Monsters of AI: Peter Thiel

Some monsters hide in the shadows while others are plastered across our news and screens every day. This series is about the monsters of AI, creatures cosplaying as innovators and visionaries, while pushing disturbing anti-human and anti-American ideologies.

Meet Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal, Palantir and the first outside investor in Facebook. At this time, his net worth is estimated to be ~$20 billion. Thiel was born in Germany but his family immigrated to the United States when he was one years old. Later, they moved to South Africa (during apartheid) and lived there for six years. He attended a school in Swakopmund for two years, a German community known at that time for continuing to glorify Nazism.

Today Peter Thiel is doing interviews and lectures centered on his extremist views of christianity, the anti-christ and technology. Thiel believes that liberalism is a threat to progress and innovation, going so far to say that Greta Thunberg is today's most likely manifestation of the anti-christ.

The way the Antichrist would take over the world is you talk about Armageddon nonstop. You talk about existential risk nonstop, and this is what you need to regulate. It’s the opposite of the picture of Baconian science from the 17th, 18th century, where the Antichrist is like some evil tech genius, evil scientist who invents this machine to take over the world. People are way too scared for that.

In our world, the thing that has political resonance is the opposite. The thing that has political resonance is: We need to stop science, we need to just say “stop” to this. And this is where, in the 17th century, I can imagine a Dr. Strangelove, Edward Teller-type person taking over the world. In our world, it’s far more likely to be Greta Thunberg.

-Peter Thiel, Interview with Ross Douthat

In this interview by Ross Douthat, Thiel states that "the hippies won" and the consequences of that was 50 years of peace and industrial stagnation. Thiel sees regulation of technology as one of the greatest threats to humanity. Thiel’s close friend Marc Andreessen shares this point of view and has even written an entire dogmatic philosophy called The Techno-Optimist Manifesto. Here's a short snippet from Andreessen's spurious writings:

We are being lied to.

We are told that technology takes our jobs, reduces our wages, increases inequality, threatens our health, ruins the environment, degrades our society, corrupts our children, impairs our humanity, threatens our future, and is ever on the verge of ruining everything.

-Marc Andreessen, The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

In Thiel's interview with Ross Douthat, Ross asks Thiel if he prefers that the human race should endure. After a long hesitation and mumbling of words, Thiel says "There’s so many questions implicit in this." Thiel goes on to talk about transhumanism saying "We want you to be able to change your heart and change your mind and change your whole body." He doubles down on this by stating that the Old Testament does not use the word "nature" once and he takes this further to imply it's because man is intended to overcome nature.

Peter Thiel's philosophy relies heavily on the work of Carl Schmitt, a Nazi political theorist. Schmitt was a critic of democracy and liberalism, preferring an authoritarian dictatorship claiming it could act more decisively. Schmitt also believed in the scapegoat mechanism, naming a common national enemy to accelerate and expand a government's power. Schmitt's doctrine was instrumental in creating a foundation for Hitler's rise to power and provided a theoretical legal foundation for the Nazi regimen. Laura Bullard wrote a piece for Wired that dives deeper into Thiel’s connections to Carl Schmitt’s work and ideas.

It should be no surprise why Thiel so fervently supported Donald Trump and urged other tech billionaires to do the same. Nor would it be a shock to learn that Peter Thiel has funded JD Vance's political career. Thiel's vision of the future is one where tech bros do not fear regulation, boundaries or any kind of moral or ethical limitation. He wants a government with clear enemies, whether they are immigrants or its own American people, it's a boon to Palantir and other surveillance focused tech companies.

Peter Thiel's reach and influence is considerable. At different points, he's served as a mentor and friend to Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Alex Karp, Marc Andreessen and many others. What becomes painfully obvious is this monster creates other monsters and their ideology pulls from some of the darkest ideas in our history. They ward off criticism with new tech announcements, by leaning into the cult of innovation and progress and child-like sci fi fantasies. They accuse the media of mislabeling and slandering them, refusing to acknowledge publicly exactly where their ideas come from. Like Trump, they deny and attack while spewing right wing extremist talking points that have found a new audience.

For Peter Thiel, AI represents a power mechanism that can accelerate the authoritarianism he sees as necessary. It's an opportunity to own the distribution of information, influence societal views and carve out institutions in ways he's only dreamed of. His company Palantir, requires wars and civil unrest to grow exponentially, providing its surveillance software as an authoritarian enabler. AI is being sold to CEOs and the managerial class as a driver of efficiency and labor replacement, but it's real use cases are much darker and insidious. Without regulation or intense public scrutiny, we are allowing people like Peter Thiel to create the world he wants, instead of the world we the people deserve.