Existential risks will present themselves in the form of nuclear war, environmental disaster, dangerously engineered bioweapons and even autonomous killer robots guided by AI.
As humans race toward a last battle—the Armageddon—a one-world government will form, promising peace and safety. In Thiel’s reckoning, this totalitarian authoritarian regime, with real teeth and real power, will be the coming of the modern-day Antichrist, a figure defined in Christian teachings as the personal opponent of God who will appear before the world ends…
According to a review of his past lectures, Thiel draws on a theory that the Antichrist could be an individual or entity that is incredibly charismatic but talks repeatedly about the end of the world, thereby convincing society to give it the power needed to regulate the existential risks from science and technology.