Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel recently met with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat to discuss many topics, including innovation, life extension technology, the antichrist, and transhumanism.
The topic of transhumanism was brought up when Douthat asked Thiel, “Should the human race survive?”
Thiel responded, “Yes. But I also would like us to radically solve these problems. And so it’s always, I don’t know, yeah — transhumanism.”
The co-founder of Palantir added, “The ideal was this radical transformation where your human, natural body gets transformed into an immortal body.”
He later stated that transgenderism doesn’t go far enough when it comes to changing one’s body and shared, “We want more than cross-dressing or changing your sex organs. We want you to be able to change your heart and change your mind and change your whole body.”
WATCH:
I completely agree with Thiel. Of course we want to improve ourselves. Of course we want to achieve mastery over our flesh. Of course we want to advance so far that one day we might not be recognizable as human. pic.twitter.com/wvcLUihlIs
— Hunter Ash (@ArtemisConsort) June 29, 2025
In case you’re unfamiliar with transhumanism, it’s an ideology that promotes using technology and science to enhance human capabilities.
Essentially, transhumanists welcome an era where humans merge with machines.
Later in the interview, Thiel and Douthat discuss the antichrist.
Thiel shared that “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.”
The New York Times provided a transcript:
Douthat: You have been giving talks recently about the concept of the Antichrist, which is a Christian concept, an apocalyptic concept. What does that mean to you? What is the Antichrist?
Thiel: All right. Well, I could talk about it for a long time. I think there’s always a question of how we articulate some of these existential risks, some of the challenges we have, and they’re all framed in this sort of runaway dystopian science text. There’s a risk of nuclear war, there’s a risk of environmental disaster. Maybe something specific, like climate change, although there are lots of other ones we’ve come up with. There’s a risk of bioweapons. You have all the different sci-fi scenarios. Obviously, there are certain types of risks with A.I.
Thiel: But I always think that if we’re going to have this frame of talking about existential risks, perhaps we should also talk about the risk of another type of a bad singularity, which I would describe as the one-world totalitarian state. Because I would say the default political solution people have for all these existential risks is one-world governance. What do you do about nuclear weapons? We have a United Nations with real teeth that controls them, and they’re controlled by an international political order. And then something like this is also: What do we do about A.I.? And we need global compute governance. We need a one-world government to control all the computers, log every single keystroke, to make sure people don’t program a dangerous A.I. And I’ve been wondering whether that’s going from the frying pan into the fire.
Thiel: The atheist philosophical framing is “One World or None.” That was a short film that was put out by the Federation of American Scientists in the late ’40s. It starts with the nuclear bomb blowing up the world, and obviously, you need a one-world government to stop it — one world or none. And the Christian framing, which in some ways is the same question, is: Antichrist or Armageddon? You have the one-world state of the Antichrist, or we’re sleepwalking toward Armageddon. “One world or none,” “Antichrist or Armageddon,” on one level, are the same question.
Thiel: It’s a very implausible plot hole. But I think we have an answer to this plot hole. 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.
Thiel: 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.
WATCH:
Peter Thiel is asked why he’s not the Antichrist he warns about if he’s actively building authoritarian rule via military and surveillance technologies
“These are different scenarios…obviously I don’t think that that’s what I’m doing” pic.twitter.com/cDEdAW1Eqs
— HOT SPOT (@HotSpotHotSpot) June 27, 2025
You can watch the entire interview below:
