Free Republic

Tech billionaire Peter Thiel, who previously supported former President Trump, said the Trump administration was “crazier” and “more dangerous” than he expected, in a recent interview. Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist who co-founded PayPal, has been a vocal supporter and financial advocate for Trump. In an interview with The Atlantic published Thursday, Thiel said he is not giving money to the former president — or any other candidate — in the 2024 presidential campaign.

wasn’t clear at first why Peter Thiel agreed to talk to me. He is, famously, no friend of the media. But Thiel—co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, avatar of techno-libertarianism, bogeyman of the left—consented to a series of long interviews at his home and office in Los Angeles. He was more open than I expected him to be, and he had a lot to say. But the impetus for these conversations? He wanted me to publish a promise he was going to make, so that he would not be tempted to go back on his word. And what was that thing...

Fears of a broad financial contagion spread on Friday after tech lender Silicon Valley Bank set off alarm bells over liquidity concerns — sparking share losses across the banking sector worth some $52 billion on Thursday. Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm Founders Firm advised clients to withdraw their deposits from Silicon Valley Bank — despite the fact the lender has been a mainstay for tech startups for decades, according to Bloomberg News. Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge fund manager, called on the US government to step in and bail out Silicon Valley Bank. Michael Burry, the eccentric investor featured in...

Blake Masters, with the backing of former President Donald Trump and Silicon Valley magnate Peter Thiel, won the Republican nomination to represent Arizona in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday. Masters trailed behind Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich and businessman Jim Lamon for much of the race. Masters, formerly COO of Thiel Capital and president of The Thiel Foundation, surged in the race after Trump endorsed him June 2. The race was called with Masters winning nearly 40% of the vote after an estimated four-fifths of the ballots had been counted. At the time, he held a roughly ten-point lead over...

Billionaire venture capitalist and Paypal founder Peter Thiel has decided to leave the board of Meta Platforms (the company formerly known as Facebook) after its annual shareholder meeting in May, according to an announcement from the company released just after markets closed on Monday afternoon.According to reports published by Bloomberg and the NYT, Thiel is leaving Meta’s board so he can focus on backing political candidates who support President Donald Trump’s agenda during November’s midterms, which Thiel sees as “crucial to changing the direction of the country.” Both reports cited anonymous sources familiar with Thiel’s thinking. He doesn’t want his...

Progressive Democrats, Wall Street multinationals and the RNC establishment are pouring money into Republican incumbents like Liz Cheney in order to keep the UniParty structure as strong as possible in Washington DC. The RNC, led by Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, is upholding a club rule not to give any Republican Party funding to primary challengers. Ronna McDaniel plays for the other team. Up until now, it has been grassroots donations funding GOP candidates/challengers who seek to defeat the DeceptiCons in the 2022 primary races. However, some big money is coming in on our side to help the cause. Removing Liz Cheney...

Tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel said Tuesday that American Big Tech companies do not consider themselves to be “American companies” due to “woke politics” and because their employees — particularly Chinese nationals — are sympathetic to the Chinese Communist Party on some issues. Thiel said during a virtual discussion hosted by former Secretary of State Michael Pompeo: If you look at the big five tech companies — Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft — virtually very, very little presence in China. So they aren’t naturally a pro-China constituency. Apple is probably the one that’s structurally a real problem because the whole iPhone supply...

Politicos and pundits praise American universities for their entrepreneurialism. Founders of tech companies get honorary degrees and give commencement speeches. Student orientations include sessions bragging about the startup resources students have on campus. Schools even create “entrepreneurship” majors and entrepreneurship centers within their business schools. But how much of that startup acumen is rhetoric and how much is grounded in fact? University marketers and grant-writers rely on people not being able to question their claims here. So long as they can draw some connection between the university and student go-getting, the school will claim some kind of credit. Then, administrators...

In the 18th century, Jeremy Bentham, an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer, introduced the idea of the Panopticon, a disciplinary concept brought to life in the form of a central observation tower placed within a circle of prison cells. Each cell is flooded with light, which creates an environment in which prisoners are under constant watch. Even if no guard is on duty, a prisoner will always feel as if they are being watched. Bentham described it as “[a] new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind.” The Panopticon is the optimal prison; it enables an unprecedented...

Billionaire investor Peter Thiel says one reason for Google aiding in the transfer of AI technology to the Chinese military in favor of America is that “woke” Google employees are anti-American and prefer China to the U.S. Thiel appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show following his call on Sunday for Google to be federally investigated for allowing itself to be infiltrated by the Chinese and the “treasonous decision” to hand them secretive technology. (not sure whether FR allows Infowars... Will try to post and we'll see)

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that his administration will look into whether Google is working with the Chinese government after billionaire and Facebook board member Peter Thiel accused the Silicon Valley giant of doing so. “Billionaire Tech Investor Peter Thiel believes Google should be investigated for treason. He accuses Google of working with the Chinese Government.” the president tweeted, quoting the Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends. “A great and brilliant guy who knows this subject better than anyone!” he added of Thiel. “The Trump Administration will take a look!” he concluded. Speaking Sunday at the National Conservatism Conference in...

Billionaire investor Peter Thiel said Sunday that the FBI and the CIA should investigate if Google has been infiltrated by Chinese intelligence, according to a report from Axios. Thiel blasted the Alphabet-owned Google for its work in China, saying the search engine giant was "engaged in the seemingly treasonous decision to work with the Chinese military and not with the US military," according to Axios. Last year, Google came under fire after it was revealed that the company was working on a controversial project to launch a censored search service in China. Billionaire investor Peter Thiel said Sunday that the...

Peter Thiel, billionaire investor and Facebook board member, on Sunday night said that Google should be federally investigated for allegedly aiding the Chinese military. Why it matters: Thiel is the tech industry's highest-profile Trump supporter, and one of the most powerful players in Silicon Valley. (please see full article at the link)

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Peter Thiel is an optimist. Standing before a room full of nearly 100 right-of-center student journalists on Friday night, he told the crowd “we are not on the losing side of history.” But a “reformation” needs to happen first, the billionaire tech mogul and libertarian philanthropist said. “Universities today are as corrupt as the Catholic Church of 500 years ago,” Thiel said. During his speech, he spoke of an academia that has shut down debate, excommunicated conservative scholars, and insisted a college degree is the only way to “salvation,” that being a good job and solid future....

Peter Thiel is not ready to give up on defending President Donald Trump just yet. The PayPal Holdings Inc. and Palantir Technologies Inc. co-founder praised Trump’s honesty, adding that unlike other Republican presidential hopefuls from the 2016 election, he isn’t a "zombie" and was the only candidate who addressed what Thiel considers politics’ biggest problem: political correctness. "I got to meet a lot of people running for president on the U.S. Republican side in 2016 and they all felt like zombies," he said during a Monday event on entrepreneurship in Sao Paulo, Brazil. "They couldn’t say anything different other than...

THE WORLD'S first floating city will boast its own government and cryptocurrency when it lays roots in the South Pacific in 2022, claim its backers. Building work on this isolated "utopia" will begin next year following the signing of an agreement with French Polynesia's government in 2017. The floating town is the brainchild of the Seasteading Institute, a non-profit co-founded by tech billionaire Peter Thiel (who sits on Facebook's board and is a former adviser to US President Donald Trump). It's teaming up with a private entity called Blue Frontiers to build 300 houses on a seaborne platform off the...

European regulators are clamping down on Silicon Valley companies because they are “jealous” of the success of the technology industry in the US, according to PayPal co-founder and investor Peter Thiel. Speaking about the looming threat of regulation for these companies, Thiel said that the “threat is probably greater in Europe” and there are “good reasons and bad reasons”. “The good reasons are these privacy concerns and the bad reasons are there are no successful tech companies in Europe and they are jealous of the US so they are punishing us,” he said at the Economic Club of New York...

If the billionaire tech investor and noted libertarian Peter Thiel really does leave Silicon Valley for Los Angeles to escape what he views as an increasing intolerance for conservatives, the city’s growing community of conservatives will be there to welcome him. Among LA’s right-leaning residents are the Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro, the political commentator Dave Rubin and the blogger Bill Whittle. There’s also the former members of the defunct Friends of Abe, a secretive group of Hollywood conservatives that fractured in 2016 over the candidacy of Donald Trump. PragerU is one of a cluster of LA-based digital media organisations in...

Explaining why he is moving his influential investment firm from the Silicon Valley, entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel says it’s one thing for a culture to be “quite liberal” and another for it to be “totalitarian.” Thiel, a cofounder of PayPal and an early Facebook investor, was virtually alone among his colleagues as one of President Trump’s biggest supporters in 2016. He acknowledged in an interview Friday with the Fox Business Network that he “got heat” for his stance. “Fault Line: How a Seismic Shift in Culture is Threatening Free Speech” is available now at the WND Superstore. Thiel,...

Billionaire venture capitalist and entrepreneur Peter Thiel predicts that Donald Trump will get a second term in 2020. “I think that if he runs again, he will get re-elected,” Thiel said at an event hosted by the Economic Club of New York on Thursday. Thiel also expects that it’s “probably the case” that the Democrats will do “quite well” in the midterm elections this fall. “The question about 2020 is a much trickier one,” Thiel said. “It’s really one of — is there anything that was learned from Hillary Clinton’s defeat?” He added that he thinks there’s a “vague parallel”...