What happened. Peter Thiel, 58, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, held a four-day, closed-door lecture series in Rome this week arguing that the biblical Antichrist may emerge not as an obvious villain but as a technocratic administrator who consolidates global power by promising to manage AI, climate, or nuclear risk. The sessions ran Sunday through Wednesday at an undisclosed venue and were barred to the press. (AP; Reuters)
Why Rome. The choice was deliberate. Thiel’s visit follows a series of high-profile stops in Italy by figures in the Trump orbit, including Steve Bannon, Elon Musk, and Vice President JD Vance. Thiel has also reportedly warned privately that Vance risks becoming too close to Pope Leo XIV, whose universalist moral authority sits uneasily with Thiel’s nationalist-technologist worldview. (CNN)
Vatican response. Cold distance. No meeting between Thiel and the pope was scheduled. Two Catholic institutions disavowed any connection: the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (where Leo wrote his doctoral thesis) denied hosting the event, and the Catholic University of America clarified it was not sponsoring it, though the Cluny Institute, an independent project housed there, co-organized the lectures. Pope Leo’s AI adviser, Father Paolo Benanti, published an essay labeling Thiel a “political theologian” within Silicon Valley. (CNN; Newsweek)
Italian reaction. The bishops’ newspaper L’Avvenire ran several critical pieces warning that technology leaders should not be permitted to define their own ethical limits. One Italian outlet asked, in a headline, whether Thiel should be burned at the stake — rhetorical, but indicative of the temperature. (Reuters)
The core argument. Thiel has drawn on the French theorist Rene Girard to argue that the Antichrist arrives as a reassuring figure who exploits fear of existential risk to accumulate control. AI skeptics, climate activists, and regulators are, in his telling, unwitting instruments of this consolidation. Silicon Valley technologists, by contrast, are civilization’s protectors. (Fortune; AP via PBS)
Bottom line. Thiel is not a marginal crank. He bankrolled Vance’s political rise, co-founded a company that helps the U.S. government track migrants, and commands attention among the tech elite. His decision to stage a private theological salon in the shadow of St. Peter’s is, at minimum, a statement about where he thinks the real contest for civilizational authority is being fought. (Daily Beast)
Sources: Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, Fortune, Newsweek, The Daily Beast