The founder of Palantir and the founder of SpaceX are fighting for the soul of Donald Trump. Peter Thiel is warning the people of San Francisco, Paris, and Rome about the coming of an Antichrist. At the same time, his Palantir serves the powers that be. Elon Musk is promising the seamless web of minds, machines, and data flows. At the same time, he produces Teslas and batteries in the United States of America, in China, and in the European Union. Meanwhile, wars rage in Ukraine (courtesy of the Russian Federation), in the Middle East (courtesy of Israel, Iran, and the United States), and elsewhere. According to Thiel, the Contrarian, the forthcoming Antichrist will not be a person, but a system with no alternative. According to Musk…
We do not know – yet – what roads were not taken before we decided on our cyborg future, before we failed to write the constitution for the Artificial Intelligence, before we even realized we were at the crossroads. Does history – this flow of one damned thing after another – offer a clue? Perhaps. In his Antichrist lecture, Thiel – his German roots notwithstanding – offers a hypothesis. About a road not taken. Perhaps unfortunately so. Here comes his musings.
In 1945, when the military defeat of the German armies became a question of weeks, the Allied leaders decided what to do with the German elites supervising genocide under the national-socialist banners. Stalin wanted a show trial, no more. Nazi criminals were a great pool for the future STASI cadres. Americans were more restrained. But they were also interested in the Werners von Braun, just in case. Churchill opted for the firing squad for the top 50.000 nazis, no questions asked, no courts needed. Russians prevailed. Churchill’s road was not taken. Could we have avoided coming closer to World War III in 2026 if Churchill had prevailed in 1945?
Haarlem, March 28, 2026