Peter Thiel’s Money Talks, in Contentious Ways. But What Does He Say?
The investor said he had last spoken to the president “a few months ago.”
“We don’t talk that often,” he said, but added, “I can get access anytime I want.”
The Trump whom Mr. Thiel touted at the Republican convention was a candidate who would “end the era of stupid wars
and rebuild our country,” move us past “fake culture wars” and start projects the equivalent of the Apollo space program.
The answer, he cautioned, couldn’t be a banality, such as “it’s making us more connected,”
and it couldn’t be utopian, such as “it’s going to cure all diseases.”
“He wasn’t able to come up with an answer, and I couldn’t come up with one, either,” Mr. Thiel said.
“We were far from perfect in doing that.”
Mr. Thiel, 50, is at the center of nearly every issue
that roils Silicon Valley, ranging from the tech elite’s fascination with New Zealand hideaways (Mr. Thiel obtained New Zealand citizenship) to Bitcoin (he is a major investor) to the problems of herd thinking (he is moving from San Francisco to Los Angeles to escape it) to the evolving role of content on the internet (he has been exploring the creation of a media company that would outflank Breitbart and Fox for a younger audience).
“It’s been a crazier two years than I would have thought,” Mr. Thiel said in his new Midtown Manhattan
apartment, which is so far up in the clouds that it literally looks down on Trump Tower.
“It’s very anti-Ayn Rand: There are no self-contained autonomous figures,” Mr. Thiel said.
“The board’s role is to help think about some of the medium- and longer-term problems coming around the corner,” Mr. Thiel said.
