Don't Go To America: Your Data Puts You At Risk.
No, that trip to Disneyland really isn't worth it.
To all my readers, friends, and loved ones: Avoid America right now. Treat any visit to the US like you would a visit to any other dictatorship like North Korea, Iran, Russia, Türkiye, or Yemen.
I don’t care which country you’re from, or what color your skin is, if you’ve written or said anything even remotely negative or critical about the Trump Regime, or attended a protest where a camera was watching (all of them), America is no longer a safe country for you. I’m not even sure it’s a safe country for Americans.
In short, visiting or living in America right now is simply not worth the risk. I say this as an American. Even I won’t go back.
Don’t believe me? Here’s the latest case where a foreign journalist was detained for days and then deported, entirely because of what he wrote online:
“United States border officials told him it was due to his writing on pro-Palestine protests by university students." (source)
Or how about this one? A “French researcher was headed to the U.S. on a temporary visa for a conference … When he arrived in Houston, messages about Trump were flagged, which was seen as grounds to bar entry. (source)
Or this one, where a drummer from the band ‘Lord Buffalo’ was detained for weeks, despite being a lawful permanent resident, at least partially based on letters he wrote in a custody dispute. (source)
Or Hasan Piker, a progressive political streamer living in America, who was detained by Customs and Border Protection for hours of questioning upon returning to the U.S. from a trip to France in May. (source)
Yes, this kind of thing happened during the first Trump term, but there’s a few big big differences.
Firstly, there’s just more data out there, and the tools for collecting, storing, and processing that data have improved exponentially. We’ve got dozens of different social media platforms now, plus numerous publishing outlets like Substack. And it’s much easier for border guards and police to search your digital papers, in near real-time, thanks to social media monitoring platforms like Dataminr or Fivecast ONYX, which can collect and process content “to facilitate analysis and the surfacing of risks and threats.” That speed means its trivial for Customs and Border Patrol to process passenger details and target individuals critical of the regime (or who are otherwise ‘undesirable’) all while they wait in line at passport control.
Second, all this data is being centralized and individual data points consolidated, thanks to platforms like Palantir and the steady erosion of norms and the rule of law. Over the last few years, Palantir has greatly expanded its reach within the US government, and has long been a favorite of ICE in particular. Meanwhile, Trump’s war against “information silos” in government, along with a capitulating Supreme Court and worthless Congress, will turn dystopian fiction into fact.
The Palantir platform is powerful—I know, because I used it for years. But Palantir isn’t some central database on its own—rather, it’s a tool that can draw connections to the data it’s given access to. And it can draw those connections, make inferences, and build profiles about individuals quickly. That makes it even easier for the government to compile dossiers on political enemies, disfavored individuals, or anyone holding a view contra to Trump.
Finally, unlike in 2017, AI and deep reasoning models are now ubiquitous. And even if the LLM hallucinates, it’s not like ICE is going to care. We live in a post-truth society, where facts are what Trump and Fox News say they are, and flawed AI tools cancel programs (and people) with few consequences. Or should I say, they ‘munch’ them. Did I mention that Palantir has loads of AI capabilities built in to make all of this even easier?
So, please, I beg of you—think twice before you plan that trip to Florida. Maybe hold off for a few years before you sign up for that PhD program in the US. Perhaps re-evaluate whether that new job or slight pay-bump is worth potentially getting hauled off to a gulag in El Salvador. Or worse.
To me, America should be treated like a failed state and avoided. It’s just not worth it.
Anyway, here’s a very friendly dog I met in the Netherlands:
Fine fine, tell me how I’m wrong.