Peter Thiel's antichrist lectures reveal more about him than Armageddon
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
The antichrist stuff strikes me as a debate tactic. Public sentiment has been trending toward, “maybe tech is kinda bad” so to shift the frame, Thiel says something extreme he knows will get headlines like, “if you regulate tech you might be the antichrist.” He also sprinkles in “or maybe there’s a 1% chance tech kills everyone” to deflate tech criticism from the other angle.
My 2c is that most tech is actually good and 90% of public disdain comes from social media and phone addiction (Thiel apparently limits his kid to one hour of screen time per week) and that because social media’s downsides caught nearly everyone by surprise we’re overcorrecting with AI safety stuff.
https://www.techemails.com/p/mark-zuckerberg-peter-thiel-mil...
That's a huge part of it but not only. Tech is being used to remove humans from the loop of interactions, people feel disdain to have to answer a robot when trying to call somewhere to get support (banks, telcos, etc.), they also disdain being surveilled all the time, online or offline, it's enabled by "tech"; there's disdain for applications to jobs, grants (scientific or cultural) being triaged by robots, one just feel swallowed by a system they have no power to appeal, the robots decided and there's no one to talk to about it.
There's a lot of tech that is useful, I don't disagree with that, but I don't think the disdain comes only from social media/phone addiction, those are just the more visible, talked about parts of it. In my immediate circle of the non-tech people they just constantly feel the encroaching of tech mediating real humans, we're being herded by a multitude of systems working on their own programming, and people just defer to those systems.
A prime example of such systems going haywire was the British Horizon Post Office scandal, a system to automate detection of fraud was trusted more than any human, causing untold suffering to postmasters flagged as criminals, pushing some to the point of suicide.
The trend for now is for this to only increase, more automated systems taking over decision-making roles, people who would be making decisions just blindly deferring to the system, with no recourse or way out for anyone affected.
It's bleak, it's understandable that people don't like this. I've been working in the tech industry for 20+ years and I don't like what it is now.
The term 'antichrist' is only used in 1st and 2nd John and doesn't refer to a specific person at a particular time, but to anyone who denies Christ came in the flesh and came from God. 2nd John says there are many deceivers who deny Christ came in the flesh and are antichrist.
Based on word usage, grammar and sentence structure, it is commonly believed that Revelation was not written by the same author as the Gospel of John or 1st, 2nd and 3rd John, so linking the antichrist of 1st and 2nd John to characters in Revelation doesn't make sense.
tl;dr Peter Thiel believes that we will be presented with a large number of potential world-enders: climate change, AI, something else. We will be told that a united force under some person or small group will be able to forestall this end of the world. However, this is a power grab technique and in truth this consolidation of power itself will be the apocalypse.
Okay, so everyone who argues for collective action will be an agent of the antichrist. I mean, I get it. Basic collective action is about creating the safe free society we all rely on. Past a point it turns extractive, with the majority Omelasing the gifted few in order to preserve the status quo. That's the thing he's scared of.
Cool. To be honest, one of the things I really appreciate the Joe Rogan Experience podcast for this: you get the guest's best shot at telling you what he's about. Not someone else's mockery of it. Just the thing the guest himself thinks is the best form of what he's about rather than some game of telephone.
Looks like there's a Thiel episode. Let's hope it's good because I'm going to have to find a good drive to listen to it on.
If you want to his own words, you can read his recent essay on the topic:
It's this complete reinvention of things.
Which makes it easy for the wanna-be world dominators. They don't have to manufacture the belief in the crisis; that's already here. They just have to exploit it.
(Or maybe they did have to manufacture belief in the crisis, but we're past that point now...)
Antichrist will need a monopoly on AI to fend off competitors. It's likely he'll also need a rather unusual brain that can be fused with AI in some way. Certainly, no man living today meets the bar.
I'm puzzled by Thiel's role in all this. If he supports this sort of technocratic tyranny, why he's talking about it at all? If he's against it, why is he trying to whitewash AI?
Consider the possibility that the lense(s) through which you see and hear him are distorting reality.
I quoth Common Sense 1952-04-01:
"The United Nations, which had its birth in the San Francisco conference—set up by a group of which Alger Hiss was secretary, is no doubt a forerunner of the coming “one world” dictatorship by “one man”—the anti-Christ The UN has ruled out Christ entirely and its headquarters are a convenient spy nest for the Reds."
https://archive.org/details/sim_common-sense_1952-04-01_159/...
This is just the same fanatical brainmelt that imagines wild conspiracies in every generation. Before the UN it was The League of Nations (Which the US didn't join) and before that "catholic imperialism".
Just because Theil has money doesn't mean we should take him seriously. The same nonsense just gets re-contextualized for every generation.
"Jesus' second-coming in your lifetime!" I mean true believers don't want to think they're going to miss out I guess...
And chances are the whole thing was a coded rant about Nero Caesar meant to be read within a specific cultural context that no longer exists. But I guess that isn't as satisfying as numerology and cryptograms and Satanic supervillains and the promise that the future can be known if only you're clever enough.
> This suggests, I think, that in Thiel’s mind there are two cosmic forces warring over creation itself, and they both consist of Peter and his friends.
I’d bet money that everyone on this site believes deeply in something that others would fine unusual, mainly because it’s been culturally or religiously significant to them.
Moral authority (elders, traditions, cultural norms) can be helpful in some ways, but they are much more crude and error prone. Respected elders can prey on children, long-held traditions can be oppressive and even harmful (genital mutilation, circumcision). Cultural norms can create significant social costs (women keeping house rather than starting companies or curing diseases, men spending weekends bored out of the social pressure to pretend to like various sports, ec.)
When the average person flips on a light switch they believe they know why the light turned on -- electricity! wire! -- but few could explain it much more specifically than that and could not ELI5 it. So in a sense they are expressing a faith-based belief. But most people can tell you who does understand it and know how to find more detailed explanations if they care to learn. This is quite unlike religious faith/tradition which demands that people profess beliefs that are impossible. When you think about it, the word faith means nearly the same thing as the word doubt only with a different connotation.
Perhaps you just used it as a springboard to point out contradiction of certain beliefs with modern knowledge or perhaps it’s a bias against religion that you hold. If so, noted.
Such authority has an important societal role, and traditions are important for a lot of people.
Anybody who threatens regulation or upsetting the current order is, by his definition, the anti-christ. He doesn't need everybody to believe him. Just enough useful idiots.
People who like his speeches or similar thoughts, think the same way. They think it's a global attack on themselves, so they tend to look out for the new leaders to defend against it.
It does make for interesting reading.
If all the problems are caused by unregulated technology, the solution is obvious, isn't it?
Sadly, the whole culture around SV is based on libertarianism, so regulation isn't even considered.
The problems also come from improperly regulated businesses, operating in the 3rd stage of encrapification where they stifle innovation that threaten their *opoly and the choke-hold they have on their captured regulators.
Every ideology and system is fundamentally flawed.
Worse, zealots (of said I/S) compulsively refuse to recognize that their own house needs cleaning. And they not only don't clean, they'll savagely attack anyone who attempts to do the needed cleaning (improve the ideology by addressing it's flaws).
No One Anywhere Will Clean Their Own House is an absolute human constant, right between death and taxes.
If you let the tobacco industry self-regulate, smoking ads would still be legal, and there would be no ban on selling cigarettes to kids.
This is the situation in IT.
Thiel actively supported one of the least libertarian candidates in US history. Whatever reputation he has for having libertarian views is nonsense.
No libertarian would try to control others based on his/her religious beliefs, and no libertarian would be remotely comfortable with any of the heavy handed stuff in Trump's platform.
In my view, what happened to Thiel and Musk is that they succeed in business and everyone starts respecting them and treating them like deities. They want to believe it is justified rather than simply people trying to manipulate them, which leads to a reinvention of self where they perceive themself to be a bit superhuman or important to the world. They act, they explore new areas, they act more. They usually do not experience as much reward from additional success in business, they are typically poorly socialized and fail to create a solid support network of people who know them and care about them. They realize money doesn't really help, fine food doesn't help, expensive possessions doesn't help. Even positions where they occupy a top hierarchical role end up feeling lacking.
What's left is the allure of tradition, religion, blood, war, progeny, and the trajectory of civilizations. They admire the brutality and decisiveness of medieval kings and the idea of theirs being destiny rather than luck. They then try to figure out how to believe they are deserving and suitable for the unique kind of destiny they realize can be theirs.
Most of us do not have to worry about hearing the voices they hear calling them to this destiny. One can see it on Elon's face. He's quick to sweat, quick to contemplate how his every decision will be more significant to the world than the entire lives of thousands.
Day after day of waiters, concierges, personal assistants, aides, advisors, trainers, masseuses, chefs, SVPs, etc. all at their absolute service. They must ask themselves again and again endlessly "what do I want? What do I really want?" Ultimately they realize that all they really want is to shape the world like so many kings or prime ministers or philosophers have. But theirs is a different skill-set. In spite of their desire they are not philosophers, not kings, not literati, not demagogues.
So they struggle to become that which they are not so they can do more than order a delicious lunch and pay for everyone else's and listen to everyone's flattery.
They want to shape the world with who they are, but part of them realizes it was luck and the are not as unique as they hoped. So they find ways to feel special like cultural supremacy, authoritarianism, buying favor with politicians or religious leaders, etc.
Have you been on libertarian Internet recently? I don't see a lot of hand-wringing about people's civil liberties being under attack.
Those are big concerns for the next 20-30 years. At any one time, they rarely hit the headlines. But their effects accumulate.
We may be in the runup to WWIII in Europe. Read up on the runup to WWII, the "phony war". The Chancellor of Germany said recently "We are not at war, but we are not at peace either".
It wasn't a "secret meeting". It was a meeting of the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, which anyone can join for about $90. I used to have a membership. Here's the event.[1] There is a recording. Here is the MP3 file.[2] Transcription of the first 30 minutes (of 67) via free web site. [3]
Notes:
On being a VC:
When you invest other people's money, you're trying to always do two things. Number one, get good returns. Number two, look like you're going to get good returns. And there's a surprisingly large disconnect between those two things.
So I like long term because again, that's less competitive. It can't be super long term. This was always the disconnect between, say, Japanese and US approaches to business. US businesses we always critique for being on this quarterly earnings cycle. Japan argued in the 80s that it had much longer time horizons. And there's a point where long term can be just a euphemism for procrastination or for avoiding accountability. But yeah, I think in its best form there are definitely things that take five or ten years to build and we should be building more of those.
On education:
My claim has been that over the last 40 years there's generally been less innovation in the world of atoms. It's not been a good idea to go into all the engineering disciplines that had to do with atoms. It was not a good idea to become a nuclear engineer, a mechanical engineer, a chemical engineer, an aeroastro engineer. And so we had less innovation in areas like energy or transportation.
Not seeing the "antichrist lectures". Sounds like standard VC speak. Am I missing something here?
Was there some other talk, also held at the Commonwealth Club, at which Thiel spoke?
[1] https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2014-09-30/peter-thi...
[2] https://audio.commonwealthclub.org/audio/podcast/cc_20140930...
[3] https://audiototext.com/?order_id=e0a6efe8-c656-4746-b93c-f4...
https://fortune.com/2025/09/02/peter-thiel-antichrist-lectur...
This sentence is such an acronym to taste and the English language that it may be hard to get through. Thought I do appreciate the offhand comparisons to Peron. I guess I’ll struggle through it.
This man is clearly delusional, and knowing that he uses his fortune to sway things one way or another based on his twisted perception of the world is scary.
He could do some good for a change...
At least the guilded-age wealthy had some sort of shame which fed into an interest in bettering society
No they didn’t. That’s a ridiculously romantic view of the Gilded Age that has absolutely no bearing on reality.
What a shameful lack of imagination. There is a million ways you could help others.
Thiel contributes to a wide range of organizations, primarily through his private foundation, the Thiel Foundation. His giving focuses on scientific research, technology, and projects that explore new political or social ideas.
Prominent recipients have included: SENS Research Foundation, Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), The Seasteading Institute, The Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Foundation, etc.
That seems uncharitable. Since your lead-in is about politics, I suspect you have a particular political ideology or maybe process in mind that you feel "Western" countries should not advocate for?
I wonder what you have in mind.
Sometimes people deserve to be hit. Say something bad about my kids, get hit (by me physically for being dumb)... Call someone the antichrist, get hit (by the news, metaphorically, for sounding like you've lost the plot)