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Today’s unbridled capitalism is approaching a new, even more dangerous stage, that of digital feudalism – unfettered, profit-driven AI risks concentrating wealth and algorithmic power into the hands of a few tech monopolies. There are many critics drawing attention to different aspects of this threat, but what we were missing till now is a clearly written broad overview which would provide an analysis of the role AI plays in our societies, avoiding both traps of rejecting AI as inherently evil and of elevating AI into an instrument of the miraculous solution of our biggest problems. What no politician or social theorist was able to do, Pope Leo’s encyclical letter Magnifica humanitas did in an unsurpassable way. His starting point is that technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it. The Pope insists on the need to ensure that technologies are not concentrated in the hands of only a few people, thereby widening the gap between those included and those excluded from the digital revolution. He also correctly rejects “any form of paternalistic or welfare-based management of societal life”: what we need is shared responsibility of all of us, not a new elite which masks its brutal power with a fake human face. And, to make this point even clearer, the Pope insists that algorithmic development cannot be left solely to the “invisible hand” of the free market: a new form of social action is needed.
The question we should ask here is: who, then, comes close to the figure of Antichrist the Pope is warning us against? The answer is easy: the very person who, in an act of brutal irony, is permanently attacking his opponents as figures of Antichrist. Peter Thiel, the founder of data intelligence company Palantir Technologies – the Pentagon contractor whose AI systems are being used in the US and Israeli attack on Iran – is preoccupied with the risk of a “one-world, totalitarian state” obstructing scientific and technological progress. He depicts those who lobby for tech regulation as harbingers of the Antichrist:
“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. The thing that has political resonance is: we need to stop science, we need to just say ‘stop’ to this.”1
So what concrete features make Thiel’s state a figure of Antichrist? Thiel names “tax treaties, financial surveillance and sanctions architecture” as defining features of the international “Antichrist-like system” of international governance. Thiel explains how “it’s become quite difficult to hide one’s money” in the wake of the Patriot Act, the “extensive” administrative state (the Treasury Department, in particular), and the international messaging network known as SWIFT, which banks use to process global payments. All of these factors make it impossible to “escape from global taxation if you’re a U.S. citizen.”2
In this sense Thiel is effectively a liberal Fascist. He advocates total dictatorship of AI, but grounded in conservative religion and state power to maintain social stability and cohesion. He is right in his presumption that in our societies, which still maintain the appearance of openness, unity and cohesion cannot be enforced through direct strong state and ideological measures (as in Russia and China), so why not do it through the digital space, controlling and regulating what people think and how they act by way of ruthlessly using their mimetic desires? In this way, we can combine total liberalism outside state control (of the AI neofeudal masters like Thiel) with the control of individuals exerted by state and religion. This is why Thiel is not alone in his project. In mid-April 2026, Palantir released a 22‑point summary of The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, the 320‑page book that the billionaire CEO co‑wrote and published in early 2025. The main point of his manifesto3 is that Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation:
