{Following a military coup,} the {Honduran} government approved a law that enabled the creation of Peter Thiel’s Zones for Employment and Economic Development (ZEDEs). ZEDEs derive from the idea of “charter cities.”
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The ZEDEs are allowed to have their own government, police force, courts, laws and any taxes collected would not be paid to the Honduran government but to the ZEDEs themselves. ZEDEs are a tech billionaire’s dream: unbridled power, tech fantasy and resource hoarding, where the government is run by AI and cryptocurrency is the main currency.
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ZEDEs are the tech billionaire representation of neocolonialism, {dispossessing indigenous communities to take possession of} Honduran land, resources, and a workforce to build playground empires for tech billionaires {and} avoid constitutional protections, government accountability, {labor protections,} or even human rights protections.
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In 2020, Karp admitted that Palantir “{finds} people in our country who are undocumented,” referring to contracts with the Department of Homeland Security to use Palantir to surveil undocumented immigrants.