The Washington Spectator

07/30/2024

The biggest concern, however, is that Thiel is coordinating with his old “PayPal Mafia” colleagues including David Sacks, Elon Musk, and Joe Lonsdale. While Thiel runs Vance, Sacks is bundling contributions and running his own propaganda effort in support of the Republican campaign. Musk and Lonsdale have recently teamed up to create a “Super PAC” in support of the Trump/Vance ticket, which has been buffeted almost daily by revelations of Vance’s earlier denunciations of Trump, and his own bizarre views of women and human sexuality.

Another secretive network may have helped provide Vance with the necessary momentum to become a favorite for VP. The Rockbridge Network, founded in 2019 by Vance, Thiel, and Chris Buskirk, publisher of the pro-Trump publication American Greatness. According to Puck News, the group’s network has included Republican donors Harlan Crow, Rebekah Mercer, David Sacks, and other familiar names.

According to Chafkin, Thiel believes that the 2008 financial crisis should have led to a depression. Indeed, it was the investment thesis of his firm, Clarium Capital, that this would happen. But low interest rates and other bailout measures kept Thiel’s “bet against the United States” from working out. Now, he’s out for revenge.

Musk has expressed similar views in connection to last year’s debt ceiling standoff. In April 2023, he said, “Given Federal expenditures, it is a matter of when, not if, we default.” And he’s taken up a similar line more recently. This week, Musk tweeted “America is going bankrupt btw,” citing a story that claims interest debt is “eating 76% of all income taxes collected.”

However one may feel about the national debt and the need to curb budget deficits, one thing is certain: a default will launch a global catastrophe from which recovery will be difficult or even impossible. And unfortunately, this seems to be their plan, and it is aligned with similar ideas expressed by Christian Nationalists and Putin-aligned actors.

Donald Trump, who in 2021 said Bitcoin was a “scam against the dollar,” is now an ardent advocate of Bitcoin and NFTs (non-fungible tokens), both of which have provided him with a significant financial boost. Trump is a headliner at the annual Bitcoin conference in Nashville, along with Putin apologists Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Russell Brand, and Edward Snowden. CNBC recently reported that Trump has raised more than $4 million in Bitcoin and other digital assets since he began supporting cryptocurrencies. At that conference, Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) proposed establishing a “strategic Bitcoin reserve,” which she claims will “create a brighter future for generations of Americans by diversifying into Bitcoin.”

We have seen how rapidly public opinion can now shift based on the interplay between traditional media, social media, and authority figures. The Silicon Valley Bank run and the crisis of confidence in Joe Biden following his poor debate performance shared similarities. In early 2021, I circulated a memo privately in Washington suggesting that Musk and Thiel were aiming to do the same thing to the US dollar. And now we see that plan coming into place, with Thiel, Musk, Russia, and other right-wing media planting seeds of doubt in the dollar. Thiel ally Balaji Srinavasan just published an article arguing that default is unavoidable.