Part 8: The Palantir's Gaze: How Peter Thiel's Anti-Democratic Vision Shapes Trump's Surveillance State
Part 1: The Dark Enlightenment Lens: Understanding the Slow Strangulation of Democracy
Part 3: Silicon Valley's Unholy Alliance: How Tech Wealth Powers the New Religious Right
Part 4: From Heidegger to Here: The Philosophical Roots of America's Alt Right
Part 5: Accelerating Toward Autocracy: Nick Land's Vision and Its Implementation
Part 7: The Hyperstition President: How Trump Became a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
In a recent YouTube interview with Ross Douthat on Interesting Times, billionaire tech mogul Peter Thiel revealed the depths of his dystopian worldview. He critiqued artificial intelligence, longevity science, and space travel while warning that humanity's lack of progress could lead to catastrophic outcomes, including what he ominously described as "the emergence of the Antichrist" (Douthat, 2025). For many observers, the interview served as a disturbing window into the mind of one of Silicon Valley's most influential and dangerous figures.
But Thiel's apocalyptic musings are far more than the eccentric ramblings of a wealthy technologist. They represent the philosophical foundation of a man who has spent decades building the infrastructure for an authoritarian surveillance state while simultaneously bankrolling politicians who share his disdain for democratic governance. The profound irony of Thiel's position - warning about authoritarianism while building surveillance tools for authoritarian control - cuts to the heart of what makes him uniquely dangerous in the current political moment.
Unlike other tech billionaires who have stumbled into authoritarianism through opportunism or ignorance, Thiel has explicitly and repeatedly stated his opposition to democracy itself. His 2009 essay declaring that freedom and democracy are incompatible was not a momentary lapse in judgment but a philosophical manifesto that has guided his subsequent actions (Silverman, 2024). Today, seven months into Donald Trump's second term as president, Thiel's anti-democratic vision is being systematically implemented through a vast network of allies, government contracts, and surveillance technologies that pose an unprecedented threat to American democracy (and perhaps all democracy).
The timing of Thiel's influence could not be more perilous. Since Trump's return to office, Palantir Technologies - the surveillance company Thiel co-founded and named after the corrupted seeing stones from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings - has received over $113 million in federal contracts (Kelly, 2025). The company's stock has soared more than 90% since Trump's election, reflecting investor confidence that the new administration will dramatically expand the surveillance state (Alexander & Tarabay, 2025).
Meanwhile, at least three members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are former Palantir employees, while others have worked at companies funded by Thiel (Alexander & Tarabay, 2025). As one expert noted, this level of tech billionaire infiltration into government is "unprecedented in the modern era" (Alexander & Tarabay, 2025).
What emerges from examining Thiel's career, philosophy, and current influence is a portrait of a man who has systematically worked to undermine democratic institutions while building the technological infrastructure for authoritarian control. His story is of how vast wealth, cutting-edge technology, and anti-democratic philosophy can combine to threaten the very foundations of free society.
Understanding Peter Thiel's darkness is essential to understanding the authoritarian moment we now face.
The Anti-Democratic Philosopher
Peter Thiel's opposition to democracy is a carefully articulated philosophical stance that he has maintained and refined over more than a decade. In 2009, the arch-libertarian Cato Institute published an essay by Thiel that would become infamous among those tracking the rise of anti-democratic sentiment in Silicon Valley (Silverman, 2024). In this piece, Thiel made his position crystal clear: "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible," he wrote, making his distaste for elections explicit and unambiguous (Silverman, 2024).
The essay revealed not just Thiel's opposition to democratic governance, but also his specific grievances with the expansion of democratic participation. He complained that "the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women" had been difficult for the libertarian cause (Silverman, 2024). This was a concrete complaint about the practical effects of democratic inclusion. Thiel was frustrated that an "unthinking demos" -that is, ordinary voters - guided electoral politics rather than the enlightened elite he believed should hold power (Silverman, 2024).
When Thiel was later accused of opposing women's suffrage, the Cato Institute published a response from him that seemed to double down on his desire to somehow escape democracy altogether (Silverman, 2024). "While I don't think any class of people should be disenfranchised," he wrote, "I have little hope that voting will make things better" (Silverman, 2024). This carefully worded statement managed to avoid explicitly calling for disenfranchisement, while making clear his fundamental opposition to democratic decision-making.
The intellectual foundations of Thiel's anti-democratic philosophy can be traced to his embrace of The Sovereign Individual by William Rees-Mogg and James Dale Davidson, a book that was "immensely popular in Silicon Valley in the 1990s and had influenced the future political trajectory of several tech leaders" (Silverman, 2025). The book's influence on Thiel's view of democracy is evident in its assertion that "voting was an effect rather than a cause of the megapolitical conditions that brought forth the modern nation-state. Mass democracy and the concept of citizenship flourished as the nation-state grew. They will falter as the nation-state falters" (Silverman, 2025).
After being outed as gay by the news blog Gawker in 2007, Thiel became "more public about his extremist politics. No longer even nominally a libertarian, he now adhered to more of an Objectivist philosophy" (Silverman, 2025). This philosophical evolution coincided with his increasing influence over other tech leaders, and his systematic construction of what would become known as the ‘New Right’ movement.
Thiel's anti-democratic philosophy has found fertile ground among a carefully cultivated network of intellectuals, politicians, and tech leaders. He has funded "a number of ideological publications, including the Journal of American Greatness, American Affairs, Quillette, and Inference" as well as backing "the 'intellectual dark web,' a collection of none-too-bright online influencers who have presented themselves as learned scholars" (Silverman, 2025). The billionaire has "spread his wealth so widely across the conservative discourse sphere that it's almost impossible to track" (Silverman, 2025).
Perhaps most significantly, Thiel has served as a mentor and patron to Curtis Yarvin, the neoreactionary blogger who advocates for replacing American democracy with a form of monarchy led by a CEO (Kofman, 2025). Yarvin, who initially wrote under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug, has become increasingly influential within Trump's circle, with his ideas "coursing through" the administration (Politico, 2025). The connection between Thiel and Yarvin illustrates how anti-democratic ideas have moved from the intellectual fringe to the centre of American political power.
The success of Thiel's ideological project is evident in the 2021 National Conservatism Conference, where a Thiel-aligned after-party brought together "Yarvin, soon-to-be-senator J.D. Vance, Newsweek editor Josh Hammer, Trump official Michael Anton, writers Chris Arnade and Sohrab Ahmari, and others" (Silverman, 2025). This gathering represented the crystallisation of what James Pogue described as the ‘New Right,’ a movement "heavily populated by people with graduate degrees" and "a highly online set of Substack writers, podcasters, and anonymous Twitter posters" (Silverman, 2025).
The danger of Thiel's anti-democratic philosophy extends far beyond his personal beliefs. As a billionaire with vast resources and influence, Thiel has the power to act on his convictions in ways that most people cannot. His investments, political donations, and business decisions all flow from his fundamental rejection of democratic accountability. When he funds political candidates, builds surveillance technologies, or structures his companies to avoid oversight, he is actively working to create the post-democratic future he envisions.
Moreover, Thiel's philosophy has found fertile ground among other tech billionaires and Silicon Valley elites who share his frustration with democratic constraints on their power. The rise of what critics call ‘techno-authoritarianism’ reflects the growing influence of Thiel's ideas among people with the resources to implement them. When Elon Musk spoke of making Twitter (now X) a ‘digital town square’ while simultaneously using it to amplify authoritarian propaganda, or when other tech leaders call for ‘disrupting’ government through private sector solutions, they are echoing themes that Thiel has been developing for years.
The intellectual framework that Thiel has constructed around his anti-democratic beliefs also provides a veneer of respectability for what might otherwise be recognised as simple authoritarianism. By couching his opposition to democracy in the language of libertarian philosophy and technological progress, Thiel has made anti-democratic ideas seem sophisticated and forward-thinking rather than reactionary and dangerous. This intellectual packaging has been crucial to his influence, allowing him to spread anti-democratic ideas among educated elites who might otherwise reject them.
Understanding Thiel's anti-democratic philosophy is essential because it reveals the intentionality behind his actions. Every major decision in his career - from naming his company after a tool of authoritarian control to funding candidates who attack democratic institutions - flows logically from his explicit rejection of democratic governance. The darkness of Peter Thiel lies not in hidden motivations or secret agendas. It lies in the open pursuit of a post-democratic future that he has been advocating for over a decade.
Palantir: The Surveillance Leviathan
The true genius of Peter Thiel's malevolence resides in his construction of the technological infrastructure needed to implement authoritarian control. At the centre of this project stands Palantir Technologies, the data analytics company that Thiel co-founded in 2003 and named with a deliberate nod to the corrupted seeing stones from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (Reich, 2025). The choice of name was no accident: in Tolkien's mythology, a palantir is "a seeing stone that can be used to distort truth and present selective visions of reality," and during the War of the Ring, "a palantir falls under the control of Sauron, who uses it to manipulate and deceive" (Reich, 2025).
The literary reference reveals Thiel's understanding of his own project. Like Tolkien's palantir, Palantir Technologies "bears a striking similarity" to its fictional namesake (Reich, 2025). The company sells an AI-based platform that allows its users - among them, military and law enforcement agencies - to analyse vast amounts of personal data, including social media profiles, personal information, and physical characteristics (Reich, 2025). These capabilities are used to identify and surveil individuals on a scale that would have been unimaginable to previous generations of authoritarians.
The scope of Palantir's surveillance capabilities becomes clear when examining its government contracts and applications. The company has created what critics describe as an "AI-powered super-database on all Americans," combining data from multiple sources to create comprehensive profiles of individuals that can be accessed by government agencies (Reich, 2025). This system goes far beyond traditional law enforcement databases, incorporating social media activity, financial transactions, travel patterns, and other personal information to create a panopticon of unprecedented scope and sophistication.
Since Donald Trump returned to office in 2025, Palantir's role in government surveillance has expanded dramatically. The company has received over $113 million in federal contracts, including a massive $800 million Pentagon deal that signals the administration's commitment to expanding surveillance capabilities (Kelly, 2025). Perhaps most troubling is Palantir's $30 million contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to provide "almost real-time visibility into immigrants' movements" as the agency assists Trump's promised mass deportation program (NPR, 2025).
The integration of Palantir's technology into the Trump administration's operations raises profound questions about the use of surveillance for political purposes. As Robert Reich noted in The Guardian, "Will the Trump regime use an emerging super-database to advance Trump's political agenda, find and detain immigrants, and punish critics? Will it make it easier for Trump to spy on and target his ever-growing list of enemies and other Americans?" (Reich, 2025). These are immediate threats given Trump's well-documented history of using government power to target political opponents and Thiel's explicit support for such tactics.
The danger posed by Palantir extends beyond its current contracts to its potential for expansion under a sympathetic administration. The company's technology is designed to be scalable and adaptable, capable of incorporating new data sources and analytical capabilities as they become available. In the hands of an authoritarian leader like Trump, supported by an anti-democratic technologist like Thiel, this infrastructure could easily be turned against journalists, activists, political opponents, and ordinary citizens who dare to dissent.
The timing of Palantir's expansion is particularly ominous given the broader context of democratic backsliding in the United States. As Reich observed, the danger inherent in Palantir's surveillance capabilities "is connected to the vast wealth and power of those associated with the corporation, and their apparent disdain for democratic institutions" (Reich, 2025). The company represents the intersection of three dangerous trends: the concentration of wealth among tech billionaires, the development of increasingly sophisticated surveillance technologies, and the rise of explicitly anti-democratic political movements.
Historical parallels make the threat even more stark. Reich draws connections between the current moment and the 1930s, noting that "gross inequalities of income and wealth fuel abuses of political power - as Trump, Musk, Thiel, Karp and other oligarchs have put on full display - which in turn generate strongmen who destroy both democracy and freedom" (Reich, 2025). The difference today is that modern authoritarians have access to surveillance technologies that their historical predecessors could only dream of.
The PayPal Mafia's Political Network
Peter Thiel's influence on American politics extends far beyond his personal donations and public statements. Through what has become known as the ‘PayPal Mafia’- the network of former PayPal executives and employees who have gone on to found or lead major technology companies - Thiel has created an unprecedented web of political influence that now reaches into the highest levels of the Trump administration (Mathews, 2025). This network represents a new form of oligarchic power, where tech billionaires use their wealth and connections to infiltrate and reshape government institutions.
The crown jewel of Thiel's political project is J.D. Vance, the current Vice President who Thiel essentially created as a political figure. Thiel poured a record $15 million into Vance's Senate campaign, making him "singularly responsible for the rise of J.D. Vance" (Silverman, 2024). This was a comprehensive investment in building a political career from the ground up. It was "Thiel himself who introduced Trump to his running mate," after Vance had worked at one of Thiel's venture capital firms (Mathews, 2025). Thiel's support transformed Vance from a relatively unknown venture capitalist and author into a major political figure who now sits one heartbeat away from the presidency.
The scope of Thiel's network infiltration becomes clear when examining the specific positions his allies now hold. Ken Howery, Thiel's "longtime colleague" who "worked with Thiel at PayPal and launched the esteemed VC firm Founders Fund with him, was nominated to be the ambassador to Denmark" (Mathews, 2025). David Sacks, who "co-authored a book with Thiel criticizing policies like affirmative action, is Trump's aforementioned AI and crypto czar" (Mathews, 2025). A Thiel protégé who worked at Thiel's former hedge fund Clarium Capital is now "director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, responsible for overseeing Trump's tech policy agenda" (Mathews, 2025).
The financial incentives driving this network are substantial and create powerful motivations for expanding authoritarian policies. Several companies backed by Thiel depend heavily on government contracts, and their valuations have soared since Trump's election. Anduril Industries, a defense technology startup backed by Thiel's Founders Fund, landed an expanded role in a deal with the US Army that could be valued at more than $20 billion (Alexander & Tarabay, 2025). The week before that announcement, Anduril's valuation reportedly doubled thanks to a $2.5 billion funding round led by Founders Fund (Alexander & Tarabay, 2025). Scale AI, another Founders Fund portfolio company, with its managing director now in the Trump administration, announced a new deal with the Department of Defense (Alexander & Tarabay, 2025).
The ideological coherence of Thiel's network extends beyond business relationships to encompass a shared commitment to dismantling democratic institutions. As one political adviser from the tech industry told The Washington Post, donors were becoming increasingly focused on a specific agenda: "We don't care about [transgender] kids going to bathrooms. We care about dismantling the regulatory state" (Silverman, 2025). This focus on deregulation aligns perfectly with Thiel's anti-democratic philosophy and his business interests in companies that thrive in environments with minimal government oversight.
The network's influence also extends to shaping the broader political discourse through its connections to media and academic institutions. Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist who has been "known to urge his associates to read Yarvin's blog," came out publicly for Trump after the Biden administration proposed taxing unrealised capital gains (Silverman, 2025). This coordination between Thiel's network and other tech billionaires has created what critics describe as a "tech oligarchy" that operates largely outside democratic accountability.
The historical precedent for this kind of oligarchic network infiltrating government is deeply troubling. As writer Quinn Slobodian noted, "The ambition seems to be more than just working at an arm's length and profiting from state contracts. There is an ambition for a bottom-up renovation of how the government operates" (Alexander & Tarabay, 2025). This represents not simply corruption or influence peddling but an attempt to reshape government institutions according to Thiel's worldview.
The PayPal Mafia's infiltration of the Trump administration represents a fundamental challenge to democratic governance. When a small group of tech billionaires can place their allies throughout government, award themselves lucrative contracts, and reshape policy to serve their interests, the basic premise of democratic accountability begins to unravel.
Understanding this network and its operations is essential to grasping the full scope of the authoritarian threat that Peter Thiel represents.
The Gawker Precedent: Weaponizing Wealth Against Press Freedom
Long before Peter Thiel's surveillance technologies and political networks posed direct threats to democratic institutions, he demonstrated his willingness to use vast wealth as a weapon against press freedom. This was done through his secret war against Gawker Media. The Gawker case, which came to light in 2016, revealed not just Thiel's vindictive nature, but his sophisticated understanding of how billionaire resources could be deployed to destroy media outlets that dare to criticise or expose the powerful (Isaac, 2016). What began as one billionaire's personal vendetta has since evolved into an assault on press freedom that now threatens the very foundations of investigative journalism.
The origins of Thiel's campaign against Gawker trace back to 2007, when the media company published an article that identified Thiel as gay (Isaac, 2016). While Thiel was not entirely closeted - his sexuality was known within Silicon Valley circles - he viewed the public disclosure as a violation of his privacy and an attack that demanded retaliation. What followed was a carefully orchestrated campaign of financial warfare designed to destroy Gawker entirely.
Thiel's strategy was deeply disturbing in its implications for press freedom. Rather than suing Gawker directly, which would have revealed his involvement and subjected him to public scrutiny, Thiel secretly funded a series of lawsuits by other parties against the media company (Isaac, 2016). The most successful of these was Hulk Hogan's invasion of privacy lawsuit, which Thiel supported with approximately £10 million in legal funding (Isaac, 2016). The strategy worked: in 2016, a Florida jury awarded Hogan one hundred and forty million dollars in damages, a sum that forced Gawker into bankruptcy and effectively destroyed the company (Isaac, 2016).
The Gawker case established a dangerous precedent that has been replicated and refined by other wealthy individuals seeking to silence critical media coverage. Since Thiel's success in destroying Gawker, numerous cases have emerged of billionaires funding lawsuits against media outlets, creating what critics describe as a "litigation industrial complex" designed to intimidate journalists and suppress critical coverage (Enrich, 2025). This pattern represents a fundamental threat to press freedom in an era of extreme wealth inequality, where the cost of legal defense can bankrupt even well-established media organisations.
Elon Musk's ongoing legal assault against Media Matters provides a textbook example of the Gawker precedent in action. After Media Matters published research showing that advertisements appeared next to pro-Nazi content on Musk's platform X, Musk filed lawsuits against the organisation in multiple jurisdictions - Texas, Ireland, and Singapore - in what Media Matters describes as "abusive, costly and meritless lawsuits to punish" critical coverage. The organisation has been forced to lay off staff due to the financial burden of defending against these coordinated attacks, with its president blaming a "legal assault on multiple fronts" for the cuts (Freedom Press Foundation, 2024). This demonstrates how billionaires don't need to win their lawsuits to achieve their goal of silencing critics.
Perhaps most troubling is how the Gawker precedent has normalised the idea that wealthy individuals can use the legal system as a weapon against press freedom. What was once seen as an abuse of the legal system is now treated as a legitimate business strategy. When billionaires openly threaten "thermonuclear lawsuits" against media outlets, as Musk did against Media Matters, they are following a playbook that Thiel perfected and that has proven devastatingly effective (CNBC, 2023).
Understanding the Gawker precedent is crucial to grasping the full scope of the threat that Thiel represents to democratic institutions and the rule of law. The case was not an isolated incident but the opening salvo in a broader war against democratic accountability. It revealed Thiel's willingness to destroy any institution - media, political, or otherwise - that stands in the way of his vision, using methods that have since been adopted by other billionaires and political leaders who share his contempt for democratic oversight.
Conclusion
The surveillance state is not coming; it is here. While Americans debate politics as usual, Peter Thiel's Palantir systems are already tracking immigrants in real-time for mass deportation. While journalists write about threats to democracy, Thiel's network controls the very agencies meant to protect it. While civil liberties organisations file lawsuits, Thiel's companies are being awarded billions more in contracts to expand their reach.
This is a documentation of present reality. Seven months into Trump's second term, the infrastructure of authoritarian control that Thiel spent decades building is operational, expanding, and generating enormous profits. Every day of inaction makes dismantling it exponentially more difficult.
The most chilling aspect of Thiel's success is not his wealth or his technology, but how completely he has normalised the unthinkable. A man who openly despises democracy now controls the surveillance apparatus of the world's most powerful democracy. A company named after an instrument of authoritarian deception is trusted with the most sensitive data of American citizens. A network of anti-democratic ideologues has infiltrated the highest levels of government, and the media treats this as normal political horse-trading rather than a constitutional crisis.
Thiel has achieved something that previous oligarchs could only dream of: he has made authoritarianism seem inevitable. His patient, methodical approach has created a sense that resistance is futile, that the surveillance state is simply the price of technological progress, that democracy was always doomed to fail in the face of superior efficiency. This psychological victory may be his greatest achievement - convincing a free people to surrender their freedom voluntarily.
But inevitability is an illusion that authoritarians always promote. The surveillance infrastructure can be dismantled. The government contracts can be cancelled. The network of influence can be exposed and disrupted. The legal precedents can be overturned. What cannot be recovered is time, and time is running out faster than most Americans realise.
The window for peaceful resistance is closing with each passing day. Once surveillance systems become fully integrated into the machinery of government, once anti-democratic networks control all the levers of power, once the legal system is completely captured by billionaire interests, the options for democratic resistance become severely limited. History shows us that authoritarian consolidation follows a predictable pattern, and we are dangerously far along that path.
Peter Thiel's darkness is not a philosophical abstraction or a future possibility; it is the defining political reality of our time. His vision of post-democratic governance is being implemented through the destruction of democratic institutions, the construction of surveillance infrastructure, and the normalisation of oligarchic control. The question is not whether this represents a threat to democracy. The question is whether democracy has the strength left to defend itself.
The palantir's gaze is not coming, it is already upon us. The only question that matters now is whether we will look back.
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