All this takes tech investing beyond Silicon Valley into new realms, some of them menacing to many observers. That will not worry Mr Thiel. Palantir is named after a “seeing stone” most often used by Sauron, ruler of J.R.R. Tolkien’s evil empire of Mordor in “The Lord of the Rings”. Evidently Mr Thiel, ever the contrarian, does not view Mordor as harshly as most Tolkien fans do. As he once told a friend: “I’d rather be seen as evil than incompetent.”
https://archive.is/20240501163147/https://www.economist.com/business/2021/09/25/peter-thiel-scourge-of-silicon-valley#selection-1056.0-1056.2
If you want a taste of this tech brainrot: https://er4hn.info/blog/2022.08.09-orc_selfidentity/
It’s a thing.