Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, is banging the drum to warn us about the coming of the Antichrist spoken of in the Bible. In essays, interviews and lectures, Thiel asserts we must be vigilant against the rise of the Antichrist, which he believes is happening at the present time.
In Christian scripture, “Anti-Christ” can be used as both an adjective — certain individuals fight against the preachings of Christ, and thus are anti-Christ (e.g., 1 John 2:18) — and also as a noun, as some specific force or individual in the prophesied end times whose reign of 3 1/2 years ushers in the great final war of Armageddon and the second coming of Jesus Christ (e.g., Daniel 7; Revelation 13).
Thiel is much more interested in the latter than the former.
The Antichrist is painted in the Book of Revelation as a global totalitarian force, marking each of us individually so better to surveil us and control what we are allowed to do, such as participating in market exchanges (Revelation 13: 16-17). While its watchword is “peace and safety” (1 Thessalonians 5:3), the Antichrist makes war against all those who refuse to worship it (Revelation 13: 7-8), blaspheming God while performing feats that appear miraculous in order to deceive many into thinking it holds the true power, perhaps even the power of God.
The figure of the Antichrist has always held special potency for Americans. Founded by Christians, the country has always viewed itself as especially beloved of God. To this day, about two-thirds of Americans identify as Christian of one variety or another, with higher levels of behavioral religiosity than European nations. In this uniquely American context, to label or identify something or someone as the Antichrist is a call to action, a prelude to a sacred and justified struggle against the forces of evil. It is a political act, first and foremost, and not a religious one.
Therefore, it behooves us to inquire about the politics of Thiel’s seeming obsession with the Antichrist. What is peddled to us as prophetic religious warning might instead be simply a political maneuver.
The Times of London suggests that, “According to Thiel ... fears around advancements in areas such as artificial intelligence, or the risk of nuclear war or environmental disasters, could usher in a period of “one-world government” regulation — and the coming of the Antichrist.”
Thiel believes that our civilizations are stagnating, and as an example, he points to the fact that parents no longer believe their children will be better off than they were. He believes that for reasons of “peace and safety,” instantiated through government regulation, we have collectively stepped back from technological progress.
This stagnation will lead to an “unraveling” of our societies, since our institutions and markets are predicated on growth, and growth — as seen, for example, in fertility rates — has ceased. Nuclear power, meant to give us a future of unlimited energy, was derailed decades ago by safety concerns. The citizenry has become risk averse and decadent, even though, according to Thiel, the only way out of stagnation is to take big risks, deregulate, and face the disruption and danger thus produced.
Thiel opines about how the reign of the Antichrist will begin, saying “the default political solution people have for all these existential risks is one-world governance. What do you do about nuclear weapons? We have a United Nations with real teeth that controls them. And they’re controlled by an international political order. And then something like this is also, what do we do about AI, and we need global compute governance. We need a one-world government to control all the computers, log every single keystroke to make sure people don’t program a dangerous AI. ”
He goes on: “And I’ve been wondering whether that’s going from the frying pan into the fire. ... The way the Antichrist would take over the world is you talk about Armageddon non-stop, you talk about existential risk non-stop. And this is what you need to regulate. ... The thing that has political resonance is we need to stop science.”
It will surprise no one that Thiel and his companies would personally benefit if you fight against the regulatory Antichrist. That is, if governments regulate AI, that would throttle Palantir’s growth potential because it is in the business of developing AI applications. (Indeed, the original version of Trump’s budget bill included a 10-year moratorium on any regulation of AI that was hidden in one small sentence; this Trojan horse was thankfully dropped in reconciliation after much protest upon its discovery).
Wonderfully for Thiel, if, alternatively, the fight against the Antichrist is unsuccessful, he in all probability stands to profit as well, because if the Antichrist aspires to be a one-world government totalitarian regime, it will definitely aim to buy the services of Palantir, one of the most powerful AI-powered surveillance companies in existence.
Palantir’s data integration systems, such as Gotham and Foundry, can be used “not only to track suspected criminals or terrorists but also to manage migration flows, monitor and suppress protests, and enforce public health measures. The concern is not that these data integration capabilities exist, but that government agencies could use them in ways that undermine civil liberties without public consent.”
Talk about a win-win scenario. Win-win for Thiel, that is. The rest of us may feel that neither preventing the regulation of AI nor enabling Big Brother’s omniscient global rule seems in our best interest. But apparently that’s an attitude of defeatist stagnation — we need to live a little more dangerously by risking it all!
Unsurprisingly, Thiel himself won’t be risking anything; he’s bought a doomsday survival property in New Zealand and has also invested in transhumanist projects such as cryopreservation in the hope that he might live forever no matter what happens to the rest of us. Such transhumanism, in his view, would produce a form of Christian-like resurrection, albeit sans God.
There’s some real red flags here. When a man uses religiously coded language in his own financial self-interest, the very best advice is caveat emptor. We’re not in the service of the Antichrist if we want to responsibly regulate AI, holding companies responsible and accountable for any harm they might cause. Rather, this is an obligation we owe our children, and our children’s children, no matter how much Thiel would want to dissuade us. Let Thiel declaim: We will do what we know must be done.