About Peter Thiel
In a March 2026 discussion with French historian Emmanuel Todd, Peter Thiel offered his views on U.S. global standing, scientific progress, and geopolitical risks. Thiel disagreed with Todd's characterization of U.S. decline, stating that while the U.S. faces challenges, he is "not convinced that the US is in decline relative to the rest of the world" and argued that "China will disappear before the US disappears at the rate things are going." He also reiterated a long-held view that the world is in an "era of scientific and technological slowdown or even stagnation," attributing this partly to the "dual use potential" of technology, where "as you built more powerful machines, you also built more powerful weapons."
Thiel also raised concerns about what he described as "the risk of a totalitarian one-world state, a tyrannical single government that controls the entire world." During the conversation, Todd characterized the U.S. attack on Iran as "an attack on a country" and "shooting heads of states," and described Trump as "the president of the defeat" following U.S. setbacks in Ukraine and against China. Thiel did not directly address those specific characterizations in the provided transcript excerpts.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Peter Thiel's recent appearances.
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✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Interviewer0:01
Harvard and Hoover, Peter, when you opened the talk you said that the antonym of diversity is the university. And one of the things that I've been thinking about during my time at Hoover is the ability of universities to cultivate human potential. For the past 12 years, through the Thiel Fellows program, you've encouraged people to drop out of the university. What are some of the lessons that you've learned through the Thiel Fellows program about how to cultivate human potential, especially given that in a sense, the Thiel Fellows program is operating as kind of like the antonym to the university for the cultivation of human potential?
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Peter Thiel0:34
Well, I'm always hesitant to do too much of a pitch for these various programs. It was a very narrow program—20 students a year, we've done about 10 classes, a little over 200 people. It's been very uneven, but even the median has been quite successful. They can always go back to college, so we never say 'drop out' because colleges want high graduation rates. If you 'stop out,' you can always come back 10 years later because universities are so corrupt—they're just trying to rig all their numbers. But in one sense, it was a very narrow program. What should be so shocking that there are 20 people a year in the U.S. who could do better than going to university? Then it triggered larger debates about our society where too many tracks aren't going anywhere, and even though we can't accept many people, there's a broad anxiety that colleges are not teleological, not leading to something better. I think Stanford is a bit healthier because people figure out you're supposed to study computer science. I always say there are only two majors that translate into reasonably well-paying jobs: computer science and petroleum engineering. There's some way this elite formation has badly broken down. It's not all the universities' fault, but I wonder whether the extreme egalitarianism of elite universities is a defense mechanism to avoid dealing with how they're betraying their students. If you tell students to 'check your privilege' and not expect to do more than average, that's a way for the university to absolve itself of responsibility to see its students become leading members of society. So, egalitarianism is the excuse for a failed elitism.
