Innovation, Blue Origin, Surveillance, UX, Harvard, and Theory of Mind
Weekly Review of News in Technology, UX and AI
Here’s the latest news, resources, and use cases from the world of product, UX, AI and technology. Let’s go:
📊 Unstructured Data
🤔 Innovation
🚀 Blue Origin
👺 Palantir
🌭 DOGE
🤖 UX
🧠 Theory of Mind
🏫 Harvard
Podcast
Structured Thinking for Unstructured Data: A Conversation with Founder Kirk Marple
In this episode of Product by Design, Kyle is joined by Kirk Marple, founder and CEO of Graphlit, to explore the world of unstructured data and how it’s transforming with the rise of LLMs and AI-native tools. Kirk shares his journey from working at Microsoft and General Motors to building Graflit—a platform designed to make unstructured data as usable as structured data.
News and Useful Reads
Trump’s cuts and crackdowns endanger American innovation, experts warn
America has long been a leader in innovation. That is because it invests significantly in the research that fuels innovation. And attracts many of the best innovators. But all that could easily change, especially with many of the new policies in place against universities, research agencies, and immigrants.
Trump’s crackdown on higher education, federal spending, and immigration could come at the cost of the US losing some of its academic, scientific, and research dominance, especially to China, some analysts warn.
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin flop is bigger than Katy Perry
I don’t think I would have even paid attention to this little jaunt into space if it didn’t get so much negative attention. They really botched it at almost every turn.
Doubtless you know the contours already: Jeff Bezos’ fiancee Lauren Sánchez, pop star Katy Perry, and four other women did a big space tourism trip in the name of performative femiladyism, wearing “space suits” cut so as to require a pair of Spanx underneath. “We’re going to have lash extensions flying in the capsule,” Sánchez said. “We are going to put the ‘ass’ in astronaut,” Perry said.
ICE Is Paying Palantir $30 Million to Build ‘ImmigrationOS’ Surveillance Platform
Palantir continues to take massive amounts of data to use in surveillance against everyone, including Americans. It’s even worse to see America’s gestapo—ICE—empowered to hurt more people by these companies.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is paying software company Palantir $30 million to provide the agency with “near real-time visibility” on people self-deporting from the United States, according to a contract justification published in a federal register on Thursday. The tool would also help ICE choose who to deport, giving special priority to “visa overstays,” the document shows.
DOGE Is Building a Master Database to Surveil and Track Immigrants
Speaking of using data to terrorize, DOGE is doing something similar, building a database of Americans so the government can target anyone out of favor, from immigrants to dissidents.
DOGE is knitting together immigration databases from across DHS and uploading data from outside agencies including the Social Security Administration (SSA), as well as voting records, sources say. This, experts tell WIRED, could create a system that could later be searched to identify and surveil immigrants.
We built UX. We broke UX. And now we have to fix it!
As a product person, I work with and advocate for UX all the time. But as the world of product management and UX shifts, we have to realign to ensure we’re creating the best outcomes.
We didn’t just lose our influence. We gave it away. UX professionals need to stop accepting silence, reclaim our seat at the table, and design with strategic clarity, not just surface polish.
Other Interesting Finds
Theory of mind: What chess and drug dealers can teach you about manipulation
The greatest tacticians are those who think ahead. Chess grandmasters, famous generals, great world leaders, and mafia dons all share one skill: They are all many more steps ahead than their rivals.
Trump Officials Blame Mistake for Setting Off Confrontation With Harvard
This past week, America did something surprising—we started rooting for Harvard. As the university stood up to a long list of demands from the Trump government, it showed that companies and institutions can push back. And in doing so, expose the chaos within our current government.
It is unclear what prompted the letter to be sent last Friday. Its content was authentic, the three people said, but there were differing accounts inside the administration of how it had been mishandled.