on everyone, you know, living and working within the United States.

And so, it seems as if this process has shifted, instead of building one giant database — right? — but to unifying data at every single agency. So, we’re seeing that in my reporting at IRS. They’re unifying all the data there to make it more easily accessible and accessed. And then, also, if you have a Foundry system at IRS and have one at DHS, those can talk to each other incredibly easily, which means you don’t necessarily have to centralize all that data. You’re able to query a variety of data systems across government if these systems are interoperable, which it looks like they could be.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what about this issue of gaining access to the ITIN numbers, that are often used by immigrants instead of Social Security numbers?

MAKENA KELLY: Yeah, so, the IRS has a tremendous amount of data on anyone who reports income, right? And so, IRS data is really, really important, because it has oftentimes the most recent addresses for workers in the country. So, if you’re trying to find someone who is operating in the — who is trying to become a United States citizen, who has applied and done the USCIS online portal, oftentimes, even if they move around — right? — the IRS will have the most recent data on how to locate them. And that is why this system could be incredibly powerful, if it plays out the way that we expect it to.

AMY GOODMAN: And in the last seconds we have, playing around with voter rolls?

MAKENA KELLY: Yes. That was something that I was able to find in my reporting at IRS. It sounds as if, from the sources who spoke to me, that they were able to download voting data from countries — from states including Pennsylvania and Florida. Antonio Gracias, who is a close friend to Elon Musk, is running that operation at SSA. And even in a recent podcast, he said that they were able to cross-reference data within SSA and voting record data across the country in order to identify folks who may have voted illegally. Now, we don’t really have a lot of information from what they found, because I doubt they found much, but this is the kinds of ways that they’re using our data.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Makena Kelly, there’s so much to talk about. I want to thank you for doing this work as senior writer at Wired. We’ll link to your recent articles on DOGE, Palantir and Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and others.

That does it for our show. We’re hiring a senior headline news producer, a director of audience and a director of technology, all full-time jobs. Check it out at democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.