Recent revelations about a secretive elite network organized by German-American tech billionaire Peter Thiel have pulled back the curtain on a growing, underreported trend: the spread of apocalyptic, end-times worldviews among the most powerful figures in global politics and technology. Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and data analytics firm Palantir, has brought together top CEOs, billionaires, and high-ranking political leaders for his closed group called “Dialog,” with confirmed members including NATO Supreme Commander Alexus Grynkewich and former White House senior advisor Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law. This year, Thiel also delivered a series of confidential lectures in San Francisco that framed modern debates over technology and politics through biblical apocalyptic language.
Thiel has publicly argued that humanity faces existential catastrophe from two sources: nuclear conflict and unregulated, out-of-control artificial intelligence, which he claims could trigger a biblical “Armageddon.” In his framework, only the most innovative and privileged elite — those included in his secret network — would survive such a collapse. Thiel is far from an outlier; a growing share of powerful figures across technology and politics now view global affairs through the lens of imminent civilizational collapse, a shift that is reshaping policy and geopolitics.
The use of end-times narratives to consolidate political power is not a new phenomenon. Centuries ago, Rome’s first emperor Augustus leveraged fears of moral decay across the empire to justify centralizing all authority in his own hands. But today’s iteration of “end-times politics” differs dramatically from historical precedents. Both real and manufactured threats now spread at unprecedented speeds, amplified by social media algorithms that prioritize outrage, hysteria, and conspiracy theories over nuanced, factual reporting.
In Silicon Valley circles, AI is routinely framed as either humanity’s savior or its ultimate extinction event. Palantir CEO Alex Karp has gone so far as to call the global race to advance artificial intelligence “our Oppenheimer moment,” arguing that wealthy world powers must choose between halting development of a potentially catastrophic technology or racing ahead to seize a decisive geopolitical advantage.
Yet this apocalyptic thinking has long since moved beyond the eccentric bubbles of Silicon Valley, embedding itself in the highest halls of formal political power. Political leaders now leverage end-times narratives to advance radical policy agendas, a trend that has been particularly pronounced in the second Trump administration. A large number of active-duty U.S. military personnel have filed official complaints alleging that senior commanders use biblical end-times rhetoric to justify planned U.S. military action against Iran, framing conflict with the country as a necessary precursor to the second coming of Jesus Christ.
This rhetoric has grown alongside the Trump administration’s deliberate courting of the Christian right, particularly evangelical voters, who form a core constituency for the administration’s “spiritual warfare” agenda. U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has repeatedly positioned himself as a divine instrument in an existential civilizational battle to defend Christianity, and senior administration officials have systematically stacked Pentagon and other executive department roles with evangelical Christians and Christian Zionists. This pattern forms part of a broader ideological shift, where leading political and business figures blend their interpretations of Christian eschatology with beliefs about American global supremacy.
The tangible consequences of this apocalyptic myth-making are already visible in U.S. foreign and domestic policy. Trump’s stark threats against Iran — including an April statement warning that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” — illustrate how end-times framing paves the way for radical, high-stakes policy shifts, both in the U.S. and across the globe. The Trump administration has also pushed the narrative that Europe faces irreversible continental decline and “civilizational erasure” driven by immigration and European integration, echoing similar rhetoric from right-wing leaders across the West. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, for example, has repeatedly warned that the United Kingdom is on the brink of “societal collapse” driven by immigration and progressive policy change.
Decades of social science research confirm that when populations believe they face an existential threat, they are far more willing to support extreme, extraordinary measures that would be rejected in ordinary times. Research also shows that the personal psychological dispositions of political leaders carry far more weight during periods of widespread uncertainty. The rapid, unforeseen changes brought by technological transformation and climate disruption have already created widespread public anxiety, and this creates a dangerous opening: leaders can frame political opponents, grassroots social movements, and marginalized minority groups as existential “foes” to justify consolidation of power and crackdowns on dissent.
Modern end-times politics is ultimately a battle to define what counts as the ultimate threat facing humanity. In an era where the world faces a growing list of tangible, evidence-based risks, these elite apocalyptic worldviews will shape how both national and global politics evolve in the coming decades. This shift is compounded by another critical change to global power structures: for most of modern history, the most influential actors in global politics were elected officials and state institutional leaders. Today, a new class of unelected tech executives, armed with massive personal wealth and outsized media influence, exercise unprecedented power over state policy. Their influence often penetrates deep into the core of state institutions, exemplified by Elon Musk’s senior role leading the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency and SpaceX’s centrality to U.S. global defense and space strategy.
For decades, political scholars analyzed global politics through the lens of formal institutions and structural power dynamics, and framed globalization as a product of cross-border business interests. Today, however, the future of both global governance and the global economy increasingly hinges on the personal beliefs and psychological outlooks of a small, unaccountable elite of political and corporate leaders.
This elite apocalyptic framing often involves selective emphasis on certain threats while deliberately downplaying others. Many tech executives tie the promise of a prosperous, stable future exclusively to unconstrained, disruptive technological innovation. U.S. venture capitalist Marc Andreessen is a leading proponent of “technological accelerationism,” an ideology that argues unregulated, rapid technological development is the only viable solution to all of the world’s most pressing existential problems.
The core challenge for the public and policymakers today is distinguishing between genuine, evidence-based threats and manufactured narratives that amplify fear to distract from more pressing issues. At a moment when public discourse is saturated with predictions of imminent collapse, it is more critical than ever to prioritize risks that are backed by empirical data — such as the accelerating climate crisis and the growing erosion of democratic institutions around the world.
On the question of whether unregulated tech innovation can solve climate change and deliver global peace, there is good reason to approach the claims of tech billionaires with deep skepticism. After all, Thiel himself has already hedged against the collapse he predicts, preparing both a fortified bunker in New Zealand and a personal refuge in Javier Milei’s Argentina, signaling that even the biggest promoters of apocalyptic elite narratives do not believe their own rhetoric about technology saving the world.