Palantir cofounder and libertarian tech billionaire Peter Thiel has been giving a series of secret lectures about technology and religion, which centered on his theories about the antichrist — yes, the one from the Bible.
And according to leaked audio of the sessions, obtained by news outlets including The Washington Post and The Guardian, the events sound just about as weird as you might expect.
The political megadonor just wrapped up a stint of two-ish hour lectures titled “The Antichrist: A Four-Part Lecture Series,” which he delivered to sold-out crowds in San Francisco. During the seminars, Thiel — who described himself to the audience as a “small-o orthodox Christian” — reportedly argued that putting any limits on technological development would destroy America and roll out the red carpet for totalitarianism, in addition to simply being bad for business. And the antichrist somehow fits into that, of course.
“The antichrist comes to power by talking constantly about Armageddon, about rumors of wars,” Thiel told the audience during one of the lectures, according to The Guardian, “and scaring you into giving him control over science and technology.”
As for who Thiel thinks the antichrist might actually be? According to the leaked audio, the billionaire has his eyes on Greta Thunberg, the 22-year-old Swedish climate activist who is under five feet tall, and Eliezer Yudkowsky, the well-known AI doomer who recently cowrote a book arguing that AI must be stopped in its tracks or it will consume humanity (the volume’s not-so-subtle title: “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All.“)
“In the 17th, 18th century, the Antichrist would have been a Dr. Strangelove, a scientist who did all this sort of evil crazy science,” Thiel said in his Sept. 15 opening talk, according to the recordings. “In the 21st century, the Antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all science. It’s someone like Greta or Eliezer.”
Thiel reportedly talked at length about other people he doesn’t like, but who he doesn’t think have the juice to actually be the antichrist. Among them were fellow tech billionaire Bill Gates, who he described as a “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde-type character,” but who’s not a “political leader” or “broadly popular” and thus can’t actually cause Armageddon. He also chided Gates for believing that “science and atheism are compatible.”
“I don’t think even someone like Bill Gates, who I think is a very, very awful person, is remotely able to be the antichrist,” Thiel said at one point, according to The Guardian.
Thiel also tore into fellow Silicon Valley accelerationist and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who he accused of spouting “pure Silicon Valley gobbledygook propaganda.” Meanwhile, Thiel spoke approvingly of peers like Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, and described himself as “very-pro” Vice President JD Vance, to whom Thiel has given millions in campaign funds — though he did express that he’s concerned that the VP, who’s Catholic, might give too much credence to the Pope.
“The place that I would worry about is that he’s too close to the pope,” said Thiel, per The Guardian. “And so we have all these reports of fights between him and the pope. I hope there are a lot more.”
Thiel’s talks read as expansive and meandering, melding religious screeds with anti-regulatory ideology, all the while weaving in petty interpersonal feuds and fixations. But it seems Thiel thinks the only way to get his message across is in the extremity of a religious context. Without it, he argues, people simply won’t take his warnings seriously.
“There are a lot of rational reasons I can give why the one-world state’s a bad idea. Turn the planet into a prison. I think the tax rates would be very high,” Thiel told the audience, as quoted by The Guardian. “But I think if you strip it from the biblical context, you will never find it scary enough. You will never really resist.”
In other words, it’s the scripture according to Thiel. And suffice to say, his interpretation of who the antichrist might be, and what exactly they might threaten, seems pretty convenient to his business and political interests.
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