‘The Contrarian’ goes in search of Peter Thiel’s elusive core

Thiel was part of President Trump’s executive transition team; Palantir, Thiel’s data analytics company, has secured a number of lucrative government contracts. Behind the scenes, Chafkin says, Thiel was pushing for a “Republican crackdown on tech companies,” and more specifically on Google, his nemesis. (The size and reach of Google presented, in Chafkin’s words, “a threat to almost every company in Thiel’s portfolio.”) You might think that this display of government power would go against everything in this way. believed the libertarian Thiel, but you begin to wonder, as you read “The Contrarian”, if the intimidation of the great government that the Conservatives warned against before Trump became president was in fact just one projection of the great importance that they would gladly do if given the chance – Trumpism as a wish-fulfilling form. In Chafkin’s summary: “Get on the Trump train or get a visit from the FTC”

As it turns out, Thiel was bullied as a child – a skinny, socially awkward boy who played chess, he protected himself by becoming decidedly “dismissive.” He was born in Germany and moved to the United States as a baby, in 1968. His father’s work in an engineering company also meant a stay in apartheid South Africa, where the young Thiel attended an elite all-white prep school. He went to Stanford and started the Stanford Review, a conservative journal, staying put to go to law school. An unsatisfactory stint as a corporate lawyer ended when he failed to secure the Supreme Court internship he so desperately wanted. “I was devastated,” Thiel later recalled, saying it precipitated a “quarter-life crisis”.

“The Contrarian” chronicles Thiel’s professional career in its entirety, depicting him stumbling into the tech industry not out of any particular passion, but because it offered an opportunity to get rich. Thiel, contrary to the fantasy of the American entrepreneur risking everything for his dream, always hedged his bets – even, at one point, proposing that PayPal pour his limited cash reserves back to his own hedge fund so he could speculate with it. the money.

Chafkin describes Thiel’s support for Trump during the 2016 election campaign in similar terms. Chances are any Republican establishment would have been good for Thiel’s business interests, and Thiel had already outraged Silicon Valley with his criticisms of women’s suffrage and immigration. But if Trump wins, Thiel was to be rewarded with a president who clearly valued displays of loyalty above all else. Not to mention that Thiel – by all accounts a master of the universe – relished the idea of ​​Trump sticking him to that part of the elite club that wouldn’t have him as a member. As one of Thiel’s investors put it, “He wanted to watch Rome burn.”