Peter Thiel
Peter Andreas Thiel (born October 11, 1967) is an American entrepreneur, innovator and venture capitalist. Known for his prominence in Silicon Valley for both creating companies and funding their founders, Thiel is frequently cited as a major figure in the tech industry throughout the turn of the century.
Contents
Paypal
Originally launched as Confinity, the money transfer service merged with Elon Musk’s X.com in 2000. It was acquired by eBay in October 2002 for $1.5 billion dollars, with Thiel receiving a large sum of the money as the CEO [1]. Many of the PayPal group have gone on to found and lead other companies, earning them the moniker “PayPal Mafia” for their significant role in the Valley after their acquisition.[2]
Palantir
Using his windfall from the acquisition of PayPal, along with seed money from the Central Intelligence Agency, Thiel went on to form Palantir with a group of Stanford and PayPal alumnus in May 2003. Named after the centerpiece from Lord of the Rings trilogy known for its ability to see events far away before they unfold, Thiel sought to have Palantir serve as a risk modeling tool for crime, with the intent of providing analytics to enforcement agencies and stop malicious activity rather than responding to it.[3] The firm has since coined this ideal as “Palantir Gotham” and separated it from its enterprise oriented analytics division, but Palantir Gotham remains fully operational today.
Ethical Dilemmas
Gawker
After Gawker revealed Thiel’s sexuality in 2007, Thiel bankrolled Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker nine years later that ultimately ended up in the company’s demise. Some have viewed this effort as a suppression of speech.[4]
Palantir
The firm’s governmental projects have drawn intense scrutiny over the years. The criticism is multi-faceted, stemming from controversial clients such as the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Agency and the CIA, as well as morally questionable endeavors such as enhancing the NSA’s surveillance efforts along with predictive policing.[5] These endeavors were under the spotlight when the Los Angeles Police Department decided to employ Palantir’s predictive modeling under their monitoring program titled LASER.
Further Comments
In addition to his business pursuits, Thiel has made a fair share of comments that push the rights of free speech and question the effect of speech from influential individuals. As a board member of Facebook, Thiel pushed for the platform not to fact-check political advertisements, but rather let viewers detect disinformation, a premise that has been shown hard to achieve.[6] Thiel also penned an op-ed in the New York Times claiming that software giant Google has been infiltrated by the Chinese government, and requires a thorough investigation by the President to ensure national security interests are upheld.[7] An outspoken Republican, Thiel has also financially backed a publication looking to discredit climate change and evolution.[8]
References
- ↑ Margaret Kane. "eBay Picks Up Paypal for $1.5 billion." CNET. August 18, 2002.
- ↑ Charlie Parish. "Meet the PayPal Mafia, the Richest Group of Men in Silicon Valley" The Telegraph. September 20, 2014.
- ↑ Maya Kosoff. "Peter Thiel's All Seeing Eye Looks to a $41 billion dollar I.P.O." Vanity Fair. October 18, 2018.
- ↑ Charlie Parish. "Peter Thiel's War On Gawker: A Timeline" Forbes. June 21, 2016.
- ↑ Sam Biddle. [1] The Intercept. February 22, 2017.
- ↑ Emily Glazer, Deepa Seetharaman and Jeff Horwitz. [https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-at-center-of-facebooks-internal-divisions-on-politics-11576578601/ "Peter Thiel at Center of Facebook’s Internal Divisions on Politics "] Wall Street Journal. December 17, 2019.
- ↑ Adam Smith. "Thiel Accuses Google of Being Infiltrated by Chinese Intelligence" PC Mag. July 16, 2019.
- ↑ Adam Becker. "A Science Journal Funded by Peter Thiel is Running Articles Dismissing Climate Change and Evolution" Mother Jones. January 29, 2019.
