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https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-libertarian-tech-titan-peter-thiel-helped-make-jd-vance-the-republican-kingmakers-influence-is-growing-261856>
"The money is easy to trace. Scroll back through tech entrepreneur Peter
Thiel’s political donations and you’ll soon hit US$15 million worth of
transfers sent to Protect Ohio Values, JD Vance’s campaign fund. The donations,
made in 2022, are a staggering contribution to an individual senate race, and
helped put Vance (Thiel’s former employee at tech fund Mithril Capital) on a
winning trajectory.
But if money matters, so do ideas. Scroll back through Vance’s speeches, and
you’ll hear echoes of Thiel’s voice. The decline of US elites (and by
extension, the nation) is supposedly a result of technological stagnation:
declining innovation, trivial distractions, broken infrastructure. To make the
nation great again, Thiel believes, tech should come first, corporates should
be unshackled, and the state should resemble the startup. For Vance, who has
now risen to the office of US vice-president, a Thiel talk on these topics at
Yale Law was “the most significant moment” of his time there.
Thiel’s influence on politics is at once financial, technical and ideological.
In the
New York Times, he was recently described as the “most influential
right-wing intellectual of the last 20 years”. And his potent cocktail of
networks, money, strategy and support exerts a rightward force on the political
landscape. It establishes a powerful pattern for up-and-coming figures to
follow.
To “hedge fund investor” and “tech entrepreneur”, Thiel has recently added a
new label: Republican kingmaker."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
