EDIT: Ah, I see that Thiel said elsewhere that China already carried out espionage inside Google and hasn't backed this up. That claim is absent from this op-ed but it may be CYA for those comments on his part.
Nowhere in the article does he disclose that he, at one point, owned 10% of facebook, a top competitor of Google's.
Most ironically, Facebook announced they'd open an office in china over a year ago [2].
He makes unsubstantiated claims that technology coming from this lab will be useful in the military before all else etc. He neglects to mention Google's public intent for the office, which has nothing to do with the military [3].
[1] https://www.axios.com/peter-thiel-says-fbi-cia-should-probe-... [2] https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/24/17607992/facebook-allowed... [3] https://ai.google/research/join-us/beijing/
Giving China this capability, i.e. gifting the gap, will give China an advanced hardware capability they do not have and did not earn. It will undoubtedly be used by the Chinese military. The supercomputer labs is the primary target.
The AI race is already a big unknown, and the Chinese government internal checks and balances are inorganic and not yet tested. Remember the tenets, be slow to speak and be wary of unearned wisdom. What is the point of accelerating this?
I'm sure editors at the Times struck that as well. Still it makes you wonder, why publish him at all?