Interview: Peter Thiel on Scientific Stagnation

Peter Thiel is an entrepreneur and venture capitalist who co-founded PayPal, Palantir, and Founders Fund, as well as being an early investor in Facebook OpenAI, and many other major technology companies. He is also a major public intellectual on the right and a major intellectual influence on Vice President J.D. Vance. This interview is focused on his thesis, first articulated publicly in 2011, that technological growth has slowed since the 1970s, leading to economic stagnation.

THE SALIENT: You have argued that many of our current social and economic ills are the result of stagnation in scientific and technological progress over the past five decades. I’d like us to go through that process of decline. Mr. Thiel, what changes in the late 1960s and early 1970s do you see as beginning this long stagnation?

PETER THIEL: In 2026, the word “technology” usually means information technology and computers. One could call this a failure of imagination, but on another level, if we define technology as that which is progressing, our narrow-mindedness simply reflects our narrowed range of progress. By contrast, “technology” in 1967 would have meant computers, but also rockets, supersonic aviation, the Green Revolution in agriculture, new medicines, and more. Society was advancing on many different fronts.