When activists in Ireland heard that Peter Thiel’s secret club, Dialog, was planning to meet in the Irish countryside, they launched a campaign to stop it. They succeeded. 

Peter Thiel is a Silicon Valley tech financier and the founder of the companies PayPal and Palantir who donated lavishly to Trump’s 2016 presidential run. In 2022, he financially backed 16 far-right congressional candidates. Thiel’s company Palantir has come under fire for supporting both the genocide in Gaza and the immigration crackdown in the United States.

Leaks about Dialog dropped in June, revealing information about Thiel’s 20-year-old elitist invitation-only organization and its planned Irish conference in August. Meeting topics included World War III, battlefield technologies, building a cult, and improving your sex life.

The meeting was to be held in the five-star Powerscourt Hotel in County Wicklow, Ireland. Several grassroots Irish groups — including Your Tech, Their Deaths and North Wicklow Against Genocide — created #DropDialog, a campaign to get the conference cancelled. They planned several protests at the Powerscourt Estate. They didn’t have to. News broke on July 3 that the event had been cancelled.

“Media reports say the genociders’ event, the Dialog conference, will not be hosted at Powerscourt Hotel,” they wrote, in a statement on the #DropDialog website. This is a victory for all people of conscience who mobilised against it and shows that direct action works! We issue a warning to any other hotel or venue on the island of Ireland who may consider hosting these individuals. Genociders, warmongers and technofascists are not welcome in Ireland. Power to the people!”

Jude Farrell is a founder of the group Your Tech, Their Deaths. She is a former Irish Big Tech worker, a human rights activist, and a mom. She’s been involved in the pro-Palestinian movement in Ireland. 

“Everything the Irish people do to support Palestine is really to help end imperialism, colonialism, oppression for everybody,” she says. 

Michael Fox spoke with Jude on July 8, as part of the Battle for Free Speech podcast. 

When they spoke, Jude had just left a protest in Dublin against the tech company Snyk Limited. 

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

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Michael Fox: Tell me about this protest that you just left. Where were you just now?

Jude Farrell: Okay, so AIB [Allied Irish Banks] which is one of the largest banks in Ireland, are about to sign a contract with a tech firm called Snyk. Now, Snyk is set up by three Israeli soldiers. Not just your standard Israeli soldier, but they’re actually former soldiers from unit 8200, which is the most nefarious evil unit in the Israeli occupying army. So this information was shared with us by an employee [of AIB] about seven weeks ago, and we have been protesting since then. And we are making headway. Right now, AIB have paused the contract, but they are refusing to put in writing or make a public statement saying that they will not sign this contract with Snyk. We just need to push in a similar way that we kicked out Dialog from the Powerscourt Hotel in Wicklow last week. 

I don’t know if you know this, Mike, but the word “boycott” was actually coined in Ireland. Boycott was an individual, an Irish person, and that person actually got boycotted. So the Irish people know how to come together, use our voices, use our boycott power, close their AIB accounts, move elsewhere to non-complicit banks, and it will happen.

Michael Fox: Wow, that’s incredible. And what a great piece of history to tie it all together. What Big Tech company did you work for?

Jude Farrell: I worked for Google. I worked for Google at a time when… I don’t think they were as evil as they are now. And I worked for Google at a time when they did not use their technology for warfare or for governments. I really enjoyed my time at Google. And I am personally heartbroken at the path that they have taken, and I fully support the boycott of Google in order to support the Palestinian people.

Michael Fox: Can you tell me a little bit about your organization, Your Tech, Their Deaths?

Jude Farrell: I set up this group only about a year ago from a sense of frustration that there wasn’t enough information out there about Big Tech’s role in the genocide in Palestine, and in particular the Big Tech EU bases in Ireland. I set it up to educate people, but also to start a people-led boycott group to move people away from using the likes of Gmail, move them towards Proton. We focus on US big tech. We focus on Israeli tech. We focus on Zionist technology. And we are making an impact. 

We had heavy involvement in Drop Dialog last week. We are working really hard to get AIB Bank to drop their use of Israeli technology. It’s a grassroots led initiative, but it’s very much brick-by-brick. A small, committed group of people can impact change. And that is in Irish blood. That is in our DNA. We saw the Dunnes Stores workers, 21-year-old Mary Manning, refusing to sell a South African grapefruit. And to be honest, we’re taking the same approach with Israeli tech in Irish organizations, in Irish semi-state bodies. 

We do not want any complicit tech in Ireland, and Your Tech, Their Deaths will not stop until that’s ended.

Michael Fox: Are all of the Big Tech firms in Ireland? Is Ireland the main spot where they’re located in Europe at this point?

Jude Farrell: Yes. And they’re only here to take advantage of our friendly tax rates. It’s absolutely galling, the amount that are here, and it is galling that the Irish government continues to welcome them.

We have Chat GPT here, Open AI. We have Anthropic. The Irish government welcomed Anthropic last year with open arms. Enterprise Ireland helped facilitate them with grants and publicity. And it’s sickening to think that an organization like Anthropic can come in here, be given tax breaks, being given great publicity, and yet go on to commit the murder of over 160 schoolgirls in Minab, in Iran, but the Irish government says, “Welcome, Anthropic.”

Michael Fox: Talk to me about Dialog and this conference. How did you all hear about it? How did you shut it down? And congratulations.

Jude Farrell: Thank you. It was a huge collaborative effort. And it wasn’t just Your Tech, Their Death. There was great involvement from North Wicklow Against Genocide because this event was actually going to take place in County Wicklow in Ireland. So that group took a huge lead on it. And then there were just general Irish people that popped up, you know, ad hoc, and got involved where they could.

Michael Fox: Why were you so concerned about Dialog? What is it about Peter Thiel and this organization that should be terrifying for everybody?

Jude Farrell: I think it’s not just Peter Thiel, it’s not just Palantir, but it is the audacity and arrogance of individuals like Thiel that they think that they would be welcome in any country and come in and discuss topics such as how to build a cult and how to get through World War III, when we know that they are entirely focused on their own power and privilege. They are not using technology or data for the good of humankind. They’re only using it to fill their own coffers, and they use it specifically to oppress and control people. 

So Palantir, for example, they are now getting pushback from the UK government. So people are very slowly starting to understand the consequence of giving large nefarious organizations like Palantir access and control of individuals’ data. That data is being used to suppress, to surveil, to oppress people. It’s being used for profiteering and warmongering.

We know that they are entirely focused on their own power and privilege. They are not using technology or data for the good of humankind.

Michael Fox: What is it about Big Tech that people need to understand? And, in particular, [about] the fact that they’re moving into so many different places. They’re pushing into Ireland, they’re pushing into Europe. These are US companies, or companies, like you just said, from Israel or other places. What is it about Big Tech, and what they’re doing, that people need to stand up against and that’s so concerning?

Jude Farrell: I don’t know if America realizes how ancient the history in Ireland is with Big Tech. Google opened their first data center in Ireland before they even opened their first office here. Then they opened their EU office here. They opened it here to take advantage of our very friendly tax rates. And the thing that I really want people to understand, and I didn’t understand this myself, going back to my time working in Google in particular, is that nothing is free, Mike.

If you are being offered a tech product for free, like Gmail, like Google Maps, you have to understand that it is not free. They are taking your data. They are selling your data to third parties. They are using that data, commodifying that data, and that data is then going to come back and basically be utilized against you. So, with Big Tech in Ireland, I want people to understand that their privacy, and their security, and their ownership of their data is absolutely pivotal to their safety in the future and the safety of the next generation, as well. And I don’t think we understand that in Ireland.

And that is largely thanks to the role of the Irish government — multiple Irish governments now — acting almost as [confiders] for  agents for, unfortunately, Mike, US imperialist interests. So having Google in Ireland, or Amazon, or X, formerly Twitter, all of these large American companies, the Irish public are constantly told how lucky we are to have these companies here. We’re told how much money they’re bringing into our economy, when the reality is they are actually extracting from the Irish people, from the Irish land, all of our resources — whether it is extracting our intellect, whether it is extracting our renewable energies, they benefit more from us than we do from them. But this would be a huge lens shift for the Irish people to understand. 

But I do think that they’re starting to get it, unfortunately, because of the genocide in Palestine. So we know, for example, that Microsoft have actually held illegally surveilled Palestinian people’s data in data centers on Irish land. And that data then has been used to blackmail Palestinians, surveil, track, murder them. And then you take that even a year forward, and data like that, phone call data, that’’s now actually being used to turn into the latest LLM AI models and build voice recognition, voice profiles, to further suppress Palestinians.

But we know it will not stop in the Palestinian laboratory; this is also then being used back in the United States. It’s being used by ICE to oppress migrants and American citizens and children in the United States. So really I just want people to understand that with Big Tech nothing is free. Your privacy and your data is everything. And no, Big Tech in Ireland are not benefiting us.

Michael Fox: My podcast is very much about free speech, and looking at the different definitions of free speech and how the United States, and particularly these Big Tech companies in Silicon Valley, are trying to push this idea of absolutist free speech, even though it’s not actually absolute, but “absolutist,” for people to be able to do whatever they want to, or say whatever they want online — hate speech, whatever else. 

First off, what is your definition of free speech? And are you concerned that these Big Tech companies are trying to push their vision for the world elsewhere, as well as fueling disinformation, fueling hate speech, etc.?

Jude Farrell: Your future — America’s future — is intrinsically tied with Ireland’s future. So if you fuck shit up, you fuck it up for everybody.

And it’s the same with the United Kingdom. It’s the same with America. It’s the same with Germany. You cannot view Big Tech or freedom of speech in isolation. It would be the biggest and the most naive error for any of us to take that approach. What happens in imperialist countries like the United States trickles down to us here in Ireland. 

I’m extremely worried about free speech. But you asked me what my personal definition of free speech was. And I suppose, for me, free speech should be being able to say anything so long as it does not harm an individual. So yeah, you can have your opinions. You can even have what could be considered divisive opinions. But as long as you’re not inciting hate yourself, or inciting others to hate, then I support free speech. Of course I do. I’m Irish. We are an oppressed people still. We have six of our counties still occupied by a foreign entity. We lost our language. It was illegal to speak, to learn Irish. And that impact we see generations later, and we’re only starting to understand the impact. It’s like we’ve got a hangover from our own oppression — the silencing of our religion, the silencing of our language, of our culture.

So yeah, free speech is incredibly important in Ireland.

We’re told how much money they’re bringing into our economy, when the reality is they are actually extracting from the Irish people, from the Irish land, all of our resources — whether it is extracting our intellect, whether it is extracting our renewable energies, they benefit more from us than we do from them.

Michael Fox: Were you following Elon Musk’s role in the Belfast riots that happened recently? And can you talk to this a little bit? Because I think this is really important in terms of understanding how the social media platforms and these kind of far-right billionaire — trillionaire — activists are fueling this kind of hatred.

Jude Farrell: I didn’t follow it in depth. And even though I’m Irish, I do not presume myself to be an expert on what it is like to grow up and live in the occupied six. So I want to be really respectful of giving my opinion here. But in the social media platforms and media conglomerates in general, promoting dangerous ideologies in order to push their own ideologies and their own aims to control and suppress, it’s extremely worrying. With the Belfast riots, but also with the influence of the far right in Ireland in particular, I would say two things.

I would say that the far right is actually smaller than they even think they are. I think they’re like one of those yappy little dogs. They don’t have much power or control in Ireland yet, thankfully.

I’ll also say that I think they are purposely targeting a population on the island of Ireland, in general, that are really suffering thanks to decades worth of poor decisions from different Irish governments. There is a very big issue in Ireland with a cost of living crisis, with public transport, infrastructure, with healthcare, with education. If you look on paper at Ireland, we should be rich as fuck. And yet we are not. For all this money the imperialist asses are throwing in here, Ireland is really, really struggling.

But these social media channels, these media conglomerates, figures like Elon Musk, etc., it is very easy to put the blame on immigrants. And immigrants are not the problem. The problem is actually with allowing imperialist people to take our resources here. 

And it’s very easy for social media to target immigrants, but you can’t be Irish and be racist.

We are a nation that is built on immigration. We had to leave Ireland due to our own genocide, thanks to the British, through our own man-made famine, thanks to the British, and we went to the places like America and Australia and built those countries. You cannot be Irish and be racist. 

Fear is a very powerful thing, a powerful tool to use on social media, and Irish people are struggling. Our utility bills, our energy bills, are the highest in the EU. They’re the highest in Europe. But this is thanks to the Irish government allowing US companies to come in and build data centers here when our grid is not even capable of powering these data centers, giving US tech firms reduced energy contracts, whilst hiking energy bills for the average Irish person.

So that’s who we should be looking at. We should be looking outwards, not inwards.

Michael Fox: If you were going to speak to people within the United States who don’t necessarily understand the power these Big Tech firms have abroad, what would you tell them? Are you concerned about the impact that these firms and the spread of their agenda may be having in Ireland and in other countries all around the world?

Jude Farrell: I think I actually have some hope for Ireland around this. And I think I have hope because of generations that are younger than me. If I think back to how younger generations in America responded to TikTok being bought out by Larry Ellison, and the number of TikTok users dropping pretty sharply… I think we’re seeing similar in Ireland. So it’s not enough yet, but there is an awareness, particularly amongst younger people in Ireland, that the information that you get online from TikTok, from Google, from YouTube, from Meta, isn’t necessarily factual and isn’t necessarily well intended.

So I do have hope that people are seeing that change. I just think we need to push more within Ireland in taking the shine off these big American companies. When they came to us in the early 2000s, it was hugely exciting because Ireland has always been like the poor cousins compared to the United States or the United Kingdom. And I think we felt lucky that Google or Amazon or Twitter picked us, and I think that those companies took advantage of our low self-esteem, the fact that we haven’t gotten over our own genocide and occupation.

But there is definitely a change since… I’m sorry to bring it back again to Palestine, but there is a change since Oct. 7. Because we’re not seeing it on our own media. 

So if you think in America that what you see on, like on TV as opposed to independent journalism, it’s no different here. RTE, our national broadcaster, is heavily complicit in suppressing what has been occurring in Palestine, the language that they use to talk about the genocide. I don’t know how many years it took them to even use the “G” word, but that is no different here. But there is a movement towards independent journalism in Ireland that is reassuring. So things are bad, but I think there’s hope.

Michael Fox: Ireland is a place where you have long seen progressive organizing and people standing up. Are you concerned for the far-right wave around the world and the narratives being pushed by the right and these tech firms, and what they could mean for Ireland? Or do you think that the Irish will continue to stand up and hold out?

Jude Farrell: The far right in Ireland isn’t as big as the far right actually think that they are. And that is partly because there is a history within the Irish people, because of our own occupation in standing up for the underdog, in standing up for what is right and being very vocal when we see oppression of any kind.

Irish people, in general, are not racist. Racism, yes, can occur everywhere, and unfortunately it does occur in Ireland, but, overall, Irish people are incredibly welcoming of all nations because we’’re a nation of immigrants ourselves.

And, I think, if you look back to the fuel protests in Ireland that happened a couple of months ago… when those first occurred, there was a big push on social media from some far-right figures in Ireland. And they were trying to shift all the blame onto immigrants and certain races and refugees. The reality is the far right were silenced pretty quickly. I actually attended some of the fuel protests as a legal observer for the ICCL [Irish Council for Civil Liberties], which is a UN-recognized role where we attend protests to observe how the police in Ireland interact with protesters.

So I got to actually watch the few fuel protests from a neutral point of view, rather than being an activist. And what I actually saw was some key “far-right figures,” and I’m using inverted commas here, you know, rock up to O’Connell Street, our central street in Dublin.

And they had a couple of fangirls and fanboys around them. But, in general, they weren’t welcome. They weren’t given a huge amount of air time, because the fuel protests were about the Irish people.

And you cannot be racist and Irish. 

The fuel protests were about highlighting the terrible decisions that multiple Irish governments have made that continuously impact the standard of living of Irish people. And Irish people being any people of any color or any creed that live on the island of Ireland.

So while the far right, yes, was trying to push their own agenda around the fuel protests, the reality was it was ordinary men and women. It was farmers. It was hauliers. It was mums, dads, kids. It was the ordinary Irish people that came out and shut the country down. And I was so goddamn proud to be Irish during those fuel protests. And it terrified the government. And I’m really glad, because the government need to listen to the Irish people. And the problem is government policies. The problem is not immigrants.

Michael Fox: Why is Big Tech so concerning for you, Jude?

Jude Farrell: I’m not anti-technology. I am anti how Big Tech is currently being used to profit from war or to oppress people. If technology — in particular AI — could be used for good, if it could be used for science, if it could used be used for medical research, then I would be completely behind it. 

The challenge is the very tiny group of people that are funding and lobbying and powering AI currently, they’re just doing it to keep themselves in billionaire status, to move themselves to trillionaire status. And they’re just going to continue to grow the gap between us and them and just further oppress people, no matter what color your skin is, where you live, what your religion is.

If that type of Big Tech is not stopped, it is coming for us all.

Michael Fox: Do you think that that technology should be democratized? Do you believe that there should be a way for it to be shared equally and not be just for profit, or the insane amount of profits that we’re seeing now?

Jude Farrell: Yeah, absolutely. And I do think that governments, in particular, can make a move away from using Big Tech at a government level to open source [software]. If we have to have data centers, why can’t they be data centers for the people? AI has the potential to move humankind forward massively in a positive manner, but it does have to be for the people, by the people.

If you look at France, for example, their government has been actively working for, I think, the last 12 to 18 months on moving away from Microsoft and moving towards open source. And that’s the type of thing that Ireland needs to do. 

The Irish government is so firmly embedded with US imperialist tech that I don’t think they’d even know where to start, which is why the people in Ireland are driving change. It’s not the government. The government will consistently vote against, block, any type of movement towards a democratic, non-oppressive way of being. Whereas the Irish people like me and other members of Your Tech, Their Deaths, we’re focused on highlighting the fact that and Irish government, state and and semi-state bodies are using technologies like Checkpoint, which I know is huge in the US as well, but that wasn’t even well known in Ireland until last year. But we are using Israeli ex-IOF technology in our banking system, in our postal system, in our electricity grid, in our hospitals.

And there is no conversation about this at government level. All that push is coming from the people. And it must continue from the people, because we have to move away from complicit tech, whether it is US big tech, whether it is Zionist tech, whether it is Israeli tech. And we need to build more of our own tech — Irish tech. We need to build European tech. We need to move to open source and not have this monopoly with US big tech.

Michael Fox: Talk to me about Palestine, what these tech companies are doing there.

Jude Farrell: What we are seeing with Big Tech companies in Ireland, like Google, like Meta, like X, like TikTok, is the purposeful suppression of brown-skinned voices — in particular Palestinian voices, or individuals that are supporting the Palestinian people. We have seen data and multiple reports saying that Meta, in particular, are removing pro-Palestine content from Facebook, from WhatsApp, from other platforms, specifically at the behest of the Israeli government.

We actually have Hasbara ads paid for by the Israeli government and being funneled through Google Ireland, the EU headquarters here. To give two examples on that: We saw ads going through and the Google Ireland office where the Israeli government were paying YouTubers and placing Google ads and denying the famine that was occurring in Palestine. When we could see men, women, children, and babies dying of starvation in front of us, there were paid Google ads saying that these claims were false. More recently, we have seen the same type of ads coming out of Google — Google Ireland in Dublin — around the recent UN report showing that the Israeli occupying army were specifically targeting children, were specifically sniping children and babies. And immediately after that, we saw more Hasbara adverts coming out. 

So when you typed in “UN report on children being targeted by Israel” the first ad that came up was a paid ad thanks to Google and the Israeli government saying that the UN is biased towards Israel.

Those ads are being funneled through Ireland, even if they’re booked in a different location. I personally don’t believe they are being booked elsewhere, but even if they are booked elsewhere, they go through the books here so that Google can take advantage of our low corporate tax rate.

Michael Fox: Is there anything else to add that you think is important?

Jude Farrell: So fucking much, Mike.

I want to touch on something that I don’t think Irish people, and definitely American people, aren’t going to understand about who is operating in these large tech companies in the US and in Ireland at the trust and safety level.

These people tend to be Zionists. They tend to be ex-IOF soldiers. And they are using their positions of power in companies like Google, like Meta, like TikTok, like X to actually influence and shape what is being put out by those platforms. And they do this by flagging anything that is pro-Palestine, that is pro-Islam, and flagging these videos or comments as being antisemitic.

This is an absolute abuse of power. And what terrifies me is that we’ve seen this happening in other countries as well, like the UK, like Australia. We’ve seen the IHRA [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance] definition of antisemitism come into Australia. The Australian people trying to push back against that definition for the longest time, and, unfortunately, it came through. And the reality is that Zionism is not a religion. Zionism is a supremacist, occupying, colonizing ideology that is as dangerous and as evil as Nazism.

And it breaks my heart to see our Jewish community in Ireland, or in other countries, be in any way associated with Zionism, because Judaism is not Zionism. Yet this small, elitist, powerful, privileged group of people, particularly via Big Tech trust and safety, are using their influence to lobby tech companies, to lobby governments, to change the definition of what antisemitism is, and to actually change it to anti-Zionism.

Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, and I think that is hugely concerning, and Americans and Irish people need to understand that.

We’ve seen the genocide in Palestine head into its third year now, and everybody watching it start said if we do not stop it in Palestine it is just going to continue, and it is going to spread, because evil crosses oceans. 

I don’t think people know this, but Ireland is Israel’s second biggest trading partner. It goes USA, Ireland, China. And this trade is mainly in technology. This trade is nearly entirely thanks to Intel. So you’re talking about just over, I think, 3 billion euros in exports in electronic circuits and chips. So it’s really heartbreaking to hear people say Ireland is doing such a great job of supporting Palestine. Yes, the Irish people support Palestine. But no, the Irish government does not support Palestine. The Irish government spent eight years obfuscating and silencing and in the end effectively shutting down the Occupy Territories Bill. They voted on it yesterday [July 7] to put it forward immediately with them excluding services. 

So we are basically going to ban, I think, around 200,000 worth of Jaffa oranges. I’m oversimplifying things a little bit there, but that’s essentially what we’re doing. It’s insulting. Whereas we could enact sweeping sanctions against the terror state that is Israel. And that is actually what we are meant to do under the Geneva Convention. Every state is meant to do their utmost to prevent genocide. 

Well, we are two and a half years into a genocide and we are still Israel’’s second largest trading partner, so, no, do not commend Ireland. Don’t even commend the Irish people. Yes, we are doing something, but we need to do more. What we are doing is not good enough. We are not angry enough. We are not disruptive enough. We are not willing to be as uncomfortable as we need to be, in order to actually effect change. The Irish people need to do more and the Irish government need to pull their fucking finger out.

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