Peter Thiel, co-founder and chairman of Palantir Technologies Inc., speaks at a news conference in Tokyo, Japan on Monday, November 18, 2019.
Kiyoshi Ota | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Technical investor Peter Thiel criticized major US technology companies for being too close to China on Tuesday during a virtual event hosted by the Richard Nixon Foundation.
Thiel, who founded PayPal and sits on the board of Facebook after making an early investment, is an outspoken voice in the technological investment world known for conflicting opinions and conservative tendencies. He has backed defense contractors like Palantir and has publicly supported former President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The Nixon session focused on China on Wednesday, and was accompanied by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien.
Thiel criticized Google for his work on artificial intelligence with Chinese universities, in part because of talks he claimed with internal circles of the company, according to a transcript of the event reviewed by CNBC.
“Since everything in China is a civilian and military merger, Google is working effectively with the Chinese military, not with the US military,” Thiel said. He was also sad that ‘insiders’ of Google told him that they were cooperating with the Chinese because’ they thought they might as well release the technology at the front door, because if they did not give it, it would be stolen anyway. ‘ ‘
Thiel criticized Google earlier in 2019, saying the FBI and CIA should investigate Google and ask if it was compromised by Chinese spies.
A Google spokesman at the time said: “As we said before, we are not working with the Chinese military.”
Thiel also said that Apple is unlikely to confront China because of its large supply chain to manufacture iPhones and other products in the country. He noted that other large technology companies such as Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft do not have such extensive business interests in the country, in some cases because the Chinese government has limited what they can do there.
He called on the US to put a “huge pressure” and investigation on Apple because of its labor supply chain in the country.
“Apple is probably the one that is structurally a real problem because the entire iPhone supply chain is made from China, “Thiel said. Apple is one that has synergies with China. “
He also apparently changed his position on Bitcoin during the conversation. Thiel has invested in Bitcoin businesses and earlier said he is ‘long bitcoin’ and considers it the ‘digital equivalent of gold’.
Thiel said Tuesday that Bitcoin is threatening the U.S. dollar.
‘Although I’m a pro-crypto-pro-Bitcoin maximalist person, I wonder if Bitcoin at this stage should also be seen in part as a Chinese financial weapon against the US, where it threatens fiat money, it threatens the US dollar in particular “And China wants to do things to weaken it, so China’s long Bitcoin,” Thiel said.