IN MID-JANUARY, at the conclusion of a special meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society, the venerable free-market organization, after appearances by Condoleezza Rice and Niall Ferguson, Peter Thiel was slated to give closing remarks on “Big Tech and the Question of Scale.” The keynote was the latest in a series of public remarks and interviews in which the PayPal founder and Facebook investor showed his prominence in conservative politics.
Thiel has long been a political donor; in 2016, he gave $4 million across various campaigns, including $1 million to a superpac supporting Trump, on whose behalf Thiel spoke at the Republican National Convention. He’s known to have funded right-wing hoaxer James O’Keefe and has been an enthusiastic sponsor of organizations for activists and intellectuals, like The Stanford Review, a conservative publication he founded in the 1980s. Earlier this month, he announced an investment in a Midwest-focused venture-capital fund led by Hillbilly Elegy author and social conservative J. D. Vance.
But unlike other major right-wing donors, Thiel seems intent on being known for his intellect as much as his wallet. Over the past year, he has played the role of outraged patriot, endorsing Trump’s trade war and bizarrely accusing Google of “seemingly treasonous” behavior in its China dealings. He intermittently lectures at Stanford. Vanity Fair has written about his hot-ticket L.A. dinner parties, where guests (including, at least once, the president) hold “deep discussions” about the issues of the day. Last year, George Mason University professor and economist Tyler Cowen called Thiel “the most influential conservative intellectual with other conservative and libertarian intellectuals.”
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