Peter Thiel

Peter Thiel co-founded Palantir Technologies, a company that builds data analysis tools for intelligence agencies and law enforcement, with early backing from the CIA’s venture arm, In-Q-Tel. Palantir’s tools have been used by governments for national security, immigration enforcement, and predictive policing, pulling together data from public records, social media, and other databases to identify patterns and flag people of interest. The company has contracts with agencies like ICE for tracking undocumented immigrants and with the Pentagon for battlefield intelligence. While Thiel warns about “surveillance AI” as a path to communism, his firm profits from deploying it.

Peter Thiel has critiqued democracy as incompatible with true freedom. In a 2009 essay, he declared that extending voting rights to women and the expansion of welfare beneficiaries had undermined libertarian ideals, rendering “capitalist democracy” an oxymoron. He advocates escaping politics altogether through technological means, such as seasteading or space colonization, to allow entrepreneurs to “unilaterally change the world” without democratic constraints. Thiel’s support for authoritarian figures, including his early backing of Donald Trump, reflects his view that mass democracy can get in the way of what he sees as necessary progress. With his anti-democratic leanings, Thiel’s massive data stores could be used to help enable power structures that prioritize tech overlords over collective decision making and individual rights.

Alongside Marc Andreessen, Elon Musk and others, Thiel is a major believer in and funder of Network State experiments around the world.

Thiel champions monopolies as the pinnacle of business success, arguing in his book “Zero to One” that true innovation comes from dominating markets rather than competing in them. His investments, from PayPal’s early payment monopoly to his early stake in Facebook, backed companies that were designed to lock in users and squeeze out competitors through scale and data advantages. Thiel critiques antitrust efforts against Big Tech as misguided, claiming they stifle progress, but his approach concentrates power in few hands, allowing firms to amass user data for surveillance and influence. As tech companies expand further into payments, communication, and personal identity systems, opting out can become harder, giving a handful of firms more control, with users having little leverage if they object.

Influenced by his mentor René Girard, Thiel has delivered off-the-record lectures describing the Antichrist as a deceptive figure exploiting societal fears like climate change AI to usher in totalitarian control. He has suggested people like Greta Thunberg or those who warn about AI safety may be “legionnaires of the Antichrist.” Drawing on Girard’s theory of mimetic rivalry, Thiel warns that escalating social and political conflicts can spiral into violence, and he argues that technological innovation can act as a potential stabilizing force against it.

Thiel sees death as a problem to be “solved” through technology and he invests heavily in biotechnology and longevity research, funding companies like cellular reprogramming startup Retro Biotechnology and the Methuselah Foundation to reverse aging and extend human lifespan. He supports transhumanist ideas like cryonics and has expressed an interest in blood transfusions from younger donors. Thiel has denied rumors that he had participated in parabiosis experiments, saying at a New York Times event in 2018, “I want to publicly tell you that I’m not a vampire. On the record, I am not a vampire.”

Thiel has played a central role in financing J.D. Vance’s rise from venture capitalist to vice president. Vance worked at Thiel’s venture firm Mithril Capital and later started his own fund, Narya Capital, with financial backing from Thiel and other Silicon Valley investors including Marc Andreessen and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Thiel also poured $15 million into a super PAC that supported Vance’s 2022 Senate campaign, helping propel him into office. Now that he’s the vice president, Vance is pushing the Thiel agenda on technology and artificial intelligence. He has argued that heavy regulation of AI would cripple innovation and has promoted a hands-off approach to the industry at international forums and domestic policy debates.