Peter Thiel is a “Tech Right” billionaire, entrepreneur and venture capitalist, avid reader of “The Lord of the Rings,” and sometime-mentor to sitting Vice President J.D. Vance. He came to prominence when he co-founded PayPal in 1999 and became the first outside investor in Facebook, later founding Palantir Technologies and a host of companies named after items from J.R.R. Tolkien’s work. But a recent interview Thiel gave, addressing everything from political philosophy and the state of the tech industry to immortality and the Antichrist, places Thiel’s worldview is at odds with the Christian values Tolkien espoused and elucidated in the books that the Silicon Valley titan claims to love so much. In fact, Thiel’s philosophy has far more in common with that of Sauron or Saruman, the Luciferian villains of “The Lord of the Rings,” than with that of any of Tolkien’s heroes.

In a New York Times interview ominously entitled “Peter Thiel and the Antichrist,” the Palantir founder began discussing “technological stagnation,” suggesting that advances in cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence (AI) are significant, but asking, “Is it enough to really get out of this generalized sense of stagnation?” Thiel identified rapid advances in technology — from railroads and airplanes to space shuttles and computers — between the early 18th century and the 1970s as a sort of golden age, noting that recent developments have largely been relegated to the digital world. “I think there are deep reasons the stagnation happened,” he posited, continuing, “People ran out of ideas. I think, to some extent, the institutions degraded and became risk-averse, and some of these cultural transformations we can describe.” Thiel further noted, “But then I think to some extent people also had some very legitimate worries about the future, where if we continued to have accelerating progress, were you accelerating toward environmental apocalypse or nuclear apocalypse or things like that?”

If that “technological stagnation” persists, Thiel suggested, then “society — I don’t know. It unravels, it doesn’t work.” In fact, Thiel suggested that the hallmark of the Antichrist — or at least the means by which he takes control of the world — could be a promise to prolong technological stagnation and stymie technological advances. “Now, I have a lot of thoughts on this topic, but one question is — and this was a plot hole in all these Antichrist books people wrote — how does the Antichrist take over the world? He gives these demonic, hypnotic speeches, and people just fall for it,” Thiel said. He continued, “But I think we have an answer to this plot hole. The way the Antichrist would take over the world is you talk about Armageddon nonstop. You talk about existential risk nonstop, and this is what you need to regulate.” Thiel posited, “It’s the opposite of the picture of Baconian science from the 17th, 18th century, where the Antichrist is like some evil tech genius, evil scientist who invents this machine to take over the world. People are way too scared for that.” He continued, “In our world, the thing that has political resonance is the opposite. The thing that has political resonance is: We need to stop science, we need to just say ‘stop’ to this.”

When pressed on the point by interviewer Ross Douthat, Thiel suggested that the reign of the Antichrist, in his view, may have already begun. “But is what I’ve just told you so preposterous, as a broad account of the stagnation, that the entire world has submitted for 50 years to peace and safetyism? This is 1 Thessalonians 5:3 — the slogan of the Antichrist is ‘peace and safety,’” the tech billionaire said. He added, “And so it is at least a question about why we’ve had 50 years of stagnation. And one answer is we ran out of ideas. The other answer is that something happened culturally where it wasn’t allowed.”

Christianity has long been a friend to science, furthering the study of the world that God created and, where beneficial and in accord with the order God has prescribed to the natural world, supporting developments of new technologies, medicines, and the like. Science becomes problematic when it seeks to re-order God’s designs and place man (a creature, part of the natural world) above the rest of nature, elevating him to the plane of supernature. In other words, science is a tool used for good when in the service of God’s created order and for evil when used to replace God with man.

Tolkien understood this concept intimately, both being a devout Christian and having a great love of nature and its beauty, out of which grew a deep distrust and even animosity towards technology. In his books, those who seek to reshape the created world in their own image are villains, and use technology or unnatural means to achieve their goals — whether Morgoth, the Satan-parallel in “The Silmarillion;” his lieutenant, Sauron, who rises to take the mantle of Dark Lord after Morgoth’s fall; the corrupt Númenorean king Ar-Pharazôn, who seeks eternal life through human sacrifice; the nine Nazgûl, who seek power, wealth, and immortality through the rings of power; or Saruman, the powerful wizard who abandons good for evil in his quest for world domination.

Saruman is perhaps the most obvious example in Tolkien’s work of the evils of unchecked or unrestricted technological advance. With his machinery, the treacherous wizard raises and arms a seemingly invincible army, an improvement in strength and brazenness on the Orcs of Mordor. Once among the most beautiful places in Middle-earth, Saruman’s abode at Isengard is marred by the “wheels, as it were, of many machines” and “furnaces” spewing “smoke and fumes,” agents of his industry. “The plain, too, was bored and delved. Shafts were driven deep into the ground; their upper ends were covered with low mounds and domes of stone, so that in the moonlight the Ring of Isengard looked like a graveyard of unquiet dead,” Tolkien wrote in “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.”

Similarly, when Saruman is shown mercy and allowed to live following the monumental Battle of Helm’s Deep, he makes his way to the Shire, the long-unmolested pastoral land of the Hobbits, and wreaks further mechanized destruction. Fields and farms are left barren, ugly new blocks of stone and metal houses are constructed haphazardly, and much that was once beautiful in the Shire is felled. In “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” Tolkien wrote, “The trees were the worst loss and damage, for at [Saruman’s] bidding they had been cut down recklessly far and wide over the Shire; and Sam grieved over this more than anything else.”

Oddly enough, one of Thiel’s best-known and most successful companies, Palantir Technologies, is named after the seeing-stones from Tolkien’s legends. It is while arrogantly using his palantir that Saruman the White becomes corrupt, coming into contact with the Dark Lord Sauron, who bends the wizard’s will to his own. Another character, Denethor, is likewise betrayed by the palantíri; although the Gondorian steward’s will cannot be bent to Sauron’s, it is broken, and he is left a suicidal, narcissistic figure of despair. Thiel’s company is a data analysis and mass surveillance firm, which certainly sounds more emblematic of the coming of the Antichrist than cries that technology is going too far and too fast.

Another Thiel-connected corporation, Anduril Industries, named after Aragorn’s reforged sword in “The Lord of the Rings,” focuses on defense contracting and weapons development, specializing in military drones and missiles. Through his investment group Founders Fund, nicknamed “the Precious,” Thiel orchestrated the company’s founding and provided seed funding, and several Palantir executives switched over to Anduril. Although his books feature several scenes of epic warfare, Tolkien, informed by his experiences in World War I and his son’s experiences in World War II, was openly critical of the increasing role of technology in war. “Well, the first War of the Machines seems to be drawing to its final inconclusive chapter — leaving, alas, everyone the poorer, many bereaved or maimed, and millions dead, and only one thing triumphant: the Machines. As the servants of men become more important, men become less free,” Tolkien wrote in a letter to his son, Christopher, as World War II neared its end.

In “The Lord of the Rings,” Tolkien wrote, in the character of the gentle Gondorian captain Faramir, “I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.” While referring chiefly to the weapons of war, this sentiment is echoed by Tolkien more broadly in a 1954, succinctly summarizing his views on technology: “I am not a ‘technocrat’ nor yet a ‘Luddite’ — though I have no time for the worshippers of machinery, nor for those who think that after all it is only machinery.”

Tolkien’s position on technology — appreciating craftsmanship and the sort of simple technology that serves the needs of man, even allowing man to be man more freely perhaps, but abhorring the domineering sort of or approach to technology that lays claim to all aspects of man’s life and advances far beyond what God has ordained as natural — is a distinctly Christian one. Alarmingly, it is also very close to Thiel’s definition of the Antichrist.