A series of “off-the-record” lectures on the Antichrist, hosted by tech billionaire Peter Thiel, has everyone wondering what the hell is going on inside.
But, ahead of night two in the four-part series on Monday, one guest published notes of the first show, and is now paying the price. Lecture notes published last week by tech worker Kshitij Kulkarni, who is the Head of Protocol Research at software company Succinct, provided the clearest look yet at what’s being discussed inside the secretive event.
When the sold-out talks began last week at the Commonwealth Club on San Francisco’s Embarcadero, the online invite vaguely said Thiel would be “addressing the topic of the biblical Antichrist” and its “theology, history, literature, and politics.” It also warned spectators that the event was off-the-record.
Kulkarni, who published the notes as a now-deleted essay on his personal website, was subsequently banned from the other three talks, according to a now-deleted X post from ACTS17 Collective executive director Michelle Stephens, whose nonprofit organized the lectures.
“You are in violation of the clear off the record [policy] we implemented and reiterated many times. Your ticket is revoked without refund,” Stephens said.
After last week’s lecture, The Standard met with attendees who said that the talks largely repeated the points Thiel had made in previous interviews on the subject — namely, that the Antichrist would use the threat of Armageddon, or some looming crisis, in order to consolidate control and create a “one-world government.”
Kulkarni confirmed that summary, more or less, writing that Thiel explained that with the advent of atomic weapons, the human race gained the technology to destroy itself for the first time — that is, to usher in Armageddon. But more recently, apocalyptic fears have grown, with the advent of artificial intelligence and big tech’s race for so-called “super intelligence” — presumably this is when the robots rise up and wipe us all out.
Kulkarni wrote that Thiel argued that because we are increasingly concerned about existential threats, the time is ripe for the Antichrist to rise to power, promising peace and safety by strangling technological progress with regulation. Thiel has previously suggested (seriously) that Greta Thunberg could be the Antichrist, but attendees last week didn’t recall her name coming up.
“How does the Antichrist actually seize power? In late modernity, we finally have the answer: by talking constantly of Armageddon (or in secular terms, of existential risk).” Kulkarni writes. “He rides the wave of apocalyptic anxiety.”
Thiel also mentioned at least six Biblical passages, Daniel 12:4, Matthew 24:35-36, 1 Thessalonians 5:3, 2 Thessalonians 2:6, and Revelation 9:6, which all discuss the arrival of the Antichrist and the apocalypse, according to Kulkarni.
Stephens and Thiel did not respond to requests for comment before publication. Kulkarni declined to answer further questions about the lectures, citing the lecture series’ off-the-record policy.
Thiel has been speaking for at least a year about the Antichrist — who, for the uninitiated, is a biblical figure who will rise before the Last Judgment and attempt to turn people against Jesus.
But Thiel’s comments on the subject received greater attention after a June interview on New York Times columnist Ross Douthat’s podcast — in part because the venture capitalist failed to fully rebut Douthat’s suggestion that Thiel himself is ushering in the coming of the Antichrist with the technology he is developing with data mining firm Palantir.
Bloomberg previously reported that the Israel Defense Forces used Palantir’s software to strike targets in Gaza. And, according to reporting by Wired, ICE is paying the company to create a real-time tracking tool to help the agency target undocumented immigrants.