The meeting started with a thank-you. President-elect Donald Trump was planted at a long table on the 25th floor of his Manhattan tower. Trump sat dead center, per custom, and, also per custom, looked deeply satisfied with himself. He was joined by his usual coterie of lackeys and advisers and, for a change, the heads of the largest technology companies in the world.

“These are monster companies,” Trump declared, beaming at a group that included Apple’s Tim Cook, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, and the chief executives of Google, Cisco, Oracle, Intel, and IBM. Then he acknowledged the meeting’s organizer, Peter Thiel.