Peter Thiel's new Antichrist warnings; Politico Decoded, October 8, 2026

CALDER MCHUGH,  BRENDAN BORDELON,  CHRISTINE MUI and  SAM SUTTON , Politico Decoded; Peter Thiel's new Antichrist warnings

"Tech billionaire Peter Thiel is sharpening his warnings about the Antichrist — which he sees as a force that could harm technological development — according to exclusive recordings obtained by Calder. His new comments come as AI races ahead and public concern over its risks grow.

Thiel began a closed four-part lecture series in Nashville last week, returning to a theme he explored in San Francisco last year before taking similar talks to Paris and Rome. Nashville is emerging as a hub for the tech right.

Decoded obtained recordings of his first two Nashville lectures, delivered on Sept. 28 and Oct. 5, and compared them to exclusive transcripts of his San Francisco talks. The structure is largely unchanged, and Thiel invokes religion to argue that regulation of the AI industry is evil — a notion that has taken hold among key factions of Silicon Valley investors."

The big idea: how can we live ethically in a world in crisis?; The Guardian, September 4, 2023

 William MacAskill, The Guardian; The big idea: how can we live ethically in a world in crisis?

"Over the last 14 years, I’ve helped to develop and promote an idea called effective altruism – the use of evidence and reason to figure out how to do as much good as possible. A movement of people has emerged who take this idea seriously and act on it...

Unfortunately, the emergency scenario we live in will not end soon. Most likely, it will persist as long as you or I are alive. For that reason, acting ethically means looking after yourself, too. My grandmother worked at Bletchley Park during the second world war, where Alan Turing famously cracked the Enigma code. She worked extremely hard, and had a nervous breakdown as a result. But as a child I remember her describing, with some fondness, how they would dance in the evenings. She was right to dance.

If we want to improve the world, we cannot focus merely on how bad things are. Our attention, instead, should be on what we can do to make things better."