Another Silicon Valley guy locks down an escape plan

Make America Great Again, but only with an escape hatch.
 By 
Kerry Flynn
 on 
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

If there's one guy who can feel safe in Trump's America, it may be Peter Thiel.

Thiel, a venture capitalist who made millions of dollars and Silicon Valley fame for his bets on Facebook, PayPal and Palantir, served as an advocate for and advisor to President Donald Trump during his campaign and the transition process.

You may remember Thiel from his appearance onstage at the Republican National Convention in July. He has since orchestrated partnerships and meetings between Trump and the tech industry, most notably in a roundtable meeting at Trump Tower in New York shortly after Trump's election.

Trump also invited and listed Thiel as "friends and family" for his Inauguration Day ceremony, The Intercept reported.

And yet, even Thiel is securing his escape plan out of the United States.

A report from The New Zealand Herald Tuesday, surfaced by Gizmodo, found that Thiel has citizenship in New Zealand.

The realization follows the New Yorker's wonderful read illustrating doomsday plans for wealthy elites, which included Thiel and other people owning property in the country.

Why New Zealand? “Saying you’re ‘buying a house in New Zealand’ is kind of a wink, wink, say no more. Once you’ve done the Masonic handshake, they’ll be, like, ‘Oh, you know, I have a broker who sells old ICBM silos, and they’re nuclear-hardened, and they kind of look like they would be interesting to live in,'" Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn's cofounder, told the New Yorker.

Doomsday, who knows when it'll happen? Perhaps Thiel is just preparing for whatever happens after the Trump administration. Indeed, Thiel is also famous in the Valley for his quest to live forever such as by injecting himself with young blood, as Inc's Jeff Bercovici reported last year.

In addition to buying property and securing citizenship elsewhere, like Thiel, there's also LASIK to consider, as Mashable's Brett Williams has done. Glasses wearers and contact-lens owners don't survive in dystopian fiction.

Topics Donald Trump

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Kerry Flynn

Kerry Flynn is a business reporter for Mashable covering the tech industry. She previously reported on social media companies, mobile apps and startups for International Business Times. She has also written for The Huffington Post, Forbes and Money magazine. Kerry studied environmental science and economics at Harvard College, where she led The Harvard Crimson's metro news and design teams and played mellophone in the Band. When not listening to startup pitches, she runs half-marathons, plays with puppies and pretends to like craft beer.

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