Greetings! Welcome to TechScape. Over the past week, I’ve been deep in thought about billionaire Peter Thiel’s intricate reflections on the Antichrist and Armageddon. I can’t help but absorb it all at this stage.
You might be questioning why billionaire perspectives on the Antichrist are significant. That’s a great inquiry!
To my team, aiding us in understanding Johana Bhuiyan, Dara Carr, and Nick Robbins – Early, we covered a series of talks by Thiel, an influential billionaire and political strategist.
Last month, Mr. Thiel conducted four lectures along San Francisco’s waterfront, delving into who he believes the Antichrist may be and cautioning that Armageddon is on the horizon. Thiel, who identifies as a “little Orthodox Christian,” suggests that the signs of the apocalypse could already be present, claiming that international institutions, environmentalism, and technological oversight may accelerate its occurrence. This is a notable discourse that sheds light on the interests of one of Silicon Valley’s and the United States’ most prominent figures.
Long before Silicon Valley shifted rightward during President Donald Trump’s second term, Thiel was a key player in conservative politics. He forged close ties with Trump nearly a decade ago, is credited with endorsing J.D. Vance for vice president, and is financing the Republican midterm campaign for 2026. Thiel, who co-founded PayPal and gained significant wealth at a young age, has also invested early in Facebook alongside SpaceX, OpenAI, and others through his firm, Founders Fund. His co-founded company, Palantir, has secured billions in government contracts for software development for the Department of Defense, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the UK’s NHS. With unprecedented attention and political influence, Thiel is attempting to share a message about the Antichrist, although his political acumen and investments are better recognized than his theological insights.
During his third lecture, Thiel stated, “I’m a libertarian, or a classical liberal, but I diverge in some minor ways, and I am concerned about the Antichrist.”
Thiel’s lectures were lengthy and diverse, weaving in biblical verses, contemporary history, and philosophy, while often veering toward conspiracy theories. He blended references to video games and television with discussions about J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, recalled exchanges with Elon Musk and Benjamin Netanyahu, and criticized Bill Gates as a “very terrible person.”
Read more: Inside tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s off-the-record lecture on the Antichrist
First off, these revelations possess such sensational qualities that they are entertaining to read. It’s bizarre that a $20 billion mogul gives sprawling lectures that resemble the ramblings of a perplexed graduate student.
However, that alone doesn’t justify this as a story. Journalists encounter various oddities that often go unreported.
While editing the piece on Thiel’s lecture, I grew concerned that The Guardian might inadvertently promote Thiel’s ideologies instead of genuinely informing its audience. The boundary between the two can be quite tenuous. Reporters covering Trump have navigated this path for much of the past decade.
A reporter who covered Thiel suggested that his speech was a method for raising funds and demonstrating that he was a “crazy contrarian.” There may be ulterior motives behind his lectures on the hidden Antichrist.
Thiel remarked, “If you want people to hear about something without letting anyone into the room, that’s an effective marketing technique.” This indicates that labeling these lectures as off-the-record can generate considerable intrigue. Secretive ideas tend to attract undue attention due to their perceived exclusivity. What transpires behind closed doors is often more compelling than public occurrences. Have we inadvertently played into Thiel’s strategy by covering his talk?
Our reporting approach was twofold. One article, referenced and linked above, outlines the facts of the meeting. Thiel hosted these lectures and made statements which are extensively quoted. I included the following note with the article: The Guardian publishes meaningful quotes with contextual annotations to keep the public informed regarding influential figures in politics and technology speaking behind closed doors.
This approach allows you to assess what this eccentric billionaire has to say and whether it resonates with you. Once you are aware of his positions, they can be scrutinized. Are you at ease with this individual wielding significant influence over the Vice President in the U.S. or impacting the healthcare system in the U.K.?
In the context of Trump, it is valuable to hear him directly. Labeling the president’s statements as “shocking” or “unprecedented” without quoting them may prevent readers from genuinely grasping the impact of his words and could evoke backlash against news outlets perceived as narrow-minded or paternalistic. Allow the audience to evaluate for themselves. Conversely, reprinting the president’s two-hour address in its entirety isn’t necessarily beneficial. Digesting, structuring, and summarizing information is a critical function of journalism, and reporters need to encompass the entire speech to extract the most relevant portions. We applied these principles from political journalism to Thiel’s lecture.
Our second article on this matter – Peter Thiel’s off-the-record Antichrist Lecture reveals more about him than Armageddon – published alongside the first, took a different perspective. This piece interpreted Thiel’s lecture without extensive quotes, integrating his viewpoints on behalf of the reader to elucidate the significance of his remarks. While his nearly nonsensical interpretations of Revelation and other texts may appear to be the lecture’s primary focus, the essential content reveals more about how a highly influential man perceives his own authority.
In a critique of Thiel’s lecture, Stanford professor Adrian Daub meticulously examined the venture capitalist’s “strange thicket of his own references and interests,” often referred to as “the private world of the autodidact.”
In these winding discussions, it’s evident that Thiel seeks to emulate the mixed-thinking style he admires in philosopher René Girard, whom he encountered at Stanford and has long esteemed. Unfortunately, Thiel often resembles Dan Brown.
The overarching impression of Thiel that emerges from these discussions portrays someone striving to conceal his true essence from his own capabilities. While interpreting a Japanese manga, he conveyed to the audience, “As you might have noticed, my interpretation is… that it is somewhat like the Antichrist that governs the world.” Here stands a man, alongside a few Silicon Valley eccentrics, who would restore a fallen caudillo manifestly unfit for presidential office, using the considerable power of the U.S. government to reshape society and the globe. These are the individuals who exploit your data to finance companies that determine who gets their personal information collected, deported, or subjected to drone strikes, and who support far-right movements seeking to transform the landscape of liberal democracy.
This casts my mind back to a scene in Apocalypse Now where Martin Sheen’s character encounters a platoon and questions who is in charge. “Don’t you?” Peter, don’t you operate the world? If it’s not you, then who?
Read more: Peter Thiel’s Antichrist lecture reveals more about him than Armageddon
After newsletter promotion
US tariffs on China threaten electronics supply chain once more
Panic triggered by AI bubble
Australia’s disapproval of social media has reached Denmark. From my colleague Miranda Bryant: “Danish Prime Minister has unveiled a ban on social media for those under 15, accusing mobile devices and social networks of ‘stealing children’s childhoods.’ Mette Frederiksen announced the initiative on Tuesday during a speech at the opening of the Danish Parliament Folketing, stating: ‘We have unleashed a monster.’ ‘Never before have so many children and adolescents suffered from anxiety and depression,’ added Frederiksen, who aims for the ban to be enacted next year. This rationale echoes Jonathan Haidt’s alarming bestseller, An Anxious Generation, yet I find it neither compelling nor convincing.
In November 2024, Australia enacted a law mandating that social networks implement strict measures to prevent children under 16 from creating accounts. The ban has faced various uncertainties over age verification, yet is still slated to begin on December 10 of this year, displeasing Meta Platforms and others.
The continued existence of this non-binding bill aimed at regulating social media companies has sparked similar legislative initiatives globally. Numerous state governments in the U.S. have introduced laws requiring social networks and other websites to confirm the ages of their users. In many of these states, pornographic websites have been disabled due to the requirements to validate user ages.
Wider TechScape
Source: www.theguardian.com
