[Editor’s note: Peter Thiel — billionaire investor, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, and a major influence in contemporary technology and politics — has in recent years drawn attention for his public reflections on apocalyptic themes, including the Antichrist and the biblical concept of the “katechon,” or the force that restrains the end of history. These ideas, shaped in part by the thought of René Girard and interpreted through modern political concerns, have begun to intersect with real-world questions about artificial intelligence, surveillance, and global power. The following is a translation of a column by Rodrigo Guerra López, secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, originally published in El Heraldo de México on March 16, 2026, which explores these themes from a Catholic perspective. —ML]
Peter Thiel is not just a Silicon Valley billionaire. He is one of the most influential thinkers shaping contemporary technopolitical power. The founder of PayPal, he is also the co-founder of Palantir. This is not merely a software company, but a particular vision of the state translated into a business for implementing strategic decisions based on big data.
Palantir brings together, within a single institution, surveillance, war, capital, and ideology. One of its most successful products, for example, is Gotham, which has served major security and intelligence agencies around the world for years. The issue with Palantir, then, is not only technical but also political and anthropological. When a platform becomes indispensable for policing, military strategy, and intelligence operations, a form of “vendor lock-in” emerges: the state is no longer purchasing a service, but the very framework through which it understands its own decisions. Technological dependence thus becomes a surrender of sovereignty.
This is not a neutral tool. It is the ideal infrastructure for a techno-authoritarian form of power, capable of classifying populations, prioritizing targets, and masking political decisions behind the appearance of technical efficiency. A concrete example is “Maven” — AI-integrated software used in military operations involving Iran — which reshapes the chain of decision-making to the point that the human being is reduced to little more than a symbolic safeguard. The question “who is a legitimate target?” risks shifting from human prudential judgment to algorithmic optimization.
A similar dynamic is at work in migration policy. Systems such as “Falcon” and “ImmigrationOS” make it possible to locate individuals, reconstruct family relationships, track patterns of movement, and coordinate forced removals. The migrant ceases to appear as a person with a face and a story and instead becomes a “target” to be processed.
Palantir is best understood in light of the political theology that shapes its founder’s thinking. Thiel draws from John Henry Newman the duty to watch for signs of the Antichrist; from René Girard, the insight that mimetic violence structures history; and from Carl Schmitt, the logic of friend versus enemy.
The problem is that, where Girard saw in Christ the breaking of the sacrificial mechanism, Thiel retains the diagnosis of violence but redirects the response toward the accumulation of power. For Thiel, there must be some force capable of restraining the Antichrist — yet that force is always ambiguous, always on the verge of becoming the Antichrist itself. In this framework, the United States occupies precisely this precarious position.
Pope Francis warned at the G7 summit that no innovation is neutral and that artificial intelligence can impose uniform models while reinforcing a “technocratic paradigm.” The Vatican document Antiqua et nova insists that peace cannot be sustained by means that justify injustice, violence, or oppression. Pope Leo XIV has likewise emphasized that AI must be evaluated in light of the integral development of the human person, and must never be confused with intelligence — still less with wisdom.
In this sense, Palantir becomes a revealing “sign of the times.” When technology promises salvation through total surveillance, the algorithmic selection of enemies, and the logistical management of the vulnerable, power ceases to serve humanity and instead begins to demand its obedience.
Image: By Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America – Peter Thiel, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115190828
Rodrigo Guerra López is the secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.
Originally from Mexico City, he graduated in philosophy from the Free Popular University of the State of Puebla, Mexico; he was then awarded a higher degree in university humanism from the Ibero-American University, Mexico, and a doctorate in philosophy from the International Academy of Philosophy of the Principality of Liechtenstein.
He has held the role of academic coordinator of the John Paul II Pontifical Institute in Mexico City and has served as professor of metaphysics, bioethics, and philosophy of law at the PanAmerican University, Mexico. In 2013 he held the Karol Wojtyla Memorial Lectures at the Catholic University of Lublin, Poland.
From 2004 to 2007 he directed the Observatorio Socio Pastoral of the Latin American Episcopal Council. In 2008 he founded the Centro de Investigación Social Avanzada (CISAV), of which he is professor-researcher of the Division of Philosophy and member of the Consejo de Gobierno.
He is a member of the theological commission of the Latin American Episcopal Council and of the Pontifical Academy for Life, and is the author of numerous publications in the field of anthropology, bioethics, and social philosophy.
Popular Posts