What Silicon Valley Insiders Think of Peter Thiel’s Speech at RNC

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/21/what-silicon-valley-insiders-think-of-peter-thiel-speaking-at-trumps-convention/

by abhi3 • 10 years ago

31 101 10 years ago

washingtonpost.com

neom5• 10 years ago

This article fails to address the growing divide between east coast and west coast technologist and entrepreneurs. Many of us in New York are ashamed and embarrassed by the valley, and are looking to change it via negation.

alex_c• 10 years ago

I'm not a member of either community - can you expand on the difference you see between the two?

neom5• 10 years ago

Some people are building toys for children, some people are building tools for humans. Both are fine, in moderation.

I think we see more and more the NYC tech culture feels like they are trying to build real things, the valley is stuck in consumerism and has lost the ability to push the needle, much of this is due to poorly considered greed and linear thinking. :(

stephancoral2• 10 years ago

Absolutely. I'm in NYC for HOPE this weekend. Coming from Silicon Valley where 1% of the workers are black, I was so happy to see such a huge diverse crowd at the conference, all there for the shared love of exploring technology and hacker culture. SV has some incredibly smart people but, in my experience, all they care about is making money. Feels like the hacker spirit has absolutely vanished

yummyfajitas3• 10 years ago

As a NY (and India) guy who occasionally visits the west coast, seriously? NY loves tech but the valley only wants to make money?

Consider the blockchain. Out west they try and rebuild the world with it - consider the (thiel funded) urbit. Back east we just replace banking clearinghouses with bank built blockchain.

What makes you feel differently? Also curious what the ancestry of the people doing tech has to do with anything.

wavefunction2• 10 years ago

Of course there are more than just the coasts.

vpribish• 10 years ago

please cite some examples

Nate75Sanders2• 10 years ago

A related article that does a good job of explaining why Thiel supports Trump:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/21/peter-thi...

EDIT: (to explain why)

No other analysis I've seen anywhere of Thiel at the RNC takes into account this very, very important attempt at explaining Thiel's reasons:

""" Now, in 2016, Thiel has finally found a politician capable of seizing that opportunity: a disruptor-in-chief who will destroy a dying system and build a better one in its place. Trump isn’t just a flamethrower for torching a rotten establishment, however – he’s the fulfillment of Thiel’s desire to build a successful political movement for less democracy. """

Thiel doesn't want less government, but he does want less democracy, because he can achieve his aims more easily if this is the case (or so he believes).

Lest anyone read the above and somehow believe I'm a Trump or Thiel supporter/advocate/etc, I'm solidly NOT.

sievebrain3• 10 years ago

I found it a relatively poor article actually. It's longer than the speech itself yet says less:

http://time.com/4417679/republican-convention-peter-thiel-tr...

From the man's own words, it seems to be a combination of:

• A shared feeling that America was once great, and it can be again, but currently is in decline. No other politician except Trump says this.

• Dislike of foreign wars, a feeling that only Trump says "end foreign wars" and really believes it.

And that's it. I'm not sure it really needs more analysis than that: Thiel feels America doesn't work as well as it used to, and like many libertarian types, is against foreign military intervention. If these two things are much more important to you than other things, it makes logical sense to support Trump.

Nate75Sanders2• 10 years ago

I didn't walk away with anywhere near the analysis you did, so I added an edit to my original post.

You can't simply hear Thiel's speech and directly get what he wants, because saying it would cause too much backlash.

He wants to use the government's massive resources to carry out projects that he's aligned with -- perhaps even that he has control over.

TimJRobinson2• 10 years ago

I understand trump over Clinton, but I don't understand why trump over Gary Johnson. He is a self proclaimed libertarian and the libertarian party is polling the highest in their history. Other than being anti war trump is the furthest from being a libertarian in Republican presidential history.

wavefunction2• 10 years ago

I would like to hear a definition of "greatness" from these people like Trump or Thiel tossing it about so casually yet naming it their main impetus.

yummyfajitas3• 10 years ago

Most Democrats say America was great once and can be again. They talk about the era of strong unions and manufacturing jobs as the golden age they want to return to. Big government spending too, which presumably means spending directly rather than just redistributing.

It's not just Trump's wife who is stealing ideas.

lmmlzxx2• 10 years ago

Jill Stein is clearly a less militaristic candidate than Trump.

jackfoxy2• 10 years ago

Multi-lateral trade agreements running to thousands of pages that nobody reads, sweeping comprehensive legislation written by lobbyists also not read by the representatives voting on it (not even by the sponsoring representatives) with multiple attached amendments (often having no relationship to the underlying bill), legislation carefully crafted to give benefit to a tiny constituency (sometimes even a single individual), and the establishment's lackeys in the press call this "liberal democracy". This is more like government of the elitists, by the elitists, for the elitists. If it were to perish from the earth, what would replace it? This is panicking the establishment. (Not endorsing any particular alternative.)

specialist5• 10 years ago

Anti-democractic, aka neoreactionary:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Neoreactionary_movement

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment

Until just recently, I dismissed this crowd as libertarian fruitopians. To be treated no different than the flat earthers.

Then I learned about the rantings of Mencius Moldbug [1]. These jokers actually mean it.

The world's a big place. I guess there's room enough for every form of crazy.

[1] Using his pseudonym, so that this isn't entirely ad homenin.

thormathison• 10 years ago

As an attorney and someone in tech, I used to strongly admire Thiel. He left biglaw and took a gamble, and it paid off. But between his support for Trump and the Gawker nonsense, I no longer have any respect for the man. Anyone on record supporting trump is on the wrong side of history.

B1FF_PSUVM2• 10 years ago

on the wrong side of history

Nikita Sergeyevich, is that you?

elgabogringo13• 10 years ago

Point awarded. Context:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_will_bury_you

"Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!"

elgabogringo13• 10 years ago

There's an irony to using the marxist derived "side of history" construct to support something you believe in.

If there really is such a thing as history taking sides, Marx and his followers very clearly ended up on the wrong side. I imagine those co-opting the phrase now will suffer the same fate.

DominikR5• 10 years ago

Even Political Correctness is a Socialist construct:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness#Early-to...

rayiner4• 10 years ago

On some issues maybe, on others probably not. I think he's on the right side of one key issue: http://www.salon.com/2016/06/22/donald_trump_is_no_lgbt_ally.... As a Bangladeshi with a beard I don't say that lightly, but we're at a weird point in history where only a guy not afraid of being called racist,[1] can take a stand (however opportunistic) on what is becoming a worldwide assault on cherished liberal social values.

[1] As an aside, calling facially race-neutral comments about particular immigration statuses or religious beliefs "racist" is kind of offensive to people of that race who don't share that immigration status or those religious beliefs. I'm sure there are a lot of Hispanics in the US who came here legally who don't appreciate liberals saying that Trump wants to deport their families, as if all Hispanics are here illegally.

elgabogringo13• 10 years ago

Pretty much. "Racist!", "Hate!". They are just buzzwords that serve to shut down debate.

elgabogringo13• 10 years ago

Replying to your aside... You are absolutely correct. Thank you.

I'd add that implementing security "at the border" is the lightest touch option available and doesn't infringe on the rights of any citizens. But our leaders won't do it.

Instead they create the TSA to eliminate free travel and get access to our emails & phone calls to eliminate privacy.

Also, while I see both sides of the gun argument, it worries me that the government uses an obvious Islamic terrorist attack as an excuse to push gun control.

In fact, it's almost like our government doesn't mind terrorist attacks, because with every attack they have an excuse to infringe on more of our rights and expand their power.

pen2l2• 10 years ago

You're a brown guy with a beard. May I please hear your experiences in America? Do you feel people have been unfair to you ever? Have they been more unfair recently?

By the way (if you don't mind me asking), did you have an Islamic upbringing? (as most Bengalis do I think). If you did, when did you decide to get away from it?

specialist5• 10 years ago

Please don't mistake Trump's clickbait (trolling) with policy statements.

Apologies to Conor Lynch, author of that article you linked, but Trump is far from the only person opposing intolerance. Just one of a zillion examples: many liberals rationalized supporting Bush's Folly in Iraq and Afghanistan to better protect women.

mter• 10 years ago

14 said they would not personally do business with him as a result.

One of the most interesting things about current politics.

I've always found it odd that republicans haven't picked up on this and tried to seize on the opportunity to create an incubator for republican leaning/apolitical companies.

Seems like there would be a tremendous amount of opportunity there given the success of fox news, particularly for an apolitical twitter given recent censorship issues.

pythia__3• 10 years ago

The idea just might be in the air, but there are several ways an attempt at implementing it can go, some of which are less likely than others to succeed through differentiation. Those details should not be neglected.

For one, "libertarian" (but explicitly not left-libertarian) would probably be a better first-order approximation of how to position such an incubator (or conference, or...). A Republican incubator could plausibly reject Curtis Yarvin on ideological grounds, which doesn't seem like the goal.

specialist5• 10 years ago

"incubator for republican leaning/apolitical companies"

That's precisely what they did. Their focus has been media, think tanks, politics instead of tech. They've been fantastically successful.

elgabogringo13• 10 years ago

Silicon valley is increasingly adopting way too much of the PC groupthink as of late. There's absolutely nothing and nobody that is truly disrupting anything. Even the word "disrupting" has become a cliche adlibs fill in the blank for pitching "new ideas".

Gone are the middle-class rebels (jobs/clark) that don't care what anybody thinks, in are the ivy-league-ish conformers that want wall street funding and friendly government regulation (basically everybody.

And hey, if wall street and friendly government regulators is what you want and if you have a few hundred grand (maybe a few million) to throw at her foundation or her friends, then Hillary is your gal.

lisper• 10 years ago

There's absolutely nothing and nobody that is truly disrupting anything

It's not for want of trying.

http://urbit.org

And my own humble efforts in this regard:

https://sc4.us

elgabogringo13• 10 years ago

Thank you for your efforts. I will read more of this when I get a chance. You are right that the new tech barons are waaaaay too cozy with the government. They travel by private jet with armed bodyguards and share our info with the government and tell us to "relax" and "get along" while we are getting felt up by TSA and having our emails read.

jackfoxy2• 10 years ago

SC4 is Strong Cryptography (or Secure Communications) for non-technical people.

Even technical people can't be technical about everything. We need useable and ubiquitous.

elgabogringo13• 10 years ago

Oh, and I shouldn't have said "absolutely nothing and nobody". That's not fair or accurate. I could have expressed that sentiment better. Incidentally, it's a POV Thiel shares, I believe.

youngButEager• 10 years ago

The Left has not helped Silicon Valley much.

1) ageism -- once you hit 40-45yo, you're done. Take a survey of the ages of the people at your company for evidence. Most engineers in their 20s; some in their 30s; almost none in their 40s and beyond

2) sexism -- females are about 50% of the population. But in Silicon Valley? Hiring favors males. Again, look at the companies you have worked at in Silicon Valley over your career. Mostly all male.

3) racial stereotyping -- take a look again at the companies you have worked for over your career. How many blacks there? How many Hispanics? VERY FEW.

So the idea that the Left is playing an effective role in the Valley is BOGUS in several dimensions:

- AGEISM

- SEXISM

- BLACK AND LATINO HIRING

pjscott2• 10 years ago

The candidates applying to those jobs are overwhelmingly male, with few blacks and hispanics. Imagine an unbiased hiring process: how would its results look different from what you see now?

brighteyes2• 10 years ago

That's a reasonable argument, but some of the facts don't fit it. 7% of tech roles in Apple are black [1], while at Google that figure is just 1%.

A 7 times difference is very large. But let's be generous and say that the 1% is 1.5% that was rounded down. The percentage of black tech workers is still almost 5 times higher at Apple than at Google.

These are massive companies, not small startups where a single hire skews the figures. So it's fair to say something is going on here - one of those companies might have a biased hiring process.

And it looks like it is Google that is biased against black people, since 9% of CS graduates are black [3], far closer to Apple's 7% than Google's 1%.

[1] http://www.apple.com/diversity/

[2] https://www.google.com/diversity/

[3] http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/10/12/silicon-valley...

DominikR5• 10 years ago

Speaking privately, Thiel’s allies could only conjecture reasons for his unexpected partnership with Trump; many expressed frustration with how anyone could support a candidate so unpredictable.

I could come up with a few pretty obvious reasons why a gay libertarian like Thiel would support trump.

1) Democrats support the resettling of millions of Muslims to the West that have been indoctrinated in an ideology that calls for killing gays. Currently in 11 Muslim countries acting out homosexuality is punishable by death. In most others they imprisons gays and extra judicial killings of gays by mobs are not persecuted.

It is not unreasonable for a gay man to fear Muslims and Muslim culture.

2) Democrats engage in political correctness and in vilification of their political opponents (You don't agree with me? You are like Hitler!) to a degree that people who say the wrong things or support the wrong candidate must fear for their financial and in some cases even physical security.

Even a billionaire like Thiel will face repercussions for this as was mentioned in the article:

In my anonymous poll of 42 randomly selected start-up founders from the database CrunchBase, only nine people supported Trump. Fifteen of them opposed Thiel’s speech for Trump, and 14 said they would not personally do business with him as a result.

In many areas it is basically open season on anyone that openly supports Trump, people will attack you, people will key your car and strangers will insult you.

It says a lot when people like Dilbert creator Scott Adams endorse Clinton because they fear for their personal safety: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/145456082991/my-endorsement-for...

This vilification pushed by the Democrats is the exact opposite of freedom and democracy. I totally get why a libertarian would support Trump even if he doesn't like him to at least restore the most basic personal freedoms.

3) Trump is very much anti big government. He wants to reduce its size and remove regulations that inhibit the growth of the private sector. Few libertarians would have a problem with that.

Also it isn't sustainable to permanently have a large portion of society completely dependant on government as we can obviously witness by the insane growth of government debt everywhere in the West.

This system almost guarantees that poor people will always stay poor and that their children will be poor too as all they know is dependance and submission to the social system.

Social systems do not help the poor, they never did. Over the last decades it has gotten bigger and bigger and yet poverty never went down, instead the opposite happened.

The same is true for public education which was basically run by liberals since the 80ties. It has gotten so bad that today it can't even guarantee that a child going through this system will not end up as a functional illiterates.

TimJRobinson2• 10 years ago

1. This is a complete straw man, no one wants to accept the intolerant into our society. They merely want to help those who are in dire need. The majority of Muslims don't care what others do, they just want to follow their own religion in peace, and those are the kind of people they want to help.

2. This isn't a democrat thing, every political ideology has some extremists that are intolerant of everyone that doesn't support their view. The only reason for saying this is to create an us vs them dichotomy. Saying this will never ever lead to positive political discussions.

3. Is he really? I see it like this: The reason manufacturing and unskilled labor jobs are disappearing is because the free market favors things being produced in China. When given the choice of buying Chinese made for cheaper vs paying more for local goods people chose the Chinese products.

The less government involvement, the better markets work, and the truth is the markets favor cheaper products made overseas, that's why this is happening. The only way that these jobs can be brought back to America is by government force, which means more government involvement in trade and business. In a world where anyone can do unskilled labor there's no reason for companies to take more expensive American unskilled labor over anyone else, and without government intervention that's always going to be the case.

I don't see any possible way that "better trade deals" are going to both help these workers and boost the economy. You can either choose free markets, which favor capital and a persons value to society and are the best for the overall economy. Or you can choose protected markets which involve more government and help some people to the detriment of others. There's no way you can have both less government and a more equal economic system.

Trump is promising a solution he almost certainly knows he can't deliver to take advantage of the economically illiterate. This is why the so many elites in the republican party hate him. He's running as a republican on a democratic economic platform (more equality) but still saying he's going to have less government, which they know is impossible to do. Unfortunately so many republicans are brainwashed into thinking the democrats are incompetent and only want to increase government because they can. While in truth the increased size of the government is the side effect of trying to make society more equal.

The saddest thing is if Trump gets in if he goes for free markets and less government (which as he is a business man I think he will, but we'll see) he's going to devastate these people (the unskilled blue collar workers, his biggest fan base) lives even more than they currently are and that's the real tragedy of the rise of Trump.

DominikR5• 10 years ago

1. This is a complete straw man, no one wants to accept the intolerant into our society. They merely want to help those who are in dire need. The majority of Muslims don't care what others do, they just want to follow their own religion in peace, and those are the kind of people they want to help.

http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religi...

Only in 3 out of 36 Muslim countries surveyed 1 in 10 Muslims believes that homosexuality is morally acceptable. This means that even in those 3 most tolerant Muslim countries 90% view homosexuality as unacceptable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_by_country_or_terr...

In the Muslim areas of Northern Africa and the Middle East you'll find that homosexuality is almost universally criminalised.

People living in Muslim countries overwhelmingly disapprove and many even hate homosexuals and that's why this orientation is criminalised in their countries. Yet when they come to Europe or the US they magically turn into gay tolerant citizens?

2. This isn't a democrat thing, every political ideology has some extremists that are intolerant of everyone that doesn't support their view. The only reason for saying this is to create an us vs them dichotomy. Saying this will never ever lead to positive political discussions.

You don't actually believe that anyone has to fear for his job, family and life if he supports Liberals in the West like Hillary.

I've never seen even one example of someone getting fired for supporting Liberals in the West, yet I've seen many reports of people who were fired because someone made a screenshot of an anti Hillary or pro Trump comment and sent it to their bosses.

3. Is he really? I see it like this: The reason manufacturing and unskilled labor jobs are disappearing is because the free market favors things being produced in China....

What I said is that regulations and increased taxes inhibit private sector growth at the cost of government growth, I didn't say anything about China or low skilled labor. We in the West could increase our competitiveness with lower taxes, less regulations and more freedoms, because this also directly effects the cost of production. No trade wars needed.

Instead all we do is increase taxes, create more debt and over regulate everything. And why do we need this? Because we have a social system in place since the 60ties that is supposedly fighting poverty and is constantly growing, yet poverty gets worse and worse.

And then there's public schools that are run by Liberals for decades now, which have gotten so bad that I honestly consider the possibility that they are actually trying hard to produce as many poor, illiterate and government dependant people/voters as possible.

specialist5• 10 years ago

"Democrats support the resettling of millions of Muslims to the West that have been indoctrinated in an ideology that calls for killing gays."

Full stop. What? I stopped reading right there.

I have no idea what you're talking about. I've never even heard such a stupid idea before.

Oh. "The West", not the USA's West Coast. You're channeling David Rubin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Rubin

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11553708

The "regressive left" and endorsing terrorism and other fever dreams. He's just making shit up.

DominikR5• 10 years ago

Sorry I don't understand, I don't even know David Rubin.

I'm living in the EU which is run by liberals/lefts and I can clearly see that they are pushing hard against the peoples will to allow millions of Muslims to resettle here. (And Obama/Hillary never fail to support this policy)

I did not say that these liberals endorse terrorism, I just say that they are doing it against the will of the people and that there are a lot of legitimate concerns that we have (terrorism, violence, sexual harassment) which are being ignored or often shut down by creating an atmosphere where everyone who disagrees has to fear being labeled a racist or Nazi.

These people don't even know what Nazis were. Nazis themselves were Socialists! Their party name was "Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" - in English: "Nationalist Socialist German Workers Party"

What Silicon Valley Insiders Think of Peter Thiel’s Speech at RNC

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