Peter Thiel’s Warning to the Valley Hostility to half of America isn’t good business—or politics.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiels-warning-to-the-valley-1518740558
The news that billionaire investor Peter Thiel is decamping to Los Angeles to escape the stifling political conformity of Silicon Valley won’t shatter the republic, but pillars of the Valley would be wise to heed its warning. One reason the maestros of tech are becoming political targets is because they are seen as partisan and disdainful of middle America.
“Silicon Valley is a one-party state,” Mr. Thiel said last month during a debate at Stanford University. “That’s when you get in trouble politically in our society, when you’re all in one side.” He’s right.
Once such Valley icons as Intel and Hewlett-Packard were seen as nonpolitical. But the titans of recent vintage—Google, Facebook and others—are rightly seen as thoroughly allied with the political and cultural left. Google’s purging of conservative James Damore was something of a watershed of public recognition of this reality, and a declaration by a Facebook board member like Mr. Thiel is further affirmation of this bias.
Americans who once thought of Silicon Valley as a jewel of U.S. innovation are likely to turn against these companies if they see them as relentless political enemies. Mr. Thiel is giving his tech friends good advice.
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