Thiel doesn’t see himself like Sauron, but like the Great and Good Kings of old, of the Númeror Empire…Numenorians lived hundreds of years and were good and noble, and most important, white.

They had the Palantirs, orbs that could connect the distant realms of the Empire…imagine colonial England with palantirs and Lords that lived hundreds of years.

Númeror was sunk by God (big G) because of the hubris of this Aryans that thought they could set sail to the land of the gods (small g’s)

With time, most of the Palantirs were lost. Most people didn’t even knew they existed. (Most people don’t know about Thiel and palantir either.)

Both Gondor and Isengard (city/fortress) had one.

And has other lemming has said, the palantirs work both ways.

So both Saruman (Isengard) and Denethor (Gondor) thought they could use the “power” of the palantirs to subjugate and rule.

But Sauron had one. And more power and knowledge about them.
So he used the 2 way channel of the palantirs to corrupt them whenever one of them connected with the orb. (Like Russia used the social media apps to corrupt discontent people into turning more and more to the right.)

So.

Like I said at the beginning.
Thiel doesn’t see himself has Sauron. I think.

He seems himself has one of the great kings of the ancient white Empire that lost the pride and diluted the blood (Aragon has numenorian blood…but diluted…so in the films your are seeing a 80 year old man. But he will not reach the hundreds of years that his ancestors lived.)

He wants to live forever, believes in eugenics and therefore dynasties, and has a company called Palantir to spy on the whole world…

He must see himself has Aragon reforging Narsil and remaking the old white Empire.