“China’s Cognitive Warfare” - Palantir Co-Founder On Iran Threats, AI PSYOPs & CIA Funding | PBD #751

**Patrick Bet-David** (0:00)
When you say Palantir to the average person, some is good, some is bad, some is neutral, some are scared.

**Joe Lonsdale** (0:05)
Nobody is angry at you, you might not be doing much.

**Patrick Bet-David** (0:08)
Why do so many people not trust you? Why do so many people not trust Palantir?

**Joe Lonsdale** (0:12)
We have to eliminate probably up to 10,000 terrorists.

**Patrick Bet-David** (0:15)
The fear becomes, what if somebody evil runs it after Alex, then what? What if somebody evil gets ahold of what you guys are building, then what?

**Joe Lonsdale** (0:22)
What's scary to me is if in Safari Public, he likes a really, really bad person.

**Patrick Bet-David** (0:27)
Who today is your biggest enemy?

**Joe Lonsdale** (0:30)
There are like the extreme populists on both political sides.

**Patrick Bet-David** (0:33)
So in a situation with Maduro or Almencio, is there a possibility that Palantir was involved?

**Joe Lonsdale** (0:39)
These guys were trying to kill Trump. It means that if they're still around after Trump's president, they're probably trying to get him and his kids again.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:45)
Why was Palantir still?

**Joe Lonsdale** (0:47)
Protect the West against Islamist terrorists.

**Patrick Bet-David** (0:50)
That's truly the mission.

**Joe Lonsdale** (0:51)
That was truly the mission. But is Iran really Iraq?

**Patrick Bet-David** (0:53)
But a lot of people think it could turn into something like that.

**Joe Lonsdale** (0:56)
I don't know, maybe this is not appropriate, but I'd be very Roman. So you know what the Romans would do? You'd go and you wipe out the leadership class, you're all dead. And you say, okay, you guys are now in charge. We're going to make a deal, or we're going to kill all of you too.

**Patrick Bet-David** (1:17)
You know, this whole thing with Valuetainment and PBD Podcast started with a phone, me and Mario, that's it. And it grew today to 15 million subscribers almost and 164 full-time employees. And that relationship, are you watching us and supporting us, wouldn't happen without you. But did you know 51% of you that watch the content are not subscribed to the channel? And it would mean the world to us if you could press that subscribe button and notification, why it allows us to grow, hire more, do bigger interviews, have a bigger team and deliver a better product to you. So if you haven't yet, if you don't mind, press that subscribe button, it would mean the world to us. Thank you so much.

**Joe Lonsdale** (2:21)
Thanks for having me, Patrick.

**Patrick Bet-David** (2:22)
Yes, and I know you like these mics. These are awesome. Jake, who picked these blue mics, by the way? You did? Okay, so credit goes to him, but co-founder Palantir.

**Joe Lonsdale** (2:33)
We started that 23 years ago.

**Patrick Bet-David** (2:34)
Yes, the story you have from co-founding Palantir to Dan, I think you were an investor in Free Press with Barry Weiss, if I'm not mistaken. You were somewhat involved.

**Joe Lonsdale** (2:44)
I gave Barry some money when she started, because we need to rebuild our institutions in this country. That's right.

**Patrick Bet-David** (2:48)
And then you moved to Austin, you're building a university, University Austin, you're doing another thing with Cicero, which we'll talk about. I want to get your opinion on Cicero and Cato, because those are two different mindsets. Two different statesmen. Yes, two different statesmen. One had a temper, his way or the highway. The other one was compromised, open to, which is kind of the route you guys went. And then recently you put, I think some $11.8 million into a drone company in Nigeria.

**Joe Lonsdale** (3:14)
Well, that's random.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:14)
I run a big venture capital firm.

**Joe Lonsdale** (3:16)
We're doing a lot in AI defense. Yeah, ABC. It's called ABC. And listen, most of the best defense stuff, we focus on America, of course. I do think in Africa, working with the very, very best group that we can find there, it's important because there's a lot of bad guys there too.

**Patrick Bet-David** (3:30)
Yeah, I agree. So that's interesting. We'll get into that because I'm curious. The drone business is very important. We're seeing with these wars with Ukraine and Russia. If you would ask the average person five years ago, if Ukraine and Russia go to war, what will be the most important tool to use? Nobody would have guessed drones. Millions. Millions of drones and blowing up all these other things. But okay, got a lot of questions. And the time we got this interview is phenomenal because we got the Iran stuff going on. We got El Mencho that was just killed. And you know, with what's going on with Mexico, we have-