> Thiel's reporting to the FBI was largely limited to foreign contacts and attempts by foreign governments to penetrate Silicon Valley. Thiel has publicly called on the FBI to investigate Google's ties to the Chinese government.
Seems like a lot of words to leave this comment buried in the middle of. The story seems like a soup of hopeful political operators trying to sow chaos, and since they're all on the same side, the publisher is happy to oblige. Talking to the IC at all gives them the unlimited option to call you an informant if you ever get involved in something counter-establishment anyway.
One gets the impression that part of America's new class system is whether you are connected to the intelligence community somehow, as if you have a certain level of responsibility at all, someone who knows someone always seems to be in touch or within a degree of separation.
Full sentence: "Johnson, who said that he was also an informant for Buma, told Insider that he believes that Thiel's reporting to the FBI was largely limited to foreign contacts and attempts by foreign governments to penetrate Silicon Valley. Thiel has publicly called on the FBI to investigate Google's ties to the Chinese government."
Can you please make the point you were trying to make more explicit? I don't understand your perspective on the impact of what was omitted.
Anything posted here about thiel or musk (especially musk) is bound to be full of useless comments that boil down to nothing more than "i don't like him." It doesn't matter what the article is about, if the headline can be used to justify that dislike, those will be the majority of the comments.
Musk, Thiel, Zukerberg, Larry Ellison and their respective company along with Qualcomm. To the point for a number of years ycombinator wouldn't even mention Thiel or Musk at all. Things only got back a little easier in the past 12 months or so.
Frankly a good number of those same people have ideological compasses that spin at a high rate of speed. People think they're punching up so mocking a gay man who just got outted for retribution as a CHS informant on global news doesn't register to them.
> People think they're punching up so mocking a gay man who just got outted for retribution as a CHS informant on global news doesn't register to them.
What on earth has Thiel's sexuality got to do with this?
And the whole trope about Gawker "outting" Thiel has to stop:
1. Don't want to be "outed" as gay? Perhaps don't fill your social media with pictures of you partying on gay cruises.
2. Whether you agree or not, billionaires are considered public figures by the courts, because of their "outsize influence on public opinion and politics".
While I don't think that his status as an informant is particularly newsworthy, think it is nasty for this article to be published and in fact would praise his patriotism, they don't think they are punching up, they are punching up.
Beyond being a gay man who got outed as a confidential source, Thiel is also one of the most powerful people in the world. He is a billionaire who bankrolled multiple people's campaigns for federal office in the last few years. Your average HN commenter does not approach that level of power and influence and never will.
The problem I see is that these people think that "telling" on criminals and international intelligence operations is wrong, for some reason. That's weird and really negative for our country.
The kind of mental arm wrestling you just engaged in to explain that point is why "punching up", which usually involves some amount of drift from norms and ethics, is problematic. The people willing to engage in that and who think doing patriotic duty is a problem is a near circle.
> The kind of mental arm wrestling you just engaged in to explain that point
What arm wrestling? It's pretty simple: anyone "taking shots" at him on Hacker News is definitionally punching-up because Thiel has more power and privilege than anyone here, power and privilege he routinely exercises on local and national stages. I don't have any issue with his actions working with the FBI here for what it's worth.
It's the timing. There's a time for rife comments aimed at Peter Thiel; I have plenty of those. As I put it before, when a gay man is outted in explicitly stated retributive fashion for being a CHS informant for doing his duty as a defense contractor it starts to color the people who are doing the punching. The whole situation should give us pause, not the reflex to punch someone.
If Alex Jones was in the news for carrying someone out of a burning building, I'd be acknowledging his good work while continuing to "punch up" on him due to his behavior that seemingly seeks to destroy civilized society (an exaggeration, but not a wild one). Someone doesn't get a free pass from earned mockery on an article-by-article basis, Thiel's civic duty to the FBI in this instance isn't some temporary hall pass for his tangible support for fascistic policies and politicians.
That's he gay is only relevant to you in this conversation, the person critiquing the critique. Why does that somehow give him extra victim status? Thiel is not subject to the power or cultural dynamics individuals in marginalized groups often are. He's being treated like Charles Koch would be were he to do the same thing - that's equality, baby.
And let’s be honest about Thiel. He was in the glass closet. Literally everyone in SV knew he was gay. He didn’t hide it. He just didn’t want it published so he could more easily raise money from Mohammed Bonesaw al-Saud.
Then again, since when MBS care about staying in anyone’s good graces?
"punching up", which usually involves some amount of drift from norms and ethics
what
'Punching down' is fits that description, as it's slang for taking easy shots at weaker people or those who can't fight back. How does criticizing someone in a greater position of power involve drift from ethics?
Because it implies that the metaphorical 'violence' against people you consider 'up' is morally justified, which it is not. It is merely ideologically justified, in some limited circles.
Oh, you're not allowed to express abstract opposition to people in positions of power now? Nonsense. American political language is awash in fighting metaphors. One of Thiel's more famous investment, Anduril, is named after a fictional sword; if he gets to invoke the idea of weapons then you have no standing to complain about other people's rhetorical selections.
If you are looking for something to get upset about, try looking at people who send non-metaphorical threats of violence to librarians, schools, and the like on the regular.
> The problem I see is that these people think that "telling" on criminals and international intelligence operations is wrong, for some reason. That's weird and really negative for our country.
If you think it's weird, you must have grown up very sheltered. Every child knows what happens to snitches. It was common practice to punish both the offender and the tattletale when I was growing up, because "nobody likes a snitch". The vast majority of the population has the same or similar cultural context here.
So the vast majority of the population didn't used to have the same context, not regarding international espionage and serious crimes. Not telling a teacher? Sure. Ragging on someone for telling the FBI about a murder? No.
"Snitches get stitches" works for perpetuating a gang's control through violence but doesn't really help people in a community. It's a terrible norm.
Outing an FBI CHS sounds like something not to do lightly, even though there might be public interest in knowing some complicated entanglements that might need oversight.
> In a written statement to Insider, [...] Johnson said that he was exposing Thiel's work as a CHS as retribution [...]
They actually wrote "retribution". Sounds like an additional hint that outing might not be OK.
Can a seasoned journalist say what the professional guidelines are here?
You would balance the public interest in the revelation against the possible harm.
Best guess is they see the harm as minor as 1. It is not revealed who Thiel was informing on and 2. To the extent a target could guess, Thiel is very well equipped to protect himself from physical threats. Further, it doesn’t seem Johnson is implying physical retribution, it seems more like (arguably) he’s trying to expose what he sees as some sort of ideological hypocrisy. So any harm would be reputational (and debatable) if that’s the case.
Many sources for news articles act out of self interest, whether to benefit themselves or hurt an enemy, so that would not be inherently disqualifying.
(Not endorsing the presumed logic just describing it.)
You comment made me do a bit of research. Apparently the owner of Insider is Axel Springer, which in Germany is compared to Fox News. So I guess that pretty much answers the question (to me at least).
Wouldn't jump to conclusions that fast tbh. BILD, Springers biggest brand, might be comparable to Fox, but Springer has more reputable stuff too. Politico was bought by them too
>> In a written statement to Insider, [...] Johnson said that he was exposing Thiel's work as a CHS as retribution [...]
> They actually wrote "retribution". Sounds like an additional hint that outing might not be OK.
Charles C. Johnson has a very colorful history. Rep. Matt Gaetz (also in the news lately) invited him to the State of the Union in 2018 after which multiple outlets reported on Johnson's Holocaust denier past and his other activities.[0][1]
In my opinion, I wouldn't trust Johnson or let him know any real secrets – damaging or not – about me. I'm a bit surprised Thiel would trust him – seems like a blunder that he typically doesn't make.
The rest of the article is a hit piece with a bunch of guilt-by-association attacks against Thiel, but Johnson is curiously spared from having his past brought up.
This is the story within the story. Maybe Johnson went to the press to legitimize his name among search terms. Maybe he’s the kind of guy you put on boards to move sums of money around.
> Insider spoke to multiple people who claim Thiel became a “confidential human source” for a Los Angeles-based agent named Johnathan Buma — a term that indicates a long-running relationship with the FBI
> Neither Thiel nor the FBI commented to Insider about the report. And one of Insider’s sources is Charles Johnson, a far-right political figure and blogger that Insider acknowledges has spread a mix of accurate and false information in the past.
How would Johnson know about a long term relationship between Thiel and Buma, if all he did was introduce them? Is the implication that the FBI leaked a confidential source, or that Thiel told him about it, or... and stay with me here... should we assume this person who has spread false information in the past is doing it again?
What’s it matter in either case he’s burned and any value as an informant vanished when the claim left the first person’s mouth, whether it was true or not.
His friends and business partners would know better than to believe it if it's a lie, and, if it's true or they are worried about being narc'd on (by Thiel or anyone) to the FBI, they have bigger problems to worry about than this
I thought Thiel's primary business was Palantir, which is a subcontractor performing data analysis for military intelligence and law enforcement. He literally works for them to begin with out in the open.
On the one hand, I don't think this surprises anyone given Thiel's history.
On the other hand, I don't think the tech community talks honestly enough about the dangers posed by a small number of powerful tech people with fringe ideologies.
"Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women—two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians—have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron."
Maybe not around here? But technocratic nationalism is certainly an unusual strain nationally, come on. We don't get to know his inner mind obviously, but whatever ideology runs through "socially conservative gay man" is likely to be rare.
>Deadspin floated an old college rumor that Johnson had once defecated on a dormitory floor at Claremont. When Johnson tweeted on Friday that he’s considering a run for Congress, the first reply suggested his campaign slogan could be “Outing rape victims and pooping on the floor since 2014. Vote for me.” Of course, I had to ask him about the allegations. “For the record, I did not shit on the seventh floor, but I wish I did,” he told me.
wait so he only denied the floor pooping not the more serious allegation? that's almost as funny as the tweet. forever sad i let my precarity to drive me to post so badly i got removed from The Website
> P.S. Palantir was founded by the CIA (In-Q-Tel):
Based on that article specifically.
>> The only early investments were $2 million from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's venture capital arm In-Q-Tel, and $30 million from Thiel himself and his venture capital firm, Founders Fund.[6][7][13][14][15]
Sounds like the CIAs investment arm funded Palantir and didn’t found it, the funding amount also seems pretty inconsequential given the overall funding.
It’s the other way around: programs which cannot adapt to the availability of info coming from CHS risk losing funding. This article claims the program dried up late last year.
> Enough money will eventually bend any justice system to your will.[b]
Not "any." The US legal (don't call it justice) system happens to be extremely corruptible, in a sort of "de facto" sense, because securing representation in court is extremely expensive, and everything secondary to representation -- depositions, expert witnesses, investigations, etc. -- is also extremely expensive. In the end, virtually all civil cases become wars of financial attrition.
But it's possible to imagine different systems that avoid this sorry outcome.
It's as simple as making trial lawyers, still called "officers of the court," actual employees of the court. Assign them at random to litigants or defendants, just as judges are assigned. What one litigant gets (e.g. should one side request depositions or expert witnesses) the other also gets on an equal basis.
You could pay 'em out of taxpayer dollars, and it would hardly register a blip in civic/state/federal budgets. We'd all benefit from a more even playing field before the law.
But it'll never happen, because legislators are virtually all lawyers, and they rather like the old status quo, which works very well at enriching lawyers.
If we are to speculate, what happens to Thiel's social reputation now (regardless of whether the allegation is true or not)?
Do people stop talking to him in fear of saying something bad?
Do his old friends stop contact because of what he might have told FBI?
Does he stop getting invited to parties?
Or will all of this blow over in a couple weeks and it's business as usual? My thinking is that his social life will change quite a bit (even accounting for him being a billionaire) and he is done with politics. I don't think any politician will want to involve themselves with Thiel now.
Oh man. Dissident right Twitter (sorry, 𝕏) is probably gonna go nuts. I myself don't have strong political opinions, but I listen to a lot of historically Thiel-adjacent media (redscare pod, Urbit) and I'm looking forward to the wild conspiratorial takes about what appears, with even the slightest bit of investigation, to be a massive nothingburguesa.
I'm surprised at how many Theil defenders there are in the ycombinator chat. We don't have to defend every VC bro just because we are on ycombinator...
I think it is concerning when law enforcement develops close, symbiotic relationships with wealthy business figures who have shady pasts. This can easily lead to conflicts of interest, lack of oversight, and preferential treatment.
And for those "libertarian" folk in the discussion, why do you care about Peter Theil so much? Why go to the chat section and defend him so ardently?
Why everybody discussing this? It looks obvious that any US citizen at any moment can be reached by FBI with a call for information; there is no countermeasure against it; since Patriot Act was enacted, you'll never know who gave any piece of information to FBI. And now, somehow, "according to anonymous source", BusinessInsider highlights a very specific pro-Trump person and trying to convince readers of something. But what exactly happened?
So we have an unsubstantiated hit piece against yet another prominent Trump supporter that hinges on "anonymous sources" and a big fat helping of "trust us"?
Even if it were true, what exactly constitutes an informant? Answered some questions once or deliberately worked his way into things with the express intent of informing on the activities?
According to The Intercept[1], there's thousands and thousands and thousands of FBI Informants today. Everyone in a powerful position with access to the greatest and latest technology is likely an informant on some level.
> So we have an unsubstantiated hit piece against yet another prominent Trump supporter
Peter Thiel had his fair share of detractors before Trump.
Disclaimer before discussing the following: I'm not saying Gawker was not trash media. That is orthogonal to Thiel's involvement.
That being said, Gawker never "outed" Thiel. The man's social media profile pictures and galleries were full of him shirtless on gay cruise liners. And whether you agree or not, courts have repeatedly held that billionaires are considered "public figures" by virtue of their "outsized influence and impact on public affairs".
These are reasons Gawker was never successfully sued by Thiel.
A fundamental concept of our legal system is the right to face your accuser. Thiel and his lawyers manipulated Hogan like a puppet:
* Hogan had already settled with the person who leaked his video (for 1/5000th of the amount he would later claim from Gawker).
* Hogan had reached a tentative settlement with Gawker that would include part ownership of Gawker, and entitlements to profits.
Then along come Thiel, and he offers to pay for lawyers, or use his lawyers (how that's not a conflict, I don't know - what if what Hogan wants conflicts with what Thiel, the person paying the bills, wants, how does your lawyer ethically reconcile that?)
And when they do, damages were upped to ridiculous levels. Financial/economic (note: NOT emotional distress, which was claimed separately) damages of fifty million dollars.
Fun fact: Hogan's net worth in 2007 at his divorce was $30M, and at the time of the video publication, $8M.
I'm not sure how someone whose career earnings were estimated at $15M could claim, with a straight face, that the video being published cost him $50M in purely economic damages... from what? Did networks stop re-running old Wrestlemania episodes as a result? His burgeoning retirement celebrity endorsement income?
And when everything was settled, Thiel's lawyers had Hogan withdraw the one claim that would have allowed Gawker's liability insurance to kick in.
Weird, huh? You're interested in owning a part of a media company, and getting a share of their profits, but "your" lawyers tell you to withdraw a claim, knowing that the only possible outcome of doing so will be immediate insolvency and bankruptcy.
However reprehensible Gawker was in this, there absolutely a wide crevice where there are perfectly valid ethical questions about Thiel's involvement and motivations in this whole debacle.
Looks like he was doing his patriotic duty.”Thiel's reporting to the FBI was largely limited to foreign contacts and attempts by foreign governments to penetrate Silicon Valley.”
Not uncommon in rest of the world. Once upon a time, it was American journalists who enthusiastically did this:
"Thiel publicly called on the FBI to investigate Google's ties to the Chinese government" kinda ignores the fact that Google competes with several of his company, and their 'ties' are allegations that come from... Thiel.
And that's story init? Not that anyone "rolls over" for the FBI. We all know it happens. The question is why. in this case it's likely not money. PT has plenty.
1) So what would motivate him?
2) How often do these type of "exchanges" go on, and we have no idea someone's (e.g., politician, journalist, industry titan, etc) actions were dictated by the Intelligence Community? This isn't a conspiracy theory. It's IC 101.
I mean it happens every day. When people have a lot to lose and not much left to gain, they tend to roll over a lot more easily.
As far as what would motivate him: look at what's happening to Musk right now as an example. I'm not saying he doesn't comply and cooperate with law enforcement, but he's certainly being made a big example of right now from all sides.
I'm sorry... what? Thiel's political opinions, alignments and investments are not remotely a secret. And having actually read the article, it seems pretty preposterous to imply it was a hit piece. If anything, this makes me feel like maybe Thiel is more complicated or nuanced than I'd previously thought him.
Not all libertarians are anarchists, that is a faction but not the majority IMO.
I would overhaul the law enforcement apparatus in my ideal society. But their current existence would not prevent me from providing information to them and asking for assistance if the reason was justified.
I cannot solve the problem of nuclear weapons without a formal state with a military, and war in general. So we can argue about how best to organize it but the state must exist and is legitimate IMO.
Government always serves the ruling class. The point of libertarianism is to eliminate the abuse of government so the capabilities of the individual can progress freely. Libertarian ideology assumes government to have a worse case scenario impact. Blissful ignorance of an over-watch is not worse case.
Libertarianism isn't the same as anarchism. Libertarians want there to be law enforcement and a defense industry, and they want the private sector to play a role in that when possible, but not to fully replace the government's role. The state having a monopoly on violence is a key part of libertarian thinking, in fact.
So there's no hypocrisy here. However, the Insider article is clearly designed as an attack piece on Thiel, and is probably written by people who don't understand what libertarianism is - a very common issue with those who attack it.
American libertarians do, not those everywhere. In the US they square it by saying that guns are a bulwark against the state going rogue and turning its own weapons on its citizens, but that in normal times (outside of civil war) guns are only meant for things like self defense in cases where the police can't get there in time, or hunting.
I think if you want to argue hypocrisy that's still a better place to start than with being an FBI informant, but the article isn't about gun control.
Thanks - and obviously it’s a hot topic. I wasn’t looking to go down that track so much as query the ‘monopoly on violence’ thing. I didn’t know this was a libertarian view, and assumed a broad ‘self-defence’ belief.
Everyone that knows anything about Peter Thiel knows that he's not a libertarian. In his book and various interviews he makes it clear that he is heavily influenced by post-enlightenment thinkers. He's even explicitly said he does not believe freedom and democracy can co-exist, and that we need silicon valley in the defense industry to help combat the enemies of america.
> starts a billion dollar company that helps the government spy on people, become FBI informant
That's not necessarily antithetic.
Although you could make the rationale that doing such a company reinforces the power of the government, and therefore creates a bigger government which would be against libertarian ideals
I like that this thread is going to become a bunch of invective where people who aren't libertarians are going to claim libertarian hypocrisy on subjects like (a) outing someone as homosexual and (b) suing a media outlet for what was effectively revenge porn.
Is it your honest opinion that all libertarians are supposed to be ethically okay with outing someone's sexuality or posting revenge porn tapes? If so, why?
About the lawsuits that he bankrolled that shut down a press outlet, he himself said:
"I strongly believe in the First Amendment" [...] "I believe journalists are a privileged group in our society. They play an important role in getting us information and in the system of checks and balances. But these were not journalists." https://www.engadget.com/2016-10-31-peter-thiel-silicon-vall...
It is my honest opinion that Thiel is a hypocrite and is a libertarian only if and when it's convenient to him.
In this quote, he's letting himself off the hook for undermining the First Amendment protection of the press, which he also did covertly, btw, by claiming that his targets were not journalists when they were.
I'm not saying they weren't scumbags for publishing what they did, but he doesn't get to have it both ways. That's the point.
Libertarians are always guilty of such "ironies", some would even call them hypocrisies. It's almost like the veneer of well reasoned ideology is a front just wanting more power.
Hypocrisy can be found in many groups. For example I've seen many leftists that claim to be pro-immigration, protest against asylum centra opening in their wealthy neighbourhoods. Or people that claim to be worried about climate change travel the world and protest against wind turbines near their neighbourhoods.
Hypocrisy is not limited to certain groups, pretty much all people are hypocritical at times.
Is that protesting immigration processing or immigration detention centres? I can see why a pro-immigration person can be against what looks like a prison going up in a leafy suburb. They may change their mind if what’s going up is simply a document processing centre that people visit when they need to.
You are cherry picking the one (weaker) example by badly interpreting it and trying to extend that to the others.
All groups have hypocrisy where people push for others to aim for lofty goals, but fight tooth and nail to not have their local community pay the costs. Left, right, authoritarians, anarchists, etc.
A lot of us are simply interested in promoting and continuing to evolve and understand that well-reasoned ideology. We feel its application can improve the human condition.
If it is being downvoted, it's at least partly because it's an unrealistic standard that is about as serious as the take that "socialists" shouldn't be allowed to use smartphones or other products of "capitalism."
> the actions of one individual do not represent the whole party
The "bad apples" phrase is often (usually?) misused. The whole saying is: "One bad apple spoils the barrel". In general, it refers to corruption, and especially bent coppers. Here in the UK, we recently had the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police saying that the rash of rapists in the Met is just "a few bad apples".
It's not just a question of taint; if you leave the "bad apples" in there, you'll end up with no good apples at all.
Being libertarian leaning is not being an anarchist. A core part of being a libertarian is a strong judicial system and only the fringiest of an already fringe are against police, such as the sovereign citizen types.
FBI does counter intelligence as its primary mission anyway (as opposed to just law enforcement) and Thiel seems to be concerned with China, not using the gov as a weapon against citizens domestically.
> A core part of being a libertarian is a strong judicial system and only the fringiest of an already fringe are against police, such as the sovereign citizen types.
Does that make taxation a core part of being a libertarian as well? To pay for vital government services?
Yes, taxation is a core part of being a libertarian. Generally, libertarians believe in taxation only for essential government services, but policing is definitely considered essential to libertarians. It is central to the ideology.
Colloquially, anarcho-capitalism is sometimes also referred to as libertarianism. Those who subscribe to anarcho-capitalism believe in stateless societies, of which taxation would be incompatible. However, Thiel purports to be a libertarian in the stricter sense. This usage is not applicable here.
Freaking Business Insider. Funny, this particular article isn't paywalled, nor complaining about my adblocker. Weird, huh? I wish that site would just implode already.
Seems like a lot of words to leave this comment buried in the middle of. The story seems like a soup of hopeful political operators trying to sow chaos, and since they're all on the same side, the publisher is happy to oblige. Talking to the IC at all gives them the unlimited option to call you an informant if you ever get involved in something counter-establishment anyway.
One gets the impression that part of America's new class system is whether you are connected to the intelligence community somehow, as if you have a certain level of responsibility at all, someone who knows someone always seems to be in touch or within a degree of separation.