Tech evangelist. Libertarian dreamer. Republican megadonor. Peter Thiel is many things. As Atlantic staff writer Barton Gellman puts it in his new profile of Thiel, he is “the purest distillation of Silicon Valley’s reigning ethos.”

Across several interviews, Gellman learned what’s driven Thiel, even through what he sees as his many disappointments. There are no floating cities. Humans can’t live forever. And Donald Trump did not turn out to be the revolutionary Thiel had hoped he might be.

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