Silicon Valley's Techno-Feudal Fantasy

Hi,

When I was a child, I loved to tell restaurant staff to deliver my “compliments to the chef”, like I saw in the movies (to be clear, my meal in question here was typically a basket of chicken strips and fries).

…Anyone else do that…

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Silicon Valley's Techno-Feudal Fantasy

Trump's second term arrived at a nexus point for American technological innovation. As rapidly as Trump has moved to reshape the federal government, AI has evolved even faster.

The tech elite have always been opportunistic in their political dealings. From Jeff Bezos to Elon Musk to Mark Zuckerberg, the wealthiest people on the planet quickly aligned themselves with Trump's administration, each maneuvering to push their AI products ahead of the competition.

Some, like Musk, relish the spotlight. His leadership of DOGE's dismantling of federal agencies made headlines, as did his public falling-out with Trump (and their quieter reconciliation at Charlie Kirk's funeral). Musk and others believe spectacle is its own form of power.

But there are quieter players from Silicon Valley who have secured deep positions of influence in Trump's orbit, operating far from public view.

Peter Thiel and the anti-Christ

Peter Thiel exemplifies this approach. The billionaire who co-founded PayPal, launched Palantir—the surveillance and data analytics company with billions in federal contracts with government intelligence agencies like ICE—and was Facebook's first major outside investor.

In private lectures over the past several months, Thiel has invoked biblical language to frame the debate over regulating artificial intelligence.

Behind closed doors, Thiel frequently compares AI regulation to the work of the anti-Christ; intentionally positioning tech oversight as an assault on divine will. He's even targeted climate activists like Greta Thunberg using this religious framing, casting activist concerns as somehow opposed to Christian values.

Thiel's most consequential political investment wasn't in think tanks or lobbying firms. It was in Vice President JD Vance.

Thiel poured over $15 million into Vance's 2022 Senate campaign in Ohio. Vance worked at Mithril Capital, a venture firm Thiel co-founded. Their connection is mentor-protégé, ideological ally, and now—with Vance as Vice President—a direct line from Silicon Valley to the oval office.

Vance didn't just receive Thiel's money, it increasingly appears he has absorbed Thiel’s worldview. That worldview has a name, a prophet, and a very strange, anti-democratic vision for America's future.

Curtis Yarvin: The Prophet of Techno-Feudalism

Curtis Yarvin, who writes under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug, is an ex-software engineer turned political blogger who has captured an alarming amount of attention from the wealthiest segment of Silicon Valley.

Yarvin’s writings argue a central thesis: democracy has failed, and America needs a CEO-style monarch to run it like a corporation.

Yarvin calls this vision "techno-feudalism"—a return to hierarchical governance where tech elites form a new aristocracy, liberated from democratic accountability. In his formulation, voting is inefficient, consensus is weakness, and the messy process of representative government should be replaced by algorithmic efficiency and enlightened autocracy. Think less "We the People" and more "corporate shareholder value optimization", but applied to our entire country.

Its a belief a number of Silicon Valley billionaires, from Thiel to Marc Andreessen, are quietly endorsing; even Vance himself has openly praised Yarvin's ideas

The appeal of these ideas to someone like Thiel is obvious. Yarvin's philosophy provides intellectual cover for what Silicon Valley already wants. A world where their technological and economic power faces no democratic constraints. Where "disruption" applies not just to industries but to government itself. Maybe the Bill of Rights becomes another legacy system in need of an upgrade.

An Old Playbook

The weaponization of Christian doctrine for political ends is as old as Christianity itself. When Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity as Rome's official religion in 313 AD, he did so to consolidate political power over a fracturing Roman empire, and win allies from the fast growing Christian following ballooning throughout the Mediterranean.

To be clear, this is not a criticism of Christianity or religion itself. It's an observation about how religious belief in America has been wielded as a weapon for enabling political policy.

My first column in this series looked the transformation of the Supreme Court, tracing its origins to Lewis Powell's 1971 memo. But I didn't fully explore how wealthy corporate interests co-opted Christian movements to serve their agenda—and that story is essential to understanding where we are now.

After Powell's memo circulated, an alliance formed between wealthy corporate interests and southern evangelicals mobilizing against abortion. The pitch being: "You don't want government in your church? We don't want it regulating our industries. Let's be allies."

This alliance has borne bitter fruit. For decades, the GOP has wrapped itself in the cross, making Christianity inseparable from party identity. Deeply religious conservatives, particularly in the south, form the bedrock of the Republican base. GOP policy moves in lockstep with this faction's perceived interests, which means deregulation of everything from fossil fuels to finance to technology gets sold as defending religious liberty itself.

The result is a political landscape where ever crueler ICE deportation practices are justified by divine mandate. Where Supreme Court justices are handpicked by ultra-conservative political actors like Leonard Leo. And now Peter Thiel is applying this exact playbook to artificial intelligence. He’s doing so because its worked over and over again in American politics.

He's arguing that regulating the development of AI is somehow contrary to Christian values. That subjecting these systems to democratic oversight is an act of spiritual rebellion. That the people calling for caution are modern-day servants of the anti-Christ.

It all sounds absurd, but its literally what is happening.

Reality Distortion

Whatever weird timeline we’ve been dropped into has increasingly become distorted by the very algorithms these tech companies created.

One aspect I do find beautiful and respect about faith is its basis in belief without needing proof; a trust in something larger than ourselves. But that same quality makes religious belief vulnerable to exploitation.

When people hear about "Christian Nationalism," I get the sense they often imagine America ruled by some theocratic emperor; like a cartoonish dystopia of forced conversions and mandatory church attendance. I don’t think that’s quite accurate.

What could be emerging is something more nefarious: a one-party state that wields Christian doctrine as justification to prosecute political opponents, silence dissent, and consolidate power—all while the wealthiest corporations in human history grow ever more influential over our lives without oversight, accountability, or democratic input.

This is a tale as old as organized religion. Except this go around it's being deployed in service of Silicon Valley billionaires who want to reshape American society according to their ketamine fueled day dreams.