HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_029455.jpg

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, did not ask him to step down from the board, and reports that he wants to leave the board are incorrect, Mr. Thiel said, noting that among other things that he brings “ideological diversity.” He declined to say exactly how much or what kind of advice the Facebook board was offering Mr. Zuckerberg, but defended the company from criticism that it was slow to wake up to what the Russians did. “Remember when Trump said the election was going to be rigged? People said that was crazy — ‘How dare you question the integrity of the electoral process?’ That was the view of most of the people working at Facebook, too,” he said. “They did not think things were so hackable. It was a mistake, but an understandable mistake.” Facebook declined to comment. The anger now being turned on Facebook, Mr. Thiel argued, is less about Russia specifically and more about tech arrogance — its failure to do so much for so many. It is a sentiment that helped put Mr. Trump in the White House. “The Trump campaign slogan, ‘Make America Great Again,’ was perhaps the single most offensive thing you could say to Silicon Valley,” he said. “Silicon Valley says the future is going to be better than the past. That is the propaganda, if you will.” A friend of his in Silicon Valley had the idea of running for governor of California this year. Mr. Thiel’s advice was that he had better have a good answer to this question: Why is tech good for the average person in California? The answer, he cautioned, couldn’t be a banality, such as “it’s making us more connected,” and it couldn’t be utopian, such as “it’s going to cure all diseases.” “He wasn’t able to come up with an answer, and I couldn’t come up with one, either,” Mr. Thiel said. He declined to identify the friend, but it is well known in tech circles that Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator, the prominent start- up accelerator, was thinking about running. Mr. Altman confirmed it was him and said he had decided not to run “for many reasons.” There is a big painting of a cresting wave in Mr. Thiel’s living room, and it might as well be a visual metaphor for what is going on in big tech now. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_029455