Does JD Vance have a Palantir problem?
In a recent conversation, Vice President JD Vance asked Roger Stone, President Donald Trump’s longtime confidant, for his biggest concern facing the country. Stone later recalled on his radio show that his answer was a technology company Vance now hears about with increasing frequency: Palantir.
For years, Democrats have zeroed in on Vance’s relationship with Palantir’s co-founder Peter Thiel, the iconoclastic tech titan who gave Vance one of his first jobs and later put $15 million behind his successful 2022 Ohio Senate bid.
But the pressure on Vance is now coming from inside Trump’s coalition. As the administration steers billions of dollars of new work to Palantir, prominent voices have expressed fears that the firm’s powerful data analytics tools could give the government sweeping, almost futuristic surveillance capabilities. MAGA architect Steve Bannon has likened Palantir to a sci-fi villain while comedian Joe Rogan called the company “creepy” on his top-ranked podcast.
Not only does JD Vance have a Palantir problem, NZ does too!
Palantir’s owner, Peter Thiel, was granted New Zealand citizenship in 2011 under the “exceptional circumstances” clause. He had spent only 12 days in NZ over five years but was approved because of his investments and purported “entrepreneurial benefit” to NZ
And what are those ‘benefits’?
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Reports going back more than a decade say that Palantir has had contracts with the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF), New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS) and Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB). Otago Daily Times Online News+2CNBC+2
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According to a public 2013 parliamentary question, the government (then-Prime Minister) declined to publicly confirm or deny which NZ intelligence agencies had contracts with Palantir, on the grounds of national security. parliament.nz+1
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The NZDF has, in the past, confirmed it uses Palantir software: licences, training for analysts, and integration of a “Palantir knowledge base and analysis capacity.” strategicstudyindia.com+1
So Paltir is involved with our Intelligence Apparatus, Thiel gets citizenship under the shadowy “exceptional circumstances” clause when Thiel is not growing his mass surveillance empire, he is hosting lectures on the ‘anti-christ’.
Why is a ‘Kiwi’ Tech Billionaire (and kid voted most likely to own a hollowed out Volcano super villain lair) suddenly hosting closed lectures on the Anti-Christ?
What new madness is this?
What’s Up With Peter Thiel’s Obsession With the Antichrist?
The tech mogul is amping up his apocalyptic rhetoric—and adding a dangerous dose of extremism into the already-fraught culture war.
In yet another troubling sign of these times, Peter Thiel can’t stop talking up the Antichrist. This month, the tech billionaire is delivering a four-part, closed-door lecture on the topic, which he is framing as “political theology,” in San Francisco. It’s part of what you might call an “Antichrist World Tour” by the PayPal and Palantir co-founder, who has already given off-the-record Antichrist lectures at Oxford, Harvard, and Bari Weiss’s ersatz college, the University of Austin.
It’s not clear why Thiel needs secrecy to hold forth on his latest obsession. He’s been pontificating about the Antichrist in public talks for years. During a June interview with The New York Times, Thiel offered extended thoughts on the shadowy figure, barely mentioned in the Bible, who according to legend (and countless pulp horror movies) will arise to help Satan kick off Armageddon. He even named a suspect: Greta Thunberg. (The interview went viral when Thiel struggled to answer a question about whether he wants the human race to endure.)
Thiel is not a theologian, scholar, or prophet. So why pay attention to his biblical musings? Because Thiel is one of the world’s most influential men and his Antichrist speeches reveal his deep belief that religion is a weapon for political warfare—and he’s right.
Thiel’s Antichrist fixation fits a long tradition in American politics. Since the nation’s founding, Americans have sought to name the Antichrist—usually by pointing the finger at their political enemies. “The symbol of the Antichrist has played a surprisingly significant role in shaping Americans’ self-understanding,” wrote historian Robert Fuller in 1995’s Naming the Antichrist: The History of an American Obsession. “Because they tend to view their nation as uniquely blessed by God, they have been especially prone to demonize their enemies.”
Over time, the identity of Satan’s Little Helper has shifted from Native Americans to Communists, Hitler and Saddam Hussein and Barack Obama—even barcodes and microchips have been implicated. From colonial days to the AI era, the hunt for the Antichrist continues. Today’s QAnon conspiracy theorists believe they are battling a cabal of cannibalistic Satanists. Unhumans, a 2024 book praised by JD Vance, equated progressives with bloodthirsty “unhuman” creatures. This turns politics into a zero-sum holy war.
Thiel knows these dynamics well, but it’s not clear whether he’s horrified or impressed. His talks stop short of providing solutions. Instead, they meld Schmitt, Girard, and scripture into an incisive meditation on the power of apocalyptic ideas. Thiel positions himself as someone trying to help the world navigate a “narrow path” between Armageddon and Antichrist. But his rhetoric also sketches a playbook for holy war, scapegoating, crisis, and power—since Schmitt famously argued that power consolidates during existential crises, when constitutions can be suspended.
“We’re told that there’s nothing worse than Armageddon, but perhaps there is,” said Thiel during a talk at Oxford in 2023. “Perhaps we should fear the Antichrist, perhaps we should fear the one-world totalitarian state more than Armageddon.”
He is already experimenting with this doomsday script: In January, he wrote an op-edframing Donald Trump’s return to power as an “apokálypsis”—an “unveiling” of hidden truth and a chance to cleanse the nation’s “sins.” And in his religion talks, Thiel does not hesitate to name potential Antichrists, including Greta Thunberg, communism, and even tech regulation. This reveals a telling urge to wield scripture as political weaponry.
…this matters because of the role Thiel had in building Vance. Both are speaking the language of end days, both seem intent on manipulating America’s Evangelical Right.
This all feels like the pre-equal to the HandMaid’s Tale.
Has Peter Thiel asked Judith or Luxon to pray with him yet?
Thiel is ‘going there’ with his secret anti-Christ lectures because the Evangelical Right in America has always funded conflict in Israel specifically to trigger Armageddon and Thiel is playing to that now.
The weird hyper religious martyrdom of Charlie Kirk was one thing.
JD Vance using Book of Revelations language around Charlie Kirk’s assassination was another…
Vice President J.D. Vance told Republicans to put on the “armor of God” and seek vengeance against “soulless and evil” institutions of the left.
…the massacre of Palestinians by Israel over the US Embassy recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital was driven by fanatical American Christians who see violence in the middle east as a pre-requisite for their rapture to heaven.
Sounds crazy?
It really is…
Middle Eastern prophecy: Is Trump King Cyrus reincarnated, destined to herald the end of days?
Prophecy is unfolding in the Middle East. Riots. Killings. War. At its centre is President Donald Trump. And his evangelical supporters are hoping he will bring on Armageddon.
The move of the United States Embassy to Jerusalem was bold.
Its outcome was predictable.
The territorial dispute between the Palestinians and the recently recreated (after some 1875 years) Israel has been erupting sporadically ever since 1948.
Any change to the delicate power balance was sure to topple into violence.
It has shattered hopes of fresh peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine.
It has also damaged the credibility of the US as a Middle East peace broker.
How this has been allowed to happen doesn’t make much sense — unless you look at it through the evangelical eyes of some of Trump’s top advisers and closest confidantes.
The move was about domestic politics.
Not international diplomacy.
…the real reason why Trump moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem and sparked the Israeli massacre of Palestinians has to be understood through the damaged world view prism of his must crazy supporters, Evangelical American voters.
For this voting block, the Bible is a literal version of events, not a metaphorical one. They believe the Earth is less than 10 000 years old, they believe climate change won’t flood the planet because God showed Noah a rainbow and they believe that the end of times and Armageddon could be upon us and they will all be raptured away to heaven.
How big is this voting block? A terrifying 50 million Americans consider themselves evangelical to this extent.
What’s more terrifying than that number of ignorant voters? That they all have a self-fulfilling evangelical death cult prophesy that sees creating conflict in Israel as the beginning of Armageddon.
I. Kid. You. Not.
Evangelicals, Israel, and the End of the World
There are some 50 million Evangelicals in the US who believe in the
literal truth of Bible prophecy. You can argue theological accuracy all you
want. This massive block of citizens possesses unshakable belief that the
end of the world will be heralded by a series of prophetic events some of
which have occurred (e.g. 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina) some of which are
ongoing (the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan).
I am not talking about Bible-thumping, street-corner ravers, though one
or two do appear in our film. The people we profiled — from Evangelical
leaders to rank-and-file believers — are for the most part formidable,
intelligent, well-educated. And all are fixated upon Israel (the land of
Christ’s return).
Waiting for Armageddon opens with James and Laura Bagg, an attractive
pair of 30-something jet-propulsion engineers living in Connecticut. Yes,
Evangelical rocket scientists from the Northeast.
“We could be raptured out of this world during this interview,” Laura
says, referring to a miracle where all good Christians disappear from earth
and rematerialize in the clouds as chaos seizes the world. “There will be
car crashes and plane crashes. And the people left behind will be asking,
‘Are they coming back for me?’”
Then James Bagg explains that, “You see God has a plan for the world
and it all centers around Israel.”
The Baggs are, in a way, typical. Millions of Evangelicals share one
political belief even more sacred perhaps than opposition to abortion or
same-sex marriage: The belief that Israel must remain a Jewish state
forever.
If that sounds unfamiliar or contradictory, then you’ve never spent much
time listening to Evangelicals. End Times theology declares that the Jewish
people must maintain control of Israel and Jerusalem, and retake the Al-Aqsa
Mosque (a/k/a the Dome of the Rock), or Jesus won’t return. Period.
Understand, they are talking about mankind’s ultimate salvation. And if that
means embracing foretold disasters and wars including the Battle of
Armageddon, so be it.
Professor Gary Dickerson from the all-Christian Corban College puts it
this way: “I don’t look at the wars in the Middle East with the hope that
things will work out. We’ve been told, Israel will experience this distress
all the way to the end.”
Thus comes the central political reality explored in Waiting for Armageddon: that Evangelicals risk creating what the Rev. Barbara Rossing calls “a self-fulfilling prophesy of death and destruction.”
…these religious fanatic lunatics believe that generating conflict in Israel will bring about their great war in the Valley of Armageddon which will herald the ends times as promised in the Book of Revelations.
They believe they will all be raptured to heaven and the planet will descend into a 7 year supernatural battle between mankind, the Anti-Christ and God.
This is what is forming American Foreign policy, and Trump’s agreement is merely pandering to this self-fulfilling Evangelical death cult prophesy so he can keep their votes.
Far-right Evangelical voters are happy to ignore his pussy grabbing because he’s going to inadvertently start the violence in the Middles East that gives them their self-fulfilling evangelical death cult prophesy.
I’m not sure what is more terrifying, crazy death cult literal Bible believing Christians who want to spark a war for the end of the world or a manipulative Leader happy to feed their lunacy.
That is the real reason Thiel is now doing secret lectures on the anti-Christ.
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