Original Article By John Loftus
Right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel has an obsession with the idea of a modern antichrist figure, and loathes anyone who is skeptical of artificial intelligence and technological progress.
During a lecture series in San Francisco, which took place throughout September and early October, Thiel reportedly called AI skeptics “legionnaires of the antichrist,” and named left-wing activist Greta Thunberg and computer scientist Eliezer Yudkowsky as possible antichrist figures. Thunberg has blamed global capitalism for destroying the environment, while Yudkowsky has pushed for constraints on AI research to prevent the technology from ever eclipsing human intelligence.
“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 the opening talk Sept. 15, according to The Washington Post. “In the 21st century, the Antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all science. It’s someone like Greta or Eliezer.”
Thiel reportedly argued that these modern-day Luddites will end up destroying capitalism, which will trigger the collapse of the United States. Once the U.S. is cooked, the world will descend into an era of totalitarianism.
“Maybe these things are good or bad — stopping them seems far, far worse,” he said of technology, according to The Washington Post. “If the internet or the AI deranges some people but we have to shut it down altogether, that feels like out of the frying pan into the fire — a cure that’s far worse than the disease.”
Frankly, Thiel’s worldview is delusion — and it is also highly deceptive.
While Thiel claims to be concerned about totalitarianism and the end of capitalism, the very company that he co-founded, Palantir, might be one of the most authoritarian, crony capitalist companies in the U.S. today. Due, in no small part, to Thiel’s relationship with Vice President J.D Vance, whose senate campaign Thiel funded, Palantir enjoys a cozy relationship with the Trump administration and the Department of War. Palantir literally sponsored Trump’s military parade back in June.
Parade announcer: "Special thanks to our sponsor, Palantir" pic.twitter.com/OKcsaDUB7X
— FactPost (@factpostnews) June 14, 2025
A Bloomberg story published 2018 detailed what Palantir, founded in 2004, is actually capable of.
“The company’s engineers and products don’t do any spying themselves; they’re more like a spy’s brain, collecting and analyzing information that’s fed in from the hands, eyes, nose, and ears. The software combs through disparate data sources—financial documents, airline reservations, cellphone records, social media postings—and searches for connections that human analysts might miss,” Bloomberg reported. The software then turns all the data into graphics that are easy on the eye, such as a spider web, according to the outlet.
Bloomberg noted that various law enforcement agencies have used Palantir, including the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which used it to find instances of Medicare fraud.
Palantir’s software has also trickled down from the federal level into police and sheriff’s departments in New York, New Orleans, Chicago, and Los Angeles, according to Bloomberg. The outlet reported that Palantir’s software “frequently ensnar[es] in the digital dragnet people who aren’t suspected of committing any crime,” which gives law enforcement agencies the power “identify more than half the population of U.S. adults.”
It’s easy to see how Palantir’s technology could be used for both good and nefarious ends. Using data to help stop the spread of a pandemic, for example, is obviously a good thing for society. But using that technology to go after a political opponent or a whole political movement, or silence dissent, is not just bad — it’s evil, and poses a great threat to Americans’ civil liberties.
But, yes, the billionaire who thinks that AI’s haters, whose skepticism probably stems from a company like Palantir, are the antichrists, not him.
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