The Breitbart News reported Wednesday 7 that Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel said Tuesday that big U.S. tech companies don’t consider themselves “American companies” because of “political leftism” and that their employees, especially Chinese employees, are sympathetic to the Chinese Communist Party on a number of issues.
If you look at the top five technology companies, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple, these companies have very, very little presence in China, so these companies are not naturally pro-Chinese,” Peter Thiel said in a virtual discussion hosted by former Secretary of State Michael Pompeo. Apple is probably the one that has a real structural problem because the entire supply chain of Apple phones is in China and there are real synergies between Apple and China (Communist). But there are leftists within these big companies who don’t see themselves as real American companies, so it’s very difficult for them to lead the trend against the CCP in any way.
Peter Thiel gave the example of Facebook employees’ attitudes toward anti-sending China, saying, “During the protests in Hong Kong 1 year ago, employees from Hong Kong were supportive of the protests and freedom of speech. But there were more Chinese employees at Facebook than Hong Kong-born employees, and these Chinese employees said, you know, it’s just Western arrogance, don’t take the side of Hong Kong or something like that. And then the rest of the Facebook employees kind of stayed out of it, and the internal debate felt like people were actually more anti-Hong Kong than pro-Hong Kong. “
Peter Thiel was participating in the Richard Nixon Foundation’s inaugural Nixon Symposium, hosted by co-chairs Pompeo and former national security adviser Robert O’Brien. Peter Thiel made the remarks in response to a question about China’s advantage over the United States in technology.
O’Brien blasted so-called “progressives” in Silicon Valley for supporting far-left affirmative action policies in the United States while ignoring human rights abuses abroad. O’Brien said, “In Silicon Valley, we’ve got a very leftist, affirmative action industry, and yet the tech giants are not sufficiently awake to the human rights of Uighurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers, and Taiwanese. Arguably, people in Silicon Valley and the industry as a whole are much less concerned about the human rights of these populations than they are about progressive politics within the United States. Are they surprised when it comes to human rights around the world? How can they find their conscience? Perhaps the victims of environmental disasters can awaken these?
Peter Thiel says the left can criticize the CCP on many issues, such as its environmental or human rights record. For example, Peter Thiel said, “If you’re concerned about climate change, you can say maybe the Trump administration is imposing too few tariffs on the Chinese (Communist) Party, and the tariffs should be raised higher, and even the carbon tax should be higher, because the Chinese Communist Party uses coal power. Even the electric cars in the Chinese (Communist) countries are dirty, dirtier than the fuel vehicles in the Chinese (Communist) countries. But for some reason it was very difficult to get them to talk coherently about any of these things.”
Peter Thiel recalled talking to some Google employees working on AI technology, and he asked them, “Will your AI be used to run concentration camps in Xinjiang?” The Google employees replied, “We don’t know, and we don’t ask.”
Peter Thiel, “It’s an almost magical mindset that by pretending that everything is fine, you can engage and have a conversation and you can make the world a better place. It’s wishful thinking, useful idiocy, and a collaborator in the fifth column of the Chinese Communist Party.”
Fifth column, a group that carries out sabotage from within and cooperates with the enemy from the inside and outside, with the unscrupulous intention of subverting and destroying national unity. It is now used generically to refer to enemy spies who are hiding within the other side and have not yet been exposed.
Christopher Nixon Cox, Nixon’s grandson, praised Peter Thiel at the seminar, “You’ve taken such a great leadership position in Silicon Valley, and I really commend you for that, and that’s because, where do big tech companies fit into the divide between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party? It’s a big issue, so I commend you for that.”
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