Technology entrepreneur and angel investor Peter Thiel – is a Big Tech anomaly.
Thiel was a co-founder of what became mammoth online payment company PayPal. He struck it really rich when they sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002.
Thiel took that coin and started Clarium Capital – an investment management and hedge fund company. Clarium’s was the first outside money invested in Facebook. Thiel’s $500,000 in 2004 – became $1 billion when he sold his Facebook shares in 2012. Not a terrible return on investment.
Ok, anyone who gets this rich is an anomaly – in the Silicon Valley…or anywhere else on the planet. But Thiel – is much more anomalous still:
“A co-founder of The Stanford Review, he is a conservative libertarian who is critical of high government spending, high debt levels, and foreign wars. He has donated to numerous political figures.”
A conservative libertarian in Big Tech Land is…a unicorn. With wings. (A Pegacorn? A Unisus?)
One of the political figures Thiel openly supports is…<GASP> now-President Donald J. Trump. Thiel endorsed Trump in 2016 – and spoke at the 2016 Republican convention. In October 2018 – Thiel donated $250,000 to The Trump Fund.
“America First” seems to possess lasting appeal for Thiel. And God bless him for it.
Which almost certainly led last week to this:
Peter Thiel Blasts ‘Treasonous’ Google for Choosing China Over US Military
Peter Thiel Calls for CIA, FBI Probe of Google over China Ties:
“Google was accused of sleeping with the enemy again this week when tech billionaire Peter Thiel called on the CIA and FBI to probe the search engine for its ‘seemingly treasonous’ ties with China….
“The speech, first reported by Axios, echoed a tweet by Trump in March accusing Google of ‘helping China and their military, but not the U.S. Terrible!’”
Trump Endorses Peter Thiel’s Demand to Probe Google on China Links
And it ain’t just them.
Ex-White House Advisor Richard Clarke: Thiel Right on Google and China
It all reminds of something we wrote last October – in which we point out the US should look at MANY more Big Tech companies than just Google.
Leftist Big Tech: Communist China? ‘Heck Yes.’ The US Military? ‘Heck No.’:
“(W)ho’s bending over backwards to help Communist China challenge American dominance of science – and everything else? And help Communist China censor everyone and everything?
“Why…it’s America’s Leftist Big Tech….
“Big Tech’s Borg employees are more than happy to work for companies that censor speech. Here – and all over the world. All at the behest of the Communism-Leftism in which they so vociferously believe.
“But Big Tech’s Borg employees won’t work for companies – that work for the US Defense Department.”
Seriously, please (re-)read our piece in its entirety. The number of evidentiary links provided therein – is extraordinarily damning of nigh all of Big Tech.
These Big Tech companies are hardcore Left. And are willing to do whatever fellow hardcore Leftists wish – up to and including incessantly genuflecting to Communist China.
How U.S. Tech Giants Are Helping to Build China’s Surveillance State
Silicon Valley Adopts Chinese Censorship Tactics
Where Is China’s Silicon Valley?
The exact same place ours is.
Big Tech is filled-to-the-brim with Fellow Travelers – in the worst definition of the phrase:
“The term fellow traveller (also fellow traveler) identifies a person who is intellectually sympathetic to the ideology of a political organization, and who co-operates in the organization’s politics, without being a formal member of that organization.
“In the early history of the Soviet Union, the Bolshevik revolutionary Trotsky coined the term poputchik (‘one who travels the same path’) to identify the vacillating intellectual supporters of the Bolshevik régime.”
We have spent the last decade-plus describing and identifying Big Tech’s domestic policy efforts – as Socialistic in nature.
Why Don’t We Want More Government in the Internet? IDK…China, Maybe?
In no small part – because the domestic people helping Big Tech push their domestic policies describe these policies…as Socialistic in nature.
To wit: Network Neutrality. Which Big Tech companies Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, et al would LOVE to impose here.
Which we have long called “Socialism for the Internet” – because it guarantees everyone equal amounts of nothing.
Why have we called Net Neutrality this? Because Socialism for the Internet – is exactly what Net Neutrality delivers. Per its proponents.
Meet Big Tech’s policy-pushing Fellow Traveler – avowed Marxist college professor Robert McChesney. Who co-founded the Left’s lead Socialist US tech group – Free Press.
McChesney loves writing for domestic Socialist publications like Monthly Review and The Bullet – The Socialist Project. In which he has written about Net Neutrality – really pleasant things like this:
“At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies. We are not at that point yet. But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.”
Hmmm. That sounds…very Communist China.
McChesney sees Net Neutrality – as the Tech portion of the Communist takeover of all things US media:
“Any serious effort to reform the media system would have to necessarily be part of a revolutionary program to overthrow the capitalist system itself.”
“There is no real answer but to remove brick by brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles.”
Hmmm. That too sounds…very Communist China.
Worse, even.
Communist China has at least taken a couple of crooked steps toward capitalism.
McChesney and his Big Tech Fellow Travelers want to take the US Internet – all the way Left.
No, thank you.
President Trump and Peter Thiel – are even more right than they know.
We should investigate MANY Big Tech companies for selling out to Communist China.
WAY more than just Google.
We Shouldn’t Be Doing Business With Communist China
We really shouldn’t.
This first appeared in Red State.