Tech billionaire Peter Thiel has hosted a series of four lectures on the antichrist in San Francisco, warning that Armageddon could be imminent. The off-the-record talks, held over the past month, sold out within hours at $200 per ticket, with attendees forbidden from recording or publishing details.
Thiel, a self-described “small-o orthodox Christian”, defined the antichrist as “an evil king or tyrant … who appears in the end times”. He mused that the antichrist could be the United States, environmentalism, or figures like Greta Thunberg, and cautioned that international agencies and lack of technological guardrails could hasten its rise.
The PayPal co-founder and early Facebook investor drew on thinkers including René Girard, Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, and English theologian John Henry Newman, whose four-part lecture series inspired Thiel’s own. His talks mingled biblical passages, conspiracy theories, and references to video games and J.R.R. Tolkien.
Thiel, credited with boosting JD Vance to the vice-presidency and bankrolling Republican midterm campaigns, has long been a conservative force in Silicon Valley. His investment firm Founders Fund backs SpaceX and OpenAI, while Palantir holds lucrative government contracts with the Pentagon, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the UK’s National Health Service.
