Smith: One Day, A "Biden-Style DOJ" Will Control Palantir, Flock
Are you scared of Flock? Palantir? How about when Newsom wields them? Will you be flagged for reading Murray Rothbard? Watching the Ron Paul Liberty Report?
These questions were at the heart of Harrison Smith's case against Palantir and Flock cameras during last night’s ZeroHedge debate with Jordan Schachtel, hosted by Viva Frei. Pointing to the government's pursuit of January 6 defendants, Smith warned that surveillance infrastructure built under one administration could eventually become a potent weapon in the hands of another.
Dem-controlled Palantir and Flock
Harrison Smith pointed to the federal response to January 6 as a warning about what could happen when increasingly powerful surveillance technology falls into the hands of an aggressive government.
Smith referenced the “Sedition Hunters,” an online community that helped identify January 6 participants from publicly available photos and videos, as well as FBI billboards and wanted posters seeking information about suspects.
He argued that combining tools from companies like Flock Safety and Palantir with a “Biden-style DOJ” could have made the government's pursuit of January 6 defendants dramatically more efficient.
“You would have seen a much more efficient rounding up of patriots who did nothing wrong.”
And a Biden-style DOJ (or worse) may not be an unrealistic scenario in a few years…
— ZeroHedge Debates (@zerohedgeDebate) August 14, 2026
The Palantir-Israel connection
The debate over Palantir took a sharp turn when Infowars host Harrison Smith and writer Jordan Schachtel moved from arguing over the controversial defense contractor to accusing one another of effectively carrying water for foreign governments.
Smith pressed Schachtel on Palantir's involvement in Israel's military campaign in Gaza, which Smith described as a genocide.
Schachtel, an outspoken supporter of Israel, defended the company.
“If Palantir is helping the IDF fight Hamas, I think good for them,” Schachtel said. “I don't think that there's any type of genocide going on.”
Schachtel then argued that much of the anti-Israel narrative circulating in the United States is the product of “foreign sourced psy-ops”, pointing specifically to Russia and China and arguing that American adversaries have an interest in breaking apart U.S. alliances.
In January 2024, Palantir announced a strategic partnership with Israel's Ministry of Defense to provide technology for “war-related missions.” CEO Alex Karp separately told Bloomberg that demand for Palantir's products in Israel had surged following October 7 and that the company had begun supplying Israel with products it had not previously provided.
“I don't need Russia or China to dictate how I feel about that,” Smith responded, reversing the allegation by bringing up Schachtel's previous employment at The Israel Project, a former Washington-based pro-Israel advocacy organization.
That history gives the exchange an especially pointed backdrop.
Schachtel appeared in leaked undercover footage recorded while he worked for The Israel Project discussing a network of social-media pages that promoted pro-Israel material without prominently identifying their connection to the organization. In the footage, Schachtel described the effort as using “side projects” to influence public debate and acknowledged that organizers did not want audiences to know those projects were associated with The Israel Project.
“I question whether you actually care about this stuff or whether this isn't just a foreign psyop operation on your part.”
— ZeroHedge Debates (@zerohedgeDebate) August 14, 2026
Viva, Smith, and Schachtel also dove into the AI data center debate, with Smith arguing it is essentially the lifeblood that will power the surveillance panopticon. Check that out in the full discussion, which you can watch below, on YouTube, or listen on Spotify.
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 13, 2026