In October 2025, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced plans to build Stargate Argentina, described as the first Stargate project in Latin America. The announcement was framed in the language of opportunity: clean energy, economic growth, and AI adoption for millions of Argentinians. But the second episode of the Unlimited Hangout Podcast, hosted by investigative journalist Whitney Webb and co-host Mark Goodwin, pulls back the official framing and raises questions that the press releases do not answer.

What Is Stargate Argentina?

According to the OpenAI announcement published on its global affairs page, the project centers on a Letter of Intent signed between OpenAI and Sur Energy, an Argentine firm that would serve as the energy and infrastructure developer. OpenAI describes itself as a potential offtaker, meaning it would purchase computing capacity from a data center it does not itself build or own. Sur Energy would lead the formation of a consortium and source what OpenAI calls secure, efficient, and sustainable energy.

The announcement followed meetings in Buenos Aires between President Javier Milei, his cabinet, and an OpenAI delegation led by Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane. Reporting by La Politica Online, cited in a Slidebean investigation published in December 2025, described Sur Energy as a company that was virtually unknown before the deal was announced. Slidebean’s on-the-ground reporting in Patagonia found that the precise location of the data center had not been publicly confirmed, even months after the announcement.

The region under consideration was also, at the time of filming, in a state of drought emergency. Local reporting by Realidad SM and Masp Neuquen documented water and agricultural emergencies in Neuquen province. The International Energy Agency has noted that large-scale data centers carry significant water and power demands, which adds weight to local concerns in a region already under resource stress.

Who Is Emiliano Kargieman?

The figure connecting OpenAI’s Stargate ambitions to Argentina’s technology sector is Emiliano Kargieman. His quote appears in the official OpenAI announcement, where he is identified as a partner of Sur Energy. His biography, published on the Satellogic investor relations page, describes a career spanning more than 25 years across technology and government-adjacent institutions.

Before Satellogic, Kargieman co-founded Core Security Technologies, which developed what is described as the first automated penetration testing software. The client list included Apple, Cisco, Homeland Security, the NSA, NASA, Lockheed Martin, and DARPA. He also co-founded Aconcagua Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on high-tech Latin American startups, and served as a member of the Special Projects Group at the World Bank.

Webb and Goodwin trace his trajectory from those early ventures through his time at the NASA Ames campus in Mountain View, California, around 2010, which is where Kargieman has said the concepts that became Satellogic took shape. They also examine his connection to Singularity University, the Silicon Valley institution with ties to NASA Ames, where Satellogic’s founding ideas were developed. The podcast episode discusses his relationship with the Endeavor network, an American organization that Webb and Goodwin describe as sponsoring a close-knit group of Argentine tech figures who have blurred the line between Argentina’s domestic tech sector and Silicon Valley.

Satellogic, Palantir, and Predictive Surveillance

Satellogic is a satellite imaging company that went public and lists Kargieman as CEO and co-founder. The Unlimited Hangout Podcast episode draws on a longer investigation the outlet published in 2024 under the title “Debt From Above,” which examined Satellogic’s business model and partnerships in detail.

Webb and Goodwin describe Satellogic as working closely with Palantir and SpaceX to build what they characterize as a global satellite surveillance network. The podcast segment titled “Merlin: Palantir in Space, AI + SATL = Predictive Surveillance” addresses a system the hosts say is designed to combine satellite imagery with AI analysis toward a stated goal of predicting the future. The hosts do not use that phrase loosely: they point to public statements and corporate materials that use predictive framing to describe the network’s capabilities.

Palantir, founded with early backing from In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture arm, has long supplied data analytics tools to military and intelligence agencies. SpaceX operates the Starlink satellite network. The combination of Satellogic’s imaging capacity with Palantir’s analytics platform and SpaceX’s infrastructure represents, in Webb and Goodwin’s reading, a privately assembled surveillance architecture operating on a global scale.

The AI Debt Bubble Argument

One of the more striking observations in the podcast comes from Kargieman himself. Webb and Goodwin note that Kargieman has publicly suggested OpenAI may not end up being the primary user of the Stargate Argentina data center once it is built. His reasoning, as the hosts describe it, involves what he sees as an AI debt bubble: the possibility that the financing underpinning the current wave of AI infrastructure investment could collapse before the centers reach full commercial use.

The podcast draws a parallel to the Enron collapse and to the dot-com infrastructure boom, arguing that speculative investment cycles often build physical infrastructure that outlasts the companies that funded it, and that the infrastructure then gets absorbed by different users under different ownership. A segment titled “Bubbles Build Infrastructure, AI and Enron Overlaps” lays out this framework explicitly.

If the data center is built and OpenAI does not become the long-term tenant, who does? Webb and Goodwin point to Kargieman’s own statements, which they say suggest the Argentine state is a likely candidate, particularly as President Milei’s government pursues what they describe as a digital transformation of public services using AI tools. The OpenAI announcement itself mentions discussions with the Argentine government about deploying ChatGPT across government agencies as part of the OpenAI for Countries initiative.

Milei, RIGI, and the Investment Framework

Argentina’s current investment climate was shaped partly by a program called RIGI, introduced under Milei. As Slidebean’s reporting explains, RIGI allows foreign companies investing more than $200 million in Argentina to receive tax reductions and reduced regulatory requirements. Stargate Argentina, if built at the reported scale of $25 billion, would qualify comfortably.

The Milei government has been explicit about its desire to attract foreign capital and position Argentina as a technology hub. The OpenAI announcement describes ChatGPT adoption in Argentina as having tripled in the past year, with the highest usage among adults aged 18 to 34. The government’s enthusiasm for the deal, and its willingness to structure investment law to attract it, gives the project a political dimension that extends well beyond a simple infrastructure agreement.

Pre-Crime Systems and Digital Twins

The final segments of the Unlimited Hangout Podcast episode address concepts that the hosts present as the logical endpoint of the systems being assembled. A segment titled “Pre-Crime, Digital Twins” examines the use of AI-driven predictive policing models and the construction of detailed digital replicas of individuals and populations for behavioral prediction.

These are not science fiction concepts. Palantir’s Gotham platform has been used by law enforcement agencies in the United States and Europe for exactly this kind of predictive analysis. The question Webb and Goodwin raise is whether the infrastructure being built in Argentina, connected to Satellogic’s satellite imaging and Palantir’s analytics, is being assembled with this capability in mind from the start.

The episode does not reach a single definitive conclusion. What it does is connect a series of documented facts: a satellite company founded by a man with deep ties to US defense contractors and intelligence-adjacent institutions, a data center deal announced through a company that was barely known before the signing, a national government restructuring its investment law to welcome the project, and public statements suggesting the state itself may become the data center’s primary client. Whether those connections add up to a deliberate plan or an opportunistic convergence of interests is a question the investigation leaves open.

This article draws on reporting from Activist Post, OpenAI Global Affairs, Slidebean, Satellogic Investor Relations, and Worldwide Business Research.

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