[burkaman]

I'm not aware of any specific recent controversy, but the core concept of autonomous military equipment is extremely controversial. Bloomberg called them "Tech's Most Controversial Startup" a few years ago: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-10-03/tech-s-mo...

Palmer Luckey and Peter Thiel themselves are also quite controversial political actors.

[mightyham]

By controversial you mean that they are conservative. I'm not aware of anything they've done that is particularly controversial; furthermore, if the standard for controversial is that a person has donated money to political candidates and organizations that would make a huge portion of big tech figures controversial.

[burkaman]

No that is not what I mean, I don't consider "being conservative" or donating money to any candidate to be controversial. For Palmer Luckey I'm referring to him personally holding a multi-million-dollar fundraiser for Donald Trump, and for Peter Thiel I'm referring to his opposition to democracy and women and poor people voting, among other things.

[mightyham]

Running a fundraiser for Trump is not controversial even probably to plenty of liberals, and if you are referring to Thiel's 2009 essay, that is a very uncharitable and biased summary of what he is saying.

[burkaman]

It is an incredibly straightforward reading of what he wrote. "Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." He was 42 years old when he wrote that.

He is welcome to apologize or publicly state that he no longer believes this, and he has done that for other past controversial statements. Since he has not done so, we should conclude that he still holds this belief and acts accordingly.