Far-right tech investor Peter Thiel sat down for an interview with the New York Times’ Ross Douthat and talked about the billionaire’s recent political escapades and the future of humanity. Thiel also discussed his thoughts on the Antichrist, a topic that the Times chose to highlight, giving the written version of the interview the salacious headline, “Peter Thiel and the Antichrist.”
But it was Thiel’s thoughts on his friend Elon Musk that were arguably the most illuminating for those of us interested in the current collision of politics, business, and tech—especially since Thiel suggested Musk doesn’t actually believe in a lot of what he’s saying. Either that, or Musk just isn’t very bright, another possibility Thiel subtly suggested was on the table.
Ever since Musk debuted his “robot” in 2021, which was actually just a person in a robot costume, the Tesla CEO has been hyping the idea that everyone would eventually have a personal humanoid robot in their home. In fact, Musk thinks these robots will be so popular that there will be a billion of them in the U.S. within 10 years. But Thiel believes that if that’s actually going to happen, Musk is worrying about the wrong things when it comes to his politics.
Musk is obsessed with budget deficits and has held up America’s debt as one of the main reasons he supported Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, tossing at least a quarter of a billion dollars into the race. Well, there was the debt and Musk’s other passion projects, like demonizing trans people and immigrants. But the debt was definitely a high priority for Musk.
Thiel told the New York Times he thought that if Musk really believed in his robot revolution, the deficit would take care of itself.
I had a conversation with Elon a few weeks ago about this. He said we’re going to have a billion humanoid robots in the U.S. in 10 years. And I said: Well, if that’s true, you don’t need to worry about the budget deficits because we’re going to have so much growth, the growth will take care of this. And then — well, he’s still worried about the budget deficits. This doesn’t prove that he doesn’t believe in the billion robots, but it suggests that maybe he hasn’t thought it through or that he doesn’t think it’s going to be as transformative economically, or that there are big error bars around it. But yeah, there’s some way in which these things are not quite thought through.
Thiel’s view is actually pretty common in Silicon Valley, though it’s never phrased in quite that way. The guys on the All-In podcast, for example, are all friends with Musk as well and similarly talk about how growth is going to take care of budget deficits. The difference is that they talk about it as a way to rationalize their support for tax cuts while insisting they’re deficit hawks. Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” is going to increase the deficit by $2.4 trillion, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, largely because it’s giving tax cuts skewed to older people and the wealthy. But the All-In bros think the growth in AI will fix it all while also insisting deficits will bankrupt the economy.
But Thiel is taking a slightly different angle on his version of our robot-filled future, and it’s one that anyone who’s being intellectually honest should take seriously. If robots are really going to deliver this revolutionary productivity, a future where we’re all just sitting around while robots do the work for us, why are Republicans like Musk so worried about deficits?
Tesla’s version of the humanoid robot is called Optimus, and Musk has been trying to play catch-up with other robot companies like Boston Dynamics and Figure. Boston Dynamics’ Atlas was doing backflips almost a decade ago, while Optimus is still being tele-operated for Musk’s smoke and mirrors shows.
Back in January of 2024, Musk posted a video of Optimus folding laundry, but it was only revealed later that there was nothing autonomous about any of it. If you watched closely, you could see a hand slip into frame, showing that a human was doing the real work, which was mimicked by the robot, tech that’s been around since the middle of the 20th century.
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