by JOHN MAC GHLIONN
Billionaire tech lord’s sermons warn of the Antichrist while building the surveillance systems that resemble it
Peter Thiel has always thrived on contradiction. The billionaire who built the tools of the modern surveillance state now wants to deliver a series of lectures on the Antichrist.
Four private sessions, sold out in San Francisco, devoted to a figure long associated with deception and domination. The irony is only possible to miss if you’ve had your common sense surgically removed.
For decades, Thiel has poured money into technologies that give governments new powers to watch, measure, and predict the lives of citizens.
His creations have been less about serving people and more about sorting them. Databases replace dialogue. Algorithms replace trust. What once felt like a town square begins to feel like a control grid.
Through Founders Fund, his venture capital arm, the translucent technocrat bankrolls companies that reach deep into daily life. From finance to biotech to defense, the pattern is clear: invest in systems that categorize, codify, and control.
These are not neutral tools. They shape how people shop, travel, speak, even think. They decide which risks are flagged, which behaviors are rewarded, and which choices are quietly closed off.
Now, Thiel wants to explain the Antichrist to his audience. He warns that such a figure would not march with horns and firearms but slip in quietly, using fear of catastrophe—nuclear war, artificial intelligence, climate collapse—to justify tighter control. He suggests that endless talk of apocalypse would pave the way for global domination.
But listen closely, and the warning sounds like a self-portrait. Thiel often speaks of catastrophe. He has mused publicly about the inevitability of destruction. Yet, at the same time, he funds the very machinery that turns dread into dominion. The contradiction is anything but subtle. It is the essence of his empire.
For Christians, the idea of the Antichrist carries particular significance. The gospel speaks of freedom, not fear. “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”
Those words from the apostle Paul stand in direct opposition to the philosophy that governs Thiel’s thinking. Where Scripture emphasizes love, Thiel emphasizes leverage. Where Christ promised mercy, Thiel promises might.
Even for readers who don’t share the faith, the tension is impossible to miss. America was built on suspicion of concentrated power, on the belief that no man or institution should hold too much sway.
The system of checks and balances, the separation of powers, the enshrined rights that no government can take away: all were designed to keep tyranny at bay.
Thiel’s vision runs in the opposite direction. He does not dilute power; he distills it. He backs systems that promise leaders the godlike ability to see everything at once. What the founders feared, he builds, then sells as progress.
Thiel frequently cites the Ten Commandments, claiming that the first and last—worship God, do not covet—are the most important. Yet in doing so, he skips past the commands that bind people to one another: to love your neighbor, to honor your parents, to reject lies, greed, and violence.
The omissions reveal a pattern. His creed looks upward and inward but rarely outward. It prizes purity and possession, while neglecting the call to kindness and kinship.
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