Culturally Clueless | AI, Dead Journalists & The Men Who Control Your News | Episode 111

This episode covers stories that the mainstream news cycle would rather you scroll past.

Nes digs into the growing alarm around Palantir and AI in warfare. More than 229,000 people in the UK have signed petitions demanding the government scrap all public contracts with Palantir [Democracy Now!](https://www.democracynow.org/2026/3/10/lawrence_wilkerson) , as backlash intensifies over the US tech giant's expanding role in the NHS, police, and military. Two senior systems engineers at the Ministry of Defence have even broken cover to warn that Palantir poses a national security threat to the UK [nuclear-news](https://nuclear-news.net/2026/04/14/3-a-america-is-losing-the-world-and-it-doesnt-know-how-to-stop/) — the concern being that handing a foreign company this level of access to sovereign data is a risk no government should be taking. Stateside, Palantir is publicly fighting the Defense Intelligence Agency after being excluded from a major military intelligence modernization contract [Hoodline](https://hoodline.com/2026/04/stanford-plaza-showdown-as-miss-israel-visit-ends-with-idf-soldier-tackling-student/) , arguing the DIA is wasting taxpayer money by refusing to consider commercial AI solutions already operating at scale. [X](https://x.com/MiddleEastEye/status/2051642703054577728) Nes frames the bigger question: should AI companies with direct ties to active war zones be trusted with the data of civilians, soldiers, and governments?

She also covers Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf and what it produced — and what it conspicuously didn't — pointing to a pattern of a president who makes sweeping geopolitical moves with zero regard for how Americans feel about the wars being waged in their name.

Nes touches on the UAE's increasingly uncomfortable position — exposed for its involvement in multiple conflicts across the region while simultaneously seeking validation and praise on the world stage.

She then turns to journalism under fire, featuring testimony from a journalist and revisiting the devastating toll on the press in Palestine — a reminder that the killing of journalists is not incidental but systematic.

The episode also marks Nakba month and its 78th year, weaving together the lived reality of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank — where settler violence has surged — and examining youth-led calls to sanction settlements, while questioning whether those measures carry any real teeth when funding can simply flow from elsewhere.

Nes closes with Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer, whose public declaration of Zionism and whose message to critical journalists — agree with how we do things or leave — ties back to every other thread in the episode: who controls the narrative, who gets silenced, and who profits from keeping it that way.

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