You can do a variety of interesting things with surveillance drones. You can send them, for example, to the most remote corners of Africa to see how endangered rhino populations are developing. They can be circled over the great rainforests of the Amazon to check how the trees are doing. Vaccines can be transported, the weather observed, mines controlled. However, these drones can also be used for military purposes and delivered to Ukraine so that the army there can spy on Russian positions.
Here the rare species, relief operations in severe natural disasters and the prevention of overexploitation in Brazilian forests. And since the use in the war. When drones are made for both civilian and military purposes, it’s called “dual use”. Such “dual-use” devices are the vertical take-off drones from the manufacturer Quantum Systems from Gilching near Munich in Upper Bavaria. You can use them either way.
Since the company delivered its first 20 surveillance drones to Ukraine in the spring, however, animals and trees have not been mentioned so often. Of the approximately 2,000 drones that Quantum Systems has sold in total over the past few years. It’s war, armaments of all kinds are the real currency, in demand like it hasn’t been for a long time, and the 42 drones are of course more interesting for the Ukrainian military than forests and cobalt mines.
Ex-Bundeswehr soldier Florian Seibel, who founded the company in 2015, is not very happy with the latest image as a manufacturer of armaments. Farming and animals, sure. And the drones could also “transport blood supplies in Africa” and “help the WWF with its projects, for example,” he tells SZ. He is “not entirely happy” that the focus is now “above all on the war in Ukraine.” The only question is: Would someone like the German-American investor and billionaire Peter Thiel really get involved in Gilching if it were only about the habitat of animals in Namibia? Or about saving the rainforest?
Billionaire Peter Thiel, 55, founded Paypal, was the first major investor in Facebook and found in 2016 that Republican Donald Trump was the right president.
(Photo: Carolyn Kaster/dpa)
The multi-billionaire Thiel, 55, founded the online payment service Paypal more than 20 years ago, was one of the first major investors in Facebook and makes a lot of money with his controversial data analysis and software company Palantir. Now he is investing 17.5 million dollars in the drone start-up together with the Berlin venture capitalist Project A. Coincidence? The use of “our drones in Ukraine” “certainly also helped to find new investors,” says Seibel. “But it was certainly not the decisive reason for Mr. Thiel to join us. He thinks long-term, very big and far beyond the war.”
Thiel’s team was already on the road in Europe in May – looking for new, interesting investments. He also met Seibel and his Upper Bavarian drone company. If someone like Thiel sends his people over and then later brings his money from Silicon Valley, then that is definitely an interesting thing for the company concerned. Seibel therefore speaks of a “door opener” that makes the company “also attractive for other investments” and “hopefully also sends a signal” to European investors.
How was it with Thiel? “I had a few talks with Thiel beforehand,” says the Quantum founder. “I found him to be very reflective and he asked the right questions.” Now Thiel is not only an investor with the right feeling for money, software and social trends, but also an expert for security and defense technologies. One who certainly finds it interesting if Quantum Systems is now also developing docking stations that make it possible to use unmanned aerial vehicles without human operators in the air. He also has very precise political ideas – and that might be the problem.
Millions in campaign aid for former US President Donald Trump, consulting activities in the President’s environment – that’s more than just political proximity. Thiel belonged at least temporarily to the very close inner circle Trumps. At the Republican nomination convention in the summer of 2016, Thiel spoke up loudly for his fellow billionaire. “Donald Trump doesn’t want to make America great again by taking the country back in time, he says. He steps in to lead us into a bright future.”
The question beyond that: What is Thiel doing? “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” he wrote years ago. If it is the case that freedom and democracy no longer go together, then the next question is of course: Do you prefer freedom or democracy? Or best: both? What relationship does the investor, who was born in Frankfurt am Main, have to the state, how does he imagine the society of the future when freedom becomes the measure of all things in a world of the greatest possible libertarianism? Then who really rules – the rich? tech companies? The Austrian ex-Chancellor Sebastian Kurz considers Thiel to be “one of the most intellectual people I know, with incredible analytical skills”. Someone who “likes to polarize and take very pointed opinions”.
It sounds similar to the Quantum founder. “We also know that Peter Thiel is not only a prominent figure, but also a controversial one,” says Seibel. However, he himself had been in the USA for a long time and knew that one “It’s best to leave politics out of such talks.” He says he’s interested in Mr. Thiel as a “world-class investor.” “So it’s not my job to talk to him about Trump.”