In an interview from June of last year, billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel was asked a seemingly trivial question: “I think you would prefer the human race to endure, right?” Yet Thiel struggled to respond. “Well, I don’t know. I would — I would … There’s so many questions implicit in this.” Eventually, he answered “yes,” albeit with a crucial caveat. “But I also would like us to radically solve these problems. And so it’s always, I don’t know, yeah — transhumanism…We want you to be able to change your heart and change your mind and change your whole body.”
This brief exchange provides striking insight into Thiel’s broader ideology, a form of extreme biological transhumanism advocating such profound reconstruction of the species that humanity itself may be a necessary casualty in the fulfillment of his ideal. He believes that in order to attain his desired reality, society must free itself from a fifty-year era of technological stagnation enforced by despotic institutional powers, exponents of “peace and safetyism.” Meanwhile, Thiel’s actions, particularly his deep-set influence within President Donald Trump’s administration and leadership of software company Palantir, have only served to urge society towards greater state control. As a result, a striking contradiction arises: Increasing totalitarianism is being effectuated within the country and much of the world through the efforts of a tech magnate with a dogmatic obsession with liberty and progress, an idolater of a modern-day Cult of Reason.
Thiel’s philosophy is not without intellectual precedent among his contemporaries. Figures such as venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and researcher Guillaume Verdon have respectively advocated for the boundless release of technological acceleration at the expense of current restrictions and for the unhindered maximization of energy usage for the purpose of human evolution. But Thiel appears to be unique in the overtly theological framework he imposes upon his beliefs. To him, technology is a spiritual means by which to fulfill the Christian goal of “transcending nature.” He reminisces over times when science could not succeed unless it “promised you a physical resurrection.” Moreover, he sees those who aim to restrict technological or economic progression, such as AI safety advocates Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nick Bostrom, as “legionnaires of the Antichrist.”
In this sense, Thiel evokes a modern-day Cult of Reason, the first state religion established during the French Revolution. Originally intended to supplant the population’s existing theological doctrine with the principles of human advancement and intellectual development, the religion became a central pillar of the regime’s brutality, functioning as little more than a pretext for the seizure of wealth and extension of state power. Lasting less than a year, the religion collapsed in favor of the Cult of the Supreme Being, a rival sect that transformed leader Maximilien Robespierre into a God-like figure and only further legitimized the mass slaughter of innocents during the Reign of Terror. As the precursor to the imposition of authoritarian rule upon the French people, the Cult of Reason illustrates the barbarism that can emerge in the name of progress.
Like the French revolutionaries, Thiel disguises his personal ambitions in a spiritual exaltation of human development. Technology must be advanced and the survival of the species risked not merely for material ends, but for the fulfillment of eternal and divine principles, grounded in science and reason and ingenuity. Thiel seems to envision himself at the crux of a theological war for the radical transfiguration of the species. But the unique danger of this theology is its haunting dualism, one apparently not amenable to nuance or negotiation: Rather than honest interlocutors, dissenters are seen as “legionnaires of the Antichrist” and proponents of stagnation.
Another striking parallel between Thiel and the French revolutionaries is an apparent hypocrisy defined by the rhetorical drive for liberty coupled with the expansion of authoritarianism. The revolutionaries depicted themselves as advocates of freedom and rationality, but routinely executed dissenters. In a similar fashion, Thiel worries continuously about the threat of a “one-world totalitarian state” brought about by fear and excess regulation, but is the founder and chairman of Palantir, an AI-powered data gathering company and major contractor for the United States government. Under the second Trump administration, Palantir’s influence has grown markedly: The firm was selected last year to “compile data” on American citizens, creating the risk of “untold surveillance power” by the state. Furthermore, as part of a $30 million contract with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Palantir is working to gather vast amounts of data on residents and “flag” those suspected of unlawful status for deportation, prompting lawsuits from privacy and labor rights advocates.
Beyond data collection, Palantir has demonstrated its capacity for enabling lethal military force. Introduced to the former Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in 2013, Palantir has since played an instrumental role in mass surveillance and military operations for the state of Israel. In particular, according to CEO Alex Karp, Israeli forces used Palantir technology to carry out the detonation of thousands of Hezbollah pagers in Lebanon in 2024, killing 42 and injuring thousands more in what UN experts called a “terrifying” violation of international law. More recently, the United States has begun to employ Palantir’s technologies militarily; the Defense Department’s contract with Palantir reportedly played a role in the January capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
It is evident that Palantir has enabled the expansion of state power, often at the expense of civil liberties and human security. But how could a self-described libertarian so ostensibly preoccupied with the threat of totalitarianism willingly enable the subversion of fundamental liberties? When asked about the possibility of the Antichrist using Palantir to his advantage, Thiel equivocated: “Look, there are all these different scenarios. I obviously don’t think that that’s what I’m doing.”
One is led to believe that Thiel’s true concern is not totalitarianism per se, but stagnant totalitarianism, despotism at odds with the technological progression he perceives as necessary for the manifestation of his transhumanist ideals. He may view an administration that embraces his products as a pivotal step towards his imagined utopia, even (or especially) if a number of freedoms must be forfeited in the process. Worse than a case of mere hypocrisy, the growing threat of Palantir may fall squarely within the scope of Thiel’s ideological convictions. Regardless of his motivations, the outcome is concerning and clear: Basic rights to privacy are being progressively infringed upon through the efforts of a man who views his critics as heretics and humanity as an expendable asset in his campaign for technology’s divine ascension.