# The Billionaire Behind Britain's Digital ID Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-drey-dossier-7704467/the-billionaire-behind-britain-s-digital-id Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-drey-dossier-7704467/the-billionaire-behind-britain-s-digital-id.md Podcast: [The Drey Dossier](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-drey-dossier-7704467) Published: 2026-02-13T22:34:29+00:00 Episode link: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/HSEDE1683591474.mp3 Audio file: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/HSEDE1683591474.mp3 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-drey-dossier-7704467/episodes/the-billionaire-behind-britain-s-digital-id Duration seconds: 1927 ## Resource The UK government told three million people that digital ID would be optional, and the newspapers called it a victory. But the database was never optional, the verification infrastructure was never optional, and the man behind it all has been working on this for twenty-five years. This video is about how Larry Ellison went from being rejected by America after 9/11 to embedding Oracle in the NHS, funding Tony Blair's institute, hiring a Prime Minister's father-in-law, and quietly building the exact surveillance system Congress banned, just somewhere else.If you want the full reporting, all the sources, and the receipts, everything is in the Substack below. That is also the best way to support the work so I can keep doing this.Substack: thedreydossier.substack.com Follow me onTikTok: / thedreydossier Instagram: / thedreydossier Independent journalism only exists if people can actually see it, so if this helped connect some dots, feel free to share it. Thanks for being here. ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-drey-dossier-7704467/episodes/the-billionaire-behind-britain-s-digital-id/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-drey-dossier-7704467/the-billionaire-behind-britain-s-digital-id.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.