Login

r/PeterThiel

▲ 47 r/PeterThiel+1 crossposts

Peter Thiel: The pope is ‘working for the Chinese Communists’ by criticizing AI

Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel delivered a series of provocative warnings and predictions about the future of artificial intelligence and the West on Tuesday, accusing Pope Leo XIV of inadvertently serving as a “Chinese communist agent” by calling for AI regulation. In his remarks at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado, he also warned of a “democratic-socialist takeover” of the United States’ Democratic Party.

Thiel, a co-founder of Palantir and PayPal, was an early supporter of President Donald Trump in Silicon Valley. He also helped launch Vice President JD Vance’s career: Vance worked at Mithril Capital, an investment firm Thiel co-founded, before Thiel backed his transition into politics. He delivered his remarks at a nonrecorded panel alongside the political scientist Francis Fukuyama. Reporters were allowed to take notes on the proceedings.

The Vatican, AI, and world domination
During the event, Thiel took direct aim at the Vatican, accusing Pope Leo XIV — the first pope from the United States — of unintentionally advancing Chinese interests by pushing for stronger international oversight of artificial intelligence.

In May, Leo used his first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas” (“Magnificent Humanity”), to declare that artificial intelligence “must be disarmed” and call for greater international regulation of the technology.

Because the pope’s message could influence some Americans, but is unlikely to be heeded by people in China, Thiel argued, the encyclical threatened to slow down only one side of the “race between the US and China” to advance AI.
In his own view, Thiel said, that means Leo is “working for the Chinese Communists.” The Aspen audience received his characterization of the pope as a Chinese agent with laughter.

The Vatican did not respond to a request for comment.

Friction between the tech billionaire and the Vatican is not new. In March, Thiel gave an invitation-only lecture series on the Antichrist in Rome, just blocks away from the Holy See. The lectures reportedly unnerved the Vatican and prompted two Catholic universities to publicly state that they were not involved in hosting the events.

Thiel has argued that the Antichrist could manifest not as an individual but as a world government that seizes power by promising to protect humanity against existential threats such as AI or global warming.

The end of history
Thiel and Fukuyama’s discussion, entitled “Humanity at the End of History,” marked a notable departure from the last time the pair debated 14 years ago.

In 2012, the two focused largely on the causes of what Thiel sees as “technological stagnation,” debating income inequality, the failures of clean energy technology, and the gridlock of US infrastructure projects like high-speed rail.
But while their previous talk centered on economic questions, this time, the pair framed the broader fate of Western democracy in more drastic terms.

Fukuyama is known for his “End of History” thesis, in which he proposed that, after the Cold War, liberal democracy might represent the final form of government. During the Aspen panel, Fukuyama argued that the greatest danger is abandoning institutions that have sustained democracy.

Thiel countered this by arguing that those institutions themselves have become engines of paralysis, and that decades of technological stagnation have pushed Western politics toward greater instability: “The weird ways that politics has gone haywire is telling me something very deep.”

Thiel’s political views have drawn criticism from some writers and thinkers, who say his distrust in democratic institutions and enthusiasm for elite-led governance amount to a form of “techno-authoritarianism.”

A democratic-socialist ‘takeover’
Responding to Fukuyama’s argument that, despite growing extremism, liberal democracy remains humanity’s best political system, Thiel warned that far-left forces are increasingly dominating American politics.

“I think there’s going to be a democratic-socialist takeover of the Democratic Party,” Thiel said.

His comments come as self-identified democratic socialists have gained influence within the Democratic Party, most notably with last year’s election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, followed this year by a series of victories by democratic socialist candidates in mayoral and congressional primaries.

“The Republican Party doesn’t matter that much. It’s the less important one,” Thiel said. “When the Democratic Party goes, this country is over.”

The tyranny of the law
On the eve of the 250th anniversary of the United States’ adoption of the Declaration of Independence, Thiel also argued that the American Revolution has been fundamentally misunderstood.

“There are all these anti-Trump protests: we don’t want kings, we want rule of law,” Thiel said. He framed the American Revolution not as a campaign against King George III, but as a revolt against an all-powerful British parliament, whose lawmakers exercised “totalitarian” control.

In Thiel’s telling, the US Constitution was designed as a corrective to Britain’s “tyrannical rule of lawyers,” with a presidency, he said, built to be “more powerful than King George III.”

He contrasted the United States’s constitutional system with that of today’s European Union, which he described as a stagnant, rule-bound bureaucracy, under which people are “NPCs” — non-player characters in video games — with no power to make decisions.

“The EU is rule of law,” Thiel said. “It is like bad AI.”

Palantir and the Deep State
Thiel spoke about Palantir, the software company he co-founded, and its close contracting relationship with US federal agencies including the Pentagon and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Despite doing billions of dollars of business with the national security establishment, the company is “not joined at the hip” with the “US deep state,” Thiel said. He called the company’s leaders “loyal-dissident-type people” and said that neither he nor Palantir’s current CEO, Alex Karp, hold government security clearances. Palantir did not respond to a request for comment.

The formidable influence wielded by tech companies, Thiel said, is “one of the things that’s really healthy about the US,” because it means “the power centers are distributed in this country.”

As an example of the multiple power centers, he offered an unsupported conspiratorial claim that the AI firm Anthropic — a “woke liberal company” that he credited with “winning the AI race” — would “rig the elections in 2028” in support of Democrats. Anthropic, Thiel said, would use its industry-leading AI models to “completely outwit” any ideological efforts Elon Musk might make in the opposite direction through X.

Anthropic declined to comment, pointing instead to one of its recent blog posts on election integrity and political bias.

Despite his own right-wing libertarian politics, Thiel said he preferred the idea of the US having competing power centers to a situation like “Rome or Russia,” since “you don’t want this whole thing to be fused in DC.”

Thiel also discussed Palantir’s name, which was inspired by the magical seeing stones in J.R.R. Tolkien’s *“*The Lord of the Rings.” Critics have noted that characters who try to use the powers of the palantír end up being manipulated by the story’s archvillain, Sauron.

Thiel argued that those people misunderstand Tolkien’s story. “Toward the end, it gets used by the good guys,” Thiel said. The hero and king-to-be, Aragorn, uses a palantír to confront Sauron, showing him he now possesses the reforged sword of his ancestors.
(Sauron then misinterprets this intelligence, leading him to make a fatal strategic blunder.)

“Anybody who tells you a different story of Tolkien,” Thiel said, “doesn’t even know what they’re talking about, on the level of literature.”

cnn.com
u/WhoIsJolyonWest — 2 days ago
▲ 63 r/PeterThiel+2 crossposts

Peter Thiel Dialog list

Last updated: June 25, 2026

Names

Immad Akhund, Founder & CEO, Mercury. (1)

Turki Al Faisal Al Saud, Founder, King Faisal Foundation. Fmr. Minister of Intelligence, Saudi Arabia. (1)

Reema Al-Saud, Ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the U.S. (1)

John Arnold, Co-Chair, Arnold Ventures. Fmr. Founder, Centaurus Advisors. (1)

Susan Athey, Professor, Stanford Graduate School of Business. Fmr. Chief Economist, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice. (1)

Peter Attia, Physician, Attia Medical. Author, Outlive. (1)

Scott Belsky, Partner, A24 Films. Fmr. Chief Strategy Officer & Chief Product Officer, Adobe. Founder, Behance. (1)

Nicolas Berggruen, Founder & President, Berggruen Holdings. (1)

Scott Bessent, Secretary, U.S. Treasury. (1)

Preet Bharara, Fmr. U.S. Attorney, New York Southern District. (1)

Elizabeth Blackburn, Fmr. President, Salk Institute for Biomedical Studies. Nobel Prize winner. (1)

Sarah Bond, President of Xbox, Microsoft. (1)

Cory Booker, Senator (New Jersey), U.S. Senate. (1)

Rachel Brand, Chief Legal Officer & Corporate Secretary, Walmart. Fmr. Associate Attorney General, U.S Department of Justice. (1)

Scooter Braun, CEO, Hybe America. Founder, Ithaca Holdings. (1)

Pete Briger, Principal & Chairman of the Board, Fortress Investment Group. (1)

Greg Brockman, Co-Founder & President, OpenAI. Fmr. CTO, Stripe. (1)

Manuel Bronstein, Chief Product Officer, Roblox. (1)

Peter Brown, CEO, Renaissance Technologies. (1)

Thasunda Brown Duckett, President & CEO, TIAA. (1)

Sophia Bush, Actress, One Tree Hill. (1)

Mike Cannon-Brookes, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Atlassian. (1)

Cesar Carvalho, Co-Founder & CEO, Wellhub. (1)

Wences Casares, Founder & Fmr. CEO, Xapo Bank. Founder: Wanako Games, Banco Lemon, Lemon Wallet. (1)

Julian Castro, Fmr. Secretary, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. (1)

Bob Cialdini, Author, Influence. (1)

Matt Clifford, Prime Minister's Advisor on AI Opportunities, U.K. Government. Co-Founder, Entrepreneur First. (1)

Caroline Cochran, Co-Founder & COO, Oklo. (1)

Matt Cohler, Fmr. General Partner, Benchmark. (1)

Scott Cook, Co-Founder & Chairman, Intuit. (1)

Tyler Cowen, Professor of Economics & Director, Mercatus Center, George Mason University. (1)

Ted Cruz, Senator (Texas), U.S. Senate. (1)

Adam D'Angelo, Co-Founder & CEO, Quora. Fmr. CTO, Facebook. (1)

Mitch Daniels, Fmr. Governor, State of Indiana. Fmr. President, Purdue University. (1)

Veit Valentin Dengler, MP of Austria (2)

Dan Driscoll, Secretary, U.S. Army. (1)

Charles Duhigg, Author: The Power of Habit, Supercommunicators. (1)

Steve Ells, Founder & Fmr. CEO, Chipotle. (1)

Tim Ferriss, Author: The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, The 4-Hour Chef. Host, The Tim Ferriss Show. (1)

Marcos Galperin, Co-Founder & CEO, MercadoLibre. (1)

Atul Gawande, Author: Being Mortal, The Checklist Manifesto. Fmr. Assistant Administrator for Global Health, USAID. (1)

Tom Goldstein, Partner, Goldstein & Russell. Founder & Fmr. Publisher, SCOTUSblog.com. (1)

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Actor, 500 Days of Summer, Inception, Looper, Snowden. (1)

Adam Grant, Organizational Psychologist, Wharton School of Management. Author: Think Again, Originals, Give and Take. (1)

Severin Hacker, Co-Founder & CTO, Duolingo. (1)

Yasmin Green, Jigsaw Chief Executive Officer (2)

Himanshu Gulati, Norway MP (2)

Jonathan Haidt, Professor, Stern School of Business, NYU. Author: The Anxious Generation, The Righteous Mind, The Coddling of the American Mind. (1)

Peggy Hamburg, Fmr. Commissioner, U.S. Food & Drug Administration. (1)

Sam Harris, Podcast Host, Making Sense. Author: Free Will, Lying, Waking Up. (1)

Jim Himes, Congressman (Connecticut), U.S. House of Representatives. (1)

Auren Hoffman, CEO, NQB8. Chairman & Fmr. CEO, SafeGraph. Founder & Fmr. CEO, LiveRamp. Chairman, Dialog. (1)

Reid Hoffman, Partner, Greylock Partners. Co-Founder & Fmr. Executive Chairman, LinkedIn. (1)

Rob Hur, Fmr. Special Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice. (1)

Bob Jain, CIO, Millennium Management. Founder, Jain Family Institute. (1)

Bryan Johnson, Founder & CEO: Kernel, Blueprint. (1)

Kaja Kallas, Vice President, European Commission. Fmr. Prime Minister, Estonia. (1)

Gaurva Kapadia, Founder & CEO, XN. (1)

Fatima Kardar, Xbox-Microsoft Vice President (2)

Karen Karniol-Tambour, Co-CIO, Bridgewater Associates. (1)

Garry Kasparov, Fmr. Member, Russian Opposition Movement's Coordinating Council. Fmr. World Chess champion. (1)

Neal Katyal, Partner, Milbank. Fmr. Partner & Supreme Court Practice Leader, Hogan Lovells. (1)

Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Fmr. Prime Minister, Pakistan. Founder, Airblue. (1)

Ezra Klein, Opinion Columnist, The New York Times. Founder & Fmr. Editor-in-chief, Vox. Host, The Ezra Klein Show. (1)

Taro Köno, Digital Minister, Japan. Fmr. Minister of Defense, Japan. (1)

Henry Kravis, Co-Founder, Co-Chairman & Co-CEO, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (1)

Jared Kushner, Founder, Affinity Partners. (1)

Jason Kwon, Chief Strategy Officer, OpenAI. (1)

Leonard Leo, Co-Chairman & Fmr. Executive Vice President, Federalist Society. (1)

Jon Levin, President, Stanford University. (1)

Howie Liu, Founder & CEO, Airtable. (1)

Joe Lonsdale, Founding Partner, 8VC. Co-Founder: Palantir, Addepar Micky Malka, Founder & Managing Partner, Ribbit Capital. (1)

Stan McChrystal, Founder & CEO, McChrystal Group. Fmr. General, U.S. Army. (1)

Neal Mohan, CEO, YouTube. (1)

Lisa Monaco, Fmr. Deputy Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice. (1)

Wes Moore, Governor, State of Maryland. (1)

Elon Musk, Founder & CEO, SpaceX. Co-Founder & CEO, Tesla Motors. (1)

Demet Mutlu, Founder & CEO, Trendyol Group. (1)

Vas Narasimhan, CEO, Novartis. (1)

Grover Norquist, President, Americans for Tax Reform. (1)

Mike Novogratz, CEO, Galaxy Digital. Fmr. CIO, Fortress Investment Group. (1)

Jim O'Neill, Nominee for Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Co-Founder, Thiel Fellowship. (1)

Chamath Palihapitiya, Founder & CEO, Social Capital LP. Co-Owner, Golden State Warriors. (1)

Benj Pasek, Songwriter & Producer: La La Land, The Greatest Showman, Dear Evan Hansen. Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony winner. (1)

Daniel Pink, Author: Drive, To Sell is Human, The Power of Regret. Fmr. Chief Speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore. (1)

Steven Pinker, Professor, Harvard University. Author: Enlightenment Now, The Better Angels of Our Nature. (1)

Jared Polis, Governor, State of Colorado. (1)

Jonathan Ross, Founder & CEO, Groq. (1)

Robert Rubin, Fmr. Secretary, U.S. Treasury. Fmr. Co-Chairman, Goldman Sachs. (1)

Gretchen Rubin, Host, Happier with Gretchen Rubin. Author: The Happiness Project, Better Than Before, The Four Tendencies. (1)

Sheikh Nawaf Saud Nasir Al-Sabah, CEO, Kuwait Petroleum Corporation. (1)

Will Scharf, Co-Founder & CTO, Oscar Health. (1)

Mario Schlosser, Staff Secretary and Assistant to the President, U.S. White House. (1)

Eric Schmidt, Founder, Schmidt Futures. Fmr. CEO: Google, Alphabet. (1)

Dan Schulman, Fmr. President & CEO, PayPal. (1)

Drew Scott, Co-Founder, Scott Brothers Global. Co-Host, Property Brothers. (1)

Kim Scott, Author, Radical Candor. (1)

Pete Shadbolt, Founder & Chief Science Officer, PsiQuantum. (1)

Ali Siddiqui, Board Chair, OnZero. Fmr. Ambassador of Pakistan to the U.S. (1)

Barry Silbert, Founder & CEO, Digital Currency Group. (1)

Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO, New America. Professor, Princeton. Fmr. Director of Policy Planning, U.S. Department of State. (1)

Charlie Songhurst, Board Director, Meta. Fmr. Head of Corporate Strategy, Microsoft. (1)

Jens Spahn, Member of Parliament, German Bundestag. Fmr. Federal Minister of Health, Germany. (1)

Scott Stephenson, Chairman, President & CEO, Verisk Analytics. (1)

Barry Sternlicht, Co-Founder, Chairman & CEO, Starwood Capital Group. (1)

Bret Stephens, Opinion Columnist & Associate Editor, The New York Times. Pulitzer Prize winner. (1)

Simon Stevens, UK House of Lords (2)

Lawrence Summers, Fmr. President, Harvard University. Fmr. Secretary, U.S. Treasury. (1)

Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots, X. (1)

Peter Thiel, Co-Founder: Founders Fund, Palantir, PayPal, Dialog. (1)

Nick Thompson, CEO, The Atlantic. Fmr. Editor-in-chief, Wired Magazine. (1)

John Townsend, Author, Boundaries. (1)

Tom Tugendhat, Member of Parliament, United Kingdom. (1)

Tim Urban, Writer & Illustrator, Wait But Why. Author, What's Our Problem? (1)

Rick Warren, Author, The Purpose Driven Life. Podcast Host, Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. (1)

Strauss Zelnick, Chairman & CEO, Take-Two Interactive Software. (1)

Shivon Zilis, Director, Neuralink. (1)

Sources

(1) Initial June 15, 2026 leak by maia arson crimew: https://bsky.app/profile/crimew.gay/post/3moejkbqctc2z

(2) November 18, 2025 article on dawn.com mentioning a list of representatives from Dialog visiting the government of Pakistan as a delegation: https://web.archive.org/web/20260228080705/https://www.dawn.com/news/1955840

u/NicolasCageFan492 — 5 days ago
▲ 1.3k r/PeterThiel+2 crossposts

Leon Black says Epstein's network included Elon Musk, Sergey Brin and Peter Thiel, while saying 'I knew Jekyll. I didn't know Hyde'

fortune.com
u/Czech_Coconut — 9 days ago
▲ 4.0k r/PeterThiel+9 crossposts

Some tech Billionaires are deploying a new kind of propaganda aimed at basic reality. A hallmark of fascism is the creation of an unreality where People can no longer distinguish between fact and fiction, making them easier to manipulate from that position of radicalized ignorance. - Gil Duran

June 17, 2026 | The Majority Report (TMR) with Sam Seder. Sam and Emma Vigeland interview Gil Duran. Here’s the full 39-minutes on YouTube: The Tech Billionaire Plan To Destroy Democracy | Gil Duran | TMR | June 17, 2026 (YouTube)

From the description: Gil Duran, publisher of the Nerd Reich newsletter, joins to discuss John O’Farrell a former partner at Andreessen Horowitz who recently quit the VC firm over their prioritizing of AI hype over the common good. You can preorder Gil’s book “The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley’s Fascism and the War on Democracy” here.

Here’s the full 79-minute segment on YouTube: Billionaires Pushing Abundance & Waging War On Democracy w/ Dylan Gyauch-Lewis, Gil Duran | MR Live - June 17, 2026 (YouTube)

...............

Gil's website: thenerdreich.com ~:~:~ His new book: simonandschuster.com/books/The-Nerd-Reich/Gil-Duran/9781668221402

Here are the latest r/Whistleblowers posts with Gil Duran: reddit.com/r/Whistleblowers/search/?q=%22gil+duran%22&type=posts&sort=new

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For those in the U.S.:

* Primary Election Dates: AP News ~and~ NBC News :~:~: Upcoming Dates: June 23: Maryland, New York, Utah + Runoffs in South Carolina and South Dakota ~:~:~ June 27: Louisiana (Runoff) ~:~:~ June 30: Colorado ~:~:~ July 21: Arizona ~:~:~ July 28: Georgia (House Special) and South Dakota (Gov Runoff) ~:~:~ Aug 4: Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Virginia, Washington ~:~:~ More Aug dates + Sept dates: see links above

* Candidates (for every State): US House (Dem Primary only): Ballotpedia (HouseDems) :~:~:~: US Senate: Ballotpedia (Senate) (select “List of Candidates”) :~:~:~: State Execs (Gov, Lt. Gov, AG, SoS, and more): Ballotpedia (State Execs)

* Voter Info (for every State): Register To Vote :~:~:~: Voter Registration Status :~:~:~: Find Your Polling Place :~:~:~: Valid Forms of ID :~:~:~: Absentee & Early Voting :~:~:~: Become a Poll Worker ~:~ Links go to the National Association of Secretaries of State website. When you select a State, it takes to a .gov page on that State's SoS website.

u/Impressive_Box4144 — 11 days ago
▲ 614 r/PeterThiel+9 crossposts

Found Out What Thiel Was Doing in Argentina!

Disclaimer: The views, analysis, and commentary expressed here are strictly the opinions of the author. All content is shared for informational and discussion purposes, utilizing publicly available information, and is fully protected under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech and expression. https://youtu.be/Bbds-UqWpXQ

u/wwjps — 11 days ago
▲ 197 r/PeterThiel+3 crossposts

Follow the Money: Who's Profiting Off Fake Food (Hint: Bill Gates)

In this episode, we follow the money—literally. Who's funding the lab-meat revolution? Who benefits from the push toward synthetic and modified food systems? And what does Bill Gates' massive portfolio of bets on "fake food" tell us about where the food industry is headed?
We examine the corporate networks, venture capital flows, and policy influence behind lab-grown meat, plant-based alternatives, and genetically modified food technologies. We look at who's investing, what they stand to gain, and what it means for food sovereignty, agricultural workers, and your plate.
Topics covered:

Bill Gates' food tech investments and portfolio strategy
Lab-grown meat companies: funding, timeline, and profit models
Synthetic biology and the corporate push for food system transformation
The intersection of tech billionaires, agriculture, and policy
Food sovereignty vs. corporate food control
What this infrastructure means for consumers in practice

SOURCES & FURTHER READING: https://youtu.be/urEy-MdU7Vs?si=uM4RAgljP2hbfMRO, https://youtu.be/7XvHnW\_XT18?si=N7XWoiK2F4Qw\_lcO, https://youtu.be/KZKkS6aFlpw?si=R-1mUiErX4xVEFjW, https://youtu.be/RZqYSkoQ-xg?si=82sdQxmPxHQMF2YM, https://youtu.be/Y0lsLnXX4U8?si=qB\_IgVSVOUv8uvb, https://youtu.be/Gn9z1FgHC-8?si=4LDFDbVf6\_V7tlTX, https://youtu.be/\_ce0IpCi8\_k?si=xY0tFGvAq18Gfz90, https://youtu.be/b9iADoVjZ1w?si=HKBKuMQhUK-X0p8J, https://youtube.com/shorts/mV8KsV-FP4c?si=QLxGsxun-7zoqMTZ,

u/wwjps — 10 days ago
▲ 608 r/PeterThiel+3 crossposts

[OC] A delegation representing Peter Thiel’s Dialog group meeting with Pakistani officials in 2025

u/NicolasCageFan492 — 13 days ago
▲ 66 r/PeterThiel+1 crossposts

Peter Thiel has left Argentina. He threw a farewell asado (Argentine barbecue) at his home for his daughters' schoolmates and their parents. The party had a World Cup theme.

u/Federal-Ideal-408 — 12 days ago