Unraveling The Mystery Of Peter Thiel — With Max Chafkin

Channel: Alex Kantrowitz

Published at: 2021-09-21

YouTube video id: Os1cOynbY8M

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os1cOynbY8M

hello and welcome to the big technology
podcast a show for cool-headed nuanced
conversation of the tech world and
beyond our guest today is max chafkin he
is a features editor at bloomberg
businessweek and the author
of the brand new book just hit shelves
yesterday it's called the contrarian
peter thiel and silicon valley's pursuit
of power
it's interesting that you also say one
silicon valley so we have to get into
that is there one is there many silicon
valleys is a silicon valley a location
is it an idea
is it uniform is it
does it contain multitudes as the la
times just spoke about your book anyway
max welcome to the show yeah thanks for
having me alex i'm really excited to be
here thank you alex you already got me
excited i've i learned so much from this
book and i'm just like uh
i'm thrilled to be talking to you and i
think that's going to be a fun
discussion so why don't we start here um
peter thiel is one one guy
um
we we see him in headlines every now and
again he's done
you know a handful of things has he
built the most impressive
companies in silicon valley i don't
think so um
certainly a presence there so
why is he so important that
you became you know obsessed in the way
that got you to write a book and you
know we're about to spend about an hour
talking about him why why do people if
people are gonna listen to one episode
of this podcast why why this be why
would this be the one yeah so i've got
two two answers um and one uh the the
kind of quick answer is he's fascinating
he's he's somebody's full of
contradictions um
uh you know
i think the thing that caught a lot of
people's attention with teal as a figure
of fascination um you know in 2016 when
he endorsed donald trump right there's
this feeling of like this um futurist
this prominent futurist who's a gay
immigrant um from california uh is
backing a reactionary uh
anti-immigrant new york real estate
developer who's running on a nativist
platform um like that's weird and
interesting and to me like that is
i i think you know as obvious as that
sounds i think that's part of the kernel
of of of why people care about him um
but but i mean the real answer to your
question is
and and and this is something that you
know i i thought about as i was writing
the book and tried to develop it but
teal
i think as you say he's not the richest
um tech mogul he hasn't started the best
companies um there are certainly stories
you could tell about the tech industry
over the last 20 years where other
people would be kind of in the main
character and uh would be like the main
character
but i would argue that teal has had a
bigger cultural impact on on the tech
industry than than any single person and
and so like by that i mean how the tech
industry sees itself how um companies
see what they do and how they do
business so in other words
this idea
that founders that the the class of the
founder is this kind of special person
who has a privileged access to kind of
like what the company's supposed to do
and who's right who's just just knows
what's best um that came from peter
thiel i mean that comes from founders
fund and that um that ethos i think you
know goes a long way to explaining like
a lot of the weird stuff that has
happened in the tech industry over the
last um 20 years as the tech industry
kind of spills into
um you know whatever the real world as
as uh facebook right but max is is it
more than that though it's more than
just trusting the founder right like of
course it is it is having read your book
it is in particular this
libertarian impulse that he has
absolutely
institutionalism right that essentially
says
you know
screw it screw the government screw the
rules disruption is almost de facto good
absolutely and that is something i mean
he starts with the company paypal
which you outlined pretty impressively
uh
was yes about sending money on the
internet but also in some ways breaking
the global financial system so yeah yeah
of course he did this thing called
founders fund where he wants to empower
the founder and he talked about you know
how how bad education is and paid people
to drop out of school but
you know having read your book my
takeaway was that his core
cultural impact
on silicon valley was
convincing people that you know
they should and could break down the
system in any way possible and this is
you know obviously do it for money but
to me it seemed you know from his very
early years he had this libertarian
anti-institutionalist streak uh and that
extended you know to so many people he
came into contact in silicon valley and
you know i wrote down a few that have
worked with him when you talk about elon
musk uh david david carp uh joe
david sacks yes sorry david sacks alex
carp joe lonsdale i mean
it's it's unbelievable how many people
have sort of come into his or about
orbit and seemed to have walked away as
this you know from there
uh from the philosophical standpoint i
100 agree with everything you just said
and i think you you just put put your
finger on exactly i'd say like the most
important thing about teal's
you know kind of ideology and identity
is is this idea yeah that breaking the
rules it's not just that it has um
neutral value it's not just that it's
that the rules can be ignored it's that
there's something good about about
breaking the rules and um
and that i think you can sort of see
why that would be useful if you're if
you're building a startup um but it's
also
um you know obviously can have you know
detrimental effects and and now we've
created and this is why i think
um it's really important to pay
attention to somebody like peter thiel
and to pay attention to teal in
particular because that ethos tealism if
you want to call it that is
basically the the main ethos of
facebook of you know of of most of the
bigger companies in silicon valley this
this idea that the rules
um
yeah just aren't that important and and
maybe it's best to to cast them aside
from time to time
and he hated it seems like he hated
people who
were pro-government pro-institution
uh in part because he was bullied as a
kid and was sort of an outcast and
you know he grew up in silicon valley if
i if i remember correctly and people
didn't treat him well and yeah like you
are
uh out there saying you're gonna go
you know heal the world and you know
what's right and your precious
institutions
and uh and this is the way you treat
someone i'm gonna wreck it and that
seemed to have defined a lot of what he
did through life is that yeah
yeah i think that's right i mean the the
teal family it's amazing how much comes
back to bullying i did yeah seriously uh
they were they're outsiders um you know
his parents were were german immigrants
um
uh very conservative uh very religious
um
and uh and and he moved around a lot as
a kid uh you know they bounced from
cleveland um to south africa and then
finally to foster city which is this
suburb um you know you know in the bay
area but it's pretty far removed from
silicon valley it's on marshlands yeah
it's not the nicest yeah i mean it's i
think the houses there are pretty
expensive just like everywhere else but
it it's it's it's kind of a world away
um yeah you can look at it as you're as
you're flying into sfo right out the
window that's what you look at um and so
yeah he he definitely he was um you know
very smart and withdrawn
um and and angry and i think you know
some of that anger like you said it came
from from bullying um and and it kind of
spilled into his
um sort of output as a as a human first
in uh as an undergraduate at stanford
starting this kind of you know very hard
right-wing um newspaper the stanford
review and then and then continuing on
you know throughout throughout his uh
his career
so here's what i'm puzzled by
so someone who who grows up as an
outcast and has this uh
you know the world be damned attitude
and wants to wreck things how does he
end up having the influence in silicon
valley that influence all the people you
know that we just spoke about by the way
let's add mark zuckerberg to the list he
funded facebook and he's a facebook
board member absolutely it you if you're
encountering a group of of generally
optimistic builders
how does this you know very dark
attitude towards the world and its
institutions take such a hold inside
that community
so one i you know i i spent a lot of
time thinking about this you know i
talked to a lot of um
you know former paypal uh employees um
and i think it's weird paypal has really
people know a lot about paypal and tech
it's been kind of scrutinized a lot i
think rightly but there's still things
like that i are probably
underappreciated
and i think one is the extent to which
there was this kind of band of brothers
at paypal
who were all from concern of this
conservative publication like there were
like it wasn't just oh teal starts a a
conservative newspaper and then you know
goes to law school and then uh gets into
tech but like he really brought along
this whole crew of people and and their
whole thing had been kind of us against
the world and that then became
transposed
you know into paypal where paypal you
know there was a political aspect to
paypal which is something people
overlook you kind of hinted at it but
you know in the early days they were
talking about it as you said like as
this thing that would break
the not just the global banking system
but like national sovereignty that it
would make it impossible for countries
to regulate their their monetary systems
make it possible for people in
repressive states to you know obviously
to move money in or out easily and and
so it was this you know
overtly political thing
and then there were you know then there
then then it sort of transposes into you
know it's us against the corporatist
it's us against ebay which you know for
a long time ebay bought paypal but for a
long time ebay was there was also their
kind of um main antagonist and i think
he didn't um tl and meg whitman just
weren't on speaking terms by the time
that acquisition no i think there's like
that is a uh yeah they're they're like
uh uh
i don't know i mean
with everyone i mean he also fought with
with elon and did a coup to sort of take
the yeah exactly
over him so um yep sorry go keep going
anyway i was just gonna say these um
when you talk to these guys about kind
of like what you know why was paypal
successful one of the things they say is
like we had this kind of we had the
sense that it was like us against the
world there's this kind of a
cohesiveness to to the paypal team
and i think that that kind of
you know basically spun forward into the
paypal mafia this this kind of
feeling that it's us against the world
um
you know i don't think people have
noticed the that political thing much
but like
i think a lot of the kind of um some of
this kind of cult of disruption stuff
that we see in in in silicon valley
probably best epitomized by like uber or
something i think kind of has its roots
in right-wing activist politics the
right-wing activist politics of of the
1980s which is like where thiel did like
his first
um you know it wasn't a business really
although i guess it kind of was a
business his first entrepreneurial um
venture and you know in in right-wing
activist politics you know there's this
like big tradition of you know kind of
like screwing with the administration
there are all these stories of um
sort of news college newspaper editors
like going in and stealing um you know
lists of names from the registrar or or
like you know sort of doing these like
um acts of um protest or whatever uh and
sort of finding ways around the
institutions and i think that kind of
spirit um
you know you you can you know draw a
line straight to um some of the things
that that paypal did because paypal
totally just ignored every banking
regulation they you know it wasn't just
that they were ideologically opposed to
you know like like uh the the normal uh
model of regulating currencies they were
just actively just just you know saying
screw it and um
and eventually and they and they um you
know got away with it i mean i don't got
away with it as the right word but you
know they were able to navigate the
company to to a successful exit and
settle with the regulators and and kind
of integrate themselves into the um
global financial system and i think
um you know the rest of of the tech
industry um you know kind of learned a
valuable lesson from that experience
which is that you can um you know you
can succeed by pursuing this sort of
regulatory arbitrage by by attacking a
regulated industry and by making one of
your points of differentiation that you
do not follow the rules
so it's largely accepted as fact that
silicon valley portrays itself as a save
the world type of companies versus we're
just doing this uh to make money
how do those two things
uh
look when you juxtapose them the we're
trying to take down the system and this
you know we're here to heal the world or
some of the zuckerberg language so i
think they're kind of two threads
of kind of ideology that and i argue
this in the book it's definitely up for
debate but here's how the way i think
about it right and this is um for was
first suggested to me by roger mcnamee
who's a you know venture capitalist who
um you know has turned uh critic of
facebook um but
but
basically you have kind of like the
steve jobs way of thinking about
companies and i think this i think
obviously there's some hypocrisy here
but the basic idea is that
business is a form of creative
expression and it's a form it's a way to
like help people get the most out of
themselves like you know kind of uh new
age human business as like new age human
potential movement stuff so um apple of
course fits into that um but so does
google right um you know it's like we're
we're we're making the world's
information accessible we're making you
smarter or whatever it is um and then
there's this like other thread which is
the tealist thread which is business as
disruption business as power and that is
you know grow as big as you can
and and like you know get a monopoly i
mean in that you know teal wrote whole
book zero to one where the basic
takeaway is you know businesses if they
want to succeed they should they should
strive for you know monopoly
profits which is another way of saying
you know dominance and and so
i don't think those two things can be
reconciled i think they're they're
they're like on two sides of the
spectrum
and
i think that
you know obviously that the teal view is
very very cynical
but of course
you know a lot of these companies that
say they're saving the world are
actually you know they're just sort of
saying i don't know i think you i think
both those frameworks are potentially
useful to like understand silicon valley
and understand why it's grown so quickly
and
stuff yeah i think my my theory on this
is that um steve jobs warped a lot of
people's view of what tech is
yeah and because he was so
hard uh
so influential and so hard on the um
save the world mentality that everyone
had this picture in their head that
that's what tech is in fact i think you
mentioned the tech press's influence a
bunch in the book which i thought was
great
and i think the tech press in large part
wanted every founder to be steve jobs i
mean you see what's happening with
elizabeth holmes it was yeah yeah her
responding to those incentives and how
many covers did she get wearing the
turtle
while she was defrauding everybody so i
think that that was um something that
folks needed to felt they needed to
portray the outside world but if you
looked on the inside
it was teal mentality all the way
yeah yeah um
yeah for sure and it's kind of funny i
went back and read a bunch of the um
you know whatever the output about the
tech industry you know there are books
written um you know in the in the early
2000s um and a lot of their essays and
stuff all about how the the role the
counterculture in forming silicon valley
which i think is okay like it's totally
valid and yes like yeah steve jobs was a
bit of a hippie but it's kind of a weird
way of looking at an industry
that literally started as an extension
of the us military and like like you
know there's nothing
there is there are counter cultural
things about silicon valley but to see
the tech industry as just this kind of
outgrowth of of 60s counterculture is
like to miss
you know the whole beginning of the
industry and like you know a thread that
probably is just as important as like as
you say you know something that kind of
a little bit came down to branding or or
something like that right it's like
these guys talking about saving the
world um
but but i don't know i mean the real
root is a bunch of defense contractors
yeah well there's something to root for
in the word disrupt
i i do think that the
tech industries claims that the um the
way things have been done for a long
time have been corrupt and hurt people
think there's any doubt about that and
they especially resonated in the time of
uh the financial crisis i think you even
talked about how you approached teal and
you you asked him to participate in how
i built this uh article
and you were talking about how i was a
little schlocky and but but we were
looking for ways to be like you know
there's got to be some optimism because
the old way just brought down the whole
economy
so i i do think that like okay yeah did
it start military of course doesn't
everything start military the internet
started military um but but there there
is
you know you can see some some virtue in
what these companies are doing but
um
that's where the story starts but so
many so many times actually gets
actualized in this tealist way which is
like teel had i mean from your from your
book it's clear he had hate hate hate
for institutions and eventually that
came through in his recommendations once
he got asked to help staff the trump
administration which we'll get to after
after the break um but it is interesting
to see how like you know it could start
from a virtuous virtuous place but very
often
and in a bad place and it seems like you
know i don't know it seems like teal had
a large hand in that yeah yeah 100 and i
also think um
you know there's something just
like appealing about the honesty of the
of the teal world view especially if
you're feeling a little bit um
you know if you're feeling betrayed like
like the the kind of post-financial
crisis mode um you're feeling betrayed
by institutions or if you're just kind
of fed up with the the hypocrisy of um
you know whatever of of that's kind of
inherent to capitalism the the sort of
cynical world view of just sort of like
yeah get as big as you can and make as
much money as you can um and you know
forget being good like that that has i
mean i don't know i mean maybe it's
because i'm a bad person or something
but i i see the appeal you know i i i
was gonna ask if some of this stuff
resonated with you i mean somebody's
institutions i mean look i i
i don't know i feel like i tend to
believe in institutions sometimes more
than i should but some of them are bad
yeah if you look at the state of the
country and obviously i don't think the
teal of mentality has helped us very
much but
uh
people have been let down by their
institutions and they don't believe them
anymore and so the idea of burning them
down is appealing in some way even
though it might not be the right
solution i i really think that reforming
them is the right solution but i can see
why burning them down has a real appeal
among a lot of people i mean teal would
not be um uh
would not have so many followers he
would not be dangerous if he wasn't
right a lot i mean that that's the thing
about so like yeah i think i mean he was
obviously
the you know for instance his his
critique of universities right it's it
has a lot there's a lot of of truth to
it um you know universities have been
you know overcharging people and have
been you know uh
failing to prepare
uh students and i but is the answer to
convince like a bunch of 17 year olds to
like not go to college especially like
not to go to the best like you know i
i'm not sure that the answers are are
correct but often like his diagnosis of
the problem
is
is really is effective and is true i
mean he's gotten um you know jeff bezos
like famously uh ripped teal once by
saying you know can think about
contrarians as they you know they get
most things wrong um but teal's been
right a lot at least right on the kind
of
big
on the big things often i think the
execution is where he's sort of screwed
up um either financially like not made
as much money as he could have or just
just done something kind of
objectionable or dangerous or something
like that yeah i want to get back to the
biography details and then keep going on
this thread so why don't we do that
right after the break we'll be back here
on big technology podcast we got max
chaffkin uh he is the author of the
contrarian peter thiel in silicon
valley's pursuit of power it's a great
book we'll be back right after this
and we're back here on the big
technology podcast with max traffic and
he's talking to us about his peer teal
book the contrarian
so
you know we talked a little bit about
how peter thiel went to paypal
and had this burned down the system type
of mentality um but howard is how does
he then spread his influence because
look at the end of the day there's a lot
of founders and there's a lot of
technologists with kooky views
or extreme views or
passionate views about different
subjects
they don't always build a following so
was it when teal then
you know moved on from paypal and
started a very successful hedge fund and
then eventually a venture capital firm
that some of the ideas that he had about
society started to take hold absolutely
and i think he did it on purpose like it
wasn't it wasn't something that just
happened by accident um
you know i think teal
obviously he's respected as a very smart
investor as a futurist um
i think he has you know his moments of
rhetorical brilliance um but he's also
like a really good marketer and i think
um teal as kind of an influencer or as a
you know self-created figure it's it's
actually probably a helpful way to think
about him actually i think i would argue
it's helpful for i think a lot of these
um sort of tech industry figures but in
any case as an influencer yeah they're
the original influencers
um but uh you know i we can have a whole
discussion about elon musk like i think
elon musk is totally underrated as a
marketer and like just and i'm not to
say sure i think people really
understand elon's well okay maybe it's
maybe people are coming around to him
now that he can like move the stock
price buy up but anyway um
let me get back on track i i think teal
um
coming out of of paypal and he made a
little bit of money and i think he he
very self-consciously set out to turn
himself into this a figure a figure of
interest and of influence and at first
and you can kind of see this because his
early efforts of it were really bad um
he um opened a restaurant it was like a
kind of a restaurant nightclub called
frison
yeah yeah i mean how much money did he
spend to build a thing i don't it was
really
i think there's some detail in the book
about like the cost of the sound system
and um it just sounds million dollars
pretty tacky yeah yeah and it wasn't
um it wasn't immediately successful like
as a restaurant it went out of business
he also started a nascar magazine um you
know despite uh i don't think being you
know a sports guy or whatever like
opinions about like
basically how how
uh what was men were happy that women
were cooking for them
in a nascar anyways it was just like a
weird uh combination of like a sort of
college political magazine right-wing
college political magazine with a sports
magazine they hired like these weekly
standard columnists to write car columns
and they you know inevitably you know
wrote kind of like weekly standard
columns and of course you know people
who are race car fans they might be
conservative but like they're not
picking up a race car to get the like
peter thiel view of uh gender relations
or something i mean that magazine by the
way just seemed to me like something
that someone would imagine in a
laboratory about like what nascar fans
would want without ever having gone to a
nascar race and ever never spoken to a
nascar fan or what um a rich guy who was
trying to establish himself as a a
big-time investor a hedge fund guy might
do and because of course
i mean all the above yeah yeah media of
course media is a great way to um to
create influence and and and same thing
like to get invited to cool parties and
having your restaurants a way to get
invited cool parties or have cool
parties and i think he was very
explicitly trying to create this this
aura around him as an investor and that
and it was originally
as like a hedge fund guy and this is
kind of one of the funny things to me
because like if you grab like a random
person on the street like a random um
wall street journal reader in 2005 2006
and said who is peter thiel and they
would say oh peter thiel he's one of the
most successful hedge fund managers in
the world they would never have said oh
he's a technologist anything like that
he was he was like the next george soros
um and he was totally styling himself as
that not as not as this
technologist and it's only let's define
what that is he was betting large
amounts of money on
things failing
yeah on on i mean you know
broadly yeah it's it's betting on you
know macroeconomic swings but
and in the specific case for teal he was
he was betting against the u.s economy
and this was the guy who even left he
left paypal and bet against paypal and
he told him
yeah he wanted to i actually don't know
for sure if he did you know how whether
he followed through with the uh the
investments the message going out the
door so yeah yes exactly and and he's
you know i talked to um you know folks
who worked you know at his investment
firm um in those years and they talked
about this very
explicit notion that that teal has two
portfolios an optimistic portfolio and a
pessimistic portfolio the optimistic
portfolio is the startup investing it's
it's facebook it's you know palantir or
whatever and the pessimistic portfolio
is this macroeconomic investing which
was you know betting against the us
economy betting that the financial
crisis
was going to be big and was going to be
worse than anyone you know expected and
kind of betting betting on an apocalypse
um
and um anyway he was he was right about
that
notion i mean there's this scene
in the book
that i think at the time the people who
worked um
at clarium thought was insane that was
his
yeah which was his hedge fund where you
know he and other senior people were
talking about you know buying a bunch of
gold and burying it and um and you know
just like really just flipping out in a
way that felt uncomfortable to some um
to some of the people who worked there
because you know because they didn't
think you know banks were going to fail
um but of course you know some banks you
know did fail and and um and so it
wasn't that like their their crazy
paranoia wasn't that far off but then
unfortunately
as i said like the execution did not
kind of match the the the insight they
weren't teal was not able to come up
with like an investment strategy
that
to capitalize on on on this and i'll
make sure
he kind of went the other way he uh
someone described it to me it was like
they were trying to find a contrarian
take to their original contrarian take
where like that you're sort of like you
you think that that this thing that
you've called has now gone too
mainstream so you have to you know come
up with something even weirder and it
was in that effort that they that they
failed they ended up
trying to time the bottom of the stock
market um and as a result
missed
they both
bought when they should have sold and
then they missed the rebound um and and
as a result his hedge fund completely
failed and um you know he had to
basically
it it was reformed as a you know family
office like the outside capital um
went away um and he lost billions of
dollars and and after that he
then kind of restyled himself again and
not as a um you know cool hedge fund
manager with a cool restaurant and cool
nascar magazine but as the quirky um
tech guy and that's when he starts um
backing seasteading that's when he kind
of goes back to the um to his political
roots he starts writing more kind of out
there you know libertarian political
stuff uh he's funding life extension
research and that's when the kind of
like the peter thiel that
most tech people would recognize starts
to kind of come into focus right and for
listeners sea setting is this
libertarian idea where you basically
build a barge or some sort of island off
the coast and
you do what you want without the rules
of the oppressive uh rest of society
that's fascinating stuff uh so maybe we
should move big technology podcast to
some seastead so we don't have to pay
taxes just kidding um but anyway uh that
so but he also has this founders fund
where he does uh do the startup
investing and starts the fellowship we
talked you talked to so you met him um
he was telling you that there's been
like three bubbles right the financial
bubble some other one and then the um
education bubble which is going to burst
and he basically said like if you
uh end up
spending too much money on the house at
least you have a house if you spent too
much money on education you got nothing
and he started this thing and curry that
encouraged young people to take a
hundred grand a year from him and the
only condition is they they drop out of
college right so is that like the second
half of
uh of his uh what he was doing
absolutely your business influence
campaign and i think
and i think it totally was related to um
something else that was going on in the
world at that time which was the release
of the social network um and
so you know
the social network
you know teal doesn't get very much
screen time but his he is sort of an
important figure in that in that story
because it was teal who sort of set in
motion this this stock structure that
creates the conflict between eduardo
severan and mark zuckerberg which is the
you know whatever the basis of the
social network yeah and as i you know as
i understand it an early investor one of
the earliest investors in facebook
yeah as i understand it he was
part one of the reasons that the teal
fellowship came in to be was because he
was trying to
sort of
take advantage of of the moment and also
shape the narrative you know where where
um at the time you know holly the the
movie right the social network does not
present a very flattering picture of
mark zuckerberg but zuckerberg i think
very savvily um and and teal did the
same thing chose to to like
to sort of flip it and say actually this
just shows how how cool we are and and
their interviews with teal at the time
saying you know these producers these
out of touch hollywood producers they
didn't um they didn't mean to but really
they're just making a great ad for
um for entrepreneurship and and it's
it's right around this time that he you
know you know almost just as a media
spectacle announces
you know that he's going to give 20
young people under 20 100 000 each 20
under 20. it's it's totally like a
contrived um you know kind of media
thing
partly as a in an effort to like you
know
catch the sort of wave that's happening
of interest from the social network
maybe to um uh distract from the fact
that like this kind of teal is portrayed
in the movie as kind of a schlubby you
know not not that interesting suit um
and and then it takes on on this life of
its own and and you know of course it's
not just a media event real people come
and and real companies are started and
it and it becomes this whole um whole
thing but i don't think it was thought
all that well through you know beyond
the just the top line here's the media
here's here's how we're going to
describe it to the press yeah and i
think you put it well in the book that
when he started to convince these young
people to drop out of college all of a
sudden i think that was a huge profile
raiser for him i mean he goes from being
a guy who and of course he had done his
writing and but he goes from being a guy
who had managed a hedge fund and had a
vc firm to someone who was like trying
these radical new ideas to reshape
society and then people started it and
they called it the thiel fellows i mean
it was good marketing for it and totally
and it was totally designed to like
to to um you know for lack of a better
world like troll the libs right like
they slate did a um slate you know did
like a a hit piece on uh on the i'm
using the it's the builder language here
which they end up yeah using in the
promotional they use it in their
marketing they loved it you know it's
like exactly what peter thiel wanted was
to be you know it was to be called out
by you know some some lefty uh
journalist and so i i think it was
totally designed
to to to catch people's attention and
and it did and and i think i mean that
that this is like one of the um
one of the big surprises in reporting
the book you know is just that you know
not that it doesn't it doesn't end up
going well for all the teal fellows like
you know obviously some of them have
gone on to great success but others
you know definitely um i think left the
fellowship feeling a little bit used by
by it and feeling like
yeah this this worked out great for
peter thiel um i'm not sure what i got
out of it exactly well maybe they just
weren't tough enough
i'm kidding so i want to take a moment
here pause and talk about the man that
we just brought up mark zuckerberg
because teal and zuckerberg have an
interesting relationship in fact when i
was reporting always day one um
i was told that you know mark has a
feedback culture and he likes to listen
to
contrarian voices peter thiel is a
contrarian that's why he's on the board
for this long
i wonder how much peter thiel's
libertarian burned down institutions
mentality has
influenced facebook's direction i'm
thinking about it in particular because
the wall street journal this week
released these five stories
that showed essentially facebook
you know blowing up institutions and
failing to you know and kind of enforce
its own rules i mean there are stories
about how
um
how it's uh
well making girls feel bad on instagram
but i think more along the lines of
where this came up
letting anti-vaccine sentiment run wild
where the government really would like
that not to be the case
allowing cartels and human traffickers
to use the system and recruit and
publicize what they're doing
and essentially giving a wide range 5.8
million people
of vip users right i mean how could you
have 6 million vip users i don't get
that
but basically exempting them from
content moderation and letting them say
whatever they want to say and i'm
reading this
and i'm thinking about your book
and i'm like damn these are pretty uh
along the lines of of what peter thiel
might want in in a society essentially
just like
in a libertarian world and just let it
run wild and you stay out of the way and
society sorts itself out so i am curious
what what you think about that how much
influence has he had on zuckerberg and
you know we point a lot to the problems
that facebook has today but
you know are they actually kind of like
the idea um yeah
there there's a line in um
there's a line in the um cecilia
carrying cheryl frankel book of i think
it's a quote from kara swisher about it
basically is like
something to the effect that like um you
know mark zuckerberg is like a blank
slate the teal has it's it's like a very
extreme
statement that i think probably um
overstates
you know the case like zuckerberg is a a
very smart person you know he's
obviously independent independently
minded
but i do think um and i do think there's
some truth to the to that sentiment and
the sentiment that you're bringing up
which is i think that teal has had yeah
just an enormous impact on mark
zuckerberg um
both in terms of like how the company is
structured like the literal
way that zuckerberg um you know got
control of facebook and maintain control
of facebook and then but also um
yeah this ideological thing this this
notion that um as you say institutions
are
really not that important and that that
it seems like zuckerberg sort of thinks
that facebook is like the only
institution that really matters or
something like that um but um
but you know for me in those in those
journal stories like
one detail that really stuck out is um
you know that
they're getting these reports about um
you know body images women young girls
like going on instagram and are are are
feeling really bad about themselves and
really concerning research and
zuckerberg is getting those and then
getting asked by congress you know
hey is this making people feel bad and
he's he's just you know totally
yeah i mean it's like like having just a
complete lack of respect for the
institution it's it's it's really
outrageous because it's both a lack of
respect for the for the issue and for
for facebook's responsibility to society
but also just you know maybe people can
agree to disagree and maybe facebook
maybe they're people going to argue
facebook doesn't have a responsibility
to stop that but just the the the
unwilling the the
the the the treatment of you know
whatever our nation's highest uh uh you
know legislative body as just kind of a
big joke is is just kind of crazy and i
think it's completely
um in line with um
teals ethos and i i think i think
facebook is in in so many ways uh you
know another one of these attempts to
kind of go beyond
the traditional institutions i mean
we've there's been lots of stories lots
of stories written about you know
facebook kind of seeing itself as its
own country they've got their own
supreme court now and they're trying to
have their own man max when i visited
the first time the conference rooms were
all named after countries that facebook
was bigger than
yeah you walk in you're like walking
past the brazil conference room like oh
why brazil they're like we're bigger
it's just yeah i mean it's really it is
really um
kind of i mean like as you say it's it's
it's in your face and um yeah and and i
do wonder like when we have facebook
promises we'll do better we'll do better
but maybe i mean i don't know i
i do i know that they're separate from
peter thiel
but i also know the influence i'm also
just like
maybe they're kind of close to where
they want to be and they right that tell
everybody
you know everybody else can cry in the
river uh and i also think you know
there's there's kind of this a lot of
people have spent time
trying to figure out like what is mark
zuckerberg actually like what are his
does he have politics is he a liberal is
he a conservative you know yeah i think
he gave some money
yeah he's i think i agree i think he's a
libertarian and i think which i think
you know 100 percent influenced by teal
there but i also think to some extent he
has no
left right politics his politics are
whatever is going to be required to
allow facebook to grow as big as
possible you know
damn the authorities damn the rules and
and i think that you know even more so
than teal's kind of like right wing
political views i think that is more
that is the that's the kind of core of
the influence and and so which and in a
lot of ways like that's a scarier
influence because it's it's harder to
talk about or even think about right and
it must be wild in those board meetings
to have teal zuckerberg mark andreessen
all together
wow i i do think it's telling too
you know
the two longest serving board so
facebook you know as you know i mean you
know they just kind of purged all their
board members a couple years ago and and
the the board members who have survived
of course are the are the two
libertarians mark zuckerberg and peter
thiel and and i think that's you know
that's no accident um it's there's
certainly some ideological alignment
there
yeah uh let's end this segment talking a
little bit about elon musk so i'd love
for you to describe the
interesting kind of yo-yo relationship
between teal and musk friends enemies
friends enemies
and
you know i'm just curious you got elon
to speak to you for the book uh that's
not easy to do especially when it comes
to teal how did you sell that
i just i i just asked him um
uh i teal was i mean elon was uh not not
um
not hesitant to uh to to share his views
um
uh you know i have a long history of you
know whatever we've talked many times
but um i think um
i i think frenemy is the way that i kind
of you know put it in my mind i think
yeah because
did put a pretty big investment in
spacex so 100 and and it's i think that
i think that elon and um peter are
basically just almost complete opposites
like temperamentally you know musk is
this kind of very emotional
all it you know he he if he's gonna if
he's gonna bet on something he's going
all in
he you know wears his heart on his
sleeve he's very
you know he's very prone to like
you know getting pissed and then
forgiving and then getting pissed again
and um and of course he's a you know
he's a gift to the journalistic gods
because of that right but and teal of
course is introverted he's cautious he's
constantly hedging his bets he doesn't
ever want to you know want to go all in
on anything and you know he keeps it all
you know kind of close to the vest and
so i think there's some
temperamental thing but but as you said
you know
uh elon was running uh paypal peter uh
led a coup that replaced him and then um
they were able to patch it up and i
think basically
um
you know while elon was on his honeymoon
he got replaced
exactly yes pretty cold
yeah
it's um
yeah it's it's uh it's it's also a
testament to like uh i mean it's easy to
see oh this coup happened but at the
time you know elon was a much more
better respected more famous
entrepreneur than peter thiel elon had
already sold a company uh he had mike
moritz who is the you know most
respected venture capitalist in silicon
valley behind him so like just laughs
because there's the story of um musk and
teal where he he bought so he sold the
company and bought this like what one
million dollar mclaren yeah and then
clarendon f1
and yeah crashes it and was like i
didn't buy insurance because i didn't
think i was the type of guy that would
crash the car
that's an amazing story which he was in
the car at the time yeah and of course
teal would have probably had insurance
uh already on elon's car yeah
um
but uh but anyway yeah and i think that
musk you know basically forgave him and
must kind of said this in not so many
words but he basically concluded like
look it's not in my interest to to make
an enemy of this guy um and
um and he was right i mean paypal paypal
succeeded and they were able to kind of
you know work closely enough together
that when when elon really needed money
when spacex in 2008 spacex was was
failing it it had um it had had three
launch failures i can't remember three
or two i think it was three launch
failures and um you know elon has
basically you know maxed out his bank
account trying to find tesla he has no
more money teal comes in basically as a
white knight and and and saves the
company and
um
i think does it kind of against his
better judgment uh you know i think does
it with some anguish because it was you
know obviously like if if elon had
failed that it would look very bad for
for founders fun um and and as i
understand it you know there was a lot
of back and forth within founders fund
over that investment where luke nosick
was pushing really hard to do that
investment teal wasn't so sure because
teal doesn't you know it's it's not his
um you know
like taking that kind of risk is is
really not in his
makeup although he did it and and it and
the rest is history and as a result he's
got a nice sized chunk of this very very
valuable um you know rocket company so
it all worked out but but they
definitely have they're definitely like
not
um
not best friends they're they're more
like allies or something like that yeah
and he did make that investment like or
the investment was announced a couple
days after elon blew up a rocket so but
yeah it's working out well for him
what's your release relationship like
with peter thiel i mean one of my
favorite scenes in the book was you
talked about how you had this off the
record conversation with him
and he just kind of finished a sentence
and left and you didn't know whether
someone was going to take you out or of
the room or something and turns out that
was just the end of the interview and
you never yeah yeah yeah i think you
said oh he was just kind of done talking
so um yeah elaborate on on this yeah i
mean i can't happen in that room i can't
share any of the details of what was
discussed um
uh i i was i mean you know as i as i i
approached this book as you know
basically wanted to be to write a
journalistic
um you know portrait of of the man and
and in other words to not not to
approach him as some kind of super
villain which has you know has been the
treatment sometimes um and all but also
not to approach him with you know with
with de facto deference to just treat
him there's a lot of the a lot of the
coverage of teal
you know this is kind of a crass way of
putting it but it's like we're talking
about a fellow davos guy you know he's
all right there's this kind of like
coziness of some of the um articles that
have been written about him um that i
think he's kind of encouraged
um where where they're not really
um calling any of the failures out or
really paying attention to to anything
in a kind of critical way so i wanted to
do but i wanted to be in the middle and
so i was talking to you know former
employees basically everyone i could
talk to but also of course trying to um
speak with him and and to get his
perspective because that you know i
thought that was really important and uh
yeah we had this meeting and you know
it's kind of like the um
you know what you what what you would
expect from somebody who's who's worth
billions of dollars and is socially
awkward i mean he he he uh yeah he just
he just excused himself but without
actually excuse excusing himself um and
but uh but he was also you know very
polite i mean you know there was no um
you know a lot of people have asked did
did did they threaten you or something
like that you know because of the gawker
oh he did bring down a publication yeah
yeah exactly yeah yeah but going um and
and i think that's i think that's
totally worth talking about in you know
in
in terms of
to the extent that that there was
intimidation
the only the intimidation just came from
the fact that he had done this thing but
but in terms of the actual in-person
interaction and um interactions with his
like pr people and stuff they they were
not um
uh yeah there were there was there
wasn't a hint of menace um right he
didn't send charles harder at you after
uh you sent him the questions for the
fact check
they did not send charles harder after
me charles harder is not a big part of
the book though so yeah
well he's the guy wasn't he the guy who
the lawyer who he funded yeah so he
could take off yeah
yeah harder is harder was the the lawyer
prosecuted the goggle case and i think
um you know one with steals money yeah
with with teal's money and in secret and
um you know and and and you know
basically architected the destruction of
this um of this media platform
um that was really big and really
influential and and also did you know of
course wrote a lot of like really tawdry
stuff um including you know the post
that that that got teal mad which you
know said that he was gay um
but uh
but gawker also did a lot of important
journalism as well and and so you know i
it definitely
i think i think that case definitely
created an environment where it was
harder for people harder for journalists
to really um think critically or write
critically or talk to sources about
peter thiel it hangs over every
conversation you have every conversation
with an editor every conversation you
have with a source
yeah as intended
uh what's your relationship i asked that
um this was the question i wanted to ask
you do you like him
i'm um trying not to i i don't really
want to
i don't know it's kind of like it feels
important to me to not like pass
judgment or anything like that are you
hearing this incredibly loud noise
no
okay good okay
there's something going on outside my
window if it starts to bother you let me
know i'm sorry you must you must have
some i mean i know you well anyway you
try not to pass judgment but you must
have some personal feeling about
here's this 330 page book about the guy
yeah you're right you're right to press
me okay um i feel um
i feel like he's worthy of respect and
um i think there are aspects of his
achievements um
uh and and the things that he's done
that are worthy of admiration and and i
find
you know i find him to be like a really
interesting
um and charismatic figure but i also
think that he's he's pretty dangerous
and i think that the ideology
that he has espoused and that he has uh
pushed in all sorts of ways um is bad
and it and it's and and it and it needs
to be scrutinized and
and um understood and and to the extent
that it's it's filtering into these
companies that are incredibly incredibly
powerful um that have you know
unbelievable control over our lives
access to our data i think we need to um
i think we need to talk about that and i
also think you know especially as he
gets um as he gets into funding these um
you know funding these political
campaigns putting 10 million dollars
into this guy blake masters running for
senate in arizona 10 million dollars
into jd vance um
both of them uh either former or current
you know teal employees um that uh you
know i think
those ideological questions become you
know even more important i mean for me
the thing that is most
troubling and that i think is worth a
lot of conversation is just the the
relationship to democracy this idea that
democracy
you talked about indifference to
institutions which i think is is
definitely worth it if you're about to
get i think that you're about to get
into some of the trump stuff okay okay
i really want to do that and it's a
great place to pause here go to break
and then pick up
trump's story
uh so why don't we do that we'll be back
here on the big technology podcast right
after this with max trafkin he's the
author of the contrarian peter thiel and
silicon valley's pursuit of power
while we go to commercial you can go to
your favorite bookstore and pick it up
and we're back here on the big
technology podcast with max chavkin
features editor at bloomberg
businessweek and also the author of the
contrarian which the book we've been
talking about it's all about peter thiel
a little biography of sorts but um you
know getting a little bit more into the
philosophical stuff
um and i definitely want to talk about
uh sort of the big peter thiel story
where he gets to take his ideology to
the world the one that you said was bad
ahead of the break i think this is where
you were going with it yeah where it
extends to his support of donald trump
and then i would say more importantly uh
his
um
the way that he actually influenced the
staffing of his administration so is
that where you were going earlier max
yeah i mean i i think um so as you said
uh teal uh
you know famously or infamously
depending on your politics uh you know
made a big donation to the the trump
campaign uh just before uh just before
the 2016 election um and and also gave
this speech at the republican national
convention endorsing um trump and that
gets him on the transition committee and
as a result you know gives him access to
the trump administration
and he is given an opportunity by steve
bannon who was his you know his ally you
know his main ally
in the administration um at least until
bannon was um
ousted um
given the job of appointing um basically
people who can you know disrupt as
bannon put it to me kind of disrupt the
administrative state who can who can
help you know
do the the
execute the trump revolution on
government and and and so he has a
chance to appoint all of these deposits
yeah he he talked about um
you talk about in the book how
the view was
republicans can win elections democrats
can win elections as long as democrats
who believe in bigger government can
staff these government agencies the
democrats are essentially never out of
power and what they wanted to do is
strip the agencies or you know i guess
they call it the swamp or i don't know
of their power and of their people so
that um they wouldn't have this
democratic influence it's kind of
questionable as to whether that's
actually true
yeah and about about their thesis but it
is interesting because when trump came
into power
it was kind of weird to see him put
people in charge of every agency to do
kind of exactly the opposite of what the
agency was tasked to do and it was one
of the most
weirdest puzzling thing where like the
epa guy
wanted to demolish
you know all environmental protection
and financial people wanted to demolish
the financial protections and you know
the list goes on and now actually after
reading this turns out that this is sort
of the influence of teal on the
transition committee getting these
people in line even if he was like
moderately successful definitely the
philosophy is well and
the thing that the really the
mind-blowing thing for me is that
you know teal actually want to go a lot
further i mean bannon was basically like
told me basically you know teal teals
further out than trump i mean teal was
too far out if you if you thought we
were doing crazy things like you should
have seen this stuff that peter actually
wanted to do and you know that's you
know teal um
attempted to get belaji sreenivasan made
fda commissioner balaji srinivasan um
you know a very opinionated very
outspoken
style to the press make uh the medical
uh
uh the medical approval process for
medicines a big crowdsource spreadsheet
where people rate their experiences with
the drug and it's like well you could
sort of learn from there
yeah sorry that was the idea that
replaced the fda with yelp um which of
course um which actually i think is
something that teal
actually wants um uh or or some version
of that they they're in favor of you
know drastic deregulation of of of drugs
um and and make no secret about that but
it's just kind of the idea of having
somebody with like no government
experience who wants to get rid of the
fda
run the fda and who's also just been
totally intemperate on twitter um is
just kind of crazy and and it wasn't
going to work um
thiel also had the opportunity to
suggest all these chief candidates for
chief scientist the top scientific
advisor to the um to the president and
and his two main choices um were climate
change deniers um
uh who who you know one of whom um
william happer
uh
you know he's actually he's a very
respected uh physicist at princeton um
but who has kind of has a sideline in
arguing that co2 gets a bad rap and it's
actually good because it's tree food and
i mean it's very like pretty frustrating
pretty fringe stuff um and um and teal
wanted him to you know have a major
scientific position the other his other
candidate was this guy david golotner
who um is a yale computer scientist
um but who also kind of as a sideline is
is a big time provocateur has written
another you know kind of you know
far right you know uh a book about about
you know how universities are two left
he's basically you know
uh yeah like a provocateur and so
another guy who really had little chance
to succeed and and so teal didn't do
that well in terms of actually getting
people into government although i think
i would argue
that he did have a he did have some
influence on the trump administration
and he kind of made the most of of his
um
of his time there even if he wasn't able
to get any of these kind of far out
picks into into government because he
was able to get you know access
you know he he set up this this meeting
um this big meeting with all the tech
ceos gets alex carr ceo of palantir in a
room with donald trump which i think was
very important for um for palantir and
and has helped one is one of the reasons
palantir has been so successful uh um
over the past four years yeah one of the
interesting things to me was um you
wrote about how
they in the in the transition uh team uh
anticipated that tila was just kind of
there for the photo op
uh but he never asked to meet trump and
all about filling the government with
people who
had his ideological beliefs
there is this kind of like um
talking to to dc people about teal you
know they kind of to often talk about
him as this kind of cipher because he
doesn't behave in in the normal ways he
so and i think some of this may have to
do with kind of inexperience like and i
think part of if he had been a more
experienced political operator he
probably could have maybe could have
gotten bellagi you know made fda
chairman or something um but i think
also some of it is that his
he's not playing the same game that that
many of the others are playing and i
don't think i don't think his game was
the like let me
you know have as much influence over the
trump administration as possible it was
let me set things up so that my
companies have as good a chance as
possible and that that long term
he has political influence which is
exactly what happened and you know post
trump uh post um you know january sixth
insurrection
you know teal i think has you know you
know in a strange way maybe more
influence than he had um you know even
during the trump administration
well because he's kind of he's been able
to put himself in the middle of this um
you know the post-trump
movement i mean these these candidates
that he's funding i mentioned masters
and vance um you know they are like kind
of among the sort of standard bearers
for
you know what what i think it probably
should be described as like trumpism or
um you know nationalist populism or
whatever it's it's the it's trumpism
with or without trump and um and i think
that uh josh hawley is another is
another one of these figures also a
figure a former stanford review guy who
has taken money from from teal who has
endorsed jd vance um there's kind of a
little to see if trumpism without trump
is actually going to work uh it me it's
it there's a i don't know i think
there's a chance that it was
unique to the individual like josh
halley is just too polished i think that
you talked about like um how it was like
you know trump was the inheritor of the
paul brothers
ron paul and his son rand and like what
they realized was you know someone in
their uh and their elk realized was it
wasn't necessarily the ideology it was
just they wanted the craziest person in
the room
yeah a hundred percent and i think
that's really tough to be the inheritor
of that philosophy even though if you
say the same things on on policy but i
think that is that you could go and
trash rosie o'donnell out of debate that
was part of his appeal sorry go ahead
but no no but i i do think that is peter
thiel is attempting to be
the inheritor of that
movement and uh to be to be the patron
of that movement to be the person
who is behind the scenes for the 20 to
30 percent of the country that wants the
guy who's the craziest [ __ ] in the room
right um and which by the way that
formulation um is from this uh reason
magazine writer brian butler who wrote a
really great book about about ron paul
and um uh and and this there was this
feeling among the libertarians i think
some libertarians feel um
you know a little bit betrayed by the by
by teal because teal was
you know teal kind of presented himself
as a libertarian but then but has kind
of gone all in for trumpism which which
is obviously very different from
libertarianism
um but anyway just to get back to the
thing about you know what what exactly
is bad i mean i think the thing that's
bad is
as they've been
attempting as teal and his acolytes have
been attempting to kind of harness this
energy
they're positioning themselves as sort
of being okay with the january 6th
insurrection you know josh hawley
famously you know raised his fist in
solidarity as he um walked into the
capitol you know on january 6th and
we're seeing you know jd vance and
masters to some extent you know kind of
trying to thread the needle and bo kind
of be okay or create a create a space
where
um the the the people who storm the
capital are just um just protesters and
the the police that tried to stop them
are you know somehow um you know strong
arming uh you know civil disobedience or
something like that and and that to me
is is very dangerous um and it's it's uh
at least if if you believe in democracy
it's dangerous because it's it's it's
totally hostile to to kind of this core
part of
american government right and all
throughout teal's life he's talked about
how uh you know quote that you see often
in the book is voting so overrated i
don't really believe in voting
yeah and and and he's said in all sorts
of ways there was this famous um essay
in the um that was published by the cato
institute where he uh talked about
basically he decided that democracy was
incompatible with um libertarian beliefs
his beliefs um and he's you know been a
patron to this guy curtis yarvin who is
uh you know um
better known as a moldbug but um
you know this blogger who is
uh whose big idea basically is is a
dictatorship i mean he's a he's
advocating you know some some version of
of fascism and and you're seeing this
kind of spill into
you know borderline mainstream
republican discourse people talking
about an american caesar and i think
that is i think you can draw a line from
that idea to teal and and i think that
is i mean that is a very very radical
position
yeah um one question i have for you so
until we've spoken about um is gay i you
know obviously like
um
he's you know the political beliefs
across the spectrum if you're gay uh but
i one thing i'm struggling to to see is
how he
was able to align himself with people
who were so
militantly anti-gay i'm curious what you
think i mean here's one
example that you write about in the book
uh let's see
about ron paul uh
paul paul's supporter preferred the old
ron paul the ron paul who talked like
the one of one of teal's old stanford
review columnist who published a
newsletter talked about paul that said
95 of black men in washington dc were
criminals and said i missed the closet
about gay rights
like teal they wanted to stick it to the
cathedral he was ready to help them
yeah and if you go back to teal's um you
know to the newspaper or stanford review
or the or the or the book he wrote
diversity myth um you will find some
views on um uh you know sexuality that
are are really
you know pretty backwards um
uh and they're you know it's it's uh and
and there there's there's obviously
there's a temptation to psychologize
this and
some people have suggested to me
um
that you know it's it's
self-hatred or something like that you
know it teals a christian and you know
maybe maybe there's some
some of this is like a symptom of his
own you know discomfort with himself
i tend to think he is a provocateur and
i think that there's
it's always been profitable
um especially in right-wing circles to
be in in an out group and to kind of
crap on the other members of your out
group like that's that's kind of there's
like a tried and true path um in in
conservative activis activist politics
of of doing exactly that and i think so
i don't like i don't think it's that
complicated i think it's just it's as
simple as that and i also think probably
he just doesn't
feel that you know he he's he's he's
talked about this a little bit like i
think the speech that he gave at the um
republican national convention um which
of course was he was criticized a lot by
um you know gay rights groups because
the the republican party had all had
positions on trans rights and gay rights
that were really you know i mean they
you know they were they were against
those things and um and and i think teal
as he kind of said in that speech like
he doesn't want to be defined by his his
sexuality and and he doesn't want he he
feels so strongly about that to such an
extent that you know he's willing to you
know ally himself with somebody who is
um you know is part of a party that's
anti-gay i also think it's probably
like i think teal has talked about this
but
trump probably was like less hostile on
gay rights than yeah i don't need trump
as hostile uh yeah yeah so i think there
is some way to see it trump is like i
mean trump sorry i'm probably getting in
trouble saying this but you know trump
obviously said what he said about in
charlottesville and i'm not absolving
with that but also like
a guy grew up as a new yorker uh ted
cruz
of having new york values yeah his
daughter converted to orthodox judaism
so
you know do i think he's backwards on
race in a lot of ways yeah dude i don't
know i don't i i guess like his his
positions are a little more complicated
yeah and i think there was like from
from trump like to the extent that that
trump was like anti-gay it always seemed
a little bit half-hearted or something
um uh and not and and i do think there's
a way to see
you know teal speech as an important
moment
you know
first time right first time someone who
was openly gay spoke at the uh
republican national convention first
time they acknowledged it on stage
because there had been one other there
had been another instance um but but
that that person was booed during the
you know during the um during the speech
and teal not only wasn't booed but he
got a standing ovation and like it was
when you watch it um you know i do think
it does feel like a moment it feels like
wow the the the the beating heart of the
republican party they're not just
accepting this they are cheering for it
they're excited about it so i do think
that is that's something that probably
like on a historical basis that will be
an important historical thing that that
teal was a part of
so wrapping up this chapter about
politics and government uh he did get
some uh so
why did he back trump right that's a
question that a lot of people ask i
think that like
there's an idea that trump and bannon
did embody a lot of the values that he
wanted but there was also the business
rationale which was that he had three
and a half billion dollars sitting in an
ira that he didn't want want taxed roth
ira
and he uh he wanted his businesses
palantir in particular to be able to get
government contracts and thought that
getting close to power would be a good
idea and he essentially made this one
billion dollar bet right after the
access hollywood tape came out
that was like all right maybe trump will
be able to help me solve these problems
let's see what happens so how did that
work out for it yeah well i think it's
important um with teal to see that the
business and politics are always
connected that he doesn't that he has
these he he has a sort of political
project and a business project and they
work together in tandem and you can't
his ideology is in service of his
business his business is in service of
his ideology they're hard to separate um
kind of like i think the koch brothers
um there's some of that with the cokes
too where they're really good at
combining at finding an ideology that
like sort of works with their business
imperatives and and then finding
business imperatives that work with
their ideology but um
i think with teal um it's it's two
things it's one he was buying low he he
had an opportunity to have a huge stake
in um in this new administration that
had very few kind of institute there was
very little institutional support for
trump there were no it's not only that
there was little institutional support
there were no like
respectable business people who were
backing trump it was all kind of i mean
there were a few but it was like largely
you know if you go to who else was
speaking at the republican national
convention it's like real estate kind of
shady seeming real estate guys pillow
sales people yeah some reality tv stars
like the guy ran who runs the cage
fighting company was there you know cha
cha happy days uh hulk hogan spoke there
also right i i don't know if he actually
did he did he appear on stage i can't
remember but he showed up right yeah he
was i mean he's you know one of the
biggest celebrities in tampa so um so
that would make sense but uh but anyway
but i also think that and and there was
so much effort among um tech people and
i'm sure in private especially to kind
of like explain away teal's support of
trump as just as just being about it's
just being kind of a machiavellian bet
he does he couldn't possibly really want
trumpism and i think the truth is he
does like trump i think there's a lot of
there's a lot about trump's ideology
that is very closely aligned with teals
despite the differences that i brought
up earlier um
yeah well the core of trump's appeal is
being able to say
being able to get away with saying the
racist thing or the sexist thing well i
think you even know that like one of the
things he enjoyed the most when in the
watch party for the election was how
angry people in silicon valley are going
to be about trump selection okay but
what about the money though
the the um
the the deals for his companies did he
yeah did he make out okay from from
those
yeah i mean he did great and i think
some of it it's of course it's always
hard to how so it's always hard to
untangle yeah okay like why did palantir
get those contracts the palantir
palantir got a an 800 million dollar
army contract another 400 million dollar
contract um and uh they took over this
uh project maven from google that's
another 40 million bucks a year you know
it goes on and on um and of course it's
it's very hard to untangle
you know why does a company get these
deals um because of course they are you
know their their
their explanation is well we're getting
the deals because we have the best
product and we've spent a long time
selling it but of course when you're
talking about defense contracts i think
inevitably like politics plays a role
and um and i think it's it's no accident
that that palantir took off during the
trump administration that that that
really had these a series of
breakthroughs you know you know under an
administration where teal had influence
um i also um i also think you know
you brought up his his tax status and
and this um
we could probably have a really long
conversation about this but
um teal has been pursuing his whole
career this very very very aggressive
strategy to pay it's legal but but just
exceedingly aggressive strategy to pay
almost nothing in taxes on his um on
most of his income it's his his
investment income because it's all in a
roth ira retirement account and there's
been this feeling in
uh in in teals world that at any moment
somebody could come along and take that
away from him either because
there is a reinterpretation of the rules
or someone changes the rules which is
something that was threatened during the
obama administration but but didn't
actually happen
or there's you know or somebody finds
you know he if he if he accidentally got
something wrong in his taxes then then
it could all go away and i think a lot
of teals
um sort of operations over the past um
decade or so can be explained by that i
mean the the the acquisition of of uh
citizenship in new zealand which we
haven't touched on but you know he he he
secretly acquired citizenship you know
max you are right this is such a
fascinating story because there's i mean
each one of these could be their own
show but sorry go ahead anyway i i think
that it was widely interpreted and and i
think this even led to some jokes in
silicon valley that this is just him
being you know apocalyptic he wants a
doomsday bunker but i think the truth is
he he actually wanted a doomsday tax
shelter you know
just in case obama goes to because he
saw obama as a communist you know case
obama you know goes full commie or
something and tries to come for his
money teal is going to have a backup
plan um and that and that backup plan is
at the time a conservative government um
that was running new zealand at the time
and it would would be a way to create
some leverage in a negotiation with the
irs or you know worst case scenario
right there have been these billionaires
or or sent to millionaires or whatever
who have renounced their u.s citizenship
um in order to to get out of a tax bill
so so that would be that would be
another option um and i think similarly
you know teals um engagement in politics
and his support of trump some of it has
to do with you know wanting to make sure
that the tax that tax policy favors him
and you know this sounds if from a
certain point of view this sounds
outrageous but of course a lot of this
is happening out in the open i mean
we're seeing you know keith ruboy and a
bunch of these guys who have you know
relocated to miami you know they're
they're doing it you know as they say to
because they don't want to pay um state
capital gains tax in california
and um and you're also you also hear
that you know um
kind of another thread of tealism but
this idea of exit this idea that you
should be allowed to you know withdraw
from the government um either by going
to a seastead as you said or or by you
know decamping for your new zealand
bunker um so i think a lot of the
political motivations some of the
political motivation for trump um came
from that that sense of of vulnerability
and a desire to like make sure that that
the tax policy stayed um friendly to the
interests of tech billionaires right so
teal's out of office i've no it's not a
deal trump is out of office uh freddie
and slip uh
you know teal's got his money uh is
what's his next act
i mean i think his next act as i said is
um
continued influence in this in this
right-wing movement which it's true you
might be right that like maybe we will
close the book on this and we'll get
like kind of a more conventional uh
republican nominee and then i think then
i think that'll really sideline people i
personally think that that it'll be the
return of trump or one of his kids yeah
well then it's astonishing to me if none
of them ran next next cycle
so i think his i think his play is to to
have influence in that in that world and
to continue to to be a uh you know
political king maker um to to be you
know to play that kind of koch brothers
uh type role but in the you know the
koch brothers played that role in the
kind of um conventional mainstream
republican party but to play that role
in the in the you know uh trumpist uh
party whatever it's called the freedom
party or the patriot party or whatever
um
and i think that's part of it and i
think also and i think you know
continuing to
um to to make investments to to to to do
the investor thing and you know there's
he's been
you know he's been doing a bunch of
stuff in crypto it's sort of hard to
figure out what he actually
um believes with crypto um because you
know he's he's sort of like making
investments but then he's like crapping
on bitcoin and um but so i i think
there's gonna be uh you know continued
engagement in in technology and also um
and also a real push in it politically
um
i also think you know he has two kids
now and i i i do think it's possible
that you know he's slowing down or or
something like that like we'll see and
and i think as you say some some of it
may come down to you know what happens
politically whether whether it's an
advantageous situation for him or not
but
and this is a guy who really seems to
get a kick out of being provocative so
it's hard for me
seeing him not trying to find some new
way to provoke um and when you have 10
billion dollars or however much money he
has
um
you know you can that could that could
be pretty dramatic uh depending on what
he does
do you think he'll talk to you guys
after the book
i don't know
i'm open to it
yeah
i hope so well the book was great man uh
i didn't think i was going to get
through it this week uh and i couldn't
stop reading it so well thank you thank
you i really appreciate it
difficult subject matter like we spoke
about
and it's uh it's well-rounded it's good
it's engaging well written packed with
facts and definitely enlightened me to
a lot of stuff that i hadn't known
previously about silicon valley and
power in tech and i suggest everybody go
read it thank you max for joining the
show appreciate it thanks alex it's
really fun
super fun the book is the contrarian
peter thiel in silicon valley's pursuit
of power it's available in all
bookstores you can grab it today
sometime later this week
you know help max become a bestseller
all right well that will do it for us
here on the big technology podcast
thanks to nate guateny for editing this
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you appreciate you coming back week
after week and we will see you again
next wednesday