PETER THIEL'S DEEP STATE: A COMMON THREAD RUNS THROUGH TRUMP'S TECH TEAM

Trump's picks for deputy secretary of Health and Human Services, “AI and crypto czar,” and ambassador to Denmark all have in common?

- BY JESSICA MATHEWS

WHAT DO

If you guessed that they are all tech-industry insiders (and men), you're only partially correct.

A less obvious but important bond linking these techies together is their shared history with Peter Thiel, the reclusive billionaire venture capitalist who famously wrote the first check that funded Facebook.

Thiel's endorsement of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election, and his speech at the Republican National Convention, are considered key factors in Trump's improbable path to victory. Nine years later, Thiel isn’t a visible part of Trump 2.0—but his fingerprints are everywhere.

Networks are powerful. And Thiel has long been at the center of some of the tech industry's most influential ones.

There's the crew that got its start at PayPal, the seminal internet-payments company Thiel cofounded and ran as CEO for several years before it was sold to eBay. The company's cofounders and early executives, dubbed the “PayPal mafia” by