A billionaire tech entrepreneur who used his wealth and influence in Silicon Valley to help Donald Trump win the presidency has deep connections to the new administration’s efforts to remake the government.
His name? Peter Thiel.
While Elon Musk and a crew of longtime employees and young acolytes have been fanning out across Washington under the banner of the Department of Government Efficiency, more than a dozen people with ties to Thiel — including current and former employees of his companies, as well as people who have helped manage his fortune or benefitted from his investments and charitable giving — have been folded into the Trump administration.
Some Thiel allies have held high-ranking government posts before, while others are heading to Washington for the first time. Thiel himself has no formal role in the Trump administration.
Musk and Thiel have been intertwined since the early days of PayPal, which Thiel helped found and where Musk briefly served as CEO. Since then, Musk, who leads Tesla Inc., SpaceX and other companies, has become the world’s richest person, while Thiel has built a multifaceted empire ranging from software firm Palantir Technologies Inc. to investment offices with stakes in top Silicon Valley startups.
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While links between industry and government have always existed, the current state of play is “unprecedented in the modern era,” said Quinn Slobodian, professor of international history at Boston University.
“The ambition seems to be more than just working at an arm’s length and profiting from state contracts,” Slobodian said. “There is an ambition for a bottom-up renovation of how the government operates.”