What Is It About Peter Thiel?

Anna Wiener’s Letter from Silicon Valley. Plus: the interstellar emo of “Dune,” and a political battle in the Hamptons. View in browser | Update your preferences Wednesday, October 27, 2021 In today’s newsletter: Anna Wiener writes about the allure of Peter Thiel; the interstellar emo of “Dune”; and the “ugly stepchild” of the Hamptons. Illustration by Nikita Iziev; Source photograph by Kiyoshi Ota / Bloomberg / Getty In 2011, George Packer wrote a Profile of Peter Thiel for The New Yorker, in which the venture capitalist and erstwhile entrepreneur was depicted as a fiercely contrarian, guarded, awkward, libertarian, somewhat immature techno-optimist. “A personal philosophy often emerges from some archaic part of the mind, an early idea of how the world should be,” Packer wrote. Thiel, he observed, “wants to live forever, have the option to escape to outer space or an oceanic city-state, and play chess against a robot that can discuss Tolkien, because these were the fantasies that filled his childhood imagination.” As I write in my new piece, over the past decade, as Thiel has accumulated wealth, power, and cultural recognition, the stakes of his personal philosophy have risen. “The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power,” a new biography by the journalist Max Chafkin, makes a case for Thiel’s unique influence within the tech industry, and as a political actor aligned with a nationalist, post-Trump far right. Thiel has also become—oddly, for a financier—a sort of intellectual figure, with a small, dense, opaque corpus of frankly esoteric essays, which are read by an audience that includes tech executives and employees. It was this audience that my editor Joshua Rothman and I became most interested in. How to account for the fandom? It seemed more complicated than just ideological affinity. What might it represent? —Anna Wiener Read “What Is It About Peter Thiel?” Anna Wiener has written extensively about technology, including the industry’s shifting narrative and life in Silicon Valley during the dawn of the unicorns, which is excerpted from her memoir, “Uncanny Valley.” From the News Desk Daily Comment Garland vs. Bannon Is Bidenism vs. Trumpism Polls suggest that provocation is proving more politically effective than probity. By David Rohde Daily Comment Joe Manchin’s Deep Corporate Ties An underexamined aspect of Manchin’s pro-business positions in the Senate is his early membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council. By Dan Kaufman Help The New Yorker improve your reading experience by taking this brief survey » Editor’s Pick Books Our Planet Is Heating Up. Why Are Climate Politics Still Frozen? Centuries after colonial and corporate powers set the stage for our environmental crisis, governments remain convinced that the market will solve it. By Olufemi O. Taiwo Dept. of Delight Photograph by Chiabella James “As an adolescent power fantasy, it doesn’t get much better than ‘Dune.’ ” Ed Park writes about the enduring appeal of Frank Herbert’s science-fiction novel, and the “interstellar emo” of Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation, starring Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides, the teen-age “chosen one.” The music of the singer-songwriter Liz Harris, who performs under the name Grouper, “is immersive and hypnotic—a rumbling undercurrent that surges toward your ears.” Sheldon Pearce reviews “Shade,” “a threadbare collection of faint love songs” that is Grouper’s most accessible album yet. 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