news

한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina

Chairman Rabbit/tuzhuxi 20240803 Arranged

according to：Today, we have excerpted an interview with Max Chafkin, the biographer of Peter Thiel, on Silicon Valley in the Trump era. We chose this interview because: 1) Max Chafkin is a Bloomberg financial reporter who has been following Silicon Valley for many years and is very familiar with the Silicon Valley ecosystem; 2) He also knows Peter Thiel very well, especially Peter Thiel's involvement in politics. He has also written a book on this issue, and is very suitable to provide insights; 3) The interview goes straight to the core issues, and Max Chafkin's answers are simple, clear and direct, which can help readers have a preliminary but relatively accurate understanding of the general situation; 4) The length of the article is not long.

https://www.businessinsider.com/jd-vance-peter-thiel-trump-silicon-valley-max-chafkin-kafka-2024-7?amp

Interviewer: We know about Peter Thiel’s relationship with Trump—he supported Trump in 2016 and spoke at the Republican National Convention that year, becoming the first openly gay person to do so. What is his relationship with JD Vance?

Max Chafkin：

Thiel hired Vance in 2016 at Mithril, another venture capital firm of his. At the time, Vance was an up-and-coming intellectual. Thiel hired him just as Vance’s book was coming out. It gave Vance a start in venture capital and also allowed Thiel to become close with this very important intellectual. Vance is now a bomb-throwing politician, but at the time, Hillbilly Elegy was seen as an important memoir, and Vance had a very good story.

Thiel has done this throughout his career. Basically, he seeks out ambitious young men — sometimes women, but mostly men — who are either technologists interested in disrupting the business order or political disruptors — and sometimes they can be the same person.

So he hired Vance, who stayed at Mithril for just a few years. Thiel then became a key investor in Vance’s own venture capital fund, Narya.

I would say Vance has had a pretty average venture capital career. His most notable investment was Rumble (a conservative competitor to YouTube). In addition to backing Narya, Thiel and Vance also invested in Rumble. It was a pretty successful investment and the company went public.

But you can see that this is also a political investment. It's not just, "Oh, this is a great business opportunity" - Rumble ended up being part of Vance's political package. Because in some ways Vance, like Thiel, is attacking so-called left-leaning social media companies, and Rumble is the answer to that problem.

INTERVIEWER: Are there other ideological connections between Thiel and Vance? Did Thiel help shape Vance, or were Vance’s views already formed before the two of them met?

Max Chafkin：

Thiel has had a huge influence on a whole generation of right-wingers. He was at the forefront of the critique of the university. In the mid-90s, he wrote a book with David Sacks, another prominent venture capitalist and right-wing donor. They denounced the terror of the left and "political correctness." The book was pretty "edgy," including a few passages that were heavily criticized. But it was ahead of its time in many ways, because many of the criticisms it made still hold true and are used frequently. Now people don't talk about "political correctness" anymore, they talk about "Wokeism," which is essentially the same thing.

I think Vance has his own political history, which predates Thiel. Thiel certainly helped establish Vance as a strong candidate for the Ohio Senate race. Vance would not have been in the United States Senate without Peter Thiel. But Vance has been politically educated and has led a different intellectual life than Peter Thiel.

Interviewer: So, it's more like like-minded people coming together, rather than a relationship between a manipulator and a puppet.

Max Chafkin：

There are, of course, other cases where Thiel found the right young people and guided them, and really helped shape them, gave them networks, and had clear and huge ideological influence over them.

But it seemed to me that JD Vance was in a good position, and Thiel spotted him and, like a good venture capitalist, did it at the earliest stage: he became a Series A investor.

Interviewer: Having supported Trump in 2016, Thiel publicly expressed his disappointment with him after Trump took office. This summer, he said that if someone "put a gun to his head," he would vote for Trump, but he would no longer support Trump financially. What is the connection between Thiel and Trump? Why did their relationship break down?

Max Chafkin：

Thiel has a retrospective view of "the America of the past" that is very similar to MAGA. It's very close to what Founders Fund (a venture fund co-founded by Thiel) said - "Where is our 'flying car'?" "Where is the 'greatness' that was promised to us?" These two things are very similar, even though Trump is a vulgar anti-tech New Yorker and Thiel is a very intellectual and thoughtful West Coaster - the two are a million miles apart.

Both Trump and Thiel like to "throw bombs," challenging tradition in an aggressive way. Thiel is a rebel -- a guy who says things that can't be said, a provocateur. Thiel thinks this is important. Of course, this is also what makes Trump so attractive.

But if you look back at the way Thiel supported Trump at the time, it wasn't some big endorsement. It was: "This guy is important." "He's saying something important." "Yeah, some things about him - I and a lot of people might find this guy annoying. But if you look at the big picture, he's the hero we need right now."

The conflict between Thiel and Trump is whether they can "get the job done." Thiel feels that Trump painted a big pie, but it didn't come true: "We came in with bold ideas to subvert everything, but in the end we didn't get very far."

But I think Thiel’s engagement with Trump was, overall, pretty smart. As an early investor in President Trump, he was able to take his influence and power to a new level and then exit early — essentially “cashing out” before Trump’s presidency collapsed in scandal.

Interviewer: Thiel was really the only well-known Silicon Valley bigwig who supported Trump in 2016, and now, in 2024, you see a lot of bigwigs supporting Trump, like Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen. What do you think about this?

Max Chafkin：

In fact, it is not just in Silicon Valley that few people support Trump. Few people in the mainstream business world actually like Trump.

In 2016, Thiel was seen in Silicon Valley as a very smart guy - he not only invested money to support Trump, but also continued to support Trump after Trump's "Hollywood Videogate" incident. He not only spent money, but also spoke publicly in support of him at the Republican National Convention. He made himself very far.

What’s different now is that there’s no embarrassment [in supporting Trump]. In corporate America, supporting Trump is no longer a reputational issue.

And in Silicon Valley, the conservative movement is much stronger and more powerful than before.

There’s a perception, also spread by people like Thiel, that Silicon Valley is super-liberal, with only a few people who can tell the truth, and Peter Thiel is one of them: They are fighting a hard-left industry in San Francisco, which is the most liberal city in the most liberal state in the United States.

But that's nonsense. Because Silicon Valley has roots in conservatism as well as counterculture. Silicon Valley got its start in the defense industry. Many people in Silicon Valley have always been conservative. Even when Silicon Valley was at its most left-leaning, there was still a libertarian politics.

[Note: It advocates small government, low taxes, and deregulation. The less government control, the better. It should not interfere in any economic, social, or cultural affairs. It is traditionally a branch of the Republican Party. Its social base is mainly businesses, capital, and middle-class elites.]

I think the biggest change now is that in addition to the libertarian wing, there are now right-wing populists. Some of these libertarians are no longer really libertarians: they have become right-wing populists. This is the path that Thiel himself has taken, and many others are now following along this path.

They are also more willing to "stir up trouble", get involved in politics, and provoke and stir up trouble.

It has something to do with social media and maybe Thiel's personal influence. But it also has to do with the labor market, which was very tight during the pandemic and is probably less tight now. CEOs are less afraid of their employees. They are no longer afraid that if they say something controversial, it will disrupt the company's business.

So it's a vortex of things that created this group of extremely outspoken far-right populists and Trumpists that didn't exist before.

[Note: Musk is mentioned here]

Interviewer: Is this really a shift in the atmosphere in Silicon Valley, or is it limited to a small group of very wealthy people?

Max Chafkin：

It's somewhere in between. Like I said, the liberal nature of Silicon Valley is exaggerated. It's never been as liberal as people think it is.

The David Sachs, Elon Musk, and Peter Thiel types are not particularly representative, but their ranks are growing as well, and they feel that Donald Trump’s political rise has given them some new strength.

Also, Elon Musk is obviously a very influential guy who has managed to break all kinds of boxes, and while he may not have been rewarded for it, he hasn't been punished in any way, at least not yet.

The way Silicon Valley CEOs and entrepreneurs think is that they will always imitate the most successful people. In the days of Steve Jobs, they were obsessed with "Are the wires in my computer pretty?" "Maybe I need to buy a suit too!"

Now it’s like, “Elon Musk posts shit online every day, so maybe I should start posting shit too.” That’s part of it, and part of it is that this [populist right-wing] politics has always been hidden there and now it’s just coming out into the open.

Interviewer: WhenMarc Andreessen and Ben HorowitzWhen they publicly endorsed Trump in July, they were careful to say, “[Our support for Trump] has nothing to do with any other issues. It’s purely economic, about cryptocurrencies, about regulation of startups, about how the government treats capital. That’s the only reason we [support Trump].” Do you believe what they say? Do you think they believe that themselves?

Max Chafkin：

I think money is almost always the best explanation for why big corporations or wealthy people get involved in politics or take political action—and that’s the first explanation you should consider.