Me: Thank you for joining us. Let's start with your latest investment. Connected collars for cows. Why?

Thiel: Look, fences are a sore in the landscape. They ruin the view from my compound. A $2 billion solution to an aesthetic problem is, frankly, conservative spending.

Me: Some people online found the cow collar investment... symbolically interesting.

Thiel: People are idiots. Churchill said it best, five minutes with the average voter and you understand why democracy is a catastrophic experiment. Though I admit, collars are elegant. Vibrations, Audio cues. No physical barrier needed. The cow doesn't even know it's contained.

Me: That's an interesting way to put it.

Thiel: Freedom is about removing visible fences. The invisible ones are fine. Preferable, actually.

Me: You've said democracy and freedom are incompatible.

Thiel: Correct. Democracy dilutes talent. You're asking a person who cannot find Ukraine on a map to have equal input with me. That's not freedom, that's noise. Real freedom is elite autonomy, protected from democratic interference.

Me: Protected how?

Thiel: Order. Behavioral control mechanisms. A ruler who can impose martial law selectively, at any time, for any reason. Not because he wants to, but because the option must exist. A fence you can turn on and off. (smiles) Metaphorically.

Me: And for those who resist?

Thiel: You cure them of politics entirely. Through force if necessary. It sounds harsh but it isn't. A great leader makes his subjects "saner". Less political. More productive. Think of it as... reorientation through vibration.

Me: Isn't that just surveillance and coercion?

Thiel: Those are very loaded words. I prefer data-driven governance and patriotic oversight. We simply monitor location and health through an app. The subjects manage fine. Most don't even look for the fence anymore.

Me: We're still talking about cows, right?

Thiel: (long pause) Of course.

Me: One last question, do you believe in the rule of law?

Thiel: I believe in law that protects innovators and elites from democratic pressure. Law subverted by majoritarian nonsense is not law, it's mob aesthetics. Law should flow from a single hierarchical authority. Clean. Efficient. No separation of powers, which is just chaos with extra steps.

Me: And transparency?

Thiel: Transparency is useful to the extent it maintains order. Beyond that it's noise. The cow doesn't need to understand the app.

Me: Thank you for your time.

Thiel: You're welcome. (standing) Beautiful view from here, isn't it?

off-record

Me: Your company has government contracts, defense, intelligence agencies. What exactly do you provide them?

Thiel: Data architecture. Pattern recognition. We help institutions understand... movement. Behavior. Anomalies. If a cow wanders toward the edge of the pasture consistently at 3am, you want to know that. You want to know why. You want to know which other cows it was near at the time. It is just good farming.

Me: And when it's not cows?

Thiel: ... It is always cows.

is there any way we could have a recording of what he said during the lectures? Am I the only one kind of scared by this? Does someone maybe have a link?