By Elena Frigenti – from New York
Democracy? Something not compatible with freedom. The elections? Nothing that can improve the state of affairs. The Christian faith? Historically the most important of the West, but weakened by the Wake ideology that made her too attentive to the poor, weak and in need with that being “always on the side of the victim”. The verb of Peter Thiel, The most powerful businessman-philosopher of Silicon Valley and the entity behind the political ascent of the Vice President of the United States JD Vance, is a mixture of Libertarianism, Christian Orthodoxy with millennial veins on the future destinies of the planet and absolute trust in technology. Paypal co-founder together with Elon Musk, the first external investor of Facebook, among the “Fathers” of Palantir Technologies, a company specialized in digital platforms for the collection and analysis of the data, Thiel is not only one of the hundred richest people in the world, the man of over 20 billion dollars (almost 21 and a half billion euros) for the magazine Forbes. His vision of society, and the role of digitization, is shaping the entrepreneurial strategies of Silicon Valley, and has reached Washington, influencing the thought and political agenda of contemporary America, which according to the most alarmed observers is delivering to the technocrats.
Thiel attracts positive and ruthless judgments: For Musk it is a “strategic mind in investments, fundamental in Paypal’s success”. Now the two are in tune on the vision of a state free from checks and bureaucratic limits, united by the idea that Big Tech’s agenda must dictate the United States’s internal and international policy. But their relationship has not always been easy: in the 2000s, a few months after Musk’s entry into Paypal, it was Thiel himself who took out of the board while Tesla’s future Tycoon was on his honeymoon with his first wife Justine. “At the beginning I was furious,” Musk confessed years later. «I also had murderous thoughts. But then I thought it was my luck: otherwise who knows how much I would still have the slave inside Paypal. Of course, if I had stayed, it would have become a company from trillion dollars ». Another Silicon Valley gentleman, Mark Zuckerberg, admire Thiel and considers him his mentor. “The most precious lesson? Understanding that, in a world that changes quickly, the worst risk is not to take any risk ». Thiel and Zuckerberg also think that the time has come for those born between 1981 and 2012, millennial and generation Z: “I bet that we will have a millennial president by 2032”, provides for the CEO of Meta.
But there is no shortage of critical rumors. Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder, from the first support for Donald Trump, has branded Thiel as a “problem for Silicon Valley”. For Gawker Media, brought to court by Thiel for a legal case that has decreed the bankruptcy of the site, is a “vindictive billionaire”. And the journalist Franklin Foer, in his book World Without Mind described him a “figure who embodies the dark side of the power of the big tech”, and his extreme libertarian idea “dangerous for democracy”. Beyond the interpretations and going to the source, the cornerstone of Thiel-Pensiero is this: we live in the time of the antichrist. The society is in a continuous apocalyptic process, succubus of an innate tendency to violence and chaos. “Just think of the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” he recalls. The nuclear threat, or of a new large -scale terrorist attack similar to that of 11 September, “are looming and real”. How to prevent them? Letting technology take control of technology. “The absence of such a solution to the problems of society,” he told a seminar at the Kennedy School of Government of Harvard, “makes us face the crises in the most aggressive way”. According to the entrepreneur, “on 11 September it could be avoided if the technology had had control of information. Instead, after the attacks the only answer was to attack Afghanistan “. But since 2001 many things have changed, and the vision of Thiel of a decision -making government, freed from the constraints of the bureaucratic machine seems to come true. According to unofficial estimates, Musk and its doge, the new department for governmental efficiency, would have already cut over 100 thousand public employees.t Hiel was born in 1967 in Frankfurt, the son of an engineer who had to move often for work reasons: the United States, Africa, again in America, in 1977 the Thiel settled around San Francisco when Peter has already attended seven different elementary schools. Young prodigy in chess and mathematics, as a high school clerk admires Republican president Ronald Reagan for the ability to “give the right answers to all questions”.
Registered in Philosophy in Stanford, He criticizes the perplexities of the University, according to him too “politically correct”, on opening a library dedicated to Reagan. So in 87 he founded the Stanford Review, a conservative and Libertarian student magazine of which he was the first director. Once graduated, he attended Stanford Law School and then works in a Law Firm in Grido in New York, Sullivan & Crowell. “The seven months and three more sad days of my life,” he will confess later. “I was too competitive for that type of work.” In 2003 the turning point, personal and professional. With Stephen Cohen, John Lonsdale and Alex Karp founded Palantir Technologies (if you are asking you: yes, the name comes from the crystal spheres of the Lord of the Rings that give clairvoyance) and makes Coming Out. The news of his homosexuality, shared with few friends and colleagues, makes the rounds quickly, leaving him a tip of bitterness. “Incredible how much importance is still given to these details on people’s lives.” From Stanford to Silicon Valley, to the dominant liberal vision he prefers the idea of a world where the strongest survives, and having competitors is weak. The devotion to the intelligence of the machines opens the rooms of politics, creating useful connections to pass his creed: you cannot and must not regulate the technology if you want you to operate for the common good. In 2012 he supported Ted Cruz, helping the lawyer Texan ultra -care to become senator, a charge that he still holds. Two years after the idea of a policy opposite to federal bureaucracy it takes shape, and Thiel is the engine.
In total disagreement with the then president Barack Obama, Considered a dangerous communist despite the fact that Palantir has signed very advantageous agreements with the American government for the control and analysis of sensitive data, Thiel wants to make sure that the political class is aligned with his worldwide vision. In 2016 he publicly supported Trump’s candidacy, hitherto warm to hi-tech, considered too liberal. But the new president understands that the alliance with Thiel must be cemented, and leaves him white paper. Thus the American ultra-decay is strengthened and structured: the publications that spread the Thiel-Pensiero, new theorists and new politicians, including JD Vance, spread. As James Pogue, author and correspondent for the magazine Vanity Fair, explains, “the new right had hurriedly populated by young graduates, emerging writers, podcaster and people who placed anonymously on Twitter”. In this new humus, which promises the reopening of the factories closed by relocation, it fights for freedom of expression and wants the wall on the border with Mexico, it forms vance, supported by Thiel in 2023 on its race by senator. A pact that then guarantees Vance to be chosen as vice -president, and Thiel of having Trump’s unconditional support on the deregulation of the Tech sector. The circle has closed. As another journalist, Dave Weigel notes, “is Peter Thiel’s party now”. The facts seem to give reason to this thesis
