Peter Thiel is organizing 4 conferences with a private closed windows on the Antichrist in a club in San Francisco

The series, organized by the non -profit collective Acts 17, will explore “the theological and technological dimensions of the Antichrist” in four sessions in September and October. The conferences remain outside the record, without transcriptions or recordings made public, but they rely on the work of René Girard, the French philosopher who deeply influenced Thiel during his first cycle years of Stanford, as well as thinkers like Francis Bacon and Carl Schmitt.

Thiel’s theological concerns may seem incongruous with its commercial empire, but they reflect a coherent vision of the world shaped by Girard’s “mimetic theory” – the idea that human desires are learned by imitation, often leading to conflicts and violence. This philosophical framework would have influenced the previous investments of $ 500,000 in Thiel in Facebook in 2004, which it attributes to the recognition of the mimetic nature of social media.

The 57 -year billionaire, of an estimated value of $ 20.8 billion according to Forbeshas built his fortune through a series of counter-current investments that have challenged the conventional wisdom of Silicon Valley. Its investment philosophy focuses on identifying single -page companies and supporting processing technologies before gaining recognition. This approach led to first successes with Paypal, which sold Ebay for $ 1.5 billion in 2002, and subsequent investments in companies such as Palant Technologies, the data analysis company he co -founded in 2003.

Palantre has perhaps become Thiel’s most controversial company, providing data monitoring and analysis tools to government agencies, including the application of immigration and customs, the Ministry of Defense and Intelligence. The “Gotham” platform of the company allows the police to connect large sets of data, creating detailed profiles of individuals by combining everything, DMV records for social media activity. The recent Trump administration contracts have expanded the scope of Palantant in federal agencies, which raises concerns about potential use for political targeting.

A theory of technological apocalypse

Thiel’s fascination for the antichrist concept stems from its conviction that such a figure would increase not by obvious evil, but by exploiting technological fears to impose global control. In a recent New York Times Interview, Thiel declared her “speculative thesis” on how the Antichrist could emerge: “The way the Antichrist would take up the world is that you are talking about Armageddon constantly. You talk about existential risk without stopping. ”

This theory positions the Antichrist as someone who would offer “peace and security” while using the fear of catastrophic technological risks – the dangers of artificial intelligence, nuclear war, climate change – to justify unprecedented surveillance and control measures. Irony, as noted by some criticisms, is that Thiel himself frequently discusses apocalyptic scenarios while building the very surveillance technologies that could allow such control.

Thiel previously suggested that modern technology provides the “mechanism” that had lacked fictitious representations of the Antichrist: the ability to achieve global domination through data integration and monitoring rather than traditional conquest. Thiel Palantir’s company illustrates this capacity, its platforms designed to synthesize disparate sources of information in complete intelligence systems.

Thiel’s theological interests have become more public in recent years, coinciding with its increased political influence. He was a first supporter of Trump and delegate to the 2016 National Republican Convention, where he marked history as the first orately gay orator to declare his sexuality of the scene. His support for political figures like JD Vance, which he helped to launch in politics, reflects his conviction that technological stagnation requires a disturbing political change.

Acts 17 collective – which organized the series of antichrist conferences of Thiel and takes its name from acts 17, where the apostle Paul preached to cultural elites in Athens and in other intellectual centers – targets rich technology leaders by recognizing that traditional evangelical approaches often fail to resonate in secular technological culture. For Thiel, who grew up Lutheran but describes himself as having complicated religious opinions, his interpretation is based strongly on Girard’s work on sacrifice, violence and social order, considering Christianity as being only equipped to diagnose the dangers of society that technology can amplify.

Overview

The time of Thiel’s conferences at the Antichrist coincides with an in -depth examination of the growing role of palantant in government surveillance. Under the Trump administration, the company obtained more than $ 113 million in federal contracts, its technology now deployed in at least four major agencies. The company’s ability to integrate data from several sources has raised concerns among defenders of civil liberties and even certain Republicans on the potential of abuse.

Critics argue that Thiel’s warnings concerning the Antichrist ring Hollow given its role in the construction of the very surveillance infrastructure which could allow authoritarian control. Thirteen former Palants employees recently signed a letter urging the company to stop work with the Trump administration, invoking concerns about the way technology could be used for political targeting.

These tensions reflect broader questions about the role of technological companies in democratic governance. As palantants are becoming more and more sophisticated, the border between legitimate security applications and potential authoritarian abuses becomes more difficult to define. Thiel’s theological framework offers an objective to understand these risks, but that its antichrist conferences represent a real concern concerning technological surpassing or an attempt to diversify the criticism of its own companies remains an open question.

Palantant did not immediately respond to FortuneComment request.

For this story, Fortune Used a generative AI to help an initial project. An editor checked the accuracy of the information before the publication.

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