He Built a Phone the Government Can't Track W/Hakeem Anwar

Episode Summary

Oto sits down with Hakeem Anwar — founder of #TakeBackOurTech and Above, a privacy-first phone, laptop, and communications company — to map out exactly how the surveillance system works and what people can actually do about it.

They trace Hakeem's path from a decade-deep conspiracy rabbit hole through a big-tech career to founding Above after COVID convinced him he was "coding his own prison."

From there the conversation covers the AI data center boom (and the free tool Hakeem built, aidatacentermap.org, to track its water and power use), Palantir's "unified surveillance" model, the push toward digital ID, why he's grown wary of Bitcoin's transparency, and a live demo of de-Googled phones, offline maps, and the F-Droid app store.

They close on Hakeem's long-term vision: small communities running their own local servers and mesh networks, fully independent of Big Tech.

Chapters / Timestamps

(Shifted +1:05 to account for the trailer at the top of the episode)

00:00 – Trailer

01:05 – Intro & Hakeem's Red Pill Moment

03:05 – Rabbit Holes: From Conspiracy to Big Tech

04:05 – COVID, Freedom Cells & the Pivot to Above

08:05 – Why Privacy Matters: From Snowden to Data Brokers