Inside billionaire Peter Thiel’s private ‘Antichrist’ lectures
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 23 October 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
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Summary
One of the hottest events in San Francisco over the past couple of months was a lecture series by tech billionaire Peter Thiel – in which he preached about those he thinks are “legionnaires of the Antichrist.” Thiel has shared his Christian viewpoints publicly and is a longtime supporter of conservative politicians. But in these talks, he asserts that those who are pro-regulation are also against God.
The lectures were off the record, but Gerrit De Vynck and other reporters at The Post obtained leaked recordings of them. Today on “Post Reports,” Gerrit shares these recordings with host Colby Itkowitz and unpacks what Thiel’s argument says about tech’s growing power and ambition during the second Trump administration.
Today’s show was produced by Sabby Robinson. It was edited by Laura Benshoff and mixed by Sean Carter.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good evening. Thank you for having me. Many of you know me from public life as a technology investor, entrepreneur. |
| 0:12.3 | That's tech billionaire Peter Thiel. The post obtained exclusive leaked recordings of a series of talks he gave in San Francisco recently. The topic, broadly, was |
| 0:22.7 | faith and technology. In private, a small, oh, Orthodox Christian, humble, classical, |
| 0:28.8 | liberal, with just one seemingly minor deviation from classical liberal orthodoxy. I am worried |
| 0:36.3 | about the Antichrist. That's right, the Antichrist. At these |
| 0:41.0 | lectures, Teal made the case that some who want to limit the power of tech companies are working |
| 0:46.6 | against God. In the 21st century, the Antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all the sides. |
| 1:04.0 | Teal has been a big figure in Silicon Valley for a while, but now he's close to political power too. He has allies in the White House, like Vice President J.D. Vance and White House Crypto-Zar David Sacks. |
| 1:10.0 | Post-tech reporter Garrett Garrett DeVink, |
| 1:13.0 | says that makes his views especially potent. Peter Thiel has always been conservative. He's always |
| 1:18.4 | opposed most tech regulation, but he is more politically influential now than he's probably |
| 1:25.2 | been at any point in his career. And he's also bringing |
| 1:28.7 | in his religion, his faith, which just sort of amplifies these ideas and gets a lot more people |
| 1:34.4 | talking about them. |
| 1:38.5 | From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post reports. I'm Colbyby Ekowitz. It's Thursday, October 23rd. |
| 1:47.0 | Today, inside a secretive lecture series that's the talk of Silicon Valley and what it says about tech's growing power and ambition during the Second Trump administration. Hey, Garrett, thanks so much for joining me. |
| 2:08.7 | Of course. |
| 2:09.5 | So, Garrett, before we dive too deeply into these lectures, I think it'd be helpful to know about Teal, who he is, and how has he gained all this power |
| 2:19.6 | in the tech world? |
| 2:21.5 | Peter Thiel is, you know, one of the richest people in the world, so that's a big place of |
| 2:25.5 | where his power comes from, and his wealth really stems from being an early investor in a lot |
| 2:30.8 | of the big technology companies that have kind of grown in size of the last 20 |
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