First Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and David Sacks upended America’s financial-services industry with an innovative Silicon Valley startup called PayPal that rocketed to dominance as the internet took hold.

Now the conservative billionaires have leveraged the power, wealth and connections that grew out of their membership in the “PayPal Mafia” into positions of tremendous influence over a federal government whose actions profoundly affect their expansive business and financial empires. Sacks, a venture capitalist , Thiel, an investor and corporate leader , and Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO, are close collaborators, sharing childhood ties to South Africa and a deep interest in disruptive technologies.

“They went from scrappy guys dodging government regulation to now they are the govern

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