I suspect there is less to Thiel than meets the eye

Today in “Peter Thiel says things.” Does society really hate tech? | PandoDaily

and

Do venture capitalists say controversial things to get attention? Are Peter Thiel's Fall 2014 comments part of a larger trend?


and what about this from a recent interview:

You hold up the Apollo program, the freeway system, and the Manhattan Project as examples of the kind of big leaps in technology we need more of. But those were all government projects. Should the U.S. government return to funding such things?

There is an argument that there should be state funding to help things get started where there are not many profits that could be captured. It’s in the public interest. But the way the U.S. government today is dominated by lawyers rather than scientists or engineers suggests that it is very poorly suited for evaluating these kinds of projects. For example, you probably could not restart nuclear power in the U.S. without the role of government. But because our government does not believe in complex coördination and planning, it will not restart the nuclear industry.
It’s quite possible it will just not get restarted.

Really?  As if the US government was ever dominated by "scientists and engineers"?   Roosevelt and Kennedy, responsible for two of those things, were virtually raised to be politicians, weren't they?
The difference perhaps was that they listened to scientists as to what was possible.  The chronic problem today is that politicians on Thiel's side of ledger do not.