The ceremony of the second installation of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States, last January 20, did not only mark the beginning of a new mandate for The Donald in the White House. It also had all the characteristics of the premises for the rise to power of a technocracy that is an expression of the high-tech world. In the very first rows, in fact, sat, in addition to the then inevitable Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX as well as the president of X (formerly Twitter), also Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos e Sundar Pichai, respectively CEO of Meta, Amazon e Google.Although in more discreet positions, the CEO of Apple was also present on the Capitoline Hill, Tim Cook, and that of OpenAI, Sam altman.
Peter Thiel and the Broligarchs: Who They Are
Just three days earlier, in his final address to the nation, outgoing Democratic President Joe Biden had warned Americans against the emergence of an oligarchy of high-tech billionaires that threatened to overturn the democratic nature of American society. Indeed, the high-tech entrepreneurs who gathered to cheer Trump on the day of his return to the White House were the quintessential expression of what British journalist Carole Cadwallard had called, during the previous year's election campaign: broligarchy – a portmanteau of bro (short for brother, meaning a member of a male fraternity) and oligarchy – to refer to a group of men with vast power connected to the world of Silicon Valley, although Musk had moved Tesla's headquarters to Austin, Texas, in 2021. The rift between Trump and Musk, with the latter's exit not only from the federal administration but also, and above all, from The Donald's good graces, has not substantially changed this situation.
From Musk to Thiel
After the conclusion of Musk's experience at the helm of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), he has increasingly distinguished himself as the true eminence grise of Trump's presidency. Peter Thiel, the co-creator of PayPal as well as the co-founder and president of Palantir Technologies, an IT company specializing in data analysis big data.
As Massimo Gaggi recalled on Corriere della Sera of August 5th, Thiel is a character who, like Musk, benefits from huge contracts from the federal government, in his case since the time when Democrat Barack Obama sat in the Oval Office: the Washington administration has signed contracts with Palantir Technologies worth hundreds of millions of dollars for profiling systems for the protection of national security and is about to stipulate another one worth ten billion dollars over ten years for Pentagon software.
Furthermore, Robert B. ReichThiel, the former Secretary of the Department of Labor in the first administration of Democrat Bill Clinton, denounced in an article in the British newspaper "The Guardian" on June 30 that Palantir Technologies could provide Trump with the technological tools to strengthen the authoritarian turn of his presidency and establish "a dictatorship led by broligarchs," providing information to target The Donald's political opponents. However, unlike Musk, who was instrumental in financially supporting PayPal when the digital payments and internet money transfer company was struggling to take off, Thiel isn't just aiming to leverage his connections with the federal government to increase his wealth.
It also poses as humanist intellectual, thanks to his Californian philosophy studies Stanford University and a law degree from the same university. Above all, he developed a project for the radical transformation of society based on the combination of the uncontrolled growth of capitalism, technological advances, libertarianism, profound skepticism towards the supposedly dominant culture, and the overcoming of electoral democracy.
Peter Thiel and the Sovereign Individual
Thiel's program is intended to be the answer to what he believes to be the inevitable collapse of today's society, a perspective he has drawn from The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive during the Collapse of the Welfare State (New York, Touchstone), a volume published in 1997 by James Dale Davidson, an American investment fund operator, and William Rees-Mogg, a British journalist who had edited the London daily newspaper “The Times” from 1967 to 1981.
The book predicted that the spread of the Internet on a global scale would have led to the dissolution of nation states, as the digital economy and finance would increasingly hinder tax collection and thus the availability of tax revenue that ensures the continued operation of services and infrastructure, starting with welfare, on which the state itself relies and thanks to which it is able to exercise its functions.
In parallel, a accentuation of individualism, because people would be freed from the oppression of their respective governments and, by virtue of this independence, would find themselves in a position to develop their potential with complete autonomy. Furthermore, the strengthening of digital finance would lead to virtual currencies, generated by the market, replacing state-issued currencies.
The origins of Thiel thought
The Sovereign Individual It has become a classic of the American neo-reactionary movement, which grew especially after the attacks of September 11, 2001. However, in celebrating the decline of the State as an occasion for liberation of the individual subject to the burden of taxesDavidson and Rees-Mogg echoed one of the main ideologists of traditional libertarian conservatism, Albert Jay Nock, who as early as 1935 had depicted the State as a sort of criminal association, due to the tax collection destined for welfare (Our Enemy, the State, New York, William Morrow).
Thiel considers The Sovereign Individual the book that influenced him the most, so much so that he wanted to write the preface to the second edition, released in 2020 with a different subtitle: Mastering the Transition to the Information AgeThe presentation of the volume as a kind of manual not only for surviving the advent of the information technology society, but also for knowing how to exploit this change to your advantage offered Thiel the opportunity to lay out his plans for the world of tomorrow. In his opinion, the future will be decided by the dialectic between two forces, artificial intelligence and cryptography.
The first would favor the advent of the totalitarianism, because it would bring with it the conditions for a centralized control of society, starting with the economy. The second, on the other hand, by making unmonitored exchanges possible through the Internet, would facilitate individualism and the establishment of a fully libertarian society.
Peter Thiel, libertarianism and its ambiguities
Freedom, for Thiel, would also mean being able to rebel against "single thought", fueling individual skepticism to its extreme consequences. From this perspective, conspiracy theories and disinformation would acquire their own dignity, as they would be seen as a healthy corrective to a sort of "single truth" peddled by the state and cultural institutions linked to the establishment.
On the other hand, in the novel The Lord of the Rings According to J.R.R. Tolkien, who inspired Thiel's company's name, palantirs are crystal spheres that distort the truth and present selective aspects of reality. Among the forms of information orthodoxy Thiel criticizes are theories about man-made climate change and the positive role of vaccines in combating pathogens and preventing disease.
In a recent interview with New York Times, Thiel has come to define Greta Thunberg, the activist who launched the “Fridays for Future” movement in support of sustainable development, literally a potential “Antichrist” which, with its supposed moralism and fueling feelings of guilt, would legitimize restrictions and conformist behavior in defense of the existing order. In this way, progress would be hindered and the world's stagnation would be perpetuated, dampening individuals' faith in a better future.
From his university experience at Stanford, Thiel developed above all the conviction that, in the name of promoting diversity, inclusion, political correctness and multiculturalism, many universities would stifle dissent, penalise critical thinking and encourage conformism, as he explained in a book written in 1995 together with David O. Sacks, another entrepreneur in the high tech field, The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and Political Intolerance on Campus (Oakland, CA, The Independent Institute).
Furthermore, for Thiel freedom and democracy would not be compatibleIn his view, voting would be an extremely ineffective method of making decisions, while the advantage of unregulated technology would be the ability to bring about epochal changes without the need for approval from others, much less from a majority. The suspicion, however, is that, for Thiel, freedom means above all a deregulation of the market to allow it to be controlled by dominant companies.
Not surprisingly, he has repeatedly argued that companies, from their very birth, would have the healthy objective of establishing a monopoly regime in their sector and that competition would be something for losers. As Palantir Technologies president stated in Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future (New York, Crown Currency, 2014), corporate gigantism and monopolies would create the indispensable conditions for implementing revolutionary and lasting transformations, as hegemonic corporations would not limit themselves to managing the existing but would be encouraged to abandon prudence and launch themselves into futuristic projects.
Thiel: The world to come is already coming true
Beyond obvious contradictions in terms (for example, the presence of monopolies ends up stifling market freedom), Thiel seems to be sketching a dystopian futureThe reality it outlines, however, is much less imaginary and distant in time than it might appear at first glance.
Some elements of Thiel's vision are already being realized under President Trump. For example, Thiel and Sacks's polemic against political correctness He pioneered the crusade against woke ideology that helped bring The Donald back to the White House in the 2024 elections and then pushed the tycoon, from the first day of his second term, to dismantle with an executive order the “DEI” (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) programs, that is, the forms of protection of diversity and inclusion, of the federal administration.
Furthermore, Trump appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who had stood out for his anti-vaxxer stance even at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, to head the Department of Health. Kennedy had repeatedly expressed his belief—without any scientific evidence—that vaccines would cause side effects such as autism, hyperactivity, and the development of allergies. Just this week, Kennedy announced cuts of nearly half a billion dollars in research funding for the development of mRNA vaccines., causing dismay among scientists because the decision seriously jeopardizes the ability to deal with future pandemics.
Trump himself has since proven to be a tenacious supporter of the misinformation as a political practice through its almost daily rewriting of facts to its own advantage. From this perspective, the transformation into patriots of the subversives who stormed Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021, was only the most striking example.
La deregulation It has been one of the defining aspects of the first six months of the Trump administration, particularly in the areas of environmental protection and worker protection. Executive Order 14192, issued on January 31, even ordered federal agencies to revoke ten existing regulations for each new regulatory measure they intend to introduce.
Finally, after an initial distrust, The Donald converted to cryptocurrency. Not without giving rise to a clear conflict of interest, he had his own issued, the $Trump and Melania, from companies linked to his family and has inserted the Bitcoin in the United States' strategic monetary reserves. Last Thursday, he even issued a presidential decree allowing pension funds to invest in cryptocurrencies.
Thiel's Influence in the Trump Administration
The Donald's alignment with the positions of the president of Palantir Technologies is not at all coincidental. Thiel has supported the tycoon since the 2016 election campaign, when Musk was still aligned with the Democratic Party, and had been mentioned for a possible role in the first Trump administration, after he had played a leading role in The Donald's transition team during the final weeks of Obama's presidency.
Furthermore, some figures linked to Thiel now hold senior government positions. For example, Kennedy's deputy at the Department of Health is Jim O'Neill, former CEO of the Thiel Foundation from 2009 to 2012, while David O. Sacks, the co-author of The Diversity Myth, chairs the White House Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology, which deals in particular with artificial intelligence and especially cryptocurrencies.
Additionally, Thiel was the main sponsor of the awarding of the Republican nomination for vice president to JD Vance, who worked for him at Mithril Capital, an investment firm, between 2016 and 2017. Finally, Thiel's close relationship with Vance provides him with the tools to try to also mortgage the policies of Trump's potential heir in the Oval Office. A few days ago, in fact, The Donald indicated Vance as his "most likely" successor in the White House, apparently paving the way for him to at least achieve the Republican nomination for the 2028 presidential election. In short, it would seem like a bleak, improbable and distant future. Instead, the broligarchy in Thiel's version has already begun to take root.
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STEFANO LUCONI teaches US History in the Department of Historical, Geographical, and Ancient Sciences at the University of Padua. His publications include The “Indispensable Nation.” A History of the United States from its Origins to Trump (2020), US Institutions from the Drafting of the Constitution to Biden, 1787–2022 (2022), The Black Soul of the United States. African Americans and the Difficult Path to Equality, 1619–2023 (2023). The Race for the White House 2024. The Election of the President of the United States from the Primaries to Beyond the November 5th Vote (2024).
