Vance-another former employee, best known for his memoir Hillbilly Elegy-and helped arrange the Trump endorsement that secured Vance’s primary victory. He has also put at least $15 million behind Ohio Senate candidate J.D. So he’s spending big to bend the American right to his will. But instead of disrupting taxi companies or hotels, they’ve got American democracy in their sights. Thiel and Masters are willing to move fast and break things. A decade after his startup lectures, there should no longer be any doubt that Thiel’s sympathy for authoritarianism extends well beyond the private sector. But instead of disrupting taxi companies or hotels, American democracy is in their sights. To do so, they are willing to move fast and break things. Instead of escaping state control, Masters and Thiel now hope to use its power to solidify the dominance of the founder class and end the technological stagnation they believe could lead to humanity’s extinction. Since then, both have had changes of heart about means, not ends. Earlier in his career, Thiel wrote about creating floating colonies in the ocean, while Masters told people not to vote. Years ago, the two men’s focus on electoral politics would have seemed unlikely. If Masters wins his August primary, he will face Mark Kelly, the former astronaut and husband of former Congress member Gabby Giffords, in one of several races expected to decide which party controls the Senate. Now, Masters is running for US Senate in Arizona with more than $13 million from Thiel behind him. After finishing law school in 2012, Masters worked on a legal research startup with funding from his former teacher, co-authored a bestseller with Thiel based on the notes he’d taken from that class, and served as Thiel’s chief of staff and the president of his charitable foundation. He had the ideal résumé to help a famously awkward billionaire popularize his unorthodox views.īlake Masters speaking with attendees at the “Rally to Protect Our Elections” hosted by Turning Point Action at Arizona Federal Theatre in Phoenix. But while Thiel alienated dormmates by performatively downing vitamins as they nursed hangovers, Masters had the social skills to make friends in environments as ideologically hostile as the vegetarian co-op he lived in at Stanford. Both men attended Stanford and Stanford Law as proud iconoclasts who chafed at limits on their freedom. It was heady stuff for a CrossFit-obsessed libertarian described by a law school classmate as being “notable for not being notable.” For months, everyone from tech bros to New York Times columnist David Brooks headed to Masters’ Tumblr to read them. For more articles read aloud: download the Audm iPhone app.Īfterward, Masters tweeted that the lecture was the best 90 minutes he’d ever spent in a classroom and linked to the exhaustive notes he’d been taking on Thiel’s course.

Blake masters peter thiel notes