The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 28 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Thiel: Lawsuit discovery proved the Army covered up reports favoring Palantir
“And then when you and then what you can do when you sue somebody is you get discovery and you discover, and you sort of discover what's going on in the sausage making factory that no one's investigated for 22 years. And there's a lot of stuff and we're sort of…”
Thiel: Left-Wing Philanthropy Is Often Cover for Criminal Activities
“So much of this left wing philanthropy nonprofit world, I think was, you know, it was just a cover for, you know, borderline criminal activities.”
Thiel: Tech has been society's only vector of progress for decades
“For the last 25, 30 years Tech meaning broadly, you know, computer science, software, internet, mobile internet now, now crypto and AI in the last few years, this has been, this, there's been, this has been sort of this one vector of progress in our society. T…”
Thiel: U.S. military's DCGS software was a failed billion-dollar boondoggle
“There was this software program. This was once we moved from intelligence community into the broader military called DSIGs, which was just sort of this in theory was a system we were supposed to figure out ways to integrate the data across all these units in t…”
Thiel: University system is as broken as military procurement
“You know, the university system seems as broken or more than the military procurement process.”
Thiel: Trump's Second Term Will Accomplish More Than His First
“Normally the second term does less than the first term, This is going to be the, I think will be the real first term.”
Thiel: Thousands of Officials Could Be Criminally Prosecuted for Mislabeling Funds
“And I think you could prosecute thousands of these people for criminally, For the thing that they wanted to prosecute Oliver North for in the eighties.”
Thiel: Austin, Texas Is a Government Town and Bad University College Town
“This is where I would be deeply skeptical even of a place like Austin, Texas. You know, it's, it is, I mean, it's a government town. It's a bad university college town.”
Thiel: Top tech CEOs express radically different views in private versus public
“There was a incredible felt sense among all the top CEOs I know in Silicon Valley that there's all the stuff you can't talk about. There are things they tell me behind closed doors that are very different from what they feel they can say in public. And the gap…”
Thiel: Fake AI would outperform the current federal workforce
“Maybe you can replace them with AI, or maybe you can replace them without AI, and just use the AI can be completely fake, and we can improve things tremendously.”
Thiel: Students at Harvard, Yale, and Stanford Are Completely Lost
“It was a big achievement in a way for them to, for students to get into, you know, elite colleges like Yale or Harvard or Stanford. But they're completely lost once they're there.”
Thiel: Elite Universities' Function of Forming Leadership Has Broken Down
“Elite universities, I think the organizing function 50 plus years ago was you were supposed to get into the elite in our society, and that is completely broken down.”
Thiel: EdTech and healthcare IT yielded Founders Fund's worst software returns
“The two worst areas are educational software related companies and healthcare IT companies.”
Thiel: Slow liquidity causes venture capitalists to over-index on popularity
“There's no fast term accountability in venture capital. You know, sometimes you have momentum and the valuations go up and that, that does give you a feel where the things are working. But in practice you off, you know, it's five, 10 years later, you get liqui…”
Thiel: China directly and indirectly accounts for half the US trade deficit
“I think the rough numbers are that about a quarter of the US trade deficit is bilaterally with China, but another quarter is indirectly with China. So China is, is sort of half the problem.”
Thiel: US should radically reset trade with China alongside allies
“The reset in trade that seems desirable to me would be that we radically changed the relationship with China and we sort of Induce a lot of other countries to radically change their relationship with China. And that's how we, you know, and maybe that's how we …”
Thiel: Moving supply chains from China to Vietnam is a big win
“Vietnam is, look, it's a communist country. It's, it has bad mercantilist policies, but it's not planning to take over the world. And so at the margins, if we can move things from China to Vietnam, that's a big win.”
Thiel: Silicon Valley experienced a rapid preference cascade away from left-wing orthodoxy
“And then you can get this, at some point, you can get this very, very fast preference cascade, and something like this happened in Silicon Valley in the last few years. It was a buildup that took a few years for people to realize that, you know, Things were ve…”
Thiel: Ambitious students should choose tech over law, banking, or consulting
“Of the, you know, law, banking, medicine, consulting. Those are like the four big tracks you have people had at Stanford in the, Probably in the late eighties when I was there, probably also in the early 2000 when you were there, maybe two thirds of the underg…”
Thiel: Extreme optimism and extreme pessimism both converge on laziness
“Both extreme optimism and extreme pessimism converge on laziness and on people not doing anything. So so I, yeah, so I think moderate optimism is the correct thing.”
Thiel: Palantir faced zero competition for a decade after launch
“And so there was sort of an element where if you could get through, you would have no competition. And then, you know, a decade later, we still had no competition.”
Thiel: Physical technology progress has been stagnant for 50 years
“The, there's, it's generally been stagnant in the world of atoms, not the world of bits for something like 50 years.”
Thiel: NRC Has Not Approved a New Reactor Design in 50+ Years
“The Nuclear Regulatory Commission basically hasn't approved a new reactor design in, in 50 plus years.”
Thiel: Remote work is not working across portfolio companies
“What we know from our companies is that remote work is not working”
Thiel: SpaceX was the first successful template for disrupting procurement monopolies
“SpaceX was the first successful template to do it”
Thiel: No VCs wanted to fund defense tech when Palantir started
“In 2004, 2003, 2004, 2005, when we started Palantir the idea of trying to do a military related software startup. There was nobody who even wanted to give you money as a venture capitalist.”
Thiel: Investing in cannabis proved extremely difficult despite obvious trend
“Another trend where I've tried investing some over, over the last decade is, you know, is, is all these marijuana related businesses. And it's like, yes, it's obviously like a big trend. But it's an obvious trend. And then It turned out to be extremely hard to…”