FMNN INVESTIGATES · OPINION & ANALYSIS
He wrote that freedom and democracy aren't compatible. Then he built the software the government uses to watch, bankrupted a news site from a St. Petersburg courtroom, and paid for the rise of a vice president.
By Joseph J. Jackson | FMNN Investigates: National (Nov. 11, 2026). Reported through Nov. 4, 2026, and updated Nov. 11.
The short version
Palantir, the data company Peter Thiel co-founded in 2003 with about $2 million from the CIA's venture fund, now holds a $10 billion Army deal and an ICE surveillance contract, and moved its headquarters to Miami in February 2026.
Thiel secretly spent about $10 million on Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker. A Pinellas County jury in St. Petersburg awarded Hogan $140 million, and Gawker went bankrupt.
Thiel gave $15 million to JD Vance's 2022 Senate race, a record for a single Senate candidate, Politico reported. Vance is now vice president.
St. Petersburg, March 2016
On March 18, 2016, a six-person jury in a St. Petersburg courtroom found that Gawker Media had violated Hulk Hogan's privacy by posting part of a sex tape. It awarded him $115 million. Three days later it added $25 million more in punitive damages. [1][2]
The jury didn't know who was paying for Hogan's lawyers. Neither did Gawker. Two months later, Forbes named the man, and he confirmed it to The New York Times: Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, had spent about $10 million bankrolling the case. [3][4] Gawker's sister site had reported in 2007 that Thiel was gay. He told the Times that funding the lawsuit was "one of my greater philanthropic things that I've done." [5]
Gawker filed for bankruptcy that June and shut down its flagship site. [6]
That Pinellas County courtroom is a good place to start, because it shows how Thiel works. He doesn't debate his enemies. He finds the lever that removes them, and he pulls it quietly. Ten years later, the company he named after an all-seeing crystal ball runs on government contracts, has moved its headquarters to Miami, and sells the tools the government uses to watch.
The ledger
Said. Thiel, 2009: "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." In the same essay: "I stand against confiscatory taxes." (Documented, Tier 1: Thiel, "The Education of a Libertarian," Cato Unbound) [7]
Did. Co-founded Palantir in 2003. The CIA's venture arm, In-Q-Tel, invested about $2 million; Thiel and his fund put in about $30 million. (Documented, Tier 2: The New York Times; Wikipedia) [8][9]
Result. Palantir holds a $10 billion, 10-year Army agreement, an ICE contract to track immigrants, and a role in the Pentagon's Maven AI targeting program. U.S. government revenue rose 66% in late 2025. (Documented, Tier 2: Reuters; 24/7 Wall St.) [10][11]
Gap. The man who wrote that freedom and democracy can't coexist built a business selling surveillance software to the government, and paid for the rise of the man who is now vice president. (Documented) [7][10][12]
Knew. Thiel told the Times he funded Hogan's case to fight Gawker, calling it "one of my greater philanthropic things." (Documented, Tier 1: The New York Times, May 2016, via PinkNews) [5]
Said after. Palantir, June 2025: "Palantir is not building a master database, and Palantir is neither conducting nor enabling mass surveillance of American citizens." (Documented, Tier 1: Palantir statement, via FedScoop) [13]
The 2009 essay is Tier 1. Thiel wrote it and signed it.
What you need to know
This is an opinion and analysis piece. It argues that Peter Thiel has spent 20 years building private power over public life: the data, the courts and the candidates. Every fact under that argument comes from the record. Where the record is disputed, we say so, and we give Thiel's and Palantir's answers.
Two things up front. First, nothing in this story is illegal as far as the record shows. Funding someone else's lawsuit is legal. So is a $5 billion Roth IRA, and so is a $15 million super PAC check. That's the point. Second, Palantir denies it is building a master database on Americans. We report the denial right next to the reporting it answers.
Swakopmund
Peter Andreas Thiel was born Oct. 11, 1967, in Frankfurt, West Germany. His father, Klaus, was a chemical engineer. The family moved to Cleveland when Peter was 1, then in 1971 to South Africa and South West Africa, now Namibia, which South Africa then ruled under apartheid. [14]
In Swakopmund, a German-speaking town on the Namibian coast, Klaus worked on the Rössing uranium mine. Peter attended a German-language school. He changed elementary schools seven times before the family settled in Foster City, California, in 1977. [14][15]
In his 2021 biography The Contrarian, Bloomberg's Max Chafkin reports that at Stanford in the 1980s, Thiel told classmates apartheid "works," and that South Africa's denial of civil rights to Black people was "economically sound." Thiel's spokesperson denied those accounts. [16][17] FMNN treats them as reported, not proven.
What's not disputed: two of the most powerful men in American tech, Thiel and Elon Musk, spent part of their childhoods in apartheid-era southern Africa, and later ran PayPal together. (See FMNN's investigation of Musk, The Subsidy King.)
Stanford, PayPal and the $5 billion retirement account
At Stanford, Thiel founded The Stanford Review, a conservative student paper. [7] In 1998 he co-founded Confinity, which merged with Musk's X.com and became PayPal. In September 2000, Thiel was one of the executives who pushed Musk out as CEO while Musk was on his honeymoon, and Thiel took over. [18]
Here is the part most people miss. In 1999, Thiel put 1.7 million shares of then-private PayPal, valued at a tenth of a cent each, into a Roth IRA. Congress created that account in 1997 for "hard-working, middle-class Americans" saving for retirement. [19] By the end of 2019, confidential IRS records reviewed by ProPublica showed the account was worth $5 billion, spread across 96 subaccounts. All of it can come out tax-free once he turns 59½. [19][20]
ProPublica noted that Thiel has publicly condemned "confiscatory taxes" and funded a major anti-tax PAC. [19] Thiel told ProPublica: "Although I have been an enormous beneficiary of the IRA mechanism, I personally do not feel the tax shield afforded me by my IRA is necessarily good tax policy." [21] It's legal. It is also a retirement account built for teachers and plumbers, holding $5 billion.
The seeing stone
Thiel named his next company after the palantíri, the seeing stones in The Lord of the Rings that let their owners watch from far away. [9]
Palantir was incorporated in May 2003. Most venture firms passed. The CIA's venture fund, In-Q-Tel, invested about $2 million, and Thiel and his Founders Fund put in about $30 million. [8][9] In-Q-Tel also introduced the founders to the CIA and other spy agencies. Palantir's first full CIA job came in 2008. [8] By 2013, its clients included the CIA, NSA, FBI, Homeland Security and several military branches. [22]
The second Trump administration has been the company's biggest boom:
The Army. In July 2025 Palantir signed a $10 billion, 10-year enterprise agreement with the Army. [11]
ICE. In April 2025, ICE paid Palantir $30 million to build a system that identifies undocumented immigrants and tracks self-deportations. Reuters reported it was Palantir's largest single award from the agency. [10]
The money. Palantir's U.S. government revenue jumped 66% to $570 million in the last quarter of 2025, and the company projected about $7.2 billion in 2026 sales. [10] Federal obligations to Palantir passed $1 billion in fiscal 2026 for the first time, and the budget ceiling for Maven, the Pentagon's AI system for sifting drone and surveillance footage, rose to about $1.3 billion. [11]
Your data. In May 2025, The New York Times reported that the administration had brought in Palantir to combine data across agencies under a Trump executive order, starting with a searchable database at the IRS. The Times said DOGE was broadly responsible for picking Palantir. [23][24] Democrats in Congress wrote that such a database would break the Privacy Act, and noted that several DOGE members were former Palantir employees. [25]
Palantir's answer: it is "not building a master database" and is "neither conducting nor enabling mass surveillance of American citizens." [13] CEO Alex Karp says the company's software has audit logs and permission controls that limit what government agents can see. [10]
Read those two statements side by side. Palantir says it isn't building the database. It doesn't say the government isn't. It sells the tool that would make one possible, and the man who controls it wrote that democracy is in the way of freedom.
Gawker: the lever
The Gawker case matters beyond gossip because of how it was run.
Thiel told the Times his money paid lawyers to find people Gawker had written about and build cases against the company. [26] Hogan had turned down a $10 million settlement offer, and his lawyers dropped a claim that would have let Gawker's insurance cover the damages. Legal observers said that looked like a case built to bankrupt the company rather than pay the plaintiff. [27] It worked. Univision bought Gawker's remaining sites for $135 million, and Gawker settled with Hogan for $31 million. [28]
Funding a lawsuit is legal, and the jury found Gawker broke the law. But the lesson for every newsroom in America was simple: a billionaire with a grudge can put a publication out of business without ever putting his name on a filing.
Making a vice president
JD Vance met Thiel at a talk Thiel gave at Yale Law School in 2011. Thiel brought him into his venture firm, Mithril Capital, and later backed Vance's own fund, Narya. [12][29]
In 2021, Thiel reportedly brought Vance to Mar-a-Lago to repair things with Donald Trump, whom Vance had compared to Hitler in 2016. [30] In 2022, Thiel put $15 million into Protect Ohio Values, the super PAC behind Vance's Senate run. Politico reported it was the most ever given for a single Senate candidate. [12][31] He also gave $20 million to a PAC backing Blake Masters, another former Thiel employee, in Arizona's Senate race. Masters lost. [30]
Two years later, Vance was on the ticket. Today he is vice president, and Palantir is one of the administration's fastest-growing contractors.
RELATED: Trump Taps Palantir’s Security Chief to Run the Nation’s Cyber Defense · The Oracle: How Larry Ellison Bankrolled His Son’s CBS and CNN
Miami and the Antichrist
Thiel has moved his life to Florida. In 2020 he paid $18 million for two waterfront homes on Miami Beach's Venetian Islands, and he has since hosted fundraisers there for Republican politicians, The Real Deal reported. [32] On Feb. 17, 2026, after weeks of protests outside its Denver office, Palantir announced: "We have moved our headquarters to Miami, Florida." Its filings list an office in Aventura, in Miami-Dade County. [33][34]
His newest project is the Antichrist. In private lectures in San Francisco in 2025, Thiel called Greta Thunberg and critics of artificial intelligence "legionnaires of the Antichrist." [35] In March 2026 he took the lectures to Rome, where Catholic universities publicly distanced themselves. [36] His argument, as reported, is that the Antichrist may arrive as a reassuring global authority that promises to regulate technology for our safety. [37]
So the man selling the government its surveillance software warns that the real danger is anyone who wants to regulate it. The Nation reported in June that he is spending to keep a Republican House in this year's midterms. [38] On Nov. 3, Democrats won the House anyway. Several of the Democrats who demanded answers from Palantir in 2025 will hold committee power in January.
Update, Nov. 11: This week the White House nominated Palantir's security chief, Michael LoSapio, to run the nation's cyber defense agency. Read FMNN's story.
Reality of the situation
What his defenders say: Thiel is a brilliant contrarian who backs the future. Palantir keeps America safe and protects privacy. Gawker earned its fate. Everything he's done is legal.
What the record says:
"Palantir protects privacy." Partly true. Palantir does build audit and permission controls, and it denies building a master database. [10][13] But its biggest new business is helping ICE track people and the Pentagon process surveillance footage, and the Times reported it was brought in to combine federal data on Americans. [10][11][23]
"Gawker earned it." Partly true. A jury found Gawker violated Hogan's privacy. [1] It's also true that Thiel's money was secret, and the case was run in a way that made bankruptcy likely. [27]
"It's all legal." True, as far as the record shows. That's the problem the story is about: the Roth IRA, the lawsuit funding and the super PAC checks are all allowed. [19][26][31]
"He defended apartheid." Disputed. Chafkin reports classmates' accounts; Thiel's spokesperson denied them. [16][17]
"He's against democracy." He said so in writing. In the same essay, he said he remains committed to "authentic human freedom." Readers can judge which one his business record serves. [7]
Voices of resistance
In May 2025, 13 former Palantir employees signed a public letter urging the company to stop its work with the Trump administration, The New York Times reported. [39] They built the seeing stone. They know what it can do. And they went on the record knowing exactly who they were crossing: a man who once spent $10 million to wipe out a critic.
Reading the pattern
The official story. A libertarian who wants government out of our lives.
The record. A fortune built on CIA seed money and Pentagon contracts, a tax break meant for working people, a news site erased through a courtroom in St. Petersburg, and a vice president he paid to elect.
Who carried the story
Forbes reporter Matt Drange first named Thiel as Hogan's backer. [3] ProPublica's Justin Elliott, Patricia Callahan and James Bandler found the $5 billion Roth IRA in leaked IRS data. [19] Bloomberg's Max Chafkin wrote the most complete biography, The Contrarian. Sheera Frenkel and Aaron Krolik of The New York Times reported Palantir's federal data work. [23]
Closing
The palantíri in Tolkien's books were tools for seeing. They were also a trap: whoever looked into them could be watched, and fed what the stone's master wanted them to see.
Thiel picked the name. Florida now hosts the company that bears it, and the man who said freedom and democracy can't share a room. In St. Petersburg in 2016, a jury didn't know who was paying. Now we do. The question is what else we don't know yet.
FMNN asked Peter Thiel's representatives and Palantir for comment before publication. Any response will be added here.
Also from FMNN Investigates: The Oracle: How Larry Ellison Bankrolled His Son's CBS and CNN
Sources
Bollea v. Gawker, Sixth Judicial Circuit, Pinellas County (verdict summary) — https://ipfs.ssi.eecc.de/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/Bollea_v._Gawker.html
Letitia Stein, Reuters, May 25, 2016 (judge denies new trial; $60M + $55M + $25M) — https://emtv.com.pg/?p=81534 ; WPTV/AP — https://www.wptv.com/entertainment/judge-denies-motion-for-new-gawker-hulk-hogan-trial
CBC Radio, interview with Forbes' Matt Drange, May 27, 2016 — https://amp.cbc.ca/radio/q/schedule-for-friday-may-27-2016-1.3601467/why-a-billionaire-bankrolled-hulk-hogan-s-gawker-lawsuit-1.3602864
The Hill, "Tech entrepreneur funding Hulk Hogan's Gawker lawsuit," May 2016 — https://digital-release.thehill.com/policy/technology/281357-silicon-valley-entrepreneur-admits-hes-funding-hulk-hogan-gawker-lawsuit
PinkNews, citing The New York Times interview, June 10, 2016 — https://thepinknews.com/2016/06/10/gawker-files-for-bankruptcy-after-losing-140-million-privacy-case-to-outed-tech-billionaire-and-hulk-hogan
Fortune, "Gawker's Nick Denton Is Set to Exit Bankruptcy," Mar. 23, 2017 — https://fortune.com/2017/03/23/gawker-nick-denton-peter-thiel-2/
Peter Thiel, "The Education of a Libertarian," Cato Unbound, Apr. 13, 2009 — https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian
The New York Times, on In-Q-Tel's $2 million and Palantir's first CIA job (excerpt) — https://www1.dal10.sl.bridgebase.com/forums/topic/63260-untrusted/page__st__40
Wikipedia, "Palantir" (founding, name, $30M, In-Q-Tel, Miami HQ) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palantir
Arsheeya Bajwa, Reuters, "Palantir CEO defends surveillance tech as US government contracts boost sales," Feb. 2, 2026 — https://gvwire.com/2026/02/02/palantir-ceo-defends-surveillance-tech-as-us-government-contracts-boost-sales/ ; Globe and Mail (Reuters) — https://theglobeandmail.com/business/article-palantir-ceo-insists-surveillance-technology-has-safeguards-as
24/7 Wall St. via Crypto Briefing, "Palantir emerges as military contracting powerhouse under Trump," 2026 — https://cryptobriefing.com/palantir-military-contracting-trump/
CBS News, "The billionaire who fueled JD Vance's rapid rise to the Trump VP spot," July 2024 — https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jd-vance-trump-vp-peter-thiel-billionaire/
FedScoop, "Democrats push Palantir for answers on reports of IRS 'mega-database,'" June 2025 — https://develop.fedscoop.com/?p=85420
Wikipedia, "Peter Thiel" (birth, moves, seven schools) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel
The Namibian, "How the roots of the 'PayPal mafia' extend to apartheid South Africa," 2025 — https://www.namibian.com.na/how-the-roots-of-the-paypal-mafia-extend-to-apartheid-south-africa/
News24, "Apartheid 'works', billionaire PayPal founder and Trump backer Peter Thiel said, book claims," Nov. 15, 2021 — https://www.news24.com/fin24/apartheid-works-billionaire-paypal-founder-and-trump-backer-peter-thiel-said-book-claims-20211115
Daily Maverick, Nov. 20, 2024 (Chafkin account; Thiel spokesperson's denial) — https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2024-11-20-how-south-african-men-are-changing-the-course-of-american-democracy.md
Fox Business, citing Walter Isaacson's Elon Musk (2023) — https://foxbusiness.com/markets/elon-musk-dethroned-peter-thiel-coup-led-paypal-mafia
Justin Elliott, Patricia Callahan and James Bandler, "Lord of the Roths," ProPublica, June 24, 2021 — https://www.propublica.org/article/lord-of-the-roths-how-tech-mogul-peter-thiel-turned-a-retirement-account-for-the-middle-class-into-a-5-billion-dollar-tax-free-piggy-bank
Bloomberg Tax, "Thiel Gets Tax Edge With $5 Billion in Roth IRA, ProPublica Says," June 24, 2021 — https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report/thiel-gets-tax-edge-with-5-billion-in-roth-ira-propublica-says
Bloomberg via BizNews (Thiel's statement to ProPublica) — https://www.biznews.com/news/hypocrisy-of-peter-thiel-calls-for-higher-rich-taxes-while-own-wealth-shielded
TechCrunch leak (2013 client list), as summarized at https://monashbusiness.prosple.com/graduate-employers/palantir-technologies
Sheera Frenkel and Aaron Krolik, "Trump Taps Palantir to Compile Data on Americans," The New York Times, May 30, 2025 — https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/technology/trump-palantir-data-americans.html
Nextgov, "Democrats press Palantir about reported creation of IRS 'mega-database,'" June 2025 — https://nextgov.com/modernization/2025/06/democrats-press-palantir-about-reported-creation-irs-mega-database/406144/
MeriTalk, on the lawmakers' letter to Karp — https://www.meritalk.com/?p=198991 ; Palantir, "Correcting the Record" — https://blog.palantir.com/correcting-the-record-palantirs-support-to-the-us-government-is-not-a-political-football-688d9a037a21
NBC Miami, May 2016 — https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/national-international/peter-thiel-funded-hulk-hogan-gawker-lawsuit-report/1971573/
The Register, May 25, 2016 (settlement offer, insurance claim dropped) — https://www.theregister.com/2016/05/25/thiel_secretly_funds_hogan_gawker_tape/ ; NBC Washington — https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/national-international/peter-thiel-funded-hulk-hogan-gawker-lawsuit-report/1996141/
Fortune (see 6), on the Univision purchase and the $31 million settlement.
Fortune, "JD Vance's venture capital career," July 26, 2024 — https://dc.fortune.com/2024/07/26/jd-vance-peter-thiel-venture-capital-mithril
Forbes Australia, "JD Vance and Peter Thiel: Inside the relationship" — https://www.forbes.com.au/news/billionaires/jd-vance-and-peter-thiel-what-to-know/ ; Salon, July 22, 2024 — https://salon.com/2024/07/22/jd-vance-owes-almost-everything-to-peter-thiel-a-pro-billionaire-and-new-right-ideologue
Benzinga, citing Politico — https://benzinga.com/z/40221033
The Real Deal, "Billionaire Peter Thiel wins approval for Venetian Islands house plans," Mar. 7, 2024 — https://therealdeal.com/miami/2024/03/07/peter-thiel-wins-approval-for-venetian-islands-house-design
Tom Hudson, WLRN, "Palantir: Big tech firm with ICE contracts says it has moved to Miami," Feb. 17, 2026 — https://www.wlrn.org/business/2026-02-17/palantir-miami-headquarters
MarketWatch via Tiger Brokers (Aventura filing), Feb. 17, 2026 — https://www.itiger.com/news/2612670044 ; Bloomberg Law — https://news.bloomberglaw.com/tech-and-telecom-law/palantir-is-latest-tech-firm-to-move-headquarters-to-miami-3
Dawn (Reuters/Washington Post), Oct. 2025 — https://www.dawn.com/news/1948026
Nicole Winfield, AP, via America magazine, Mar. 13, 2026 — https://www.americamagazine.org/news/2026/03/13/peter-thiel-antichrist-vatican/ ; Reuters via Yahoo, Mar. 15, 2026 — https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/thiels-secretive-rome-conference-draws-140227515.html
Torre News, Mar. 17, 2026 — https://torre.news/epstein-linked-us-mogul-lectures-on-antichrist-on-vatican-doorstep
Chris Lehmann, "The Banality of Peter Thiel's Evil," The Nation, June 18, 2026 — https://www.thenation.com/article/society/peter-thiel-dialog-leak/
The New York Times, May 30, 2025 (see 23), on the former employees' letter — https://www.itiger.com/news/1152794745
Updates and corrections
No corrections as of publication.
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