Thiel won’t be leaving his heart in San Francisco
Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley’s most high-profile conservative, has admitted defeat in Silicon Valley’s culture wars and plans to retreat to Los Angeles.
Thiel may also leave Facebook’s board, the Wall Street Journal says, citing “people familiar with his thinking.”
The billionaire entrepreneur — a member of the PayPal Mafia, Facebook’s first outside investor and venture capitalist with his fingerprints all over Silicon Valley — has long been known for his libertarian views, but what thrust him into the center of the valley’s political and cultural wars was his support of President Trump.
Fellow Facebook board member Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, in a 2016 email called Thiel’s support of Trump “mystifying” and “catastrophically bad judgment” and questioned whether he should remain on Facebook’s board, the New York Times reported last year. But in public, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended Thiel and said it was important to have “ideological diversity” on the Menlo Park company’s board.
A Facebook spokeswoman said Thursday the company would have no comment about Thiel.
Like some other conservatives in the tech world lately, Thiel has been complaining about Silicon Valley’s liberalism and “intolerance” to other views.
“Silicon Valley is a oneparty state,” Thiel said at a
recent debate.
The Journal reports that Thiel Foundation and Thiel Capital will move to L.A., where Thiel also is said to be planning to start a new media venture. Last month, Thiel was said to be considering launching a cable TV news network that would serve as a Fox News alternative.
Thiel — who was born in Germany but grew up in the Bay Area and attended Stanford University — remains on the board of Palantir, the Silicon Valley data-mining company he co-founded, but has exited the boards of a couple of area startups and cut ties with Y Combinator. Late last year, he sold 73 percent of his remaining stake in Facebook.
— Levi Sumagaysay
Intelligence chiefs warn against Huawei
If you are shopping for a new smartphone, stay away from Huawei phones, warn U.S. national security agency chiefs.
Six top U.S. intelligence chiefs told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that they would not recommend phones made by China-based Huawei as they may pose a cybersecurity risk for private U.S. citizens. The chiefs — including the heads of CIA, FBI, NSA and the director of national intelligence — extended their concerns to the telecom company ZTE for the same reason.
“We’re deeply concerned about the risks of allowing any company or entity that is beholden to foreign governments that don’t share our values to gain positions of power inside our telecommunications networks,” said FBI Director Chris Wray, according to CNBC.
U.S. government officials have long been wary of the relationship between Huawei — which has been trying to break into the U.S. market in recent years as a new smartphone alternative to Apple — and the Chinese government.
In January, U.S. Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, proposed a bill to ban all government agencies from purchasing equipment or services from Huawei and ZTE, worried that using Huawei and ZTE equipment “would be inviting Chinese surveillance into all aspects of our lives.”
However, a 2012 White House-ordered review of security risks found no clear evidence that Huawei had spied for China, according to Reuters.
In recent months, AT&T and Verizon pulled out of partnerships with Huawei after pressure from the U.S. government.
Huawei still plans to make its phones available in the United States.
“Huawei is trusted by governments and customers in 170 countries worldwide and poses no greater cybersecurity risk than any ICT vendor, sharing as we do common global supply chains and production capabilities,” said the company in a statement to Engadget.
— Seung Lee