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Tag: Peter Thiel

  • Discord age verification data in the UK will leave phone, report claims – Tech Digest

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    UK Discord users are facing a change in how their personal data is handled as the platform prepares for its “teen-by-default” global rollout.

    What began as a promise of localized, device-only security has now pivoted into what Discord calls an “experiment,” leaving many questioning the safety of their biometric information.

    At the heart of the controversy is a major change to Discord’s age verification process. Originally, the company explicitly assured users that video selfies submitted for facial age estimation would “never leave a user’s device.”

    However, according to Eurogamer, British users have recently discovered a quiet update to the platform’s FAQ. It reveals that some may now be funnelled through a different vendor, Persona, where verification data will actually leave the phone.

    Under this new “experiment,” the selfie and identification information provided by UK users will be temporarily stored on Persona’s servers for up to seven days before deletion. While Discord maintains that “all details are blurred except your photo and date of birth,” the shift from on-device processing to cloud storage represents a significant departure from previous privacy guarantees.

    Industry analysts suggest this pivot may be a response to users finding ways to “cheese” the system of Discord’s other partner, k-ID. By moving data to Persona’s servers, the platform may be seeking a more robust – albeit more invasive – way to verify ages. Yet, the security of this data remains a sore point; only last October, a breach of a third-party support system at Discord resulted in the compromise of government IDs.

    The backlash isn’t limited to data storage alone. Users have also raised red flags over the entities behind Persona, which include the investment fund of Peter Thiel, the founder of the controversial surveillance firm Palantir. The connection to a company known for providing data services to federal agencies has sparked a fresh wave of scepticism regarding the ultimate destination and use of user metadata.

    As the mandatory age-verification rollout begins in early March, users who refuse to participate will find themselves locked out of age-gated channels, unable to bypass sensitive content filters and restricted from receiving direct messages from new contacts.


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    Chris Price

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  • US Awards Peter Thiel–Backed Nuclear Startup $900 Million

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    The U.S. government is shelling out a whopping $2.7 billion to three companies in an effort to strengthen domestic uranium enrichment, amid surging electricity demand from AI data centers.

    The Department of Energy announced on Monday that it will award $900 million each to American Centrifuge Operating and Orano Federal Services, as well as General Matter, a nuclear startup backed by billionaire investor Peter Thiel.

    The funding will be distributed through task orders over the next 10 years, under what the department described as a “strict milestone approach.”

    The stated goal is to wean the nation’s 94 commercial nuclear reactors off foreign fuel supplies, particularly Russia. Russia currently controls roughly 44% of the world’s uranium enrichment capacity and supplies about 35% of U.S. nuclear fuel imports, according to the Energy Department.

    At the same time, the funding is meant to jumpstart domestic production of high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), a specialized fuel that will be required to power advanced nuclear reactors currently in development.

    “Today’s awards show that this Administration is committed to restoring a secure domestic nuclear fuel supply chain capable of producing the nuclear fuels needed to power the reactors of today and the advanced reactors of tomorrow,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a press release.

    The announcement comes as tech giants, including Microsoft, Google, Meta, and OpenAI, race to build massive data centers to train and run increasingly powerful AI models. Those facilities are energy-hungry and are already putting strain on local electricity grids, fueling renewed interest in nuclear power as a potential long-term solution.

    The money was first allocated in a government funding bill passed in 2024 during the Biden-Harris administration. That year, six companies were selected for contracts that enabled them to compete for future work to supply enriched uranium. The administration also banned imports of Russian nuclear fuel, though the Energy Department can still issue waivers through 2028.

    On Monday, the Energy Department announced which companies would be getting the funding and what work the funds would be tied to. American Centrifuge Operating, a subsidiary of Centrus Energy, and General Matter are tasked with building a domestic supply of HALEU. Meanwhile, Orano will be focusing on expanding the nation’s production of more traditional low-enriched uranium.

    So where does tech billionaire Thiel fit into all of this? General Matter was founded last year by Scott Nolan, a partner at Founders Fund, the venture capital firm founded by Thiel. The company raised $50 million last year in a funding round led by Founders Fund, a deal that also added Thiel to General Matter’s board.

    General Matter has also already been given a pretty big head start. In August, the Energy Department signed a lease allowing the startup to turn roughly 100 acres of federal land at the former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky into a private-sector uranium enrichment facility. The agreement also gives the company access to at least 7,600 cylinders of existing uranium hexafluoride, effectively handing it a ready supply of material for future reenrichment operations.

    Construction for this facility is expected to start this year, with operations planned to start by the end of the decade.

    The three companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Gizmodo.

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    Bruce Gil

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  • Newly released emails and a Trump-ordered investigation have thrust Reid Hoffman into the Epstein firestorm | Fortune

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    Reid Hoffman has spent years trying to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein, having apologized repeatedly for his former ties to the disgraced financier. Now, the LinkedIn cofounder and prominent Democratic donor has been thrown into a widening political storm—one fueled by the release of emails between him and Epstein in the late 2010s and President Donald Trump’s efforts to scrutinize Democrats named in the Epstein files after newly released documents revealed seemingly extensive ties between Epstein and Trump that appear to challenge the president’s account of their relationship. 

    Trump has emphatically and consistently denied any wrongdoing, knowledge of Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation, or involvement with the allegations mentioned in newly released emails

    The controversy has escalated rapidly in recent days, as Trump ordered a Justice Department investigation into Hoffman, several other high-profile figures, and institutions like JPMorgan Chase, and then abruptly reversed his stance and spoke out in favor of releasing the full trove of Epstein files. Attorney General Pam Bondi confirmed on Nov. 13 that she would launch the probe. The move was widely interpreted as a political counteroffensive designed to deflect attention from Trump’s own ties to Epstein—ties that the 20,000 newly released documents described in detail.

    Bondi has attempted to further connect Hoffman to Epstein in the past. During her contentious Senate Judiciary Committee testimony on October 7, she repeatedly invoked Hoffman’s name when questioned about Epstein and Trump and called him “one of Epstein’s closest confidants.” Hoffman has repeatedly denied any such allegations.

    On November 14, Hoffman hit back, taking to X to demand “Trump should release all of the Epstein files: every person and every document in the files.” The LinkedIn co-founder accused Trump’s probe of being “nothing more than political persecution and slander” and claimed he was never a client of Epstein’s nor did he engage with him in any capacity other than fundraising.

    In a Sunday evening Truth Social post, however, the president doubled down. He said calls to release the entire cache of Epstein files were a “Democrat Hoax” and declared, “The Department of Justice has already turned over tens of thousands of pages to the Public on ‘Epstein,’ are looking at various Democrat operatives (Bill Clinton, Reid Hoffman, Larry Summers, etc.) and their relationship to Epstein, and the House Oversight Committee can have whatever they are legally entitled to, I DON’T CARE!”

    A White House spokesperson reiterated some of Trump’s claims, telling Fortune, “By releasing tens of thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena request, and President Trump recently calling for further investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends, the Trump Administration has done more for the victims than Democrats ever have. The Democrat Party did nothing about Epstein for years; they are only pretending to care about these victims now as they attempt to score political points against President Trump.”

    Hoffman did not respond to a Fortune request for comment regarding his ties to Epstein. JPMorgan Chase, Clinton, and Summers also did not respond to Fortune’s requests for comment.

    Summers apologized for his relationship with Epstein in a statement to the Harvard Crimson, writing, “I have great regrets in my life. As I have said before, my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgement.” 

    A spokesperson for Clinton refuted the Trump administration’s claims in a post on X. “These emails prove Bill Clinton did nothing and knew nothing. The rest is noise meant to distract from election losses, backfiring shutdowns, and who knows what else,” they wrote.

    JPMorgan Chase, which previously settled a multi-million-dollar lawsuit with Epstein victims, responded to Trump’s probe in a statement to CNN: “The government had information about his crimes and failed to share it with us or other banks. We regret any association we had with the man, but did not help him commit his heinous acts. We ended our relationship with him years before his arrest on sex trafficking charges.” (The bank did, however, continue to bank Epstein even after his 2008 solicitation of a minor conviction, working with him until 2013.)

    When Hoffman met Epstein

    The relationship between Hoffman and Epstein began through Joi Ito, who served as director of the MIT Media Lab. According to multiple reports, Hoffman first encountered Epstein when he helped solicit donations for the MIT Media Lab from the convicted sex offender. In July 2013, Epstein met with Hoffman and others at MIT’s campus. At this time, Epstein was already a registered sex offender, following his 2008 guilty plea to soliciting prostitution from a minor in Florida.​

    Hoffman then visited Epstein’s private island, Little St. James, in 2014, according to the Wall Street Journal. Ito was also present during this trip, which was described as being for the purpose of raising funds for MIT. According to Ito’s statement to the Journal, Hoffman participated in a “fundraising event” on the island “at my request.” Documents also indicated that Hoffman and Ito were planning another visit to Epstein’s island later in 2014, with plans to travel from Palm Beach to the island for a weekend and then onward to Boston.​

    Documents obtained by the Journal in 2023 also note that Hoffman planned to stay overnight at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse on December 4, 2014, followed by a “breakfast party” the next morning that was expected to include both Epstein and Bill Gates. Whether this visit actually occurred remains unclear.​

    The last known in-person meeting between Epstein and Hoffman occurred in 2015, when Hoffman hosted a dinner attended by Epstein along with several Silicon Valley luminaries, including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Peter Thiel. Hoffman has stated that he invited Epstein to this gathering based on assurances from Joi Ito that Epstein had been vetted and cleared by MIT’s approval process. 

    In 2023, Hoffman claimed the 2015 dinner was the last time he interacted with Epstein. Unsealed emails reviewed by Fortune, however, show that Epstein wrote to Hoffman at least once in 2017. This correspondence appears to be related to potential fundraising efforts intended to offset cuts Trump wanted to make to federal spending in his first term in office. 

    In an email to Hoffman dated March 16, 2017 and reproduced here with the original typos and other errors, Epstein says, “a HUGE donor advised fund is an elegant solution to the cuts trump proposes to what some consider critical programs. you could organzie a huge public charity that would continue the work of many worthwhile orgs. not my thing but structurally beautiful. its the wealthiest now stepping into a quasi govt funding. national endowment for arts. climate science, as extraordinary amounts of wealth have moved into private hands. elons and jeff space goals should be mirrored with many other former govt ones. hope to see you soon.”

    The newly released emails do not show whether Hoffman ever replied.

    Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail while awaiting trial on further sex trafficking charges in 2019.

    MIT’s external investigation report, released in January 2020, also described Hoffman’s timeline. The report revealed that in July 2016, Ito sought advice from Hoffman about whether to allow Epstein to attend a Media Lab conference with “lots of people” who may “see him and maybe know he’s involved.” The report did not disclose whether Hoffman offered any advice or what it was.​

    While Elon Musk accused Hoffman of being a client of Epstein’s in 2024, no evidence of that genre of relationship has actually emerged. Hoffman has also vehemently denied any such characterization. 

    Hoffman has issued several public apologies and statements regarding his interactions with Epstein. After scandal over MIT’s Epstein connections erupted publicly in September 2019, Hoffman apologized in a statement to Axios: “By agreeing to participate in any fundraising activity where Epstein was present, I helped to repair his reputation and perpetuate injustice. For this, I am deeply regretful.” He reiterated this position in 2023 to the Journal, stating, “It gnaws at me that, by lending my association, I helped his reputation, and thus delayed justice for his survivors.”

    On Tuesday, the House of Representatives is expected to vote on a measure that would compel the DOJ to make all Epstein files publicly available “in a searchable and downloadable format” within 30 days.

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    Lily Mae Lazarus

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  • Palantir CEO slams ‘parasitic’ critics calling the tech a surveillance tool: ‘Not only is patriotism right, patriotism will make you rich’ | Fortune

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    Palantir CEO Alex Karp is sick and tired of his critics. That much is clear. But during the Yahoo Finance Invest Conference Thursday, he escalated his counteroffensive, aimed squarely at analysts, journalists, and political commentators who have long attacked the company as a symbol of an encroaching surveillance state, or as overvalued. 

    Karp’s message: They were wrong then, they’re wrong now, and they’ve cost everyday Americans real money.

    “How often have you been right in the past?” Karp said when asked why some analysts still insist Palantir’s valuation is too high. 

    He said he thinks negative commentary from traditional finance people—and “their minions,” the analysts—has repeatedly failed to grasp how the company operates, and failed to grasp what Palantir’s retail base saw years earlier. 

    “Do you know how much money you’ve robbed from people with your views on Palantir?” he asked those analysts, arguing those who rated the stock a sell at $6, $12, or $20 pushed regular Americans out of one of tech’s biggest winners, while institutions sat on the sidelines. 

    “By my reckoning, Palantir is one of the only companies where the average American bought—and the average sophisticated American sold,” Karp continued, tone incredulous. 

    That sort-of populist inversion sits at the core of Karp’s broader argument: The people who call Palantir a surveillance tool—his word for them is “parasitic”—understand neither the product nor the country that enabled it.

    “Should an enterprise be parasitic? Should the host be paying to make your company larger while getting no actual value?” he questioned, drawing a line between Palantir’s pitch and what he said he sees as the “woke-mind-virus” versions of enterprise software that generate fees without changing outcomes.

    Instead, Karp insists Palantir’s software is built for the welder, the truck driver, the factory technician, and the soldier—not the surveillance bureaucrat.

    He describes the company’s work as enabling “AI that actually works”: systems that improve routing for truck drivers, upgrade the capabilities of welders, help factory workers manage complex tasks, and give warfighters technology so advanced “our adversaries don’t want to fight with us.”

    That, he argues, is the opposite of a surveillance dragnet. It’s a national-security asset, part of the deeper American story. That’s what Palantir’s retail-heavy investor base understands: the country’s constitutional and technological system is uniquely powerful, and defending it isn’t just morally correct, it’s financially rewarded.

    “Not only was the patriotism right, the patriotism will make you rich,” he said, arguing Silicon Valley only listens to ideas when they make money. Palantir’s success, in his view, is proof the combination of American military strength and technological dominance—“chips to ontology, above and below”—remains unmatched worldwide.

    That, he believes, is what critics get wrong. While detractors warn Palantir fuels the surveillance state, Karp argues the company exists to prevent abuses of power—by making the U.S. so technologically dominant it rarely needs to project force.

    “Our project is to make America so strong we never fight,” he said. “That’s very different than being almost strong enough, so you always fight.”

    Karp savors the reversal: ‘broken-down car’ vs. ‘beautiful Tesla’

    Karp bitterly contrasted the fortunes of analysts who doubted the company with the retail investors who stuck with it.

    “Nothing makes me happier,” he said, than imagining “the bank executive…cruising along in their broken-down car,” watching a truck driver or welder—“someone who didn’t go to an elite school”—drive a “beautiful Tesla” paid for with Palantir gains.

    This wasn’t even a metaphor. Karp said he regularly meets everyday workers who “are now rich because of Palantir”—and the people who bet against the company have themselves become a kind-of meme.

    Critics—especially civil-liberties groups—have accused Palantir for years of building analytics tools that enable government surveillance. Karp says these attacks rely on caricature, not fact.

    “Pure ideas don’t change the world,” he said. “Pure ideas backed by military strength and economic strength do.”

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    Eva Roytburg

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  • These are the 37 donors helping pay for Trump’s $300 million White House ballroom

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says his $300 million White House ballroom will be paid for “100% by me and some friends of mine.”

    The White House released a list of 37 donors, including crypto billionaires, charitable organizations, sports team owners, powerful financiers, tech and tobacco giants, media companies, longtime supporters of Republican causes and several of the president’s neighbors in Palm Beach, Florida.

    It’s incomplete. Among others, the list doesn’t include Carrier Group, which offered to donate an HVAC system for the ballroom, and artificial intelligence chipmaker Nvidia, whose CEO, Jensen Huang, publicly discussed its donation.

    The White House hasn’t said how much each donor is giving, and almost none was willing to divulge that. Very few commented on their contributions when contacted by The Associated Press.

    A senior White House official said the list has grown since it was first released in October, but some companies don’t want to be publicly named until required to do so by financial disclosure regulations. No foreign individuals or entities were among the donors, according to the official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details that haven’t been made public.

    Here’s a look at the divulged donors:

    Tech giants (8):

    Amazon Background: Trump was once highly critical of company founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, but has been much less so lately. Amazon donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, an event attended by Bezos. Its video streaming service paid $40 million to license a documentary about first lady Melania Trump. Its cloud-based computing operation, Amazon Web Services, is a major government contractor.

    Apple Background: After an up-and-down relationship during Trump’s first term, CEO Tim Cook has sought to improve his standing with the president this time. Before returning to the White House, Trump hosted Cook at his Palm Beach estate, Mar-a-Lago, and said he had spoken with Cook about the company’s long-running tax battles with the European Union. Cook also donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. In the spring, Trump threatened the computing giant with tariffs after Apple announced plans to build manufacturing facilities in India. In August, Cook presented the president with a customized glass plaque with a gold base as the CEO announced plans to bring Apple’s total investment commitment in U.S. manufacturing over four years to $600 billion.

    Google Background: During his first term, Trump’s administration sued Google for antitrust violations. While a candidate last year, Trump suggested he might seek to break up the search engine behemoth. Once Trump won the election, Google donated $1 million to his inauguration, and its CEO, Sundar Pichai, joined other major tech executives in attending the ceremony. Google’s subsidiary, YouTube, agreed in September to pay $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit with Trump after it suspended his account following the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. According to court filings, $22 million of that went to the Trust for the National Mall, which can help pay for ballroom construction.

    HP Background: An original Silicon Valley stalwart, the company donated to Trump’s inaugural fund. HP ‘s CEO, Enrique Lores, participated in a White House roundtable event in September. Lores also previously met with President Joe Biden at the White House on multiple occasions as top CEOs endorsed that administration’s economic plans.

    Meta Background: Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg had been critical of Trump going back to 2016, and Facebook suspended Trump for years after the Jan. 6 insurrection. This time around, Meta contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, and Zuckerberg attended.

    Micron Technology Background: The producer of advanced memory computer chips announced an April 2024 agreement with the Biden administration to provide $6.1 billion in government support for Micron to make chips domestically. Then, in June, Micron pledged $200 billion for U.S. memory chip manufacturing expansion under Trump. But at least $120 billion of that involved holdovers first announced during Biden’s administration.

    Microsoft Background: The company donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, twice what it spent for Biden’s or for Trump’s first inauguration. CEO Satya Nadella has also met with Trump numerous times, as Microsoft has supported the administration’s relaxation of regulations on artificial intelligence. He met previously with Biden, too. Trump has called for Microsoft’s president of global affairs, Lisa Monaco, to be fired because she was a deputy attorney general under Biden when the Justice Department led several investigations against Trump.

    Palantir Technologies Background: Co-founded by billionaire libertarian Peter Thiel, the firm concentrates on artificial intelligence and machine learning. It has seen profits soar thanks to lucrative defense and other federal contracts.

    Crypto (5):

    Coinbase Background: The major cryptocurrency exchange was founded by Brian Armstrong, a top donor to a political action committee that helped Trump and other pro-crypto candidates in 2024. Armstrong attended the first crypto summit at the White House in March. Coinbase also hired Trump’s co-campaign manager, Chris LaCivita, to its Global Advisory Council.

    Ripple Background: In March, the Securities and Exchange Commission dropped a lawsuit filed during Trump’s first term, which accused the company of violating securities laws by selling XRP crypto coins without a securities registration. In his second term, Trump has eased regulations on digital assets, repealing an SEC accounting rule and a previous presidential executive order mandating more federal study and proposed changes to crypto regulations.

    Tether Background: A cryptocurrency company and major stablecoin issuer, Tether paid fines for misleading investors. CEO Paolo Ardoino has been to Trump’s White House, and, in April, the company hired former Trump administration crypto policy official Bo Hines to lead its domestic expansion efforts.

    Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss Background: Each Winklevoss twin is listed as a separate donor. Best known as Zuckerberg’s chief antagonists in “The Social Network,” the brothers founded the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange. Biden’s SEC sued Gemini for selling unregistered securities, but the case has been paused under Trump.

    Energy and industrial (4):

    Caterpillar Background: The equipment maker ‘s PAC has donated to candidates from both parties, but given more to Republicans. It has also said publicly that Trump’s tariffs, some of which the administration has now eased, could increase its costs and hurt earnings.

    NextEra Energy Background: NextEra is the world’s largest electric utility holding company. Trump says he’ll work to ensure tech giants can secure their own sources of electricity to power data centers, especially as they expand energy-hogging artificial intelligence operations. Google recently entered into an agreement to buy power from a shuttered nuclear power plant in Iowa owned by NextEra, which the company plans to bring back online in 2029.

    Paolo Tiramani Background: An American industrial designer who has donated to Trump’s political campaigns. Tiramani, with his son, runs BOXABL, a firm specializing in modular, prefabricated homes.

    Union Pacific Background: Trump has endorsed the company’s proposed $85 billion acquisition of Norfolk Southern, which would be the largest-ever rail merger. It also will be up to the president to appoint two more Republican members of the Surface Transportation Board, who will ultimately decide whether to approve the merger. In August, Trump fired one of the two Democratic members of the board.

    Philanthropy (3):

    Adelson Family Foundation Background: Founded to strengthen the state of Israel and the Jewish people, the foundation was created by Miriam Adelson, the majority owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, close Trump ally and longtime GOP megadonor. She’s also the widow of Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire founder and owner of Las Vegas Sands.

    Betty Wold Johnson Foundation Background: Based in Palm Beach, the foundation supports health, arts and culture initiatives, as well as environmental and educational programs. It’s named in honor of the mother of New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, who served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Kingdom during his first term.

    Laura & Isaac Perlmutter Foundation Background: The nonprofit based in Lake Worth Beach, near Palm Beach, focuses on promoting health care, social justice, the arts and community initiatives. Isaac is an Israeli American businessman and financier and former chair of Marvel Entertainment. He and his wife have donated to Trump’s presidential campaigns and affiliated PACs.

    Trump administration officials (3):

    Benjamin Leon Jr. Background: The Cuban American founder of Miami-based Leon Medical Centers is Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Spain.

    Kelly Loeffler and Jeffrey Sprecher Background: A former Republican senator from Georgia, Loeffler heads Trump’s Small Business Administration. Her husband is CEO of the energy market Intercontinental Exchange Inc. and chairs the New York Stock Exchange. The couple faced scrutiny in 2020 for dumping substantial portions of their portfolio and purchasing new stocks, including in firms making protective equipment, after Congress received briefings on the severity of the coming coronavirus pandemic.

    Lutnick Family Background: Howard Lutnick is Trump’s commerce secretary. A crypto enthusiast, he once headed the brokerage and investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald.

    Communications/entertainment (3):

    Comcast Background: The mass media and telecom conglomerate has often been criticized by Trump, including in April, when the president posted that Comcast was a “disgrace to the integrity of broadcasting.” The company owns NBC and is spinning off MSNBC. It could be interested in acquiring Warner Bros. Discover, and that would leave Comcast looking for government approval.

    Hard Rock International Background: A Florida-based gaming and tourism concern owned by the Seminole Tribe, the company operates a number of casinos, including the former Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Trump has for decades criticized federal exemptions allowing tribes to operate casinos.

    T-Mobile Background: The wireless carrier is indirectly linked to Trump Mobile, which the president’s family controls and offers gold phones and cell service in a licensing deal. Trump Mobile uses Liberty Mobile Wireless, a small, Florida-based network that T-Mobile says runs its operations on T-Mobile’s network. T-Mobile says that is unrelated to its decision to donate to Trump’s ballroom, which it says is meant to “restore and enrich the historic landmarks that define our nation’s capital.”

    Big Tobacco (2):

    Altria Group Background: The tobacco giant controls Philip Morris USA, maker of Marlboro. It has pressed for federal crackdowns on counterfeit and illegal vaping products. The company donated $50,000 to Trump’s inauguration.

    Reynolds American Background: With brands including Lucky Strike and Camel, the company has been active in lobbying to steer the Trump administration away from a Biden-proposed ban on menthol cigarettes.

    Defense/national security (2):

    Booz Allen Hamilton Background: A major defense and national security technology firm with extensive government contracts, it paid fines to settle lawsuits with the Justice Department under Biden. Booz Allen Hamilton agreed to pay more than $377 million in 2023 to settle allegations that it improperly billing costs to its government contracts. In January, it paid nearly $16 million to settle allegations that it submitted fraudulent claims in connection with government contracts.

    Lockheed Martin Corporation Background: The massive defense contractor has huge government contracts. It said in a statement that it “is grateful for the opportunity to help bring the President’s vision to reality and make this addition to the People’s House.”

    Individuals (7):

    Stefan E. Brodie Background: A biotech entrepreneur and co-founder of the chemical manufacturing company Purolite, Brodie and his family donated to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and affiliated committees. Brodie and his brother, Donald, were convicted in 2002 of circumventing U.S. sanctions on Cuba.

    Charles and Marissa Cascarilla Background: Charles Cascarilla is co‑founder of the blockchain firm Paxos. He and his wife are philanthropists who have advocated for financial technology sector deregulation.

    J. Pepe and Emilia Fanjul Background: Longtime Republican donors and Palm Beach residents, the couple controls U.S. sugar refining interests that includes the Domino brand.

    Edward and Shari Glazer Background: Members of the family that owns the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers and has a controlling stake in the Manchester United football club, the couple donated to Trump’s campaign. Edward is the founder and CEO of US Property Trust, which operates shopping centers, and the car dealership company US Auto Trust.

    Harold Hamm Background: The billionaire oil tycoon and pioneer of hydraulic fracturing heads the oil producer Continental Resources. He’s praised the Trump administration for aggressively moving to purchase oil to replenish the Strategic Petroleum Reserve stockpile.

    Stephen A. Schwarzman Background: A Palm Beach resident and chair and CEO of the Blackstone Group, a global private equity firm he helped establish in 1985. Schwarzman has donated to Trump and his PACs previously and led his first-term President’s Strategic and Policy Forum.

    Konstantin Sokolov Background: Born in Russia, he immigrated to the U.S. and now heads the Chicago-based private equity firm IJS Investments. Sokolov has donated to many educational and charitable causes in the past, and to Trump’s political campaigns.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report.

    ___

    This story has been updated to correct the first name of an individual who donated to the White House ballroom. He is Harold Hamm, not Howard Hamm.

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  • The Gaza War Has Been Big Business for U.S. Companies

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    Two years on, Israel’s war in Gaza might be finally drawing to a close. The conflict built an unprecedented arms pipeline from the U.S. to Israel that continues to flow, generating substantial business for big U.S. companies—including Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Caterpillar.

    Sales of U.S. weapons to Israel have surged since October 2023, with Washington approving more than $32 billion in armaments, ammunition and other equipment to the Israeli military over that time, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of State Department disclosures.

    Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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    Benoit Faucon

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  • Elon Musk teases a flying car on Joe Rogan’s show

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    Elon Musk has told Joe Rogan that he hopes to unveil a flying car “before the end of the year.” As Gizmodo has reported, Rogan asked Musk about about the long-delayed second-gen Tesla Roadster in his show, when the Tesla CEO suddenly started talking about wanting the vehicle to fly. If you’ll recall, Tesla unveiled a new Roadster in 2017 and had plans to start deliveries in 2020, but its production got delayed again and again. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently tweeted that he’d been having difficulties getting a refund on the $50,000 deposit he made for one way back in 2018. But instead of talking in depth about Roadster’s status, Musk talked about getting close to an “unforgettable” product demo of a prototype instead.

    He was giving Rogan vague answers in the interview, but he eventually said: “Well, you know, my friend Peter Thiel, once reflected that the future was supposed to have flying cars, but we don’t have flying cars. I mean, I think if Peter wants a flying car, we should be able to buy one” He didn’t want to divulge all the details in the show, but he claimed that the vehicle Tesla is supposedly working on contains “crazy, crazy technology.” Musk said he wasn’t sure it’s a car but that “it loos like a car.” He didn’t answer when Rogan asked if it had “retractable wings” or mentioned if the vehicle would be VTOL, or a Vertical Take-off and Landing, aircraft.

    Musk has been talking about developing flying cars as early as 2014, as Gizmodo notes. However, take note that the CEO is rather infamous for being overly optimistic and ambitious with his timelines, not just for the automaker but also for his other companies like SpaceX. Take for example, the aforementioned Roadster, which is yet to go into production, and the SpaceX Falcon Heavy whose first launch didn’t happen until five years later than he predicted. That said, it’s also possible for Tesla to unveil a prototype that would still have to go through massive changes and improvements if and when it becomes ready for production.

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    Mariella Moon

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  • Elon Musk Tells Joe Rogan That He Will Demo a Flying Car by End of Year

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    Billionaire oligarch Elon Musk appeared on the latest episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast on Friday. And while much of the conversation covered topics we’ve heard before, Musk decided to drop some news about something he wants to demo by the end of the year: a flying car.

    Stop us if you’ve heard this one before—from Musk himself, no less, who has been talking about making a flying car since at least 2014.

    Musk’s flying car dreams came up in the context of Tesla’s Roadster, a car that was originally produced from 2008 to 2012. The second-generation Roadster has been promised by Musk for years, but he’s always failed to deliver since the original target date of 2020. When Rogan asked the Tesla CEO about the Roadster’s status, Musk slowly made it clear that he wants it to fly. But it took him some time during the conversation to actually reveal what he was talking about.

    “We’re getting close to….” Musk said with a long pause, “…demonstrating the prototype. One thing I can guarantee is that this product demo will be unforgettable. Unforgettable.”

    Rogan didn’t quite understand because Musk hadn’t revealed that he was referring to a flying car. The podcaster asked him how it would be unforgettable. Musk replied with a laugh, “Whether it’s good or bad, it will be unforgettable.” Rogan was still confused, asking Musk to explain.

    “Well, you know, my friend Peter Thiel, once reflected that the future was supposed to have flying cars, but we don’t have flying cars,” said Musk, finally giving a hint.

    Thiel, the cofounder of Palantir and Musk’s old friend from his days at PayPal, is another far-right billionaire who spends his days talking about the Antichrist in the most sweaty manner possible. Rogan couldn’t quite understand what Musk was saying and pressed him further, to which Musk replied, “I mean, I think if Peter wants a flying car, we should be able to buy one.”

    Rogan asked Musk if the vehicle would have a “retractable wing,” imploring him to elaborate further. Musk replied that he “can’t do the unveil before the unveil,” but said that he thinks, “it has a shot at being the most memorable product unveil ever.” The billionaire said he hoped to unveil it “before the end of the year,” putting an emphasis on hopefully.

    None of this should be a surprise for anyone who’s followed Musk over the past decade. He often likes to roll out prototypes and ideas long before they’re ready to deliver. That doesn’t mean you’ll actually see those things in the form they were promised.

    Remember Musk’s idea for the Hyperloop? Or the more modest Loop system, which was supposed to be a 155-mile-per-hour autonomous mass transit system? It was going to be able to carry 16 people at a time, zipping around in tunnels underneath cities. When it came time for Musk to deliver, he built a tunnel in Las Vegas where human drivers ferry around people in regular Tesla vehicles at slow speeds.

    Which is to say that Musk might very well hold a demo of a flying car soon, though a prototype isn’t the same thing as a product that hits the market. Musk also unveiled an autonomous two-seater Cybercab over a year ago, and there are no indications that it will be released anytime soon. The Robotaxis, on the other hand (regular Tesla vehicles that drive “autonomously” with a safety driver in the passenger seat), are already shuttling people around in Texas.

    There’s also the issue that confronts every flying car inventor of the past century: Since flying is much more difficult and dangerous than driving, how large is the market for something like this? Any aircraft that carries passengers in the U.S. needs to be flown by someone with a pilot’s license. Unless, of course, it’s an autonomous flying vehicle. And that presents its own logistical challenges, such as coordinating air traffic.

    The full episode, which is available on YouTube, includes the broader conversation, but Musk definitely hedged on the timing of his flying Roadster while talking with Rogan.

    “You know, we need to make sure that it works,” said Musk. “Like this is some crazy, crazy technology we got in this car. Crazy… technology. Crazy crazy.”

    Rogan asked him if it was different than what was previously announced for the Roadster, which Musk confirmed.

    “It has crazy technology. Like, is it even a car? I’m not sure. It looks like a car,” said Musk. “Let’s just put it this way. It’s crazier than anything James Bond… if you took all the James Bond cars and combined them, it’s crazier than that.”

    It’s interesting that Musk is giving hints that it might not be a “car.” It’s entirely possible that this means he’s developing a vertical take-off and landing vehicle (VTOL), which typically doesn’t drive on the road, but can still shuttle passengers. Many VTOL promises of the past decade have grabbed headlines as “flying cars,” even though they don’t actually drive on the road at all and function much more like helicopters.

    Rogan was stunned, saying that he didn’t know what to think because he was only getting a “limited amount of information.” Musk, clearly sensing skepticism, told Rogan that if he wanted to see it before the unveiling, he would show it to him.

    Are we going to see a flying car soon? It sounds like it. But we’ve had functioning flying cars since at least the 1950s. Are we going to see something that will be more than just a flashy distraction from the fact that Tesla vehicle sales are in the toilet ever since Musk aligned himself with President Donald Trump and made those two Nazi-style salutes? That part remains to be seen.

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    Matt Novak

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  • Chip Startup Backed by Peter Thiel and In-Q-Tel Seeks to Revolutionize the Semiconductor Biz

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    Another company backed by tech magnate (and part-time apocalypticist) Peter Thiel is seeking to disrupt Silicon Valley.

    The Wall Street Journal reports that Substrate, a U.S.-based chip startup, recently raised $100 million, and plans to use the funding to support its ongoing mission to upend the semiconductor industry. The company’s website lists a number of prominent venture capital firms as its backers, including Thiel’s Founders Fund, General Catalyst, the CIA-backed In-Q-Tel, Long Journey, and MITIMco, which is associated with MIT.

    So how does Substrate plan to reinvent the semiconductor game? According to the Journal’s report, it wants to vertically integrate all of the various activities associated with chip production so that it “owns the entire [manufacturing] process.” Currently, the chip industry is—much like many other industries—a complex supply chain, that sources hardware infrastructure from all over the globe. Large parts of that supply chain originate in Asia.

    Given the political turmoil in Asia, there’s been ongoing talk about the need to reshore chip production in the U.S. Substrate would appear to be trying to do just that but, if its activities all sound very impressive, unfortunately, industry experts are skeptical that it can accomplish its goal. The Journal notes that “industry veterans have said vertical integration is unsustainable” for their business.

    Substrate’s co-founder, James Proud (described by the Journal as a Thiel “protégé”), promises to return “the United States to dominance in semiconductor production,” but has admitted that his plan may sound a little far fetched. “If I had come from the existing industry, I probably wouldn’t believe it’s possible because I’d probably know too much about how hard it’s going to be, and it was and it has been immensely hard,” he said.

    On the company’s website, it frames its efforts in existential terms: “The only chance the United States has to return to dominance in semiconductor production would be to create a new type of more vertically-integrated foundry, one that continues pushing Moore’s Law in both performance and cost,” the site states. “To achieve this, Substrate is building next-generation semiconductor fabs to return America to dominance in semiconductor production and will use our technology—a new form of advanced X-ray lithography—to power them.”

    Proud further explained to the Journal that one of his company’s advantages is its more “compact machine that uses ultrashort-wavelength laser light to etch intricate and microscopic patterns on silicon wafers.”

    The Journal also notes that Substrate “has received attention from the Trump administration,” although it’s unclear what kind of attention its been or the extent to which it has helped the company. In the current era in which the AI industry is ascendant, the physical infrastructure necessary to produce that AI is taking on ever more vital importance. The Trump administration has also sought to encourage domestic chip production so, in that sense, Substrate is making the most of the current political moment.

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    Lucas Ropek

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  • Drone Threats Ignite Burst of Counterdrone Wizardry

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    Startups from Silicon Valley to Europe and beyond are racing to develop cheap, reliable systems to counter hostile drones.

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    Bertrand Benoit

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  • WIRED Roundup: The New Fake World of OpenAI’s Social Video App

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    Manisha Krishnan: Yeah, this season has … I mean, this is the first time I’ve watched in 15 years. But this season has been pretty spot on. It’s almost like they’re reading WIRED and satirizing everything. I feel like if Trump and Eric Adams started a talk show, maybe that could be the catacomb.

    Zoë Schiffer: I like that.

    Manisha Krishnan: Because everyone would find it funny across political lines.

    Zoë Schiffer: So maybe South Park will save us after all. Switching gears literally for our next story. Our colleague Aarian Marshall reported that Tesla has been encouraging drowsy drivers to use the full self-driving or FSD mode on their cars. Contrary to its name, this feature does not actually allow cars to drive themselves, it just assists drivers in doing a variety of basic tasks. The manual for the car says that the driver needs to be ready to take over at all times. But drivers are reporting that in-car messages are appearing to tell them to do just the opposite. The messages say things like “Drowsiness detected, stay focused with FSD.” Or, “Lane drift detected, let FSD assist you so that you can stay focused.”

    Manisha Krishnan: Yeah, that sounds dangerous. It sounds like they’re kind of like, “Hey, you want to take a nap right now? Let FSD kick in.” No, they should be blasting music, blasting the AC, make it like a spin class in there to wake you up. Tesla has made changes to its technology to make it more difficult for inattentive drivers to use FSD. Back in 2021, the company started using in-car driving monitor cameras to determine where their drivers were sufficiently paying attention while using FSD.

    Zoë Schiffer: It seems at odds with their past efforts to build more safety around their self-driving features. This is like a pretty delicate time for Tesla. For years, the company has been accused of making products that can be allegedly defective in certain ways. This past August, a Florida jury found that the company was partly liable for a 2019 crash that killed a 22-year-old woman. The crash occurred when a Tesla model S driver was using an older version of the company’s driver assistant software called Autopilot. At the same time, Elon Musk and the company’s board of directors have put FSD at the center of the automakers strategy. So Musk has promised that the feature will transform into a truly autonomous driving system by the end of the year, although that’s looking unlikely. And Elon Musk is generally known for promising pretty aggressive timelines that then he blows pass again and again. One more before we go to break. WIRED Science reporter, Emily Mullin reported this week that scientists made human eggs from skin cells, and use them to form embryos. This is a huge deal because it could mean a new way to treat infertility for people who want kids. But to be clear, none of the embryos were actually used to try and establish pregnancy. And it’s unlikely that they would’ve developed much further than the womb. But it’s still a really big deal because it could one day be used as an alternative to IVF.

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    Zoë Schiffer, Manisha Krishnan

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  • Where the ‘PayPal Mafia’ Is Today: Founders, Fortunes and Feuds

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    Peter Thiel, PayPal’s first CEO, turned his fintech fortune into a far-reaching empire of influence spanning venture capital, politics and power. Marco Bello/Getty Images

    In 2007, Fortune magazine reimagined a classic mafia scene with a Silicon Valley twist: 13 male founders and early employees of PayPal, all long gone from the company, posed at a San Francisco café with slicked-back hair, poker chips and dozens of whiskey glasses. The crowd included some of the most recognizable names in today’s tech scene, like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman. The magazine dubbed them the “PayPal mafia,” not for their time at the fintech company, but for their outsized impact on Silicon Valley through the companies they launched afterward.

    PayPal went public in early 2002 and was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion the same year. Most of its early employees left the company after the acquisition. They went on to found YouTube, SpaceX and LinkedIn, among other legendary names in Silicon Valley. However, like their cinematic namesake, the group hasn’t avoided controversy. These former colleagues have built billion-dollar businesses while also finding themselves in the crosshairs of public criticism.

    For instance, Thiel has faced controversy over his political affiliations and, most notably, for funding Hulk Hogan’s 2012 lawsuit against Gawker Media with $10 million — a case that ultimately drove the online media company into bankruptcy. Musk has also faced criticism for his takeover of Twitter and his prior role in the Trump administration, where he led widespread federal employee firings.

    Here’s what they are up to these days:

    Peter Thiel: venture capitalist 

    Peter Thiel speaking at the 2022 Bitcoin ConferencePeter Thiel speaking at the 2022 Bitcoin Conference
    Peter Thiel. Marco Bello/Getty Images

    Peter Thiel, Max Levchin and Luke Nosek founded PayPal in 1998, originally as a software security company. After merging with Elon Musk’s X.com (unrelated to the social media platform he owns today), PayPal shifted its focus to digital payments.

    Thiel served as CEO from 1998 until 2002, leaving after the company was sold to eBay. He then co-founded Palantir Technologies, a major U.S. government contractor providing data analytics services. The company now has a market capitalization of $439 billion.

    Thiel is also known as a prolific angel investor. He co-founded Clarium Capital, Founders Fund, Valar Ventures and Mithril Capital. In 2004, Thiel became Facebook’s first outside investor after acquiring a 10.2 percent stake in the company for $500,000.

    Thiel is among the many former PayPal employees who have entered political and high-profile public arenas. An active donor to the Republican Party, Thiel supported Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign but withheld donations during the 2024 election. He is also credited with helping JD Vance reach the Vice Presidential ticket.

    Elon Musk: entrepreneur, the world’s richest person

    Elon Musk gesturing at a press conference in the Oval Office of the White House in May 2025. Elon Musk gesturing at a press conference in the Oval Office of the White House in May 2025.
    Elon Musk. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

    Elon Musk briefly served as PayPal’s CEO before being ousted by the board in 2000. He went on to build one of the most influential portfolios in technology, spanning electric vehicles, space exploration, social media and A.I.

    Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 and has led Tesla since 2008. He also founded Neuralink and The Boring Company, expanding his reach into brain-computer interfaces and infrastructure. In 2022, Musk gained global attention for acquiring Twitter for $44 billion, later rebranding it as X.

    His ties to A.I. run deep: Musk co-founded OpenAI with Sam Altman in 2015 but left in 2018 over strategic disagreements. In 2023, he returned to the field by launching xAI, a research venture focused on building A.I. that is more understandable for humans.

    Today, Musk is the richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $400 billion. He is also perhaps the only PayPal alumnus to ascend into direct political influence. During the Trump administration, he led the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—a name shared with his cryptocurrency venture—before stepping down in May after clashing publicly with the President.

    Max Levchin: computer scientist 

    Max Levchin speaking at a FOX Network show in 2019.Max Levchin speaking at a FOX Network show in 2019.
    Max Levchin. John Lamparski/Getty Images
    • Position at PayPal: co-founder, chief technology officer from 1998 to 2002
    • Companies later founded: Affirm
    • Net worth: $1.8 billion

    As PayPal’s chief technology officer, Max Levchin helped lead the company’s anti-fraud efforts by co-creating the Gausebeck-Levchin test—the foundation for the widely used CAPTCHA security tool. After leaving PayPal, he launched the media-sharing platform Slide in 2004, which was acquired by Google in 2010. Levchin briefly served as Google’s vice president of engineering until Slide was shut down the following year.

    In 2012, he co-founded Affirm, a leading “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) company, where he continues to serve as CEO. Today, Affirm has a market capitalization of $27.5 billion, with 21.9 million consumers and more than 350,000 merchant partners on its platform.

    Levchin has also held board positions at Yahoo and Yelp. In 2015, he became the first Silicon Valley executive appointed to the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s advisory board, emphasizing the importance of collaboration between companies and regulators.

    Reid Hoffman: entrepreneur, investor

    Reid Hoffman speaking at event for WIRED's 30th anniversary.Reid Hoffman speaking at event for WIRED's 30th anniversary.
    Reid Hoffman. Kimberly White/Getty Images for WIRED
    • Position at PayPal: chief operating officer
    • Companies later founded: LinkedIn, Greylock Partners
    • Net worth: $2.5 billion

    Before joining PayPal, Hoffman worked as a senior user experience architect at Apple, contributing to the company’s online social network eWorld. He later became director of product management at Fujitsu. After his online dating startup, SocialNet, folded, Hoffman joined PayPal in 2000 as chief operating officer.

    In 2003, he co-founded the career networking site LinkedIn. Following Microsoft’s $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn in 2017, Hoffman joined Microsoft’s board, a move that greatly increased his wealth.

    Over the years, Hoffman has served on the boards of Airbnb and OpenAI, where he was also an early investor. Through the venture capital firm Greylock Partners, he has backed dozens of A.I. startups. In 2022, he co-founded Inflection AI with Mustafa Suleyman, who now serves as CEO. Earlier this year, he teamed up with cancer researcher Siddhartha Mukherjee to launch Manas AI, a startup focused on drug discovery.

    David Sacks: investor, White House A.I. and Crypto Czar

    David Sacks being photographed on a red carpet in Los Angeles.David Sacks being photographed on a red carpet in Los Angeles.
    David Sacks currently serves as the White House A.I. and Crypto Czar. JC Olivera/Variety via Getty Images
    • Position at PayPal: chief operating officer from 1999 to 2002
    • Companies later founded: Craft Ventures
    • Net worth: $200 million

    Since leaving PayPal, David Sacks has built a career spanning film, tech, investing and politics. In 2005, he produced and financed a political satire that earned two Golden Globe nominations. The following year, he founded Geni.com, a genealogy-focused social network that later spun off Yammer, one of the earliest enterprise social networking platforms. He went on to co-found Craft Ventures, the startup Glue, and the podcast platform Callin.

    Today, Sacks serves as the White House’s Special Advisor for A.I. and Crypto, a role created by the Trump administration to guide policy on artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency.

    Jeremy Stoppelman: engineer, Yelp CEO 

    • Position at PayPal: vice president of engineering
    • Companies later founded: Yelp
    • Net worth: $100 million

    Jeremy Stoppelman joined Musk’s X.com in 1999 and became vice president of engineering after its transition to PayPal. In 2004, he co-founded Yelp, where he has served as CEO ever since. Under his leadership, the company turned down a 2010 acquisition offer from Google and went public two years later. Stoppelman’s net worth is estimated at more than $100 million.

    Ken Howery: investor, U.S. ambassador

    • Position at PayPal: chief financial officer from 1998 to 2002
    • Companies later founded: Founders Fund
    • Net worth: estimated $1.5 billion

    Ken Howery served as PayPal’s chief financial officer from 1998 to 2002. After PayPal’s sale to eBay, he became eBay’s director of corporate development until 2003. He later joined Peter Thiel at Clarium Capital as vice president of private equity and went on to co-found Founders Fund as a partner. Beyond investing, he is a member of the Explorers Club, a nonprofit dedicated to scientific exploration, and an advisor to Kiva, the micro-lending nonprofit founded by former PayPal colleague Premal Shah.

    Howery is also among the former PayPal executives who have moved into politics. He has donated at least $1 million to Donald Trump’s campaign through Elon Musk’s political action committee. During Trump’s first term, Howery was appointed U.S. ambassador to Sweden and today serves as the U.S. ambassador to Denmark.

    Roeloth Botha: venture capitalist

    Roelof Botha joined PayPal as director of corporate development shortly before graduating from Stanford University. He later became vice president of finance and went on to serve as chief financial officer until the company’s acquisition by eBay.

    After leaving PayPal, Botha joined Sequoia Capital, where he oversaw investments in YouTube and Instagram. He currently sits on the boards of MongoDB, Evernote, Bird, Natera, Square, Unity and Xoom.

    Russel Simmons: entrepreneur 

    • Position at PayPal: software architect from 1998 to 2003
    • Companies later founded: Yelp, Learnirvana

    Russel Simmons helped design PayPal’s payment system as a software architect. After leaving the company, he and fellow PayPal alum Jeremy Stoppelman set out to build a platform for restaurant reviews. With a $1 million investment from Max Levchin, they launched Yelp in July 2004. Simmons served as chief technology officer until his departure in 2010. At the time, Yelp said he would remain a “significant” shareholder, though the size of his stake—and whether he still holds it—remains unclear.

    In 2014, Simmons co-founded Learnirvana, an online learning platform.

    Andrew McCormack: entrepreneur

    • Position at PayPal: assistant to Thiel from July 2001 to November 2002
    • Companies later founded: Valar Ventures

    Andrew McCormack began his career as an assistant to Peter Thiel at PayPal and followed him into subsequent ventures. From November 2002 to April 2003, he oversaw operations at Thiel’s hedge fund, Clarium Capital.

    In 2010, McCormack co-founded Valar Ventures with Thiel and James Fitzgerald, focusing on fintech investments. He remains a general partner at the firm.

    Luke Nosek: investor 

    • Position at PayPal: co-founder and vice president of marketing and strategy from 1998 to 2002
    • Companies later founded: Founders Fund, Gigafund

    In 2005, Luke Nosek joined Peter Thiel and Ken Howery to launch Founders Fund, a San Francisco–based venture capital firm that has backed companies such as Airbnb, Lyft and SpaceX. While his exact net worth is unclear, Nosek has made substantial investments through his venture firms. At Founders Fund, he led one of the firm’s earliest major deals with a $20 million investment in SpaceX, later serving on its board.

    In 2017, Nosek left to co-found Gigafund, which went on to invest $1 billion in SpaceX, according to the company. He also sits on the board of ResearchGate.

    Premal Shah: entrepreneur 

    • Position at Paypal: product manager
    • Companies later founded: Kiva

    Three years after leaving PayPal, Premal Shah co-founded Kiva, a nonprofit that provides loans to entrepreneurs in underserved communities worldwide. He also serves on the boards of other nonprofits, including the Center for Humane Technology, the Change.org Foundation, Watsi and VolunteerMatch.

    Keith Rabois: investor

    • Position at PayPal: executive vice president of business development

    After leaving his executive role at PayPal, Keith Rabois became an active investor, backing companies including Slide, YouTube and Palantir. He also invested in LinkedIn, where he served as vice president of business and corporate development, and Square, where he was chief operating officer.

    Rabois joined venture capital firm Khosla Ventures from 2013 to 2019 and was a partner at Founders Fund from 2019 to 2024.

    Where the ‘PayPal Mafia’ Is Today: Founders, Fortunes and Feuds

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    Irza Waraich

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  • Newly Released Epstein Files Suggest Elon Musk Was Invited to Notorious Island

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    House Democrats released a small but notable sample of documents obtained from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein on Friday. And one line really sticks out.

    The line appears to be from a 2014 schedule for the late sex trafficker, dated Saturday, Dec. 6, 2014: “Reminder: Elon Musk to island Dec. 6 (is this still happening?)”

    It’s unclear which “island” the line may be referring to, but the obvious suggestion is that it could be a private island in the Caribbean owned by Epstein himself. The island is known as Little Saint James, but most people online just call it Epstein Island.

    The press release from Democrats even refers to it as “evidence of a pending trip by Elon Musk to Epstein’s island.”

    Excerpt from a schedule for Jeffrey Epstein released by House Democrats asking if Elon Musk was still visiting the “island.” Screenshot: Oversight Dems

    The fact that this line appeared in a schedule for 2014 seems notable. Musk has repeatedly denied being involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes. But internet commenters have frequently raised questions about a Vanity Fair Oscars party on March 2, 2014, where Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell and Musk were photographed together.

    Back in 2020, Musk addressed the frequent questions about his photo with Maxwell in a tweet, writing, “Don’t know Ghislaine at all. She photobombed me once at a Vanity Fair party several years ago. Real question is why VF invited her in the first place.”

    Maxwell was interviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice in August and told Todd Blanche, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney and now a top official at the DOJ, that she first met Musk at a birthday party for Sergey Brin in 2010 or 2011.

    “I met him in—I don’t remember the year, but it’s going to be in 2010, ’11, something like that, I think, if my memory serves,” Maxwell said. “And I was at an event for Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google. And Sergey had arranged for—it was for his birthday.”

    Maxwell said that Epstein was not present for the birthday party, but the New York Times reported in August that Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse included photos of the late sex offender “alongside” famous people like Pope John Paul II, Mick Jagger, Elon Musk, and Fidel Castro.

    Representatives for Musk didn’t respond to an email on Friday, but he’s previously said he had nothing to do with Epstein. However, the billionaire Tesla CEO hasn’t been shy about accusing others of being affiliated with the late pedophile.

    Musk accused President Donald Trump of being “in the Epstein files” in early June, not long after the two men had a very public falling out. Musk later deleted the tweet, and the two men were photographed sitting together at a memorial service for Charlie Kirk last weekend.

    Shortly before the 2024 presidential election, Musk also complained to Tucker Carlson that the Epstein client list hadn’t been released. “You know, I think part of why Kamala’s getting so much support,” Musk said, “if Trump wins, that Epstein client list is going to become public.”

    Musk suggested that Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, and Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, were on “the list.” Hoffman reportedly visited Epstein’s island in 2014, according to a 2023 article from the Wall Street Journal.

    Musk isn’t the only name mentioned in the six pages released by House Democrats on Friday. Bill Gates is also on Epstein’s schedule for Dec. 5, 2014, in New York. It’s listed as a “TBD TENTATIVE Breakfast Party” with Bill Gates.

    Excerpt from a 2014 schedule for Jeffrey Epstein that mentions Bill Gates.
    Excerpt from a 2014 schedule for Jeffrey Epstein that mentions Bill Gates. Screenshot: Oversight Dems

    Gates met with Epstein several times, and the Wall Street Journal reported in 2023 that Epstein had blackmailed the Microsoft co-founder over an alleged affair with a Russian bridge player in 2017. Epstein reportedly wanted Gates to donate to a charitable foundation he was trying to set up with JPMorgan Chase, according to the Journal.

    The newly released files also include an email sent to Epstein with his schedule on Nov. 27, 2017, that lists a lunch with Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel in New York.

    Excerpt from a document released by House Democrats showing Peter Thiel on a schedule to meet with Jeffrey Epstein.
    Excerpt from a document released by House Democrats showing Peter Thiel on a schedule to meet with Jeffrey Epstein. Screenshot: Oversight Dems

    Epstein was found dead in his jail cell in 2019, and his death was declared a suicide. But many people don’t think that’s how he died, and roughly 70% of Americans think the federal government is hiding something about Epstein.

    Julie K. Brown, the journalist who’s arguably most responsible for bringing Epstein’s crimes to broader public attention in the late 2010s, tweeted “Have these been redacted by @GOPOversight @OverSightDems or by the Estate?”

    We don’t have an answer to that question yet, but the press release from House Democrats notes, “Extensive redactions have been made to protect victims as Committee investigators continue to analyze the new documents.”

    Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump pose together at the Mar-a-Lago estate, Palm Beach, Florida, 1997.
    Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump pose together at the Mar-a-Lago estate, Palm Beach, Florida, 1997. © Photo by Davidoff Studios/Getty Images

    Democrats clearly aren’t going to stop asking about Epstein, who was friends with President Trump for about 15 years before they had a falling out.

    “It should be clear to every American that Jeffrey Epstein was friends with some of the most powerful and wealthiest men in the world,” Dem Oversight spokesperson Sara Guerrero said in a statement posted online.

    “Every new document produced provides new information as we work to bring justice for the survivors and victims. Oversight Democrats will not stop until we identify everyone complicit in Epstein’s heinous crimes. It’s past time for Attorney General Bondi to release all the files now.”

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    Matt Novak

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  • Tech Billionaires Already Captured the White House. They Still Want to Be Kings

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    During our conversation, Brown compared Praxis to Israel—minus a world war and a holocaust, of course. “There were these stateless people who were scattered,” he says, and they had “this idea of Judea and building a state and returning to the OG homeland.” (Srinivasan has been even more direct in the past, saying, “What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism.”)

    Of course, the beauty of a network state is that it can embody “the West” without actually having to be there. In addition to the Vandenberg location, Praxis announced that its team would be traveling to Morocco, Japan, and the Dominican Republic, among other countries, to explore the possibility of establishing an SEZ. While Brown says he does not consider Morocco to be Western, Praxis is willing to work with countries that are willing to give it land. Like Ion, Brown promises an influx of companies and tech talent that “can radically benefit” those places, boosting property values and creating jobs for local residents. It is unclear if those Moroccan residents would be considered “citizens” in a Praxian SEZ. In the meantime, through an initiative called Praxis Development, the group plans to buy up residential properties where its members can live as a stepping stone toward “real territory, real assets, and real power.”

    “This is a colonial project, aimed at tech empire,” says Gil Duran, a former political consultant and author of the independent newsletter The Nerd Reich. “It sounds like colonization 2.0. When you go to another person’s country and create your own country there, no matter your excuse, no matter your rationale.”

    Or, as the Praxis X account posted on September 1, “Cyberpunk East India Company.”

    The most evolved version of the SEZ strategy is Próspera, a charter community, backed by Pronomos Capital, on the island of Roatán in Honduras. It has an arbitration system, low taxes, and a code of rules. (Vitalia, Ion’s original project, considered setting up a permanent location within Próspera.)

    Próspera’s leaders say they do not consider it a network state, that their goal is “city-scale development that advances human progress and prosperity—within Honduran sovereignty and law.” The Honduran government, then led by Juan Orlando Hernández Alvarado, granted the city its charter in 2017. But Hernández was arrested in 2022 for drug trafficking (he has since been convicted), and the new government repealed Próspera’s SEZ status, alleging that these types of zones violated the country’s sovereignty. Próspera then filed an $11 billion lawsuit against the Honduran government, alleging that the government had failed to “honor its guarantees of legal stability.” The case is ongoing.

    Ion, for his part, says that he “would approach different things differently” in Viva City.

    Back at Viva Frontier Tower, after the morning rave and a full day of sessions on health and longevity, Ion, now dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, leads a few dozen attendees on a tour of his pop-up fiefdom. While the AI-generated images on the group’s website portray a semitropical seaside paradise that looks like a cross between Monaco and Atlantis, in real life, the WeWork turned “vertical village” turned temporary network state is in various states of repair.

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    Vittoria Elliott

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  • Peter Thiel’s Antichrist Lectures Met With Protestors Who Seem to Think He’s the Antichrist

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    PayPal mafia OG Peter Thiel, whose data firm Palantir is currently assisting the Trump administration’s deportation machine, recently began taking time out of his day job (ghoulish billionaire defense contractor) to engage in some part-time work as a Christian evangelist spreading the word about the rise of the Antichrist. It’s been a bizarre sight, indeed, and this week, Thiel kicked things up a notch by launching the first of a four-part lecture series he’s doing about the Dark Lord.

    Thiel’s super-exclusive lecture series, which began on Monday in San Francisco, was said to have been about “how his Christian faith informs his understanding of the world,” according to an online ad. The event was organized by a nonprofit called ACTS 17 Collective: Acknowledging Christ in Technology and Society. Thiel has previously spoken at several events put on by ACTS 17, according to reporting by the New York Times. The group’s modus operandi is to court Silicon Valley executives and attempt to convert them to the Christian faith.

    It’s unknown to the public just what exactly Thiel said about his “Christian faith” and Christ’s chief antagonist during Monday night’s secretive seminar, but there were plenty of people outside of the venue who were more than happy to publicly share their thoughts about Thiel. That is to say, a group of several dozen protesters showed up to the demon-centric event and offered ample criticism of the speaker, seeming to imply he was, himself, demonic.

    In a video taken at the scene, several protesters, dressed in presumably ironic satanist garb, can be seen holding a banner that reads: “The End is Near, Palantir is the Path, Thiel Leads the Way.” One of them, a young woman with an upside-down cross on her forehead, said: “I’m just here to hopefully get a glimpse of the antichrist himself.” Another young woman, seen holding a satanic bible, said she was hoping to get his autograph. A young man holding a sign that read “Embrace Darkness, Hail Thiel,” said, with faux optimism: “He’s the one, he’s the one who’s going to bring about the end!”

    Others approached their political protest with less sarcasm, though the message seemed to be pretty much the same. One younger protester said that she was protesting because “Thiel is a fascist” who was “trying to take over the country through J.D. Vance.” She referred to Thiel’s antichrist lectures as his “Christian bullshit,” and said she thought his endgame was “power.”

    Another woman said, “I think Peter Thiel needs to go away for a while,” adding, “I think he has a lot of power.” She also said that she felt there was “increasing authoritarianism” in the country and that Thiel is “part of the elite, who really do think that they are above the rest of us,” and that this group “have a plan for taking over the country.”

    The handcrafted signs at the protest were quite creative and funny. One, visible in the background during an interview, appears to show Thiel—who is a rabid J.R.R. Tolkien fan—as Gollum, cradling the one ring.  Another person, a local artist, brought one of their paintings to the rally, it depicts Thiel as a devil on President Trump’s back:

    © Screenshot/YouTube

    Even attendees of Thiel’s talk did not seem overly enthusiastic about the speaker. The San Francisco Standard reports that one person standing in line told its reporter: “I’m personally ready for horns to grow out of his head in the middle of talking.” The interviewee, who revealed that he had also attended the “anti-woke” school known as the University of Austin, seemed more curious about Thiel’s thoughts than compelled by them. “Palantir makes the AI technology that decides who lives or dies on the battlefield, which seems exactly like the Antichrist [that Thiel] describes in all of his lectures,” the guy said. “I’m very curious what he has to say about that, or what excuses he might make.”

    If Thiel really is concerned about the rise of the Dark Lord, his decision to give a series of private speeches to a select audience is somewhat confounding. You’d think he’d want to shout it from the rooftops. Why not rent out a football stadium and give your speech there? That said, Thiel has made many podcast appearances in recent months in which he’s given web users a taste of what his newfound faith looks like.

    What does Thiel have to say about the Dark Lord? In short: Nothing coherent.

    In a recent interview with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, the tech oligarch seemed to suggest that political organizations that expressed interest in regulating the kinds of technology that he (Thiel) is invested in may actually be doing the Devil’s work.

    Thiel also rambled on about how he thought the Antichrist might support things like nuclear non-proliferation, international law, and the regulation of AI. Thiel also suggested that the Antichrist could be someone like Greta Thunberg—a social activist who cares about climate change and Palestinians.

    Maybe, and stick with me here, it’s possible that Thiel just has an incredibly incoherent view of the world and a lot of power to spread incoherence to every aspect of society that he touches.

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    Lucas Ropek

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  • Startup Behind Goldman Sachs’ First ‘A.I. Employee’ Valued at $10B After Peter Thiel Funding

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    Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund led Cognition’s latest $400 million funding round. Photo by Nordin Catic/Getty Images for The Cambridge Union

    Cognition AI, the San Francisco-based startup known for its A.I. software engineer Devin used by Goldman Sachs, has more than doubled its valuation to $10.2 billion after raising more than $400 million in a round led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. The deal, announced yesterday (Sept. 8), also drew participation from existing backers including angel investor Elad Gil, Lux Capital, 8VC, Neo, Definition Capital and Swish VC. The fresh financing marks a stark increase from the $4 billion valuation Cognition received earlier this year.

    Cognition was launched in 2023 by Scott Wu, Steven Hao and Walden Yang. Wu, the company’s CEO, previously co-founded Lunchbox, an A.I. networking platform. The founding team also includes alumni of Scale AI, Google DeepMind and self-driving software maker Waymo, as well as a number of elite coders who medaled at the International Olympiad in Informatics, a global programming competition.

    Cognition’s flagship product is Devin, an A.I. software engineer. The company also made waves through acquisitions, most notably when it snapped up software firm Windsurf just days after Google hired away much of its leadership. While OpenAI had reportedly pursued Windsurf before complications with its partner Microsoft, Google in July struck a multibillion-dollar licensing deal for Windsurf’s technology and acqui-hired several top staffers. Cognition then acquired what remained of the company: its team, intellectual property and product.

    Even before the Windsurf deal, Cognition’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) had climbed rapidly—from $1 million in September 2024 to $73 million by this June, Wu said in a press release. Since the acquisition, ARR has more than doubled. “We’ll continue to invest significantly in both Devin and Windsurf, and our customers are already seeing how powerful the combination is together,” Wu added, noting that clients include Goldman Sachs, Dell and Palantir.

    Looking ahead, Cognition plans to expand the ways its users can leverage the combined power of Devin and Windsurf. “We’re looking forward to enabling engineers [to] manage an army of agents to build technology faster,” said Jeff Wang, Windsurf’s interim CEO since former leader Varun Mohan departed for Google, in a LinkedIn post. “It’s been quite an eventful last few months, and now it’s time to show what we’re made of.”

    Startup Behind Goldman Sachs’ First ‘A.I. Employee’ Valued at $10B After Peter Thiel Funding

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    Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

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  • The new head of the CDC has no training in medicine and once helped Peter Thiel develop man-made islands floating outside U.S. territory

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    President Donald Trump has picked Jim O’Neill, a former investor and critic of health regulations serving under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to take control of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, following a tumultuous week in which the agency’s director was forced out.

    O’Neill, Kennedy’s deputy at the Department of Health and Human Services, will supplant Susan Monarez, a longtime government scientist who had been the CDC director for less than a month.

    Monarez’s lawyers said she refused “to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts.”

    O’Neill takes over as acting director of an agency that has been rocked by firings, resignations and efforts by Kennedy to reshape the nation’s vaccine policies to match his long-standing suspicions about the safety and effectiveness of long-established shots.

    An HHS spokesperson said Friday that O’Neill would continue to serve as deputy of the department but did not provide details on his new role.

    A former associate of billionaire tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel, O’Neill previously helped run one of Thiel’s investment funds and later managed several of his other projects. Those included a nonprofit working to develop manmade islands that would float outside U.S. territory, allowing them to experiment with new forms of government.

    He has no training in medicine or health care and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in humanities.

    A Washington insider on a team of outsiders

    O’Neill has kept a markedly lower profile than Trump’s other top health officials, who all joined the administration as Washington outsiders. He’s also the only one with experience working at HHS, where he served for six years under President George W. Bush.

    Those who know him say he’ll likely be tasked with trying to calm the situation at CDC — though it’s unclear what, if any, independence he’ll have from Kennedy.

    “Jim O’Neill is a health care policy professional and I don’t think anybody can accuse him of being an RFK Jr. sock puppet,” said Peter Pitts, a former FDA official under Bush. “The question becomes whether the role of CDC director becomes a strictly paper tiger position, where the person only does what they’re told to by the secretary.”

    O’Neill is not closely associated with Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement and its efforts against food dyes, fluoride and ultraprocessed foods.

    He was also not a major critic of public health measures during the pandemic, unlike Food and Drug Administration chief Marty Makary and other Trump officials. Although O’Neill did use social media to criticize FDA efforts to stop the prescribing of unproven treatments for COVID-19, including the anti-parasite drug ivermectin.

    O’Neill has pushed for less regulation

    O’Neill has long-standing ties to the libertarian wing of the Republican Party, including Thiel, one of Trump’s leading supporters from Silicon Valley. Like Thiel, O’Neill has expressed disdain for many parts of the federal bureaucracy, saying it hinders advances in medicine, technology and other areas.

    During Trump’s first term, O’Neill was vetted as a possible choice to lead the FDA, although his past statements about the agency raised alarms among pharmaceutical and medical technology executives.

    In particular, O’Neill proposed doing away with FDA’s 60-year-old mandate of assuring new drugs are both safe and effective in treating disease. In a 2014 speech, O’Neill suggested drug effectiveness could be established after they hit the market.

    Trump ultimately nominated Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA official and supporter of the agency’s regulatory approach, as commissioner.

    Refusal to break with Kennedy on vaccines

    After being nominated to the HHS post, O’Neill voiced his support for the federal government’s traditional system for overseeing vaccines — including the role of the CDC — while refusing to criticize Kennedy’s views on the topic.

    “I support CDC’s recommendations for vaccines,” O’Neill told Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy at a confirmation hearing in June. “I think that’s a central role that CDC has. It’s mandated in law.”

    In follow-up questions, ranking Democrat Ron Wyden pressed O’Neill on statements by Kennedy downplaying the safety and effectiveness of vaccines to prevent measles and other diseases.

    “Secretary Kennedy has not made it difficult nor discouraged people from taking vaccines,” O’Neill responded.

    High-stakes vaccine decisions ahead

    Within weeks, O’Neill could be asked to sign off on new recommendations from a CDC panel that Kennedy has reshaped with vaccine skeptics. The group is scheduled to meet next month to review vaccinations for measles, hepatitis and other conditions that have long been established on the government schedule for children.

    Traditionally, the CDC director signs off on recommendations from the panel. But Monarez was ousted after, among other things, she refused to automatically sign off the committee’s recommendations, according to Dr. Richard Besser, a former CDC acting director who spoke to her.

    As an acting official, federal law limits O’Neill to no more than 210 days heading the agency before he must step aside or be formally nominated to the post.

    Dr. Anne Schuchat, who served twice as acting CDC director, says there are essentially no limits on the powers of the acting agency chiefs, beyond the time constraints.

    “I was told, ‘You’re the director. Do what you need to do,’” Schuchat said.

    Dueling health roles

    Both of O’Neill’s roles at HHS and CDC are demanding, full-time jobs that would be extremely challenging for one person to do simultaneously, Schuchat said.

    “But if the goal is to have an acting CDC director fulfill a predetermined decision about vaccines, it’s a different story,” Schuchat said.

    It won’t help O’Neill that there was an exodus this week of four veteran CDC center directors, leaving the agency with few leaders who have a background in medicine, science or public health crisis management, she added.

    ___

    AP Medical Writer Mike Stobbe contributed to this story from New York

    ___

    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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    Matthew Perrone, The Associated Press

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  • The CDC’s Nightmare Interim Director Is a Peter Thiel Pal

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    The Center for Disease Control and Prevention is in chaotic disarray, as a slew of resignations and an unprecedented walkout of staff have roiled the agency. At the center of the controversy is the CDC’s weirdo director, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose most recent contribution to public health dialogue was a bizarre rant about what passes through his mind as he stares at children. No wonder longtime agency staffers are losing their minds.

    Now, in a development that is sure to help (*sarcasm*), Jim O’Neill, Kennedy’s deputy secretary, has been selected to take over at the agency. People are freaking out about O’Neill’s nomination because, well, he’s a freak—or, at the very least, he is anomalous in regards to his espoused beliefs and career experience and how little they seem to match his new job. But, as Stat reports, the sure-fire tell that this man waves a freak flag is his deep connections to PayPal co-founder and all-around weirdo Peter Thiel.

    One of the first things you notice when you check out O’Neill’s LinkedIn is just how much time he’s spent working for organizations that were created by rightwing billionaire Peter Thiel. Between 2008 and 2012, O’Neill served as the managing director of Clarium Capital Management, one of Thiel’s first hedge funds. After that, O’Neill spent nearly a decade as the managing director of Mithril Capital Management, one of Thiel’s venture capital firms, which has been responsible for funding companies like Thiel’s defense contractor, Palantir (which is also doing a lot of work for the Trump administration right now).

    O’Neill was also previously a board member of Thiel’s Seasteading Institute, an organization that is devoted to the creation of autonomous floating cities that are governed by private entities rather than traditional (i.e., democratic) governments. A picture on the group’s website from 2014 shows O’Neill hanging out with dead-eyed libertarian operative Grover Norquist at Burning Man. The Seasteading Institute is run by Milton Friedman’s grandson, Patri Friedman, who is also a point person for the “Network State” movement, which Thiel is also all wrapped up in.

    Frankly, O’Neill’s dense ties to Thiel are one of the less worrying things about him. Much more concerning is the wealth of information about him online that would give any sane person pause when considering whether to let him run a public health agency. For one thing, there’s an old YouTube video of him talking about how we should open up organ donation to the “free market” (there’s nothing wrong with incentivizing people to but and sell organs, right?), and he’s also a fan of Silicon Valley’s trendy new life-extension sciences (he has shared kind words about the penis-shocking, teen-blood-transfusing health guru Bryan Johnson). During the pandemic, he is said to have advocated for the use of alternative medications, like hydroxychloroquine and Joe Rogan’s favorite, ivermectin. The Seasteading Institute is run by Milton Friedman’s grandson, Patri Friedman, who is also a point person for the “Network State” movement. O’Neill also reportedly advocated for dispensing with the FDA’s mandate that drugs be deemed “effective” before they’re sold to the public. In 2014, he told a biotech group: “Let people start using them [the drugs], at their own risk.” And, of course, he wants healthcare to be a “free market” enterprise.

    In short, he sounds like a complete and total nightmare and, also, the exact kind of person that RFK would want to run the CDC.

    Unlike his boss, O’Neill is not a complete stranger to government, although this should offer little comfort. During the George W. Bush administration, he served in several roles at the HHS, even rising as high as principal associate deputy secretary. In that role, between 2007 and 2008, he is said to have focused his attention on food safety regulations. Then, during Trump’s first term in office, O’Neill was mulled as a potential choice to head the Food and Drug Administration. When it originally broke that Trump was considering O’Neill for this post back in 2016, Gizmodo wrote an article entitled: “Trump is Considering an Insane Silicon Valley Libertarian to Head the FDA.” At the time, much controversy was stirred up by the mere suggestion that O’Neill take the FDA role, and eventually, Trump dropped the idea. Now, unfortunately, O’Neill is going to be running an agency nearly twice as large and significantly more important, at least for the time being. Gizmodo reached out to the government for more information.

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    Lucas Ropek

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  • Bitcoin Flash Crash Roils Crypto Market

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    Crypto prices dipped Monday following a so-called flash crash of Bitcoin on Sunday. And while Ethereum dipped as well, the second most popular cryptocurrency is still up significantly on the month.

    Bitcoin’s weekend crash is being blamed on a single whale who sold 24,000 Bitcoin, according to crypto watchers on X. Bitcoin’s most recent peak hit $117,370 on Friday, not too far from the all-time high of $124,500. But Bitcoin is currently sitting at $112,660, well below recent highs.

    “Bitcoin flash crash today, which wiped out $310M in long positions, has been traced to a SINGLE Bitcoin whale dumping BTC for ETH. The whale sold 24,000+ BTC, including coins that hadn’t moved in 5+ years, sending 12,000+ BTC today alone to the Hyperunite trading platform,” crypto analyst Jacob King tweeted on Sunday.

    “They’ve sold 18,000+ BTC ($2B) so far and are in the process of dumping the remaining 6,000+ BTC ($670M). Most of the money is being moved into Ethereum, $2B bought and $1.3B staked,” King continued.

    That sale seemed to set off a chain reaction and a flurry of selling with $100 billion wiped out in just 24 hours, according to Forbes, as traders seemed to worry about whether the optimism from Jerome Powell’s statements Friday might be a mirage. Powell signaled he may lower interest rates at the next meeting of the Federal Reserve in September.

    But others are more skeptical that the price really swung due to a whale, suggesting that it could be due to “multiple whales,” rather than a single entity, according to The Block. Whatever the reason for bitcoin’s pullback, there’s no doubt that Ethereum has been faring better in recent days.

    Ethereum is down almost 4% over the past 24 hours to $4,637, but is still up 24% on the month, according to CoinMarketCap. Why is Ethereum doing so well lately? There are a lot of different theories, including the popularity of spot ETFs, which now account for about $30.5 billion or 5.2% of Ethereum’s market cap, according to The Street.

    But there’s also just been a lot of hype in mainstream news outlets about Ethereum, with a recent story in the Wall Street Journal touting all the big money that’s “piling into” the cryptocurrency. One of those investors is apparently Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal. The Journal reports that people close to Thiel believe his “recent bets stem from a belief that the Ethereum network will keep growing.”

    But that kind of hype should probably be taken with a grain of salt. Founders Fund, Thiel’s venture capital firm, quietly sold about $1.8 billion in crypto by the end of March 2022, not long before the crypto crash of 2022. Thiel had cashed out at a time when he was hyping crypto like crazy, telling a crypto conference in Miami around the same time that “we’re at the end of the fiat money regime.” Thiel made no mention at the conference that he was selling at what would be near the top just before a crash, according to the Financial Times, which only revealed his sales in January 2023.

    Thiel really has a knack for buying low and selling high, which is the smart play for any investor with discipline. But that’s obviously not how markets actually work in practice, crypto or otherwise. People buy at the top because they fear missing out, and then get left holding the bag by guys like Thiel. The question, of course, is whether crypto’s most recent highs are sustainable.

    The Trump regime’s embrace of crypto has been great news for the industry, but nobody knows whether the number can continue to just go up, given the uncertainty of America’s economic outlook. There’s also the small problem that crypto is little more than a speculative asset with no inherent value. Despite countless promises from crypto boosters over the past 15 years, the average person isn’t using crypto to actually buy goods on a regular basis.

    The Block reports that big players like BlackRock, Grayscale, and Fidelity have seen $1.4 billion in net outflows for crypto last week, the highest since March, as investors get skittish. Other cryptocurrencies were also struggling Monday, including Ripple which is down 2%, Solana down over 4%, TRON down over 3%, and Dogecoin down 5%.

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    Matt Novak

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  • Teens Say Trump’s Former Personal Aide and Project 2025 Higher-Up Made Them Uncomfortable in Chats

    Teens Say Trump’s Former Personal Aide and Project 2025 Higher-Up Made Them Uncomfortable in Chats

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    When Grace Carter heard from The Right Stuff’s account on Instagram, the person controlling the account introduced himself as John. He also offered a phone number with a Southern California area code—a number that a WIRED reporter has used in the past to contact McEntee.

    There was no obvious reason why he would have reached out to her in particular. At the time he contacted her, Carter had about 17,000 followers on TikTok, she says, and still has only a modest 1,500 on Instagram. “I actually have no idea how he found me,” she says. “Based on the other accounts I follow and things I post, it’s very leftist. So I was surprised when he found me.”

    Carter says she never used McEntee’s phone number, though she did accept his offer of a free branded hoodie. While messages viewed by WIRED indicate that Carter sparsely responded to McEntee, he repeatedly offered to fly her and a girlfriend to Los Angeles. “My treat,” he wrote.

    “I remember I told my boyfriend about it, and I was joking that he was going to be the other girl,” says Carter, who says that she continued to talk to McEntee as a kind of “trolling.” “I was like, I could use a free trip, that’s initially why I kept the conversation going.”

    In messages seen by WIRED, McEntee says to Carter, “I think you’re a liberal” but tells her, “as long as you’ll be fun I don’t care.” The conversation, she says, died out after Carter declined to visit McEntee over her winter break.

    “I would have been uncomfortable with him in person,” she says.

    Following the presidential debate on September 10, McEntee posted a video saying, “Can someone track down the women Kamala Harris says are bleeding out in parking lots because Roe v. Wade was overturned? Don’t hold your breath.” The comments section of that video were soon flooded with women across the country sharing their experiences.

    It was this post that Carter says made her feel like it was important to share her experience. “That video he made about abortions really upset me,” she says. “And I was just like, it needs to be called out.” Carter posted a video on TikTok sharing her messages with McEntee and says that she has received messages from several other young women who allege similar experiences.

    One of those women, who spoke to WIRED and asked to remain anonymous because she’s concerned about her security, says that she connected with McEntee on The Right Stuff dating app before moving to texting him. The number provided matched the one given to Carter and the one used previously by a WIRED reporter; messages reviewed by WIRED also included selfies that clearly appear to be of McEntee. Like Carter, she was 18 at the time.

    “I would label myself as semi-conservative,” the young woman says. Unlike Carter, she knew who McEntee was and at first thought his profile on the app was an example for users, as opposed to his actual account. (Last year, a series of TikTok videos showed McEntee going on first dates with women he matched with on the app in various cities.) “I had seen him on TikTok. I’d see him on the news. My family is quite conservative, so I had seen him before.”

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    Vittoria Elliott

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