Peter Thiel has spent 30 years arguing, on political and economic grounds, the regulatory state is the primary obstacle to technological progress.
He cofounded Palantir, the surveillance and data-analytics company whose government contracts depend on minimal oversight. He was the first outside investor in Facebook, an early backer of dozens of AI companies, and the most consequential political financier in Silicon Valley’s history—the man who backed President Donald Trump before it was safe, who bankrolled J.D. Vance’s Senate campaign when Vance was a longshot, who has built an ideological project aimed at weakening the international institutions and regulatory frameworks that have governed technology and climate for a generation. He has made this case in newspaper columns, in books, in conference speeches, and in the funding decisions of his venture firm.
