The Most Opinionated Man in America - The Atlantic
Mike Solana, a Peter Thiel protégé, has made his Pirate Wires newsletter a must-read among the anti-woke investor class—and a window into what the most powerful people in tech really think. Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.
This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here.
Mike Solana has opinions. Here are a few of them: Building stuff is good. The media are unduly harsh on tech companies. Labeling things as “misinformation” is just an excuse to stifle speech.
Donald Trump is “the greatest clown in human history” (though not entirely in a bad way), the court cases against him are “fake show trials,” and J. D. Vance would be “a great guy in the White House.” The siege of the Capitol on January 6 was a “riot” like many others the previous year. Also, the Capitol rioters should have been shot. (He later retracted this one.) Kamala Harris is a joke of a presidential candidate, but it’d be fun to get a drink with her and gossip about members of Congress. The Democrats are “no longer a free-speech party.” Fewer people should vote. Germany is “a very stupid nation,” but France is cool. Marvel movies are good. Cats are bad. The moon should be a state.
Solana's Views on Technology and Politics
Solana has shared these views—and many more—on Pirate Wires, the newsletter turned website that he started in 2020, as well as on his podcast of the same name. He’s also prolific on X, where he lobs takes to his quarter-million followers and trolls his haters—mostly on the left—from behind his distinctive avatar, a portrait of Ulysses S. Grant, and where Elon Musk regularly replies to his posts.
I was curious to see if the corporeal Solana matched the online version. When we met up at his favorite dive bar in Miami, where he lives, he did not disappoint, riffing on topics as varied as immigration (we need to slow it down to allow for assimilation), gay identity (it doesn’t make sense as a category), and his theory that the Marvel villain Thanos is a typical “environmentalist” because he wants to eliminate half the human population. Solana delivers his spiels with a sunny, earnest energy; with his large eyes and lively brows, he looks like a friendly Pixar dog. So it’s a bit jarring to hear him hold forth on, say, why liberals hate themselves.
Solana's Entrepreneurial Journey
For years, Solana played a supporting role in the tech world, serving as the chief marketing officer for Founders Fund, Peter Thiel’s venture-capital firm. Solana calls Thiel his mentor, and says he owes his career to him.
Solana started Pirate Wires during the pandemic and has built it into a small media company covering tech, politics, and culture. After raising money from Thiel and Founders Fund, among others, in 2023, he hired a handful of staff. The Pirate Wires free daily newsletter now has 100,000 subscribers, mostly young men, according to Solana.
Solana’s rise corresponds with the ascent of a new political ideology in Silicon Valley, one that mixes pro-tech, anti-media, and Trump-curious sentiments. To the extent that Pirate Wires has a thesis statement, it might be Solana’s pinned post on X: “I just want us to be amazing.”
Solana's Political Stance
Technology is neither good nor bad. I think that it just changes the world, and there’s always a trade-off. And the question is, is it worth the trade-off? And I think most of it is. Solana rejects efforts to categorize his political views. He used to be a libertarian, then he was a Marxist, then he became libertarian again, only more so.
In practice, Solana articulates a politics that could be described as less pro-Trump than anti-anti-Trump. It’s often a matter of emphasis: Whatever the right might be doing wrong, the left’s reaction is worse. Pirate Wires itself is a mix of opinion essays by Solana and others, interviews with major tech figures such as Jack Dorsey and Palmer Luckey, and reporting on tech and San Francisco politics largely from a left-critical perspective.
Solana's Background and Career Path
Solana grew up in a cramped house on the Jersey Shore, the son of a teacher and an on-and-off construction worker. He got mediocre grades until senior year of high school, when, he said, he decided to pay attention in class and became an A student.
At Boston University, Solana grew irritated watching other kids coast. “I used to wreck people in class,” he said. This was his Marxist phase. Solana explains himself during that period as “a boy who realized he wanted to date other boys in the Bush years and needed a place to go where people said, ‘There’s nothing wrong with you’.” But then one day in class, he was arguing against property rights when he realized that he didn’t believe what he was saying. He turned back to libertarianism.
After college, Solana took an internship at Farrar, Straus and Giroux and then a job as an editorial assistant at Penguin Books in New York City. In 2009, Solana read an essay by Thiel called “The Education of a Libertarian” and reached out to the Thiel-backed Seasteading Institute.
Solana moved to San Francisco to work for Thiel and played a key role in preparing to teach a Stanford class on start-ups. Solana wasn’t an obvious fit for Founders Fund, but he successfully took on various tasks and responsibilities within the firm.
Solana's Evolution into a Public Figure
In 2014, Solana published a sci-fi novel, Citizen Sim, and began to share more of his political views following the 2016 election. His follower count grew, and in March 2020, he created a podcast called Problematic and started writing a newsletter, Pirate Wires.
Solana wants Pirate Wires to be more than just an “anti-woke New York Times op-ed page.” He aims to generate real news about the industry and provide a platform for like-minded individuals in tech and business.
