Peter Thiel – a libertarian and the co-founder of PayPal, arguably the largest digital payment platform in the world – has taken some serious guff over the past week thanks to some comments he made about bitcoin and China. Thiel Doesn’t Want China to Use BTC Against America In a recent interview, Thiel commented that the Chinese could potentially weaponize bitcoin and use it against its enemies like the United States. He recommended harder regulation be put in place so that things like this cannot occur in the future. While Thiel appears very certain that an event of this capacity could happen, others – such as Mike Novogratz – feel that the comments are unjustified and suggests there is little evidence that China could perform such an action. Still, Thiel remains
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Peter Thiel – a libertarian and the co-founder of PayPal, arguably the largest digital payment platform in the world – has taken some serious guff over the past week thanks to some comments he made about bitcoin and China.
Thiel Doesn’t Want China to Use BTC Against America
In a recent interview, Thiel commented that the Chinese could potentially weaponize bitcoin and use it against its enemies like the United States. He recommended harder regulation be put in place so that things like this cannot occur in the future. While Thiel appears very certain that an event of this capacity could happen, others – such as Mike Novogratz – feel that the comments are unjustified and suggests there is little evidence that China could perform such an action.
Still, Thiel remains convinced, and he is concerned that China could be stepping into several new regions that could make it a serious threat to global economies and infrastructure. At a recent event known as “The Nixon Seminar on Conservative Realism and National Security,” Thiel and many attending individuals discussed some of the problems the U.S. and its allies are facing from the likes of China, which continues to make its way deeper into the world of big tech.
Many attendees were asking themselves what needs to be done to prevent China from getting such a monster edge in so many industries. One thing that Thiel commented on was that while China is not a very innovative nation, it is good at mimicking products and putting out potential competitors, and it does not help that so many large American corporations like Google and Facebook are willing to help them out. He states:
Shockingly little innovation happens in China, but they have been very good at copying things and stealing things… I criticized Google a few years ago for working with Chinese universities and Chinese researchers, and since everything in China is a civilian-military fusion, Google was effectively working with the Chinese military. One of the things that I was sort of told by some of the insiders at Google was that they figured they might as well give the technology out the front door, because if they didn’t give it, it would get stolen anyway.
The Country Is Presenting Problems
For the most part, he was critical of the attitude that so many of these firms have. They believe that in being cooperative with places like China, they can potentially smooth tensions in the future, but this is not necessarily the case – especially when technology is being utilized for illicit and dehumanizing purposes. He continues his statement with:
I had a set of conversations with some of the DeepMind AI people at Google. I asked them, ‘Is your AI being used to run the concentration camps in Xinjiang?’ and they said, ‘Well, we don’t know and don’t ask any questions.’