"Whatever you think of the morality of nuclear weapons, building an atomic bomb is a far harder undertaking than building a website."
I disagree, Mr. Thiel. In building an atom bomb you have the laws of nature as a guide. Those laws are fixed ahead of time and do not change through the project. When you are doing something wrong, there is exactly one ultimate authority which will tell you so unequivocally. That kind of absolute feedback has value.
On the other hand, making a web site? No one knows what it should look like ahead of time because it doesn't exist yet. The managers also don't know, and the feedback they give about the project along the way will be either intentionally or unintentionally misleading, misinformed, and wrong. They may be trying to spare someone's feelings by giving some positive feedback. Nature doesn't have those kinds of problems with perpetuating false information.