Part Four: How Peter Thiel Became the Gravedigger of Democracy

every year, but the rest of us have allergies. Robert's allergic to grass. The world is poisoned to me. I don't know what to tell you, Like I have eggs, I'm allergic to my own fucking skin. Get off, get off my back, thank you, thank you. Noah, it's true. My relentless toughness, Robert, Robert and.

you guys can remember back this far right. At the end of his last term in office, w announced massive support for a new immigration reform package, which today, unfortunately we would call like hopelessly live leftist right like the George W. Bush two thousand and seven immigration reform package is like so much more progressive than you could get away with now and part it included a path to citizenship for undocumented Americans. Bush's attempts to fix immigration as

he saw it again. This was not seen as great by progressives in the day, but it's just kind of more than you could get away with. Now didn't work out, and it didn't work out because there's this massive ground swell of rage from the fight flank of his own party right that is furious that Bush is suggesting any

mercy for people who had entered the country illegally. Teal saw this movement as promising, and he credited the failure of Bush era immigration reform on an unprecedented internet campaign. Teal money started to flow towards anti immigration organizations reaching people online was called. One was a nonprofit called Numbers USA, which argued that the US needed to reduce the number

of immigrants allowed in every single year. Numbers USA was founded and operated by Roy Beck, who himself had once worked for a guy named doctor John Tanton, who had founded other earlier anti immigration groups. Beck had worked for Tanton's US Inc. That's the anti immigration organization for a decade and had helped Tanton organize a book They Vacation together. These guys are very close ideologically and personally. Now, once Roy starts his Numbers USA foundation, which is backed by

Peter teel. He starts to downplay his relationship with Tanton because John Tanton, in addition to being Roy's friend, is

a white supremacist. Here's the Southern Property Law Center writing about tantin as long ago as nineteen eighty eight, A set of internal memoranda to the staffs of two groups he founded, the Federation for American Immigration Reform FAIR and US English were leaked and showed and showed Tanton warning of a coming latin Onslaught, questioning whether Latinos were as durable as others, and worrying that Latinos were outbreeding whites.

A decade later, he told a reporter that whites would soon develop a racial consciousness and the result would be the war of all against all. He hired and worked alongside Wayne Lutton, who has held other leadership positions in four white supremacist hate groups. He published and endorsed a racist book on immigration, and he published numerous white supremacists.

Tanton compared immigrants to bacteria that will continue growing until the population crashes, and sneered at immigrants defecating and creating garbage and looking for jobs. There's a lot that's messed up there.

You like, you listen to the pope, you know, that's all that matters, is like you know, it's this, it's this, this kind of separation between what cultural Catholicism is and like the fact that right now the fucking in a I think it's a in Pennsylvania. The Republicans are going after this nunnery because like a bunch of nuns are registered to vote there and they're like none of them

live there. They're like, the nuns are talking about counter suing them, and man, if the nuns are suing you, no born Catholic I have ever known would fuck with a group of nouns terrify you go get their uns. They're frightening people.

nationalist thinkers. He introduced leaders of FAIR, on whose board he still sits today, to the president of the Pioneer Fund, a racist outfit set up to encourage race betterment. At a private club, he promoted the work of an infamous anti Semitic professor, Kevin MacDonald to both FAIR officials and a major donor. At one point, pursuing his interest in eugenics, the utterly discredited science of breeding a better human race, he tried to find out if Michigan had laws allowing

forced sterilization. His concern, Tanton wrote in a letter of inquiry, was a local pair of sisters who have nine illegitimate

children between them. And again, Peter Teal is putting money into all of the people adjacent to this guy, right like he is backing a lot of organizations that are next to him like this, this is just you can see, and this is he's very much Tela is very happy when like this Bush era immigration reform package goes down in flames, because he has been one of the things he's most consistent on again since like the two thousand and seven eight is wanting massive restrictions and particularly non

white immigration into the United States, which is not a libertarian stance and is really just kind of a far right racist stance.

like a thing that's absolutely confirmed, but there's definitely like ties between him and Roy Beck, and Beck is tied to Tanton, and this is all kind of part of this very long process of Teal backing different explicitly racist anti immigration organizations. Now, the next year, right around the time that JP Morgan started experimenting with Pallanteer, Peter Teal published an article in the Cato Institute's Journal with his Sea stetting buddy this is the guy that he's backing.

At the Sea Steatic Institute. The theme of that issue was the idea of creating libertarian enclaves outside of existing states. Teal submitted an essay, The Education of a Libertarian, where he channeled his friend Curtis Jarvin to write, I no longer believe freedom and democracy are compatible. He wined that the nineteen twenties where the last gasp of hope for liberty because Americans then gave women the right to vote and created the welfare state, and these two innovations had

made political victory impossible for libertarians. Libertarians can't win elections because women can vote and there's welfare, and we'll never get those people to give us any votes. Right, That's why he's so angry about this ship.

guys are the winners of our society. They are elevated by a system that is designed to produce and support them, but they still can't feel help, but feel like losers all the time, no matter what they do, and so they turn their rage against the system that is the only reason they're special.

I don't want to stop women from voting, but we have to agree, this is a problem that guys like me can't win as many elections because the girls now. Another constant teel irritant was the free press, as we talked about last episode. I do think his initial irritance with Valley Wag comes from a semi understandable place, but it took years of them reporting on his actual doings in a manner that I think was generally responsible journalism

before Teal acted. Here's the shadowy, inciting incident of the Gawker lawsuit. According to Derek Thompson in an article with The Atlantic where he interviews Ryan Holliday, he's the guy who wrote the book on this. In twenty eleven, he is in Berlin and he takes a meeting with a then twenty six year old Teal devotee, who you might call mister A. The young man essentially tells Teal, I know you're obsessed with Gawker, and I have an idea

to destroy them. He says, Teal should create a show company to fund investigators and lawyers to find causes of action against Gawker and ultimately sue it into oblivion. He estimates that the plan will take up to five years and up to ten million dollars in funding, which is prophetic.

So it's this mysterious mister A who nobody knows the real name of, allegedly who is the guy who sits down with Teal and is like, Hey, I think if you find if you just keep putting it, put money, you know, put it towards some people, maybe I can help you with this the feeling this guy's kind of angling for a gig, Like we will figure out when gawker slips up and we will use that to stick the knife in them.

Vance and Blake Masters get into his circle, right, and I don't know how much. I'm trying to just kind of like stay out of it, because what matters is he's backing these people, not whether or not he thinks they're hot. But that is an allegation. You'll hear that's made about this, right, And I don't know, I'm sure that,

I'm sure that's not a non factor. Sometimes you hear out this guy who like goes out and targets older men to try and like embolden his career and is like, I know how you can destroy Gawker, And maybe Peter, he's frustrated, he's angry that he can't do anything about this thing that's hurting his business, and then like this hot dude comes up with a plan to kill them, right,

Maybe that's some of what's going on. According to the version of the story told by Holiday, Peter compared to complain to mister A over their meal that he couldn't just outright destroy Gawker, and mister A said back, Peter, if everyone thought that way, what would the world look like? Right if people didn't just destroy journalistic outlets like because they could, where would we be as a society. So if this is accurate, that is kind of a not a I don't know if it's a big if, but

it is an if. Peter. This guy is who succeeds in getting Peter to fund this operation to find a way to kill Gawker, and they eventually find the way to kill Gawker in an unlikely place, the office of a Florida DJ named Bubba the Love Sponge. Here we go, Here's where Bubba the Love Sponge comes in. Everyone's been waiting for this since we started talking to you. You know, speaking of Bubba the Love Sponge. You know who is a love sponge?

COVID sponsor as Sophie and they give us money. Come on, hymns. Get on the bastard's trade, you know, yeah, adds like that. Every day. We'd shill for you, we'd chill for you. I'll sell hymns. I don't give a fuck. Uh right now, give hymns. Do you enough testosterone? Probably? But you could have more. It's what all the celebrities do. They'll ship it to your door. Who gives a shit?

bubbas a bad place. I really need some comfort, and Bubba the Love Sponge is like, Holkster, you know it'll cheer you up fucking my wife. Why don't you go into my bedroom and fuck my wife? And the Hulk said, okay, but you're not going to film this, are you? Brother? I know you always film people who have sex in your house. You're not going to film the hulks dick,

are you? And Buba was like, of course, I'm not going to film you, And then of course he films the whole keving sex and he takes the recording made in his house and he puts the recording in his desk at the radio station where he works. Incredible, did you do amazing?

this all happens. If this is accurate, the whole destruction of goker thing started because Bubba the Love Sponge at a rival Florida DJ had an argument over who was going to like get which time slot, and the rival DJ broke into his desk and stole the videos to like hold him for like them for ransom basically, and ultimately leaked the videos to Gawker to embarrass Bubba the Love Sponge. Hulk was only ever an accidental casualty in the It was collateral damage. The poor ulkster. That's in

the Great Florida the Great Game of Florida DJs. He's Afghanistan.

that is it still was potentially defensible. We'll talk about Gacker makes some mistakes in their legal representation here, but it's deeply questionable. This is a thing that I can say I'm leaning on this not being newsworthy, right, And what's not newsworthy is they publish the video. They don't just report on the fact that there's a whole Cogan

sex tape. They published the video under the title even for a minute, watching Hull Cogan have sex in a canopy bed is not safe for work, But watch it anyway, and that's just hard to defend in court that you're going to have to defend that.

not something he did with his subordinate. This is not something he did on company property, right, Like, this is not something you can argue as an abuse of power on the Holkster's part. You know, this is a consensual non monogamy. I guess you could call it. Really that just happened to get filmed. So Hulk has an argument that what happened was a violation of his privacy. Now gocker Again, I think if they had just reported on the tape's existence, could have defended it. Making it a

vai le is a lot harder to defend. Teal's people set legal wheels in motion. And it's again, it's like twenty twelve when this article, when this video gets released, so that's like six years after the sex tape was filmed, and for a few years, the case kind of grinds forward. And part of what it grinds forward is Gawker doesn't know that Teal is backing hul Cogan and you know, the Holkster's got money, but the Holkster does not have

a major media company money. And the smart play if you are a big corporation like Gawker sued by a guy, even a rich guy, is delay make it as expensive for them as possible. Right, You run out the clock and eventually they will not want to keep burning cash in order to keep fighting you.

they're pressure. Yeah, I work with afterwards, But I would just say at the dly East rabble truck together for a compleaders is like, look, I think in general, you got the First Amendment errors on the side of publishing, right, even creepy ash absolutely like all Cogan's dick and so I mean, I think what they were more pursuing was a uh, you know what happens in any of these First Amendment cases where they're they're they're trying to put

up their best defenses against getting sued, and those defenses take a while. And I don't think it was I mean, this company was never particularly a huge company. They had insurance that protected them against litigation at some points, and and and you know they had you know, depending on where the case landed, whether it's in New York or Florida or whatever, they had better defenses against the walk because a lot of the stuff is weirdly state by state.

should know that. Yeah, it's kind of like a holiday is argument as to how this went badly is that Gawker takes the standard strategy you would take, which is a bad strategy if Hogan has the kind of financing behind him that they couldn't have known he had, right, like the fact that there's so much more money behind this, which starts to become clear later in the case, Like, it's the kind of thing people do not initially know.

Gocker doesn't initially know that Teal is backing them, and what Holiday will argue, And I think I think you're probably right, But I don't think it's wrong that if Gaker had known who was supporting the lawsuit, there are probably changes they would have made and how they pursued their defense, or at least how they pursued publicizing that Teal was involved. Right, Yeah, Like maybe maybe you try to make that clear earlier, right, Right, you.

But also it's one of these things where well, if you have Peter Teal money and the ability to judge, shop and shit in a way that a guy Teal does, it's it's hard to imagine he wouldn't eventually have gotten them on something. Right.

that's a very different kind of way to operate. And look, I think also just like growing up in the same era of media is like I think we all a lot of us were like kind of self taught and kind of like relearning the rules as we went along, right, you know, Like you know, this was you know, a major object lesson and and we would have all rolled a little bit differently if we had known that there are these like you know, kind of like autocratic gazillionaires

that were kind of out to destroy what we were about.

of journalism early on in my career too, Like we were trying to figure out how these things worked in a new era where there was suddenly both opportunity and money in a way that journalists had not been used to for a while, but also brand new pitfalls and threats. Right, And this is well said, I don't think. I don't think it was you know, Gawker, if they had done

things differently, might have been able to survive. But someone was going to go down in flames for something like this as a result of the different period that we had entered into, Right. I do kind kind of believe that maybe it wouldn't have had to be Gawker, but it was going to be somebody because there was just so much being tried that was new and that hadn't been adjudicated, you know, like that that was always good, and it was the same thing I think most of

us expected. It was going to come down over like whistleblower stuff, you know, WikiLeaks kind of shit, as opposed to Bubble the Love Sponge. But it was going to happen, right, right. So a big part of why the case goes against God is there's this. One of kind of the leading moments of this court case is that in court, Gacker editor in chief Aj Delario, in a deposition kind of jokes that the only celebrity sex tape he wouldn't have considered news whethy was one that featured a preschooler. That

does not go over well in court. It's not a great moment, although I don't think it actually changes the It's just why would you say that. I don't know anyway, I'm not gonna He's suffered enough, But it doesn't. This all goes very badly, right, I mean, it goes as badly as it possibly could. Even though the case had not initially gone super well for Hulk. Ultimately, you know the fact that this judge is very sympathetic, it all goes their way in the case, the plaintiff is awarded

one hundred and forty million dollars in damages. Goker, as you have said, was never that big as a media company, and this absolutely drives them into bankruptcy. Nick Denton sold the company off to Univision, which shuddered the embattled flagship site. And that is the end of Gaker, except for it's kind of sort of back. I don't know, I don't know how we want to like it didn't all die out, right, But yeah, it's a and this is a scary moment.

Teal's behind this. But right as the case is ending, it comes out that Peter Teal is the guy who had backed this right, and so Teal is able there's this like backlash against him, but he's also able to kind of go out in the open and take a victory lap. He tells The New York Times. It's less about revenge and more about pacific deterrence. I saw Goker pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attention by bullying people even when there was no connection with

the public interest. And like you back guys like JD. Vanson, Blake Masters whose politics is entirely dedicated to attacking little people who have no power right destroying their lives for cloud like, you don't believe any of this shit, Peter. Now, the Gocker case was the first thing to put Teal on my radar in a big way, right. You know. I wish I could say I was one of those guys who from the early days of pallunteer and knew

he was dangerous. But it wasn't until this that I was like, oh shit, there's this Peter Teal guy, and he seems like a real problem. Right. It's also notable that, like, it's not entirely I think that the surface summary of this, which is that Gocker outed Teal and then he destroyed them, is not entirely what happened.

like the early Craigslist era had killed local newspapers. And so there's suddenly this lifeline for reporting and you have this explosion in sights that had started as kind of less legitimate. Gaker's early days is no One's p finest hour, just like the earliest days of BuzzFeed, right, you know,

it's kind of a clickbait site. And then they start this very serious, groundbreaking news organization that really does great work, and it's terrifying to these guys who are like, oh shit, maybe we're going to deal with more of this than we ever had as opposed to it all being on the out and dying, and so they kind of commit

themselves to killing it. And this is that Silicon This is Peter Teele is the first of the Silicon elite to start flexing their muscles to destroy the independent media, right.

business interests. Nothing would come without a legal threat. And so it was just a regular part of the publishing process which was deal with legal considerations. And often it was the very same lawyers that were connected with the Gawker case that were then being hired by everybody else because they had, you know, they had learned this one trick.

So yeah, that's one weird trick. Yeah yeah, And so you know that stuff was real, and I don't know that it stopped us from publishing any stories, but it definitely stopped like, it definitely slowed down the pace of stories for sure. And it definitely I know, I definitely know of others where you know, big stories got killed off. Yeah, because of the because of the legal threats.

try new things. And that also means, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean I'm not saying every journalist would have published the bub Bubba the love Sponge video, but you are going to do things that are new and that you can't say are covered under the laws that supported you in the past when you're trying to adapt to changing circumstances, and that's always going to create opportunities for people to destroy you if they're scared by what you're doing. Yep, fair, Yep, Yeah,

I think that that that gets at it. I hope in a way that's pretty fair. Speaking of destroying your enemies, you know who my enemies aren't.

behind the mastards promise. Ah, we're back. So one of the results of the Gawker lawsuit is that Peter gets put thrust in the public awareness and gets criticized in a much bigger way after this, right he is no longer is kind of like, oh, he's just this smart founder, he's kind of a libertarian. He probably has a couple of different stances like, oh, this guy's like a dangerous

right wing ghoul. Right, Like, that's that's really people. And this happens right May of March twenty sixteen is when the Gawker case, you know, gets closed in court, and obviously Peter becomes like the Republican parties bigger single funder I think during this period, and it's our capped. I think he's at least one of them. Because of the way money works in all of this, it's kind of

hard to say that for a statement. But he's a major donor and he speaks at the twenty sixteen RNC where he endorses Donald Trump, and he makes a big deal about the fact that I am a gay Republican. The Republicans are welcoming now, you know, they'll accept you, unlike these evil liberals who aren't really tolerant. The Republicans

accept me a gay man. And obviously, like that was the thing that Republicans were doing at the time, like Trump because the Pulse Nice club shooting was like a Muslim who did it, Like I could really, you know, pretend to be defending gay people and anti isis credentials and it works because people are make bad decisions a lot of the time.

want to do. You know, that's being a person too, So it's not it's not worthless to look at like, well, how does Peter do that?

focus and on gay people. There's stories that like has now deceased boyfriend like kind of talked him into stopping supporting Republicans because of how you know, crazy they were at the Andy gay stuff at the same time, guy is exactly and Blake Masters are both two of the biggest anti gay like Christian fucking lifestyle crusaders out there. And these guys are total teal creatures. So do I.

they start reporting on his life extension fixation. Now all of his life extension investments are made through his a lot of them made through his nonprofit Breakout Labs, which is supporting, like you know, unconventional solutions to major problems, and one of those major problems is extending human lifespan and ending aging. Now people think this is kind of quirky of Peter, so they start looking into it and reporting on it, and Peter starts getting asked by journalists

in interviews about this. In one interview with The Washington Post, he explained, I've always had this really strong sense that death was a terrible, terrible thing. I think that's somewhat unusual. Most people end up compartmentalizing and they're in some mode of denial and acceptance about death. They both have the result of making you very passive. I worry the FDA

is too restrictive. Pharmaceutical companies are way too bureaucratic. A tiny fraction of a fraction of a fraction of NIH spending goes to genuine anti aging research, the whole thing gets treated like a lottery ticket. Part of the problem is that aging research doesn't always lend itself to being a great for profit business, but it's still a very

important area for philanthropic investment. And you know, one thing Peter comes around on is that government funding is okay if it's supporting things like anti aging research that I might benefit from, right, Like, we don't need roads or schools, but I don't want to die. But also I love this idea that like, well, normal people aren't scared of death. Everyone's scared of death, Peter, We're just not going to baby's about it. Deal with it, man, fucking take it on the chin, motherfucker. God.

people like how that rumor starts to spread. Now, the actual ultimate source of this was an article published in the same week for Ink magazine by Jeff Berkovici, who put out an old interview he'd done a year before with Teal that touched on Peter's interest in what's called a biosis quote, which includes the practice of getting transfusions of blood from a younger person as a means of improving health and potentially reversing aging. I'm looking into parabiosis stuff,

which I think is really interesting. This is where they did the young blood into older mice and they found that it had a massive rejuvenating effect. And so that is one that Again it's one of these very odd things where people had done these studies in the nineteen fifties and then it got dropped altogether. I think a lot of these things have been strangely under explored. Now. The reason parabiosis was under explore under explored is that

it doesn't really work right. Blood transfusions are amazing medicine for the reasons that you would think, like when people lose all their blood, right, great to be able to give people a blood transfusion when they have been shot and bled out. It's not going to make you young, because of course, it doesn't work that way, because that's stupid. It's stupid that it would work that way. That's not how blood works, and it's not how aging works, and

you're silly for thinking it. Oh no, no, Unfortunately, nothing can stop aging, except apparently taking lots of HGH and testosterone. Huh you don't, noah, do you have twelve thousand dollars a month because I could. I can help you out with a plan here.

product that he claimed. Ambrosia LLC was looking for volunteers over the age of thirty five to receive blood transfusions from the young Goker reported around this time that they had gotten a tip and again, this is right after the lawsuit has concluded that Teal spent forty thousand dollars a quarter to get blood transfusions from an eighteen year old. Now, is Gker just trying to take a shot at Peter

because of what happened? There's not outside evidence of this, right, nothing's ever come forward to make it clear that Teal definitely was taking the blood of the young right. In interviews, Peter has always been consistent that he had he never

got around to starting it, right. He told a reporter that he hadn't quite started yet, and he has since denied ever taking the blood of the young, telling that Andrew Sorkin at Deal Book on the record, I am not a vampire, which I have to say, is something a vampire would say. He's like Alla on one hand, only a vampire would say that, because normal people don't have any reason to deny being vampires. Yeah, right, I.

about that. He takes HGH as like a life extension thing, right, Like, I don't think he would hide it if he was on it. I think maybe it just the science was not there in any real way, and Peter's not going to do something like this, like it's it's not pleasant, probably like you wouldn't want to get constant blood transfusions if you weren't convinced it. Did something.

But HGH has side effects. You can get carpal tunnel from it, you can get muscle and joint pain, you get an increased risk of cancer. Research has shown that people in animals whose natural levels of HGH are high are likely to die at a younger age than those with lower levels of HGH. So I don't know that I would take this gamble. I think this may just be a case of Peter wanting the cosmetic benefits of HGH.

It makes you look jacked, even if you don't spend all that much time working out as opposed to, Peter truly believes this is a life extension technology. I think it's probably more accurate that he convinced himself it's keeping him young because it has cosmetic benefits that he appreciates. Right, My stance and all this life extension stuff is that Peter Teal will die one day, and as is the case with all of us, he will probably die sooner

than he expects, because that's just the way shit goes. Sorry, Peter, I recommend making peace with it. That's the only real way to handle this. Now. I went back and forth with myself for how much to cover of each of Peter's evil interests For example, in twenty sixteen, Peter was a mega donor to the Republican Party, but like most people who get involved with Trump, he soured on him quickly, and he avoided donating to Trump's reelection campaign in twenty

twenty out of what he described as frustration with Trump's personality. Right, I don't disagree with any of his policy, but I'm angry at how much he's become the story. Right. In twenty twenty two, he got back in the electioneering saddle, and he backed Jdvance and Blake Masters with unprecedented donations. He gives more money to jd Vance than a single

candidate had ever received for a congressional seat. In all, Peter Teel put thirty five million dollars in twenty twenty two into sixteen federal level Republican candidates, and twelve of them win. But the overall performance of the GOP in those midterms is famously poor. And it's famously poor because a big part of their campaign rhetoric was spurred by irrational bigotry against LGBT and particularly Tea Americans. Peter would

publicly state that this frustrated him. I think this has to do with the fact that there's a guy he's dating at the time who is a like a gay male model and who will give later interviews. I think these are kind of we're actually right around this point where he says that, like, yeah, I talked to him about this and like convinced him to stop right because I think these people are toxic and they're bad for us, and I didn't think he should be doing this. This

model's name was Jeff Thomas, as we'll talk about. He's deceased now, but you know he would claim that, like I talked to pee, and I don't see why Jeff would have necessarily light about this other than that, I think Jeff was getting shit for his associated with Teal because of how much more aggressive Republicans were being at gay people. So maybe that's was Jeff's reason to want to say this. Teal is going to set out twenty

twenty four, but he does. It's kind of worth noting if you're trying to take seriously this idea that he stopped backing Republicans because of a toxic they were getting. He backs the most toxic of them in twenty twenty two. So I just don't know how much to take that I don't think I should take that very seriously. Now I could say more about how teal c steading ambitions have metastasized to a broader quest by some Silicon Valley elites to create an independent network state rule by big

tech in a place like California. I probably should, but we'll leave it with this, which is that one of the major advocates of the network state movement is an investor named Belaji Shrinevasen, whof Teal suggested to Trump should lead the FDA in twenty sixteen. Thankfully, Lash didn't wind up leading the FDA. But this guy is a really dangerous dude, and he's taken some of these ideas, these Curtis Jarvin ideas that heel started to mainstream, and he's

been twisting them into very dark directions. In twenty twenty two, his book The Network State described a plan for tech oligarchs to make their own countries, escaping democracy. At the same time, one of his chief plots was to conquer San Francisco. Here's a repoet from an article in The

New Republic on Blaji's current advocacy. What I'm currently really calling for is something like tech Zionism, he said, after comparing his movement to those started by the Biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, Theodore Herzel, the spiritual founder of the State of Israel, and le Kwan Yu, former authoritarian ruler of Singapore. What a collection. Bolaji then revealed his shocking idea for a tech governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a

new political tribe clad in gray shirts. And if you see another gray on the street, you do the nod, he said during a four hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. You're a Fellow Gray. The gray shirts would feature Bitcoin or Elon or other kinds of logos white combinators, a good one for the city of sam says go In particular, Grays would also receive special ID cards preventing access to exclusive Gray controlled sectors of the city.

In addition, the Grays would make an alliance with the police department, funding weekly policemen's banquets to win them over. Gray should embrace the police. Okay, all in on the police, said schmid Nevawsen. What does that mean? That means, as I said, banquets, That means every policeman's son, dotter, wife, cousin, you know, sibling, or whatever. She'd get a job at a tech company in security. In exchange for extra food

and jobs, cops would pledge loyalty to the Grays. Shrinivasen recommends asking officers a series of questions to ascertain their political leanings. For example, did you want to take the sign off Elon's building? Some shit, absolute loser. Shit is stupid, fucking X sign incredibly fun.

The idea behind the much ballyhooed Fellowship was that Peter would pick twenty students per year and give them each one hundred thousand dollars to drop out of school and do their own thing trying to start a business with some support from the Teal Foundation. Basically, Peter pays for you to figure out a company you want to start, and your association with him makes it easy for you to get VC bucks and keeping with his supreme weirdness

as a dude. Teal announced the initiative by attacking the Catholic Church kind of, if you get into the right college, you'll be saved. If you don't, you're in trouble. As I've said, colleges are as corrupt as the Catholic Church was five hundred years ago. They're sort of charging people more and more. It's the system of indulgences. You have this priestly or professorial class that doesn't do very much work, and you basically tell people that if you get a diploma,

you're saved. Otherwise you go to hell. And like, that's such a weird way to look at it, because it's it's not the professor who have made college expensive. In part, it's like the same reason people like you, these VC ghouls that you know who are part of the administrator class we're sitting on the boards of these colleges, want more money. Like, it's not a random Marxist professor who has decided that college is going to cost eighty thousand

dollars a semester. That guy doesn't benefit from that situation, right.

website Education Surge. A columnist for Bloomberg who is himself a venture capitalist, Aaron Brown, recently did an analysis of the two hundred and seventy one people who have received a Teal Fellowship since the program began, and it turns out eleven of them have gone on to start new companies now valued at more than a billion dollars, making them what are called unicorns in the industry. He sees

that as a pretty remarkable record for finding unicorns. It's not like colleges aren't trying to encourage their students to start companies through various programs. Brown says, none of those have been anywhere near as successful as giving these kids one hundred thousand dollars and sending them out into the world. So that's one analysis of the program. Max Chafkin, you won't be surprised to hear, gives a more critical summary

of things. First off, he alleges the foundation was started in part for the media attention it would get, which would distract people from the fact that Peter's Founder's Fund has lost a lot of investors after his hedge fund fell apart. Peter launched the Fellowship with a characteristic five thousand word essay on what happened to the Future written by his partner at the Founder's vund, Bruce Gibney. It includes the line we wanted flying cars, and we got

one hundred and forty characters. Thus, the Fellowship was a small attempt to get the future back on track by encouraging ambitious geniuses to take big swings and not just work for the man making fake technologies solving fake problems. Chaefkin points out that these kinds of fake technologies were precisely where the Founder's Fund had invested its money for years. Founder's fund backed Facebook, a social network just like Twitter, as well as path, Gowala, and slide, which were all

social media companies. The last one, which had been started by Teal's PayPal co founder Max Levchin, was known for something called super Poke, which have allowed users to virtually slap, punch, and grope their Facebook friends, and was about as far from the randy and ideal as one good man imagine.

The fellowship did connect some young men with funding that wound up leading to profitable companies, but none of them gave us the flying car or anything but more of the same overvalued Silicon Valley bullshit, and Schafgan argues the program than damage to some of the young people in it. For one thing, the program tossed kids into the Bay Area with little mounted to a small sum of money and very little social support or institutional support. Ironically, the

kinds of things that universities are decent at providing. Quote, they showed up in California, only to find out that the actual execution of the fellowship was basically an afterthought. Once Teal had achieved its marketing goal, there was no structure to speak up beyond that suggestion and the requirement that they not enroll in school or take a full

time job. Some former fellows talked to Schaefkan and made the very interesting point that the actual benefit of the fellowship was essentially the same as what you got out of an Ivy League school, access to powerful people in money. The Teal program, one fellow told, promised libertarian capitalism in a supportive community that would reward creativity rather than Machiavellian maneuvering.

What I found was comically not that he said. It was college without the classes, a residential community, or studying. In short, most of what was enriching about college. It wasn't an attack on a credentialing system. It was another credential And of course, yeah, yeah, I think that gets it right. The greatest privilege of wealth is the ability to be taken seriously as a diletant. Right. You don't have to know anything, you don't have to earn your way in to show up with a bunch of money

and be a serious player. Now, sometimes this works out. That's what James Cameron does with deep sea exploration. But he's a real he becomes a legitimate expert, right, Like, No one can argue that at this point, But James Cameron very rarely is that how it works out. Usually, usually it works out like this, right.

had helped track the terrorists down. This appears to be untrue, but it spread far and wide enough that you can find plenty of critical reporting on the company that will point out its alleged connection to bin Laden's death. After Trunk took office, Peter saw his most nativest dreams come true in a way that meant big bucks for Palenteer. They made a contract with ICE and Homeland Security Investigations

for thirty eight million dollars. This led to them providing software for a twenty seventeen operation that targeted unaccompanied children and their families tried to enter the United States. This was the Kids in Cages scandal. And I'm going to read an excerpt from the Intercept next. I think Ryan

Grimm wrote this one. Documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act litigation provided to the Intercept show that this claim that Palenteer software is strictly involved in criminal investigations as supposed to deport tiations is false. The discrepancy between the private intelligence firm's public assertion and the reality conveyed in the newly released documents was first revealed by Mihinte, an advocacy organization that has closely tracked Palenteer's murkey role in

immigration enforcement. Far from a detached support in cross border criminal investigations, the materials released this week confirmed the role Palateer played in facilitating hundreds of arrests, only a small fraction of which actually led to criminal prosecutions. The document makes it clear that the operation which would directly target the parents and other family members of children apprehended at the border, all with help of Palateer's case management app.

The document continues to instruct that if sufficient information on parents or family members is obtained while investigating an unaccompanied child, a collateral case would be sent to the affected team for action. The instructions make it clear that enabled inquiries

could result in charges against a child's family. Teams will be available immediately to conduct database checks and provide and contact super a suspected sponsor, parent or family members to identify, interview, and if applical, seek charges against the individual and administratively arrest the subjects and anybody encountered during the inquiry who

was not who was out of status. So the Palenteer aided campaign to hunt down and arrest family members of children who crossed the border alone was touted by the Trump administration's top immigration hardliners as a necessary measure to de tear asylum seekers from making the journey north. According to figures ICE provided the intercept on Monday, the twenty seventeen initiative led to four hundred and forty three arrests,

including thirty five criminal arrests. Prosecutions, however, were much more difficult to come by, with ICE, acknowledging that the campaign led to just thirty eight prosecutions related to alien smuggling or re entry of removed aliens. Karp, the avowed neo Marxist, had initially expressed frustration at his company being involved in government overreach. In twent and thirteen, he told Forbes, I didn't sign up for the government to know when I

smoke a joint or have an affair. But in the wake of reporting on his company's involvement in ICE, when some employees that Pallunteer pushed to divest themselves from work with ICE, Karp pushed to renew a forty two million dollar ICE contract and attacked workers at Google and other Silicon Valley companies that had protested contracts with the military

and law enforcement. In the first couple years after Trump took office, Pallanteer acquired contracts potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars more than the total revenue they perceived from the US government during Obama's entire second term. Palenteer has at varying points explored deals with the Saudis, and in January Karp flew to Israel to express solidarity with the Israeli government, and one presumes make the case for why the IDF should buy his company's products at the moment.

Pallenteer's technology is also heavily used in Ukraine, where by some accounts, it plays a major role in targeting decisions. Now, I am hesitant to rely on a lot of reporting that basically asks iftise acts as advertisements for Palenteer's technology, but there is some evidence that their algorithmic analysis has been useful in allowing Ukraine to more efficiently target and

expend munitions on the battlefield. It is not really possible for me to analyze how how effective Palateer's technology is here, right, in part because information siloing in a war with this kind of stuff is so effective. I do worry about how much a lot of the reporting on the efficacy of Palateering Ukraine, how much of it sounds like an ad And I'm always very questionable about early reports that military and intelligence products are like game changingly effective, right,

because a lot of the time that winds up being overblown. Right, I can't say that it is. I don't know. This is something that will be adjudicated in the march of time. Right, this is still all going on.

Israeli government. Israel most of their like AI targeting that's gotten so rightly covered is not through Palenteer, but Palaeer clearly wants to be in that business with Israel, right, Like they're seeing what's going on in Gaza and like this is a place where we can make a lot of money. You know. It's just a case where I think they kind of got beaten to the punch on

some of this stuff. When it comes to what they've been doing in Ukraine, Pallanteer has played a big role in turning the war in Ukraine into what center for Security and Emerging Technology analyst Rita Konev described as an AI war lab. It's possible that their technology has been helpful to Ukraine, but even in the most defensible use

of Palenteer's tech, there are troubling questions. From a write up by c SET, national security officials and experts caution that these new tools may end up in the hands of adversaries. Rita Kane have raised significant concerns about the long term implications of the demployment of advanced technology in Ukraine. She stated the prospects for proliferation are crazy. She also

post critical questions about the future implications. Most companies operating in Ukraine right now said they align with US national security goals, but what happens when they don't? What happens the day after, right, and you know what happens with governments who are engaged in stuff that's a lot more questionable, you know, than what Ukraine is doing right like what we're talking about with them shopping around Israel. You know, there's a lot of a lot of unknown questions about

how this is going to work out. This is not I hope this is like a ground level overview of what Palainteer does of why you should, you know, be paying attention to them. Nobody should take this as the final word on everything Palanteer gets up to. That's too big for even four parts of a podcast. But I think we've laid the groundwork and I think, Noah, that's where we're going to have to roll out for the day. Yeah wow.

of unclear what was going on with him. Teal has always been famous for throwing these very lavish, very decadent parties right, very much at odds with the whole religious conservative image that he had. There's definitely some texts and stuff that have come out about like the parties that he would plan with this guy. There's some evidence they had a fight, or maybe he had a fight, Peter

at a fight with his husband. It may have been that Jeff got angry at him over his support of the right, and that like that's part of why he pulled away from Teal because he like moved out of the house. I just don't know who was on what side of this. But in twenty twenty three, Jeff committed suicide, and we do not know why. We don't know what happened here. I'm bringing this up just because people are

gonna be like, why aren't you talking about this? But like, there's really not enough for me to say what happened here, right, But it is like a thing that you'll run into with Peter. I didn't want to just leave it out because you know, that would seem like a weird hole to have in the story too. Yeah, yeah, it's cool stuff.

It's also it's part worth noting for like the ethics of Pallanteer that when Peter was interviewed about like how Israel has been using AI and a lot of their targeting those resulted in heavy, massive civilian casualties, his basic statement was like, I don't think it's worth criticizing them on this. You have to assume they know their business, right, which, like, man, a lot of innocent people have died as a result

of this AI targeting shit. And I think that tells you where Peter sees the ethics in his industry, right, it doesn't really matter, you know. Uh anyway, sorry, YadA YadA, so much there, But like, how how do you cover all of this in four episodes? We're already over time? So thank you, Noah. I appreciate you sitting here with us for this.