\n<\/p>\n
Peter Thiel, the billionaire political svengali and tech investor, is worried about the antichrist. It could be the US. It could be Greta Thunberg.<\/p>\n
Over the past month, Thiel has hosted a series of four lectures on the downtown waterfront of San Francisco philosophizing about who the antichrist could be and warning that Armageddon is coming. Thiel, who describes himself as a \u201csmall-o orthodox Christian\u201d, believes the harbinger of the end of the world could already be in our midst and that things such as international agencies, environmentalism and guardrails on technology could quicken its rise. It is a remarkable discursion that reveals the preoccupations of one of the most influential people in Silicon Valley and the US.<\/p>\n
\u201cA basic definition of the antichrist: some people think of it as a type of very bad person. Sometimes it\u2019s used more generally as a spiritual descriptor of the forces of evil,\u201d Thiel said, kicking off his first lecture. \u201cWhat I will focus on is the most common and most dramatic interpretation of antichrist: an evil king or tyrant or anti-messiah who appears in the end times.\u201d<\/p>\n
Timeline<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>Show<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Peter Thiel divided his four lectures on the antichrist under loose banners of subject matter. After listening to recordings of his off-the-record talks, the Guardian has summarized each lecture by synthesizing them into a format easier to follow than his meandering musings. The timeline below consists of the title of each lecture, the question Thiel is attempting to answer within it, and the conclusion he comes to, accompanied by representative quotes.<\/p>\n 15 September 2025<\/p>\n Lecture 1: \u201cKnowledge shall be increased\u201d<\/p>\n Question: What is the antichrist\u2019s relationship to Armageddon?<\/p>\n Answer: The antichrist, whom Thiel believes is some sort of evil tyrant, will come to power by constantly talking about the existential threats of technology and science to the world. They will use this prognostication to gain some type of unifying global power and force the complete stagnation of technological and scientific progress which he says is already stagnant.<\/p>\n Quote: \u201cThe antichrist comes to power by talking constantly about Armageddon, about rumours of wars and scaring you into giving him control over science and technology,” said Thiel.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n “We have sort of an answer in late modernity, which is that the antichrist will come to power by talking about Armageddon non-stop. Matthew 24:6: \u2018You shall hear of wars and rumours of wars.\u2019 If you think of it not in the timelessly eternal but in the one-time world historical way, it’s sequence. The rumors come after the wars or they’re escalations from the wars. In some ways, we got the answer already in Los Alamos,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n 22 September 2025<\/p>\n Lecture 2: \u201cEmpire and the antichrist\u2019s relation to government\u201d <\/p>\n Question: What kinds of government are antichrist-like in nature?\u00a0<\/p>\n Quote: \u201cLast time I talked about Daniel 12:4 \u2013 \u2019knowledge shall be increased in the end times.\u2019 Tonight I will explore the other half of this prophecy, that \u2018many shall run to and fro,\u2019 which I read, much like Francis Bacon did, as a prophecy about globalization, empire, and the dangers of a one-world state,\u201d Thiel said.<\/p>\n Answer: There are several forms of either anti-science, pro-science, anti-Christian or pro-Christian governments represented in literature that show the various forms that an antichrist-like government can take. These dynamics change throughout modern history. He zeros in on four books: Francis Bacon\u2019s New Atlantis, Jonathan Swift\u2019s Gulliver\u2019s Travels, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons\u2019s Watchmen, and Eiichiro Oda\u2019s manga One Piece, which embody various stances in favor of or against science and Christianity.<\/p>\n Quote: \u201cYou can at least identify the antichrist in literature. I’m going to try to illustrate this change in history through these four books,\u201d said Thiel. <\/p>\n 29 September 2025<\/p>\n Lecture 3: \u201cHow one person can take over the world and the velocity at which that person has to move to do so\u201d<\/p>\n Question: How can the antichrist, a single mortal person, achieve world domination?<\/p>\n Answer: They can do it if they\u2019re young \u2013 or \u2013 get rich young, since \u201cmoney has this remarkable velocity\u201d.<\/p>\n Quote: \u201cTonight, I\u2019ll continue this investigation by asking the seemingly narrow question of the velocity of the antichrist. What I mean by that is: the Bible says that one man will take over the entire world. He only has one lifetime to do that. How on earth can he achieve that?\u201d<\/p>\n 6 October 2025<\/p>\n Lecture 4: \u201cThe new Rome\u201d <\/p>\n Question: Where today might we find the antichrist’s new Roman Empire?\u00a0<\/p>\n Answer: According to the Bible, the Roman Empire served as the katechon, or the place that will restrain an antichrist figure, and provided law and order, which in turn prevented or delayed the coming of the apocalypse. Thiel says the modern-day katechon is likely in America. One possibility is San Francisco, partly because of its distance from Washington DC, which would make it harder for there to be a fusion of too many powers like the federal government and the technology industry. Ironically, though, he says America is also likely the place with the most markings of a future one-world order.\u00a0<\/p>\n Quote: “It’s just that America is, at this point, the natural candidate for katechon and antichrist, ground zero of the one-world state, ground zero of the resistance to the one-world state.\u201d<\/p>\n Thank you for your feedback.<\/p>\n Thiel was on the forefront of conservative politics long before the rest of Silicon Valley took a rightward turn with Donald Trump\u2019s second term as president. He\u2019s had close ties to Trump for nearly a decade, is credited with catapulting JD Vance into the office of vice-president, and is bankrolling Republicans\u2019 2026 midterm campaigns. Making his early fortune as a co-founder of PayPal, he has personally contributed to Facebook as its first outside investor, as well as to SpaceX, OpenAI and more through his investment firm, Founders Fund. Palantir, which he co-founded, has won government contracts worth billions to create software for the Pentagon, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and the National Health Service in the UK. Now, with more attention and political pull than ever, the billionaire is looking to spread his message about the antichrist, though he is better known for his savvy politics and investments than his contributions to theology.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a libertarian, or a classical liberal, who deviates in one minor detail, where I\u2019m worried about the antichrist,\u201d Thiel said during his third lecture.<\/p>\n Thiel\u2019s talks, which began on 15 September and ended on Monday, were long and sweeping, mingling biblical passages, recent history and philosophy and sometimes deviating into conspiracy theories. He peppered them with references to video games and TV shows along with musings on JRR Tolkien\u2019s The Lord of the Rings. He likewise recalled conversations with Elon Musk and Benjamin Netanyahu and spoke at length about how he thinks Bill Gates is \u201ca very, very awful person\u201d.<\/p>\n Tickets for the series went for $200, selling out within hours. Attenders were told that the lectures were strictly off the record and that they were forbidden from taking photos, videos or audio recordings. At least one person who took notes and published them had his ticket revoked by a post on X.<\/p>\n Guardian reporters did not attend the lectures or agree to the off-the-record stipulation. Recordings were provided by an attender who gave them on the condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n When reached for comment, Thiel\u2019s spokesperson, Jeremiah Hall, did not dispute the veracity of the material given to the Guardian. Hall did correct a piece of the Guardian\u2019s transcription and clarified an argument made by Thiel about Jews and the antichrist.<\/p>\n The Silicon Valley heavyweight drew on a wide swath of religious thinkers, including the French-American theorist Ren\u00e9 Girard, whom Thiel knew at Stanford University, and the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, whose work he said helped create the core of his own beliefs. He credited the English Catholic theologian John Henry Newman as the inspiration for his four-part series, saying: \u201cNewman did four, so I\u2019m doing four. I\u2019m happy about it.\u201d<\/p>\n The venture capitalist has hosted and attended events and lectured on the topic for decades, going back to the 1990s, according to a report by Wired. In recent months, he has spoken to theologians and podcasters about the antichrist both publicly and in private. His beliefs are diffuse, meandering and often confusing, but one tenet he\u2019s steadfastly maintained over the years is that the unification of the world under one global state is essentially identical to the antichrist. In his talks, he uses the term \u201cantichrist\u201d almost interchangeably with \u201cone-world state\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cOne world or not, in a sense is the same as the question antichrist or Armageddon. So in one sense, it\u2019s completely the same question,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n His version of history, and its potential end, posits technology as a central driver of societal change and takes a Christianity-focused, Eurocentric view that declines to engage much with other religious movements or parts of the world.<\/p>\n On the day of Thiel\u2019s final lecture in San Francisco, as the mostly young and mostly male crowd lined up to get in, a group of about 20 protesters stood out front holding anti-Palantir and anti-Ice signs that said things such as \u201cPredatory tech\u201d, \u201cWe do not profit from people who profit from misery\u201d and \u201cNot today Satan\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/span>People protesting outside a Peter Thiel event in San Francisco.<\/span> Photograph: Dara Kerr\/The Guardian<\/p>\n A trio of self-described \u201csatanists\u201d dressed in black costumes with goth makeup walked up and down the line of attenders carrying a goblet of red liquid with a small plastic replica of a bone. \u201cWill you bring our dark lord Peter Thiel this baby\u2019s blood?\u201d they asked. Then they performed what they called a \u201cdark ritual\u201d, dancing slowly in a circle to Mozart\u2019s Requiem in D minor, which ended with them writhing on the city sidewalk, and yelling: \u201cTake us to your personal hell \u2026 Thank you for being our dark lord.\u201d<\/p>\n The Guardian is publishing substantial quoted passages alongside contextual annotations so that the public may be informed on what an influential figure in politics and technology was saying behind closed doors.<\/em><\/p>\n He believes the Armageddon will be ushered in by an antichrist-type figure who cultivates a fear of existential threats such as climate change, AI and nuclear war to amass inordinate power. The idea is this figure will convince people to do everything they can to avoid something like a third world war, including accepting a one-world order charged with protecting everyone from the apocalypse that implements a complete restriction of technological progress. In his mind, this is already happening. Thiel said that international financial bodies, which make it more difficult for people to shelter their wealth in tax havens, are one sign the antichrist may be amassing power and hastening Armageddon, saying: \u201cIt\u2019s become quite difficult to hide one\u2019s money.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s because the <\/em>antichrist talks about Armageddon non<\/em>stop. We\u2019re all scared to death that we\u2019re sleepwalking into Armageddon. And then because we know <\/em>world war three will be an unjust war, that pushes us. We\u2019re going hard towards peace at any price.<\/em><\/p>\n What I worry about in that sort of situation is you don\u2019t think too hard about the details of the peace and it becomes much more likely that you get an unjust peace. This is, by the way, the slogan of the <\/em>antichrist: 1 Thessalonians 5:3. It\u2019s peace and safety, sort of the unjust peace.<\/em><\/p>\n Let me conclude on this choice of <\/em>antichrist or Armageddon. And again, in some ways the stagnation and the existential risks are complementary, not contradictory. The existential risk pushes us towards stagnation and distracts us from it.<\/em><\/p>\n Thiel rarely gives a definitive answer about who exactly the antichrist might be or how Armageddon might come about \u2013 a central point across his lectures is that nothing is written in stone or inevitable \u2013 but he does give the contours of what a global conflict that could lead to Armageddon might look like.<\/p>\n There\u2019s all sorts of different ways, <\/em>one <\/em>world or <\/em>none, <\/em>antichrist or Armageddon, that I\u2019m tempted to think about this, and here\u2019s one sort of application. In terms of how does one think about the current geopolitical moment. How does one think about the nature of the conflict between the United States and China, the <\/em>west and China. You don\u2019t really know how it\u2019s going to go. You can ask, are we heading for <\/em>world war three or <\/em>cold war two? And if you sort of reflect on the history of the two <\/em>world <\/em>wars and the first <\/em>cold <\/em>war. But first, if there ever was an unjust war, <\/em>world war one is an unjust war. If there ever was a just war, <\/em>world war two was probably a just war, with certain caveats. World <\/em>war one is really insane. World <\/em>war two was about as justified as a war can be. I think we can say that if you had an all<\/em>-out <\/em>world war three or war between nuclear powers involving nuclear weapons, it would simply be an unjust war. A total catastrophe, possibly literal <\/em>Armageddon, the end of the world. So <\/em>world war three will be an unjust war. But then if you have a <\/em>cold <\/em>war, you have to distinguish between \u2013 can you have a just peace and an unjust peace?<\/em><\/p>\n Somehow, it\u2019s very strange how the first <\/em>cold <\/em>war from \u201849 to \u201889 ended. But it ended with roughly what I think of as a just peace, where somehow you didn\u2019t have a nuclear war. And somehow our side, which I think was more the good side, basically won. And you ended up not with a perfect peace, but more or less a just peace. And so if we have <\/em>world war three, it will be an unjust war. If we have <\/em>cold war two, maybe it can end in a just peace or an unjust peace. Reflecting on this material and thinking about it, it\u2019s obviously not written in stone and there\u2019s a lot of different ways this stuff can go. But I keep thinking that, if you had to put odds on it, aren\u2019t the odds that we\u2019re trending towards the fourth quadrant this time. The fourth possibility that <\/em>cold war two will end an unjust peace.<\/em><\/p>\n Thiel devotes a large section of his second lecture to a quote from the Book of Daniel that involves a prophecy about the end times, which he equates to modern advances in technology and globalization.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s go on to \u2018many shall run to and fro and knowledge shall be increased.\u2019 It means science progressing, technology improving, globalization, people traveling around the world. Of course in some sense, I think these things \u2026 I\u2019m not sure they\u2019re completely inevitable, but there is some direction to it. Where there\u2019s a linear progression of knowledge and something like globalization that happens. But of course, the details matter a lot. Knowledge increasing, science progressing, technology improving can be a very good thing. No disease, death, protect people from natural disasters. Then, of course, we can destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons, bioweapons, etc. And similarly, globalization is \u2026 you have trade in goods and services. There\u2019s certain ways to escape from tyrannical governments. And of course there is danger in the <\/em>one<\/em>-world state of the <\/em>antichrist.<\/em><\/p>\n As the antichrist is synonymous with a one-world state for Thiel, he also believes that international bodies including the United Nations and the international criminal court (ICC) hasten the coming of Armageddon. Throughout his lectures, he warns of what he sees as the danger of these bodies and the harms they have already caused. In the following quotes, he\u2019s lamenting the actions of the ICC:<\/p>\n They\u2019ve started arresting more and more people. <\/em>Rodrigo Duterte<\/em>, the former president of the Philippines, was arrested this year. They had arrest warrants out for Netanyahu and Gallant.<\/em><\/p>\n When I met Netanyahu early in 2024, about a year and a half ago, we talked about what he\u2019s doing in Gaza, and the one-liner he had was: \u2018I can\u2019t just Dresdenize Gaza \u2013 you can\u2019t just firebomb them.\u2019 So it\u2019s like, come on, \u2018I\u2019m less of a war criminal than Winston Churchill. Why am I in so much trouble?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n During a Q&A portion of one of the lectures, an attender asked specifically about Thiel\u2019s thoughts on abolishing the ICC, saying: \u201cIf we get rid of the ICC or other organizations that exist to bring, in theory, justice, how can we right crimes? Should we not have prosecuted Nazi criminals?\u201d Thiel responded:<\/p>\n I think there was certainly a lot of different perspectives on what should be done with the Nuremberg trials. It was sort of the US that pushed for the Nuremberg trials. The Soviet Union just wanted to have show trials. I think Churchill just wanted summary executions of 50,000 top Nazis without a trial. And I don\u2019t like the Soviet approach, but I wonder if the Churchill one would have actually been healthier than the American one.<\/em><\/p>\n Thiel believes that the antichrist would be a single evil tyrant. He mentions several figures he believes are particularly dangerous and, while he never definitively says who the antichrist is, he makes suggestions about how some people could be antichrist-type figures.<\/p>\n A basic definition of the <\/em>antichrist. Some people think of it as a type of very bad person. Sometimes it\u2019s used more generally as a spiritual descriptor of the forces of evil. What I will focus on is the most common and most dramatic interpretation of <\/em>antichrist: an evil king or tyrant or anti-<\/em>messiah who appears in the end<\/em> times.<\/em><\/p>\n Specifically, he suggests the antichrist would be a \u201cluddite who wants to stop all science\u201d, referencing Thunberg, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and Marc Andreessen.<\/p>\n My thesis is that in the 17th, 18th century, the <\/em>antichrist would have been a Dr<\/em> Strange<\/em>love, a scientist who did all this sort of evil crazy science. In the 21st century, the <\/em>antichrist is a <\/em>luddite who wants to stop all science. It\u2019s someone like Greta or <\/em>Eliezer.<\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s not Andreessen, by the way. I think <\/em>Andreessen is not the <\/em>antichrist. Because you know, the <\/em>antichrist is popular. I\u2019m trying to say some good things about <\/em>Andreessen here, come on.<\/em><\/p>\n During a question-and-answer session, Thiel was asked to respond to a quote from fellow investor Andreessen \u2013 a name he audibly bristled at. He said Andreessen was engaged in hyperbole and \u201cgobbledygook propaganda\u201d when it comes to the promises of AI.<\/p>\n Where should I start? I\u2019m tempted to be triggered in some nasty ad hominem argument, but I can\u2019t resist so I\u2019ll do that. I don\u2019t know, this is just pure Silicon Valley gobbledygook propaganda. I wouldn\u2019t give someone who said things like that too much money to invest.<\/em><\/p>\n Later, he returns to these \u201clegionnaires of the antichrist\u201d.<\/p>\n In late modernity, where science has become scary and apocalyptic, and the legionnaires of the <\/em>antichrist like Eliezer Yudkowsky, Nick Bostrom<\/em> and Greta Thunberg argue for world government to stop science, the <\/em>antichrist has somehow become anti-science.<\/em><\/p>\n Gates, the philanthropist and co-founder of Microsoft, is high on the list of people Thiel does not like.<\/p>\n One of my friends was telling me that I should not pass up on the opportunity to tell those people in San Francisco that Bill Gates is the <\/em>antichrist. I will concede that he is certainly a Dr<\/em> Jekyll and Mr<\/em> Hyde-type character. The public Mr<\/em> Rogers, the neighborhood character. I saw the Mr<\/em> Hyde version about a year ago, where it was just a non<\/em>stop, Tourette\u2019s, yelling swear words, almost incomprehensible what was going on.<\/em><\/p>\n Ultimately, Thiel concedes Gates cannot be the antichrist, bringing up the topic more than once:<\/p>\n He\u2019s not a political leader, he\u2019s not broadly popular, and again, perhaps to Gates\u2019s credit, he\u2019s still stuck in the 18th century alongside people like Richard Dawkins who believe that science and atheism are compatible.<\/em><\/p>\n I don\u2019t think even someone like Bill Gates, who I think is a very, very awful person, is remotely able to be the <\/em>antichrist.<\/em><\/p>\n Pope Benedict XVI is someone who Thiel admired because he was one of the few popes who referenced the possibility of an antichrist:<\/p>\n The <\/em>tl;dr: my belief is that Benedict literally thought that the historic falling away from the church during his papacy was a sign of the end times.<\/em><\/p>\n However, Thiel said Benedict failed at spreading the message of the antichrist because he \u201cwas not very courageous\u201d.<\/p>\n I often like to say libertarianism and marijuana are both gateway drugs to alt-right, other ideas. The danger of the red pill is you move on the black pill. And somehow Benedict overdosed on red pills.<\/em><\/p>\n Musk, a longtime friend and ally of Thiel, came up during one of the lectures in the context of the Giving Pledge, a pact Gates founded in 2010 where billionaires pledged to donate the majority of their money to philanthropy. Here is Thiel recapping the conversation:<\/p>\n If I had to pick a little bit on Elon \u2013 and I\u2019m going to pick on him because I think of him as one of the smarter, more thoughtful people \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n This is a conversation I had with him a few months ago, and it was like: \u2018I want you to unsign that silly Giving Pledge you signed back in 2012, where you promised to give away half your money. You have, like, $400bn<\/em>. Yes, you gave $200m<\/em> to Mr<\/em> Trump, but $200bn<\/em> \u2013 if you\u2019re not careful \u2013 is going to left<\/em>wing non-profits that will be chosen by Bill Gates.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n And then I \u2013 one step ahead \u2013 rethought it and said: \u2018<\/em>You don\u2019t think about this much because you don\u2019t expect to die anytime soon, but you\u2019re 54 years old. I looked up the actuarial tables: at 54, you have a 0.7% chance of dying in the next year. And 0.7% of $200bn<\/em> is $1.4bn<\/em> \u2013 about seven times what you gave to Trump. So Mr<\/em> Gates is effectively expecting $1.4bn<\/em> from you in the next year.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n And to his credit, Elon was<\/em>, well,<\/em> pretty fluid on it. He said<\/em>: \u2018Actually, I think the odds of me dying are higher than 70 basis points.\u2019 A shocking explosion of self-awareness. Then: \u2018What am I supposed to do \u2013 give it to my children? I certainly can\u2019t give it to my trans daughter; that would be bad. You know, it would be much worse to give it to Bill Gates.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n When asked about the slain far-right commentator Charlie Kirk\u2019s memorial in reference to the role of Christianity in American politics, Thiel initially demurred saying it was \u201cabove his pay grade\u201d. When further prompted, he described what he saw as two versions of Christianity on display at the event:<\/p>\n I think, um \u2013 what to say \u2013 I was thinking about, you know, I had the chart: the <\/em>katechon pagan Christianity versus the <\/em>eschaton \u2013 the Christianity of Constantine versus that of Mother Teresa. We had an illustration of that with Kirk\u2019s wife saying that she forgave the murderers because that\u2019s what Christ would do. This was an incredibly saintly form of Christianity. And then, you know, President Trump \u2013 I don\u2019t know<\/em>, I forget the language exactly \u2013 but, you know, Charlie was into forgiving, being nice to his enemies. He doesn\u2019t believe in being nice to his enemies; he wants to hurt his enemies. And that\u2019s sort of the pagan Christian view. And the problem \u2013 the naive view \u2013 is: there has to be something somewhere in between, right? But how do you concretize that? What\u2019s the thing that\u2019s in between Mother Teresa and Constantine \u2013 between forgiving the murderer and delighting in punishing your enemies?<\/em><\/p>\n Perhaps, I don\u2019t know, perhaps the in-between thing I thought was that maybe Trump and Elon were able to forgive each other.<\/em><\/p>\n Thiel argues that, in order for the antichrist to be able to pull off the Armageddon in one lifetime, they need to be young today \u2013 he points to 33 as an auspicious number. In these quotes, he draws parallels to powerful figures who died at the age of 33, including Jesus, Buddha and some literary characters:<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n A weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Christ only lived to age 33 and became history\u2019s greatest man. The <\/em>antichrist has to somehow outdo this. I don\u2019t want to be way too literal on the 33 number \u2013 I\u2019d rather stress the <\/em>antichrist will be a youthful conqueror; maybe in our gerontocracy, 66 is the new 33. But something like these numbers do occur almost mystically through a number of different contexts.<\/em><\/p>\n Buddha begins his travels at age 30 and experiences Nirvana, ego death, at age 33. But I had to be ecumenical and say something nice about Islam. One idea that\u2019s pretty cool is, when you\u2019re reborn into your afterlife, you\u2019re born into your 33-year-old self. Your 33-year-old self is your best self. <\/em>Livy\u2019s \u2013 the Roman historian\u2019s 33rd chapter of the 33rd book \u2013 it announces this 33-year-old conqueror. It\u2019s like Alexander at the peak of his power. Or even in Tolkien, the hobbits have a coming-of-age ceremony at 33. That\u2019s how old Frodo is when he inherits the ring.<\/em><\/p>\n By the same token, people who are older cannot be Thiel\u2019s antichrist. Here Thiel gives some examples:<\/p>\n Trajan, a Roman <\/em>emperor, wept when he reached the Persian Gulf in AD<\/em>115 at the age of 65. He\u2019s too old to beat Alexander the Great\u2019s achievements in India. He died two years later. Hitler is 50 by the time <\/em>world war two starts \u2013 he mimetically loses to Napoleon, who\u2019s only 30 when he became first consul of the French Republic. That goes on to the same problem for a seventy<\/em>something Xi Jinping. Racist, sexist, nationalist, maybe the second coming of Hitler. But not even the second coming of Genghis Khan. Past the sell-by date.<\/em><\/p>\n He frequently oscillates between talking about the antichrist and the katechon \u2013 a term very briefly used in the Bible that refers to something holding back the coming of the antichrist. In one example, he describes a post-cold war shift to embracing neoliberalism and bureaucracy as an example of antichrist-like government.<\/p>\n Of course, you have all these examples where it\u2019s one toggle switch from <\/em>katechon to the antichristic thing. Claudius to Nero, Charlemagne to Napoleon, anti-communism after the Berlin Wall comes down, it gets replaced by neoliberalism. Which is, you know, the Bush 41 <\/em>new <\/em>world order, which you can think of as anti-communism where there\u2019s no communists left. Or Christian democracy, which is sort of the European form of the <\/em>katechontic, transnational anti-communism. Once the communists are gone, it sort of decays into the Brussels bureaucracy. All kinds of different riffs one could do with this. Or to go even further, if something is not powerful enough to potentially become the <\/em>antichrist, it probably isn\u2019t that good as a <\/em>katechon.<\/em><\/p>\n In his last lecture, Thiel also responds during the Q&A portion to a question about potential 2028 presidential candidates and whether they are antichrist or katechon. When asked about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Thiel says that he worries about there being a \u201cwoke American pope\u201d\u2013 Pope Leo XIV \u2013 and a \u201cwoke American president\u201d, creating a \u201cCaesar-Papist fusion\u201d. He goes on to talk about Ocasio-Cortez in relation to Thunberg:<\/p>\n One of the ways these things always get reported is, I denounce Greta as an <\/em>antichrist. And I want to be very clear: Greta is, I mean she\u2019s maybe sort of a type or a shadow of an <\/em>antichrist of a sort that would be tempting. But I don\u2019t want to flatter her too much. So with Greta, you shouldn\u2019t take her as the <\/em>antichrist for sure. With AOC, you can choose whether or not you want to believe this disclaimer that I just gave.<\/em><\/p>\n Thiel is asked several times about Trump and how he fits into his imagination of what form Armageddon might take. In one instance, he is asked whether Trump\u2019s opposition to global governance makes Thiel feel any relief about the hastening of a one-world order.<\/p>\n At the very best, you shouldn\u2019t have even the most fanatical Trump supporter. You know, no politician, not even Reagan, will solve all problems for all time. Maybe we both were sort of delusional about Reagan in the 80s. There was some moment in the 1980s when we thought that Reagan had permanently solved the deepest problems in the world for all time. And that\u2019s too high a bar. That was too high a bar for Reagan. That\u2019s an unfairly high bar you\u2019re giving to Mr<\/em> Trump. You\u2019re just trying to make a subtle anti-Trump argument and I\u2019m not going to let you do that.<\/em><\/p>\n One of Thiel\u2019s longstanding political affiliations has been anti-communism, and in his fourth lecture, he suggests that opposition to communism following the second world war is something that held back the antichrist. At other times, he is critical of post-cold war presidents and government order.<\/p>\n I always sort of wonder what functions as the <\/em>katechon in the world after 1945. This is Schmitt\u2019s 1947 diary. \u2018I believe in the <\/em>katechons, for me the only possible way to understand Christian history and find it meaningful. The <\/em>katechon needs to named for every epoch for the past 1948 years.\u2019 The way I interpret this is that sotto voce, Schmitt is saying he has no idea what the <\/em>katechon is. And maybe, the New Dealers are running the whole planet. Then of course, 1949 the Soviets get the bomb, and my sort of provisional answer is that the <\/em>katechon for 40 years, from <\/em>\u201949 to <\/em>\u201989, is anti-communism. Which is in some ways is somewhat violent, not purely Christian<\/em> but very, very powerful.<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019ve argued that the <\/em>katechon, or something like this, is necessary but not sufficient. And I want to finish by stressing where one goes wrong with it. If we forget its essential role, which is to restrain the <\/em>antichrist, the <\/em>antichrist might even present himself or itself or herself as the <\/em>katechon, or hijack the <\/em>katechon. This is almost a memetic version. A similarity between the <\/em>antichrist and the <\/em>katechon, they\u2019re both sort of political figures. The <\/em>katechon is tied in with empire and politics. If the <\/em>antichrist is going to take over the world, you need something very powerful to stop it.<\/em><\/p>\n Thiel also opines on modern-day Russia and offers his views on Vladimir Putin:<\/p>\n In some sense, there are perhaps two candidates for the successors to Rome. For all sorts of reasons, I don\u2019t particularly like the Russian theories of all these ways where you have Putin describing himself as the <\/em>katechon and the last Christian leader in the world. It\u2019s hard to look into someone\u2019s heart. I always suspect he\u2019s more of a KGB agent than a Christian. And then, of course, to be a <\/em>katechon, you have to be strong enough to possibly become the <\/em>antichrist. And Russia is not nearly powerful enough to take over the world. It cannot simply be the <\/em>katechon or the new Rome.<\/em><\/p>\n Thiel also comments on the relation between Jewish people and the antichrist. He argued against medieval theologians\u2019 idea that the antichrist would be Jewish.<\/p>\n There\u2019s probably a lot I can say about the relation of the Jews to the <\/em>antichrist. The philo-semitic rebuttal, just to get it on the table, is that the Jews in the Bible are described as a stubborn and stiff<\/em>-necked people. Which is mostly a bug, but maybe in the end times, it is a feature because \u2013 this is sort of the way [Vladimir] <\/em>Solovyov phrased it \u2013 that they\u2019re too stubborn to accept Christ, they will be too stubborn to be char<\/em>med by the <\/em>antichrist. And so, they become the center of resistance to the <\/em>antichrist in the <\/em>Solovyov narrative.<\/em><\/p>\n In response, Thiel\u2019s spokesperson said: \u201cPeter was arguing against medieval, antisemitic theologians who suggested that the antichrist will be Jewish,\u201d citing Solovyov.<\/p>\n Thiel\u2019s final lecture dedicates a large portion of its time to talking about empires and what role the US government plays in holding back or advancing the antichrist. He is characteristically noncommittal, describing the country as having characteristics of a one-world government and also being outside it:<\/p>\n Now this is not meant to be an anti-British or anti-American lecture. It\u2019s just that America is, at this point, the natural candidate for <\/em>katechon and <\/em>antichrist, ground zero of the <\/em>one<\/em>-world state, ground zero of the resistance to the <\/em>one<\/em>–<\/em>world state. The US world police is the one truly sovereign country. They always say the president is the mayor of the US and the dictator of the world. International law gets defined by the US. That\u2019s sort of <\/em>Nato\u2019s prime, to see in some ways, coordination of the world\u2019s intelligence agencies.<\/em><\/p>\n Then of course, the global financial architecture we discussed is not really run by shadowy international organizations, it\u2019s basically American. And perhaps always a very important feature is the reserve <\/em>currency status of the dollar, where it\u2019s sort of the backstop for all the money. The petro<\/em>dollar regime, there\u2019s sort of crazy ways you have trade deficits, current account deficits, but then in all these ways, the money gets recycled into the US.<\/em><\/p>\n Then of course, there\u2019s sort of a way where from a certain perspective, the US is also the place that\u2019s the most outside the world state. In many ways, it\u2019s probably one of the best tax havens, at least if you\u2019re not a US citizen. And then there are all these ways the US is a kind of ideological superpower. Christian, ultra-Christian, anti-Christian sense, woke Protestant liberation theology, social gospel, social justice. City on a hill, this institution serves as a beacon of light for other nations and honor.<\/em><\/p>\n At another point in his final lecture, he seems to suggest that when things are codified or formalized they tend to lose their power or ability to operate. He selects Guant\u00e1namo Bay detention camp as an example:<\/p>\n By 2005 in Guant<\/em>\u00e1namo, you were way better off as a Muslim terrorist in Guant<\/em>\u00e1namo, the liberal lawyers had taken it over by 2005, than as a suspected cop killer in Manhattan. In Manhattan if you were a suspected cop killer back in 2005, you know, there was some informal process they had for dealing with you. Guant<\/em>\u00e1namo, it was formalized. Initially, they did some bad things and then very quickly, they weren\u2019t able to do anything, any more. And this is again a sort of revelatory unraveling process.<\/em><\/p>\n During the Q&A section, Peter Robinson talks about John Henry Newman\u2019s description of the antichrist promising people things like civil liberty and equality. \u201cHe offers you baits to tempt you,\u201d Robinson said, quoting Newman. Then, Robinson says to Thiel: \u201cThe antichrist is a really cool, glamorous hip operator. Is that Zohran Mamdani?\u201d Thiel doesn\u2019t directly answer the question, but does offer his take on the young, progressive mayoral candidate:<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think <\/em> Mamdani can be president because he\u2019s not a natural<\/em>-born citizen. So he\u2019s capped out at mayor. I also don\u2019t think he\u2019s really promised to reduce my taxes.<\/em><\/p>\n In his final lecture, Thiel was asked to comment on various potential 2028 presidential candidates and whether they\u2019d be more of an antichrist figure or a katechon.<\/p>\n Thiel says he is \u201cvery pro-JD Vance\u201d. But he has some concerns about his allegiance to the pope.<\/p>\n \u201cThe place that I would worry about is that he\u2019s too close to the <\/em>pope. And so we have all these reports of fights between him and the <\/em>pope. I hope there are a lot more. It\u2019s the Caesar-Papist fusion that I always worry about. By the way, I\u2019ve given him this feedback over time. And you know with the sort of \u2026 I don\u2019t like his popeism, but there\u2019s sort of a way if I steel manned it. It\u2019s always, you have to think about whether if you say you\u2019re doing something good, whether it\u2019s a command, a standard or a limit, or whether in philosophical language, is it necessary or sufficient. And so when JD Vance said that he was praying for Pope Francis\u2019s health, it\u2019s as a command, as a necessary thing. <\/em>OK, that\u2019s \u2026 if you\u2019re a lot more if you\u2019re a good Catholic. But what I hope it really means is that it\u2019s sufficient, and that he\u2019s setting a good example for conservative Catholics like you, Peter, who listen to the <\/em>pope too much. And perhaps all you have to do to be a really good Catholic is pray for the <\/em>pope. You don\u2019t really need to listen to him on anything else. And if that\u2019s what JD Vance is doing, that\u2019s really good. I\u2019m worried about the Caesar-Papist fusion.<\/em><\/p>\n Thiel also spoke about San Francisco and his views on Gavin Newsom, the California governor.<\/p>\n \u200b\u200bI would say that if we go to the <\/em>katechontic thing and the US is that, tech and politics are radically separate, Silicon Valley is really, really separate from DC in an extreme way. If these things could be fused, <\/em>\u2026 someone like that perhaps represents a way to do that. That\u2019s the part where, if there was a way to \u2026 you know, he was the governor of California, he was the mayor of San Francisco. In a way, San Francisco is more important than California. The world city is more important than just this sort of silly province called California. And if you could fuse Washington and San Francisco, that\u2019s a very dangerous thing. It\u2019s kind of, it\u2019s sort of in a way the last <\/em>precedent where such a fusion of sorts happened. I think it was FDR with New York and D<\/em>C. So that\u2019s the piece that would be tricky.<\/em><\/p>\n And you know, by the way, these things have been very, very unfused historically. Back in 2008, one of my liberal friends was trying to get 75 tech-type people to endorse Obama and they got like 68, 69 and thought maybe they could get me. I told them, man, if there are only six or seven, you want to be in the minority. It\u2019s more valuable to be one of the seven than one of the 68. And then his counterpoint was, well, you know, we need to all get on board with Obama because he\u2019s going to win and then we\u2019ll have an influence. And then, the really crazy \u2026 and then in a way, Obama \u2026 if you think about the primary in 2008, the Democratic primary, Obama had the students, the minorities, the young people. Hillary was the finance world in New York, the unions. Hollywood was sort of split 50\/50 between Obama and Hillary.<\/em><\/p>\n But Silicon Valley was the one sector of the economy that went all in for Obama. But it didn\u2019t work at all. And then if you fast forward to the Obama cabinet, there were zero people from Silicon Valley. There was no representation at all. And so, even Obama was very far from anything resembling a fusion. And then the question is whether Newsom will be like that or different.<\/em><\/p>\n Chief among Thiel\u2019s concerns about how quickly the world is hurtling toward an Armageddon is what he describes as a stagnation or slowing down of technological and scientific progress. He attributes part of that to the use of science and technology \u2013 once largely seen as a force for good, in his telling \u2013 for harm.<\/p>\n The creation of the gun and the machine gun \u201cwounded our faith in science and tech\u201d, he said. \u201cAnd then the atom bomb somehow blew it up entirely. And in some sense in 1945, science and tech became apocalyptic. It left us with a question.\u201d This fear of tech is what the antichrist will seize on to gain power, he says.<\/p>\n During the Q&A portion of the first lecture, Thiel is asked about how artificial intelligence (AI) \u2013 the much-hyped darling of his fellow Silicon Valley investors \u2013 fits into this larger narrative of technological stagnation. Thiel said AI was a symptom of the larger tech stagnation and that people including Andreessen needed to boost its promises because there\u2019s nothing else going on.<\/p>\n If we\u2019re going to not have this sort of crazed corporate utopianism versus effective altruist luddism, luddite thing. If you try to have some more nuanced version of this, you try to quantify it. How big is the AI revolution? How much is it going to add to GDP? Add to living standards? Things like that. My placeholder is, it\u2019s looking probably on roughly the scale of the internet from 1990 to the late 90s. Maybe it can add 1% a year to GDP. There are big error bars around that. And I think the internet was quite significant. People talked about the internet in very similar terms in 1999. That\u2019s another way where it sounds like roughly the right scale.<\/em><\/p>\n The place where it\u2019s very different, where it feels both true of the internet and maybe it\u2019s true of AI, maybe a place where I would agree with Andreessen. The negative part of the statement is: \u2018But for AI, nothing else is going on.\u2019 He\u2019s not talking about going to Mars, so it doesn\u2019t sound like he believes Elon\u2019s about to go to Mars. I think there\u2019s a negative part, if AI was not happening, wow, we are really stuck. Things are really stagnant. And maybe that\u2019s why people have to be so excited about this one specific vector of technological progress. Because outside of that, to a first approximation, things are totally, totally stagnant. Maybe even the internet has run out of steam but for AI. So that\u2019s another framing. Now, the thing that strikes me is very different from <\/em>\u201999, if I had to give a difference, again I\u2019m too anchored and rooted in the late 90s. But the late 90s, it was broadly optimistic. And there were a lot of people who thought about it just like Andreessen does. Nobody feels that personally. You can\u2019t start a dot<\/em>com company from your basement in Sacramento. You can\u2019t start an AI company, you have to do it in San Francisco. You have to do it in Silicon Valley. It has to be at an enormous scale. Most things aren\u2019t big enough. And then there are layers and layers and layers where it feels incredibly non-inclusive. Maybe people just updated from the internet because maybe the internet turned out to have a lot of winner-take-all dynamics.<\/em><\/p>\nPeter Thiel’s lectures on the antichrist, summarized<\/h4>\n
The meandering gospel of Peter<\/h2>\n
What do Thiel\u2019s lectures say?<\/h2>\n
How does Thiel think Armageddon will happen?<\/h2>\n
Who could be Thiel\u2019s antichrist?<\/h2>\n
What does he say about Trump and politics?<\/h2>\n
Why is he fixated on stagnation?<\/h2>\n