Peter Thiel on the Global Economy, the State of Our Technology, and Artificial Intelligence
Another surprise from the endlessly surprising US election cycle: billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel has beennamedas one of Donald Trump"s delegates in California.
Thiel co-founded PayPal with Elon Musk, and was the first outside investor in Facebook. Locally, he"s bought stakes in Xero and Vend. Along the way, he"s racked up around $US2.6 billion in wealth, according to Forbes.
With Trump the only Republican candidate contesting the state, the primary vote will be a formality and Thiel is pre-destined to be one of those casting his ballot for Trump when the Californian delegation attends the Republican Convention in June.
A number of traditional big money Republican donors have been wary of Trump, or even said they will vote for Hillary Clinton to keep him out of office. And the tech sector has been chilly. Microsoft, for example, has said it won"t donate money to support the Republican convention this year. Calls by Trump for Apple to hand over its encryption keys to the State, and bring low-skilled, low margin hardware assembly back to the US have many in Silicon Valley up in arms.
So how did Thiel come to join Camp Trump?
The tech investor is a long time Republican supporter, but has previously been described as a libertarian -- a reasonable assumption given he was the largest donor to Ron Paul"s campaign in 2012.
According to the Guardian, Thiel is "very hawkish on immigration," and has previously donated $US1 million to Numbers USA, a group that lobbies for reduced intake.
It"s been noted that there"s some irony in Trump lobbying for restrictions, given he is the son of a German immigrant (and his construction company"s enthusiasm for hiring undocumentedimmigrants, according to New York Times reports).
Thiel was born in West Germany, making him the latest in a long list of immigrant"s who have contributed to US success in the tech industry that includes Andy Grove (Intel), Elon Musk (PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX) and Sergey Brin (Google) and many others. And that"s not to mention the children of immigrants such as the SyrianAbdul Jandali, who foisted the layout Steve Jobs on the Californian education system. Perhaps a wall could be built around Silicon Valley to keep them out.
Source: http://www.nbr.co.nz/opinion/peter-thiel-trump-delegate
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