Palantir and Clearview Are Turning Ukraine’s War Into an R&D Lab — With Vera Bergengruen

0:00The war in Ukraine is pushing the cutting edge of tech in warfare forward. Effectively, it's an R &D lab for companies like Palantir and Clearview. We'll explore how it's all going down right after this. LinkedIn presents.

0:18Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. We're joined today by Vera Bergen-Gruen. She's a senior correspondent at Time. She's based in Washington, D.C., where she covers the overlap of national security, politics, and technology. She's a former colleague of mine from the BuzzFeed Newsdays, and she's just back from a trip to Ukraine, where she did some fascinating reporting on Clearview and on Palantir. Vera, welcome to the show. Thanks so much. So can you talk a little bit quickly about what Ukraine is like right now, what your trip was like?

0:53Does it feel like a war zone in places like Kiev? Yeah, so it was very interesting. I actually arrived doing what people there said was one of the calmest periods the war has had. You know, it was, you know, they had several weeks since there had really been any major air raid alerts. The city itself felt, you know, for an outsider coming in, feels fairly normal. You obviously know you're in a city that's been going through a war. But at the same time, you know, someone who was there for the first time, it's really interesting how life seems to go on as normal. Businesses are going, you know, people are traveling back and forth.

1:25and but of course coming in and out of Ukraine you still can't fly in you have to drive in or take a train and you know you're very aware you are the country at war but of course we just you know right after I left there was another major wave of air raid sirens a bunch of drones and so you know there's really never a moment of rest but this has been the general sense was that this was kind of a small respite before the winter when Russia's really going to pick it up. wow so you're so there's more on the way right like coming soon yeah what was the train out like i mean i imagine that the people leaving you know there are people running away from the war people who have just dipped in and are leaving again yeah you know obviously fighting age males for the most part can't leave ukraine except you know unless you really have a reason unless you have permission so it's mainly women and children they are you know it's not like taking the amtrak It's full of people with, you know, a lot of their belongings, you know, in the middle of the train.

2:22The train mainly goes through the night with the lights off. So it's definitely a very kind of surreal feeling. You know, they have all kinds of warnings on the TVs on what to do if there's, you know, if there's any kind of emergency on the way there. And then usually get stuck at the border for a couple of hours as they check everyone in, you know, leaving Poland and leaving Ukraine and then entering Poland. But, you know, you can really tell that, you know, there's a lot of dramatic scenes at the train station. People are saying goodbye. And it's mainly the young men staying behind and saying goodbye to family members who are either leaving for good or kind of coming in to check on family and going back.

2:58You went to Ukraine. You didn't need to go to the front lines to report on the story that you were after or the stories multiple. because there's actually this fascinating tech story unfolding within that country where Western tech companies are effectively using this war zone as a R &D lab to better their products and to see what type of experiences they can enable, for lack of better words, at the extreme, at the limit. So the first company that you started to really dig into is Clearview AI, which we kind of know as this like facial recognition company that's kind of creepy and used by political by used by police in the United States, but ended up being used for some fascinating uses out there.

3:47So talk a little bit about what caught your eye about Clearview and what you started to learn when you started reporting on the company in Ukraine. Yeah, and it's interesting that you said that earlier, because it's definitely true. I spent the first year and a half of this war covering the technology and digital front on the Ukraine war from D.C., which, you know, I could do all my interviews. I could see the effect of all of their technology without having to go in person. But of course, once I actually got there, it was interesting. I was looking at tech companies, local tech companies by Ukrainians that were really kind of trying to build out and take advantage of the fact that they were able to help their country, obviously, in their view, win this war on the technology front.

4:29They find themselves to be much more limber, much less, you know, like the Russia is this kind of Soviet era, slow moving country. And they think that they have the advantage on the tech front and that they are convinced you speak to officials there. They think that's exactly what's going to help them win this war. But I was very interested in Western tech companies also coming in and offering a lot of their technology, often for free. And a lot of them being companies that have a controversial reputation in Western countries, in Europe, in the U.S., because of, you know, what they call kind of bad tech, right?

5:00Like, you know, kind of creepy tech, tech that we don't tend to like when it's used against us in peacetime. But then you use it in a war and it's, you know, what it gives the Ukrainians is again, free access to extremely effective technology in a country that doesn't have or isn't really using many regulations. It's like the Wild West. You can come in and use, you know, facial recognition software. You can use, you know, drones. you can kind of develop anything you want and you can use it there. And then, you know, on the tech front for the Western companies, it's kind of, you know, a bit of reputation laundering going on for many of them.

5:35They are, you know, companies that are having a reputational problem in the West. They're being called on to testify. They're being sued. And here they are kind of being the heroes. They are getting to go give something that is helping, you know, what people kind of consider a black and white war. And the West is considered, for the most part, you know, people generally, especially at the beginning, were just wholeheartedly supporting Ukraine. And anything you could do to help Ukraine is a good thing for the company, right? And so when I was there, one of the things that I knew that Clearview AI, which is an American facial recognition software that's being used by police departments here in the U.S., it's pretty controversial.

6:11It has been used in Europe and sued in Europe because Europe has much stronger privacy regulations. So it's kind of been banned from being used in a lot of these countries. In the U.S., they can't sell the software to private companies. And I knew it was being used there, but it wasn't really revealed how much. And everyone I spoke to, every high level law enforcement or military official was obsessed with Clearview. They couldn't stop talking about it because it's incredibly effective. And that's what makes it creepy. Again, that's what people don't like in the US if DHS or ICE has it, it's being used in a different way.

6:44But I got there and I was trying to talk about different kinds of tech. And they all said, yes, but have you heard about Clearview? You know, we love this company. And that's kind of where it began. I started asking them how they were using it. And when I reached out to the company itself, it turned out that the CEO was very obviously eager to tell me about all the good uses. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he's such a mysterious person. And he's like, just like, yes, let's talk about this. Exactly. And I mean, we have to keep in mind the context. I mean, again, it's a company that's considered creepy. You know, it's considered it's, you know, a lot of people have, you know, if people know about Clearview, it usually has a kind of negative connotation unless you're a cop.

7:24Cops love this stuff. And so, you know, the New York Times, there's a New York Times reporter who just published a book about Clearview. I mean, they're currently going through a particular reputational issue here. And so I think when I called them up and said, I want to talk about how this tech is being used in Ukraine, they were really excited. The CEO himself connected me to five, six different high-level Ukrainian officials. And, you know, two days later, I was in Kiev talking to them. So they clearly wanted this out there. Right. So talk a little bit about how they're actually using this software because they have used it in some very fascinating ways.

7:56Yeah. So they kind of started using it to identify Russians. So at the very beginning of the war, a couple of days in, the CEO himself goes on Zoom, gives a couple of officials a demo and gives them a code basically for three months of Clearview and they start using it. And he says that in the first Zoom session, basically, one of the officials kind of told him, can I show you something? and he shared a screen and had identified a bunch of dead Russian soldiers. And it immediately found, you know, you basically upload a photo. It shows you everywhere that photo appears on the internet, which makes it pretty easy to find social media profiles, names, hometowns, all of that.

8:31And they first used it to identify dead Russian soldiers. They wanted to know kind of who was coming in. Then they started identifying more living Russian soldiers. And just, you know, what they did is they would put all these photos on a website and kind of have their names, ages, hometowns on there. And they started promoting this heavily in Russia through telegram groups and stuff like that, kind of saying like, hey, if you think your son's fighting here, he might be dead. The Russians won't tell you, like, come check it on this website. And this was their own, you know, kind of the campaign of truth that they were called, you know, waging it in terms of informing the Russian population about the cost that the war was having.

9:08And the website actually called No Losses, which is kind of, you know, it's kind of making fun of the fact In fact, the Russians said they weren't suffering any losses. Yeah. And so, you know, they were using it for Russians, but it clearly started being expanded pretty quickly because it was so effective. Russians started coming into the country a couple of months later wearing full face coverings. And this was in the height of the summer because they realized that they were being, you know, immediately identified. And why wouldn't they want to be identified? Is it just that like they would be they wouldn't be able to travel anymore?

9:37They have sanctions like what does the average Russian soldier care? I think according to the Ukrainians, and what kind of makes sense is if you are out there, you're in Bucha, you're outside of Ukraine committing what is considered an international war crime. You're hurting civilians into a basement, you're deprived of water. Most of the stuff you're doing, and it's considered an illegal invasion, right? So, I mean, basically, if your face out there is having participated in this, you might be on a sanctions list. You might not be able to leave Russia in the future. And most of these people are pretty young.

10:08And I think they realize, you know, they definitely don't want the rest of the world to be closed off to them. Fascinating. Okay, so they use it as this sort of information warfare against Russian citizens to try to make the war a little bit less popular. Right. And then from speaking with people, it was interesting. I knew that was the kind of known use case. But then I realized that they were actually using against, not against, on Ukrainians. They started filming a lot of these meetings that they were having in Russian occupied territories where they would, you know, there was kind of these pro-Russian groups that would meet in order to hold referendums and plan these things.

10:46And so they started identifying the Ukrainians who would participate because they're considered collaborators. And, you know, if they ever come back into non-occupied Ukraine, they would arrest them. So that was a way that they were using it on Ukrainians. And one of the most interesting cases that, again, Clearview was very eager to publicize, and the Ukrainians too, was that there was tens of thousands of Ukrainian kids who were taken from orphanages or from these kind of foster homes in Ukraine that were occupied by Russia. and a lot of them were taken to Russian families to be adopted, to put in foster homes, to be re-educated in these kinds of camps.

11:21And when Russians were adopting their kid and posting photos on social media, Clearview was scraping all of that of Russian social media networks. And so they were able to basically confirm that these kids were in Russia and who their adoptive parents were and that they were alive. And I think they were able to identify quite, I think over almost 200 kids that way, which was, again, a really interesting case for technology, use of technology that we think of as kind of a police tool. But if they're saying, you know, we're prosecuting war crimes, we're finding kids, it's kind of harder to have a problem with that tech.

11:56At least that's what they're counting on. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. Like, what do you even do once you know that you have a kidnapped child living with another family? And, you know, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, for them, I think it's a way to, it's x-ray vision into aspects of a war in a way we've never really seen used before in a modern conflict. They are able to have names and faces and identifications for almost every wrongdoing in their minds, right? And so collaborators, Russians, again, these kids, even checkpoints, they started using this at checkpoints. If people lost their IDs, they were able to confirm that you were who you said you were.

12:36So it's really taken over. It's really kind of, you know, it's really wrapped itself into almost every Ukrainian law enforcement agency. Over a dozen agencies are using this. And the concern, I think, for a lot of people is that how do you rein this in? You know, in peacetime, how do you start putting regulations on this very, very effective tool, which is obviously still being provided for free? They're not paying for it. Right. So are there any answers? I mean, can you even put the genie back in the bottle on something like this? I, from my experiences in speaking with people, I don't think so.

13:09They are absolutely all in. They are, you know, there's several issues with that, you know, if they want to join the European Union, European Union has some of the strictest data and privacy regulations on earth. They're going to have to do something then. But for now, you know, they've actually invited the CEO to the country. They kind of rolled out the red carpet. They gave him all these like, you know, certificates and medals. And, you know, basically, again, we have to remember this is being provided for free. It's in everyone's interest for that to continue in Ukraine. But I think they are, you know, they basically put out a statement that was pretty controversial that said, we are going to use Clearview to build the digital infrastructure of our country.

13:48We're going to use Clearview to, yeah, they're like, we're going to use this for customs, we're going to use for banking. And a lot of Ukrainian tech, you know, tech workers, lower level officials I've spoken with are extremely upset by that because they know, they call it a company with a bad reputation and they don't want to be seen as the kind of country that includes this and makes it an integral part of their government. So it's going to be really interesting to see what happens then. And Clearview is even talking about opening an office there. What's the success rate for identifying people with Clearview?

14:20There must be false positives. And what happens if you have a false positive at a checkpoint or saying somebody is a soldier or finding a kid? Like imagine a kid grows up and then like they come and get the kid, but, you know, they can't identify who the kid is or it's the wrong match or what happens then? It's a really good question. Yeah. I mean, from speaking to them, they basically made it sound like there was never, almost never false, you know, identifications. Right. Which is impossible. You know, they themselves, you know, the tests they have done, you know, they've put in some independent reviews, you know, it's over 99 % effective, but that's not 100%.

14:56And I know here in the U.S., it's also for the 0.1 % that gets shot at a checkpoint. Well, we also know that here in the U.S., people have been put in jail. The wrong person has been identified and actually, you know, put in prison for something. So we know that it doesn't work all the time. They were they weren't really giving me many examples. But so far, it sounds like they according at least on the war crimes prosecution front on a lot of these, they say that they use identification as a first. It basically cuts and, you know, cuts down by 90 percent the work they have to do. And then the extra 10 % is confirming it through a different way.

15:29So they say that they haven't really had that many issues like this and that they're not making decisions fully based on that. But again, it's just interesting hearing them talk about it because the unbridled enthusiasm, the fact that they were able to identify Russian soldiers who were almost completely burned, and they were still able to, again, we can't confirm this, but allegedly detect who they were, makes them pretty confident in using this technology with very few holds barred. But I think we are definitely going to hear some cases like that. they weren't eager to share them. Right. Do you think the reputation laundering will work for them?

16:01Like, do you think that if they play a pivotal role in Ukraine's ability to hold off Russia, that it will be something that will make Clearview's reputation change? It's hard to see how it fully changes in the US and in Europe, right? I mean, in these countries that have already, it just goes against the law in many of these countries to have all of your citizens' data scraped and stored, even if it's public. So I'm not sure that can fully change. But I do think that the company is basically correct. I mean, I think that's where we're heading. I think it's going to be hard to imagine in the future that these things are going to be widely used.

16:38I mean, I traveled for Thanksgiving and I didn't think twice before just scanning myself into TSA. You know, like I feel like these things are so convenient. We're going to see them everywhere. And I think that they see this as, you know, we're, I told, the CEO told me, you know, we're going to be on the right side of history. Facial recognition is going to be used in every single conflict going forward. And people are going to realize that the benefits far outweigh any negatives, you know, that when you're in a war, life or death situation, your privacy basically falls by the wayside. I think that's a hard case to make in the US when people are identifying, you know, immigrants, ISIS using this tech to do all kinds of stuff.

17:16I think that's never going to be easy to do, But I do think that he's not wrong that we're going to see it more and more. Right. Right. OK, so bottom line. And we're going to talk a little bit about how this might expand into other conflicts in the second half here. But bottom line for you in terms of, you know, you reported on Clearview, you traveled to Ukraine, you've spoken with people who've used it. You think it's good or bad that it's being deployed this way in Ukraine?

17:44Myself? You know, it is. I'm on the side of it's really difficult. It's really hard to argue against it when you see how effective it is at making people survive a war. Again, imagine the number of war crimes you can prosecute that would never be prosecuted if you couldn't identify the person. So I think it's really difficult to say that it's a good thing without any controls. In a country like Ukraine that didn't have strong privacy regulations, it's kind of the perfect storm. It's going to apply it and we don't know what's going to happen afterwards. I think, but I do, I do, as someone who came in feeling extremely creeped out by it, you know, the CEO offered to run my own face through it.

18:25And I actually, I wish I had done it. I kind of said no, because I got creeped out. I was like, no, yeah, I don't really want to see what's out there about me. as someone who came in kind of preconditioned to think of it as a negative. I do think that it was hard to argue with a lot of the positive results. But at the same time, I do think that, you know, imagine this in a country that we don't consider to, you know, there's a lot, you know, so I don't know. That's not quite the answer, but I do think I found myself changing my mind. Yeah, it is complicated. It's fascinating. It's good you went out and reported on it.

18:59At least we know about it. and definitely being used in some really interesting use cases that probably would not fly in the US. But this is obviously the future that the company sees. All right, let's take a quick break. We're here with Vera Bergen-Gruen, senior correspondent and time in the second half of the show. We're going to talk a little bit about how this stuff spreads, but also about Palantir. So stay tuned. We'll be back right after this. Did you know your credit card points and miles can lose value to inflation? Credit card companies often reduce the redemption value of your points and miles.

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21:44And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Vera Bergen-Bruin. You can find her stories about this conflict, about how this technology is being used at Time Magazine. So definitely check that out. We're also going to talk a little bit about Palantir. So Clearview is not the only company that's trying to really expand and make inroads in Ukraine, right? Right. You know, Palantir, as you mentioned, is their biggest partner. It came in very early. Its CEO was the first Western CEO, you know, official tech CEO to basically go in and meet with Zelensky. And they're basically become, they've completely ingrained themselves into the Ukrainian government.

22:22So Palantir was the other big company that I focused on while I was there. Okay. When you say first partner, they were the first partner with the government or? Yeah. So basically, I mean, there's a lot of, you know, we've had Elon Musk offering Starlink, right? At the beginning of the Ukrainian war. We had a lot of tech companies actually speaking to with officials. They said, you know, they were so grateful and yet they were overwhelmed with offers from every major. You know, I've got Microsoft, Amazon, Google. Everyone was offering to help Ukraine. They were offering cloud space. They were offering them money.

22:51They were offering them tools. And they didn't, for Ukraine is an extremely tech savvy country with a highly, you know, highly skilled workforce. And they still weren't able to utilize all of that. But Palantir signed contracts with them, right? They've got memorandums. They've got like contracts of understanding. where they've partnered with specific agencies. They've opened an office in Ukraine and they are specifically working with the Ukrainian government to make their software available to the government, do all kinds of stuff. And so what are they doing? So, you know, they've got so many buckets that they're using.