Palantir co-founders Peter Thiel and Alex Karp neatly embody the zeitgeist of 2025 with Palantir’s use of AI for ICE and the IDF, their Trump affiliations, and their outspoken views on the Antichrist and “Western Civilization.”
Bare Capitalism has lined Palantir from a number of angles in latest months, let’s contact on the highlights of these items so readers can compensate for the dialog and shortly grasp the stakes.
The main target of this piece is Palantir 2025’s use of AI as a part of a hype marketing campaign, their crony capitalism in Israel, the U.S. and the U.Ok., and the way Thiel’s seemingly bizarre obsession with the Antichrist, performs into it.
- Thomas Neuburger on Palantir Revisited: Who’s Us in Us vs. Them?
“Alex Karp’s admonition — to ensure “our” enemies “get up scared and go to mattress scared” — places People, us within the extra superior West, inside going through out — safe and guarded, not simply from “our enemies,” however from the evils we ship to them. To place it in cruder phrases, we’re additionally secure as a result of we’re pissing, not pissed upon.“And that is how we’re supposed to treat the muscular state, the closely armed, punishing state, as guardians of ‘us’, as outward-facing armies guarding the gates. The state can mistreat ‘them’ as a result of ‘they’ should not ‘us’.
“However Karp is a billionaire, as is Trump, whom he serves, as are all the rich class, the overly wealthy. Karp imagines he speaks for a bigger ‘us’, for his class and in addition People generalized.”
- Nick Corbishley on Welcome to Peak Palantir
“The corporate that ‘is aware of all the pieces about you’ goes from energy to energy as conflict rises and and the so-called ‘liberal’ West turns right into a dystopian novel. …“Palantir’s star is rising quickly underneath Trump 2.0 whereas its shares hit file highs on an virtually day by day foundation. The agency’s co-founder and chair of the board, Peter Thiel, was one among comparatively few Silicon Valley moguls to bankroll Trump’s 2016 presidential marketing campaign, and now it seems like he’s cashing in. Thiel can also be a former employer-cum-mentor of Vice President JD Vance, whose senate run in Ohio Thiel virtually single handedly funded with a file breaking $15 million donation. In different phrases Thiel’s affect would in all probability be larger in a Vance administration.
“Palantir is concerned in a brand new Pentagon initiative geared toward spurring innovation throughout the US military, titled Detachment 201. As Protection Information experiences, Shyam Sankar, Palantir’s chief expertise officer, was one among 4 Silicon Valley tech execs invited to hitch the US Military Reserve as lieutenant colonel, to assist inject their velocity and experience into the military’s navy innovation. The opposite three Military Reserve lieutenant colonels had been from Meta, Open AI and Pondering Machines Lab.”
- Curro Jimenez on Palantir’s AI Justified Israel’s Assault on Iran — Will Tech Take Us Again to Irrational Beliefs?
“’Should you don’t have AI, there’s nothing happening.’ These are Peter Thiel’s phrases in an interview with Ross Douthat for the podcast Attention-grabbing Occasions. To place it into context, Thiel is referring to one thing he calls the ‘stagnation speculation.’ …“The argument is that with out a breakthrough to propel a brand new wave of financial progress, the social cloth as we all know it—within the West—will start to break down. To keep away from that, we have to search progress by numerous means, together with exploring new types of authorities, ventures into radical biology—akin to transhumanism—or missions to Mars.”
- Haig Hovaness on The Two Faces of Palantir
“Palantir’s expertise is inherently Janus-faced. The identical software program that permits governments to defend in opposition to terrorism or reply to pandemics may also be deployed to observe political opponents, quash dissent, and entrench authoritarian management. On this sense, Palantir represents a broader dilemma of the digital age: the dual-use character of superior data infrastructure. Rising controversy surrounds Palantir, because the dangerous potential of its work turns into more and more evident. …“Palantir’s expertise can act as a nationwide safety protect, defending in opposition to exterior threats and crises. However with out authorized safeguards, it could possibly simply as simply turn into a cage, controlling home political life by refined technique of surveillance. The query is just not whether or not Palantir has constructed highly effective instruments. The query is whether or not america and different nations can be sure that such instruments stay solely instruments of protection in opposition to overseas threats, and never turn into devices of home repression.”
- Curro Jimenez on The Alliance Amongst Washington, Tel Aviv and Silicon Valley
- Silicon Valley Ideologies as a Lens for Viewing Present Occasions
Emile P. Torres: “Thiel holds a specific interpretation of pro-extinctionism based on which we must always turn into a brand new posthuman species, however this posthuman species shouldn’t be totally digital. We must always retain our organic substrates, albeit in a radically reworked state. As such, this contrasts with most different views mentioned right here. These different views are clear cases of digital eugenics, whereas Thiel advocates a model of pro-extinctionism that’s extra historically eugenicist — specifically, it’s a pro-biology variant of transhumanism (a type of eugenics).”
“…the Army Industrial Advanced, which Eisenhower warned about, has expanded to incorporate the governments of the U.S. and Israel, in addition to main Silicon Valley tech firms. If Eisenhower might draw a line between the MIC and the federal government, in the present day that’s not doable.
“This new alliance, known as the ‘military-digital advanced,’ is characterised by the blurred traces between the private and non-private sectors, with companies enjoying an important and infrequently unaccountable position in geopolitical affairs and navy operations. Out of this, a brand new energy system is rising. …
“Thiel outlined ‘the foundations of the brand new international energy structure. He based mostly this on the premise that ‘the brute info of September 11 demand a re-examination of the foundations of contemporary politics,’ provided that ‘Western political philosophy can not address our world of worldwide violence’.
“(Thiel) states that this new international energy structure ‘known as for a brand new compromise, and this new compromise inexorably demanded extra safety on the expense of much less freedom’.”
Now that my colleagues have set the scene and defined the stakes, let’s get into Palantir’s use of AI in its advertising, their involvement with the worst excesses of the Israeli and American regimes, and what Thiel and Karp have been saying currently in regards to the Antichrist and Western Civilization.
Palantir 2025, AI Hype & Influencers
This piece is a praise to my on-going collection on the assorted firms main the headlong cost into massive language fashions branded as AI.
Palantir, has loved a dramatic share worth run up within the AI period:
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) September 24, 2025
The corporate is taken into account by some analysts to be a “high 15 AI firm,” nevertheless it must be considered as a intermediary, re-selling AI tech to governments (and big authorities contractors) relatively than a tech pioneer per se.
Wired’s Caroline Haskins grappled with what it’s precisely that Palantir 2025 does:
(Juan Sebastián Pinto, former Palantir Content material Strategiest) believes that the corporate, which lately started utilizing the tagline “software program that dominates,” has cultivated its mysterious public picture on function. Not like consumer-facing startups that want to obviously clarify their merchandise to on a regular basis customers, Palantir’s essential viewers is sprawling authorities companies and Fortune 500 firms.
What it’s finally promoting them is not only software program, however the thought of a seamless, virtually magical resolution to advanced issues. To try this, Palantir usually makes use of the language and aesthetics of warfare, portray itself as a strong, quasi-military intelligence accomplice.
In one other piece, Haskins known as Palantir 2025 a “life-style model”:
…what does it imply for Palantir—an organization that, within the phrases of 1 former worker, primarily sells digital “submitting cupboards” to prospects like Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the US Division of Protection, Heineken beer, and Normal Mills—to be a way of life model?
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Palantir bros should not laborious to come across on-line: There are a number of Palantir-focused subreddits, the biggest of which has 109,000 members. Some folks on X have been capable of amass enormous followings by posting completely in regards to the firm all through the day.
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Palantir’s fan base progressively expanded through the years that contractors for immigration enforcement and the navy had been least standard in Silicon Valley. For followers, Palantir was a contrarian darkish horse that stood by its ideas, though others detested them.…underneath the second Trump administration, the tech world is starting to overtly embrace aligning with the navy—each transactionally, and symbolically. In June, the Military commissioned an elite group of tech executives to be “lieutenant colonels.” Palantir chief expertise officer Shyam Sankar was joined by Meta chief expertise officer Andrew Bosworth, OpenAI chief product officer Kevin Weil, and present Pondering Machines Lab adviser and former OpenAI chief analysis officer Bob McGrew, who additionally labored at Palantir.
Palantir 2025 additionally cultivates influencers:
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) September 24, 2025
And one among their co-founders, Joe Lonsdale, has a mid-sized YouTube channel the place he platforms Palantir execs like CEO Alex Karp:
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) September 24, 2025
Karp’s opening assertion on the present is a inform as to what he desires Palantir 2025 buyers to be targeted on:
Joe Lonsdale: How a lot of AI proper now’s innovation in theater? What’s actual and what’s hype?
Alex Karp: Properly, the large factor that we’ve to keep away from in our nation, however is much less of an issue for us than in different international locations, is there’s an try and dampen AI and its utilization by individuals who don’t have a product. That may be a huge deal inside and outdoors of presidency. Now, fortunately for us, on this nation (U.S.), it’s a a lot smaller deal than say in Europe.
Wouldn’t need any choice makers within the Pentagon to search out out that AI is generally hype, now would we? There’s cash to be made in any case.
Karp additionally has his finger on the heartbeat of Gen Z, and like a great physician he has some recommendation:
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) September 24, 2025
The New York Occasions pitches in with a way of life profile of the charming Alex Karp:
In truth, Mr. Karp, a co-founder and the C.E.O. of Palantir Applied sciences, the mysterious and highly effective information analytics agency, doesn’t belief himself to drive. Or trip a motorcycle. Or ski downhill.
“I’m a dreamer,” he mentioned. “I’ll begin dreaming after which I fall over. I began doing tai chi to forestall that. It’s actually, actually helped with specializing in one factor at a time. Should you had met me 15 years in the past, two-thirds of the dialog, I’d simply be dreaming.”
What would he dream about?
“Actually, it could possibly be a stroll I did 5 years in the past,” he mentioned. “It could possibly be some dialog I had in grad faculty. May very well be my member of the family aggravated me. One thing a colleague mentioned, like: ‘Why did they are saying this? What does it truly imply?’”
Mr. Karp is a lean, extraordinarily match billionaire with unruly salt-and-pepper curls. He’s introvert-charming (one thing I aspire to myself). He has A.D.H.D. and might’t conceal it if he’s not excited by what somebody is saying. After a hyper spurt of speaking, he loses vitality and has to recharge on the stationary bike or by studying. Despite the fact that he thinks of himself as totally different, he appears to love being totally different. He enjoys being a provocateur onstage and in interviews.
Actually sterling journalism from the Paper of Document’s legendary columnist Maureen Dowd.
I ponder if the identical Palantir 2025 flacks that feed Dowd such horny bits additionally deal with outreach to this plucky grifter:
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) September 24, 2025
The Palantir 2025 hype could present some innocent enjoyable for us, however its function is to set company behemoths and Western governments up for the kill.
Palantir because the Eyes and Ears of Homicide, Inc.
This Marketwatch piece illustrates how Palantir’s branding and use of AI hype helps them land huge contracts with the U.S. and U.Ok. governments:
Financial institution of America analysts see Palantir’s ahead deployed engineers, or FDEs, as a part of the corporate’s “secret sauce.” These are engineers who embed with prospects to supply providers and encourage using Palantir’s expertise, the analysts famous. Now that Palantir is including agentic synthetic intelligence “to increase this idiosyncratic skillset to extra use instances,” Financial institution of America expects the AI FDEs to speed up the corporate’s business enterprise.
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In its authorities enterprise, Palantir’s new strategic partnership with the U.Ok.’s Ministry of Protection, which goals to take a position as much as £750 million, or greater than $1 billion, into AI-enabled protection expertise over the subsequent 5 years, “builds on Palantir’s momentum as the worldwide digital battle-management system,” the analysts mentioned.
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Palantir’s take care of the U.Ok.’s Ministry of Protection, which marks its first outdoors of the U.S. value $1 billion, not solely builds on its rising publicity to the nation, but in addition on worldwide demand for its expertise, the analysts mentioned. They famous that adoption of Palantir’s Maven Good System within the U.S. has grown eightfold since early 2024 and that it’s now being utilized by NATO.“We anticipate different international locations to more and more take into account Maven as their international digital battle-management system, because it supplies each interoperability with the U.S. and allies in addition to governance on their very own information,” the Financial institution of America staff mentioned.
Attention-grabbing to notice the distinction between what the Palantir staff quoted within the Wired piece above assume the corporate does with what Financial institution of America analysts name the corporate’s “secret sauce.”
Appears like a modified McKinsey mannequin to me, planting engineers as a substitute of consultants inside huge orgs.
Right here’s what they’re doing for ICE, per Enterprise Insider:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has signed a $30 million take care of Palantir for software program add-ons to trace self-deportations and immigrants who’ve overstayed their visas, authorities data present.
A contract reviewed by Enterprise Insider mentioned the Immigration Lifecycle Working System — or ImmigrationOS — will decrease “time and useful resource expenditure” for choosing and apprehending immigrants based mostly on ICE enforcement priorities.
Together with “violent criminals” and “associates of identified transnational felony organizations,” the contract additionally cited visa overstays as a deportation precedence.
ImmigrationOS will develop ICE’s case administration system to incorporate “close to real-time visibility into cases of self-deportation.” The contract mentioned the brand new ImmigrationOS will streamline “finish to finish immigration lifecycle from identification to removing.”
The company is awarding Palantir $29.8 million for a prototype to be delivered by September 25.
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The software program collates data from a variety of presidency databases and permits DHS brokers to maintain detailed data on potential immigration violators for future enforcement actions. It contains “information sharing with Customs and Border Safety for lookout and seizure monitoring.”
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“Palantir has developed deep institutional information of ICE operations over greater than a decade of help,” ICE wrote within the paperwork. “Their techniques have been tailor-made to satisfy strict DHS safety and privateness requirements.”
The group Simply Futures Regulation used a Freedom of Data Act request to search out out extra about Palantir’s work with ICE, by way of The Guardian:
The paperwork…largely cowl Palantir’s contract with Homeland Safety Investigations (HSI), the investigative arm of Ice that’s liable for stopping the “unlawful motion of individuals, items, cash, contraband, weapons and delicate expertise”.
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The paperwork reveal how deeply embedded Palantir’s instruments had been in HSI’s day-to-day operations, serving to its brokers to research and arrest folks utilizing a searchable super-network of presidency and personal databases.They present the HSI staff used Palantir platforms and apps to trace air journey, analyze data like driver’s license scans and observe folks’s places utilizing cellphone data.
In an instance that highlights the vastness of the info Ice has entry to: one March 2020 coaching doc detailed how Palantir software program allowed Ice brokers to look throughout information from the Pupil and Change Customer Data System (Sevis), which on the time contained 4.9 million data “of non-immigrant college students, change guests and their dependents” relationship again to 2016. One other instructed Ice brokers they may improve their investigations through the use of telephone numbers or names extracted from telephones the brokers unlocked utilizing expertise from Cellebrite, an Israeli forensic software program firm that has had a contract with Ice since 2019.
The precise nature of Palantir’s work for Israel is barely more durable to parse.
The Nation’s James Bamford took a take a look at Palantir’s position within the Gaza genocide final 12 months:
the large quantity of superior concentrating on AI {hardware} and software program supplied to the Israeli miliary and spy companies—a few of it by one American firm specifically: Palantir Applied sciences.
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As one of many world’s most superior data-mining firms, with ties to the CIA, Palantir’s “work” was supplying Israel’s navy and intelligence companies with superior and highly effective concentrating on capabilities—the exact capabilities that allowed Israel to position three drone-fired missiles into three clearly marked assist autos.“I’m fairly inspired about expertise right here and that we’re getting the most effective folks,” Alex Karp, cofounder and CEO of the corporate, instructed a gaggle quickly after arriving in Tel Aviv final January.
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Instantly after the speak, Karp traveled to a navy headquarters the place he signed an upgraded settlement with Israel’s Ministry of Protection. …
The mission concerned promoting the ministry an Synthetic Intelligence Platform that makes use of reams of categorised intelligence experiences to make life-or-death determinations about which targets to assault. In an understatement a number of years in the past, Karp admitted, “Our product is used occasionally to kill folks,” the morality of which even he himself sometimes questions. “I’ve requested myself, ‘If I had been youthful at school, would I be protesting me?’” …
Palantir’s AI machines want information for gasoline—information within the type of intelligence experiences on Palestinians within the occupied territories. And for many years a key and extremely secret supply of that information for Israel has been the US Nationwide Safety Company, based on paperwork launched by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Bloomberg checked out Palantir’s Synthetic Intelligence Platform in 2023 which reveals extra in regards to the firm’s pivot to AI-focused advertising than the tech itself:
AIP stands for Synthetic Intelligence Platform. In accordance with the corporate’s web site, the instrument can be utilized by militaries to faucet the sorts of AI fashions that energy ChatGPT to help in battlefield intelligence and decision-making. A demo video reveals how the platform can show and analyze intel on enemy targets, establish probably hostile conditions, suggest battle plans and ship these plans to commanding officers for execution.
The video emphasizes that the platform is secure and safe, permitting a shopper to determine what information the fashions can see and what they “can and might’t do on behalf of people.”“Should you wheel these applied sciences accurately, safely, and securely,” Palantir Chief Government Officer Alex Karp mentioned throughout Monday’s name, “you’ve got a weapon that may will let you win, that may scare your rivals and adversaries.”
Karp described the growth in massive language fashions as a revolution “that may elevate ships and sink ships.” Demand for AIP is like “nothing I’ve ever seen in 20 years of being concerned in Palantir,” he mentioned. “We’re reorganizing our efforts aggressively to capitalize.”
By no means concern, Palantir has loads of candy AI tech for the US Military too, per CNBC in March of this 12 months:
Palantir is rolling out its first two synthetic intelligence-enabled techniques to the U.S. Military, the corporate mentioned Friday.
The Tactical Intelligence Concentrating on Entry Node techniques, or TITAN, act as a cell floor station that harness AI to gather information from house sensors to help troopers with warfare technique and enhance strike concentrating on and accuracy, based on Palantir.
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Palantir received the $178 million contract final March, beating out competitor and protection big RTX Company
. It marked a key milestone for the corporate identified for its information evaluation and software program providers, in addition to the primary time a software program firm has labored as a major contractor for a major {hardware} program.
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The settlement features a complete of 10 TITAN techniques. Every system contains a sophisticated system with two bigger vans and a fundamental system with two autos delivered over 5 supply orders, Jain defined. The techniques enable troopers to make intelligence selections with out requiring the cloud, placing “all that energy behind a truck,” he added.
Peter Thiel, Jeffrey Epstein Acquaintance, and The Antichrist
Now that we’ve regarded slightly extra at what Palantir is definitely promoting, to whom, and the way, let’s tie them again into the 2025 zeitgeist.
For instance, Thiel even has a weird enterprise reference to the brand new head of the CDC, one thing about man-made islands past nationwide borders.
Now on to the intercourse scandal and loopy spiritual stuff: Jeffrey Epstein and the Antichrist.
The previous is just not one thing Palantir desires to be related to in 2025, however they wouldn’t be embodying the zeitgeist in the event that they stayed out of that mess would they?
The Antichrist, however is one thing Thiel very a lot desires to be related to.
I mentioned his notorious interview on the subject with the NY Occasions’ Ross Douthat in a earlier piece.
Let’s take a look at what and why.
Motive.com bought the products on the Epstein-Thiel-Israel hyperlink:
After his first arrest for intercourse crimes, Jeffrey Epstein tried to get into a brand new line of labor: surveillance. In 2015, he partnered with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to put money into a safety tech startup known as Reporty Homeland Safety, now often known as Carbyne. Leaked emails present that Epstein was utilizing Barak to hunt out alternatives within the surveillance business and construct connections with highly effective figures across the globe, together with American businessman Peter Thiel, the previous director of Israeli indicators intelligence, and two folks in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s circle.
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Epstein invited (former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud) Barak to return to a gathering with Thiel, cofounder of PayPal and the surveillance contractor Palantir, in Might 2014. Though Barak couldn’t make that assembly, Epstein insisted that Barak “spend actual time with peter thiel [sic]” and supplied to arrange a dinner the next month.Barak wrote to a unique enterprise affiliate a number of days later, with out mentioning Epstein’s position, that he and Thiel would have a “first date” and “in all probability spend it speaking simply geopolitics” with an unnamed third particular person. In that e-mail, Barak added that he had met Thiel as soon as earlier than in Davos, Switzerland, however speculated that Thiel “in all probability doesn’t even recollect it.”
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It’s not clear precisely what occurred in that assembly. In February 2016, nonetheless, Epstein pitched Reporty to Valar Ventures, a fund co-founded by Thiel and two shut companions. “We’d love to listen to extra about Reporty, are you in NYC within the close to time period or would a telephone name make extra sense? Thanks for considering of us Jeffrey,” Valar Ventures basic accomplice Andrew McCormack wrote again.
Appears just like the Epstein, Israel, Thiel connection could be extra smoke than hearth, however the identical could possibly be mentioned for Thiel’s antichrist obsession.
Mike Brock linked Thiel’s considering on the Antichrist together with his mental mentor at Stanford and defined Thiel’s function:
Thiel is publicly, explicitly a follower of René Girard—his Stanford professor and mental mentor whose insights about human social psychology Thiel has weaponized as political methodology.
Consider it this manner: as a substitute of society dissolving into everybody combating everybody, folks unite in opposition to a delegated villain. That’s Girard’s scapegoat concept—and it’s the lever Thiel pulls. Consider conspiracy theories blaming George Soros, or anti-woke crusades concentrating on universities. In each instances, actual frustrations get channeled towards a scapegoat that distracts from the oligarchic seize truly shaping outcomes.
As I explored in “Concepts With out Love,” Thiel approaches civilization itself as a thought experiment relatively than lived actuality—he loves concepts greater than folks. However he’s systematically utilized Girard’s insights to redirect standard anger away from oligarchic seize towards the establishments that would present democratic resistance.
Émile P. Torres dives slightly deeper at Realtime Techpocalypse Publication:
Should you can persuade those who the tip is nigh, that one is combating the Antichrist, and that Armageddon — an final battle between Good and Evil — is at hand, you possibly can persuade them to do absolutely anything. In spite of everything, what hangs within the steadiness is everlasting life, good happiness, perpetual peace, and cosmic justice. With the stakes that top, what precisely is off the desk? What act is morally impermissible?.
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My guess is that Peter Thiel understands this dynamic, at the very least to some extent, and that’s partly why he retains speaking in regards to the Antichrist.
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So far as I can inform, the actual interpretation of biblical prophecy that Thiel is peddling goes like this: we face two foes — the Antichrist and Armageddon. The previous is a world authorities with — I child you not — excessive taxes, an concept that’s “curiously in keeping with different apocalypticists who’ve claimed that the Antichrist will achieve energy by supranational organizations just like the European Union or United Nations.”Thiel sees Greta Thunberg as an agent of the Antichrist exactly as a result of she advocates for international laws concentrating on carbon emissions. If applied, this is able to take us yet one more misstep down the slippery slope of regulatory regimes that intrude with different areas of business, a few of which Thiel has a vested curiosity in.
Right here’s the technique of Antichristic brokers, based on Thiel: they use the specter of Armageddon — a global-scale disaster, or an existential catastrophe — as a pretext for establishing a world authorities. If you wish to keep away from annihilation or collapse, they are saying, we should sacrifice the “freedom” of companies to proceed polluting, exploiting, extracting, and doing no matter they see as obligatory to maximise their earnings. Thiel responds that aligning with the Antichrist to keep away from Armageddon isn’t any resolution in any respect. Relatively, our eschatological job in these perilous instances is to stroll the slender path between Armageddon and the Antichrist: to keep away from an precise disaster whereas resisting the urge to perform this by international governance.
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If Thunberg is simply an annoying local weather activist, she might be safely ignored. But when she’s an agent of the Antichrist, then she should be stopped instantly and in any respect prices. If these advocating for AI regulation are engaged within the work of the Satan, then they, too, should be handled in a fashion proportionate to the superior stakes of the combat. That is an apocalyptic showdown to guard, protect, and convey about paradise, which Thiel imagines taking place by the unregulated growth of superior applied sciences.
It doesn’t get extra 2025 than conflating Greta Thunberg with the Antichrist. I ponder if Palantir’s tech was used within the newest assault on the flotilla headed for Israel with Ms. Thunberg on board.