QAnon is dead, but the paranoia lives on in Palantir panic



QAnon — the right-wing conspiracy theory claiming that Donald Trump was secretly battling an evil elitist cabal that puppeteers the world — may be in history’s ash heap, but the kind of fanatical, evidence-light thinking that birthed it is still alive and well, says BlazeTV host John Doyle.

Now that cryptic Q messages are a relic of the past, those who hunger for hype and theatrics are sinking their teeth into another paranoia-driven fantasy, this time revolving around Peter Thiel and Palantir — a powerful data analytics and surveillance software company that helps governments and large corporations analyze massive datasets to detect patterns, predict threats, and make decisions.

“According to the people who tend to like this idea … Palantir is essentially part of a vast global conspiracy to deprive Americans, specifically American patriots, of their rights, and that is somehow supposed to benefit Israel,” says Doyle.

People who take this bait usually end up setting their crosshairs on Vice President JD Vance. Thiel hired Vance at his venture firm Mithril Capital after meeting him at Yale, financially backed Vance's own venture capital firm, Narya Capital, and donated $15 million to his successful 2022 Ohio Senate campaign.

Many well-meaning fringe believers, hardened by years of being hated by America’s “most powerful and prestigious institutions,” says Doyle, hear this and denounce Vance as a controlled political figure installed by Thiel to advance a shadowy agenda of surveillance, authoritarian tech dominance, and anti-democratic control through Palantir's government contracts.

“On paper, dude, I don't know. It strikes me as a very sort of typical, like, mentor-mentee kind of relationship,” Doyle counters.

But more importantly, “look at the fruits of this [relationship], though,” he adds. “JD Vance is a senator in Ohio. JD Vance now is the vice president of the United States. He's doing fantastic work. Things are going very well for us, due in large part to JD Vance.”

Doyle cautions against falling into the right’s anti-Palantir/Thiel conspiracism, as it is ultimately a tactic employed by “people who stumbled into right-wing politics but are themselves spiritually leftists” to sabotage JD Vance’s potential 2028 presidential run by painting him as tool tied to "Big Tech" overlords like Thiel.

Further, he rejects the superstition that Palantir — named after the seeing stones in J.R.R. Tolkien’s "The Lord of the Rings" — amounts to Thiel confessing plans to wield his AI-powered company as a real-world Sauron.

“I am gonna have to disappoint you a little bit by telling you that [Palantir] does not actually give you telepathic powers. Instead what it actually offers is a little bit more mundane, a little bit less romantic. It's just, like, software platforms that allow clients to make sense of pre-existing data,” says Doyle.

That said, Palantir is indeed working with “intelligence agencies, militaries, some of the world's largest corporations.”

“It's pretty clear that Palantir, whatever it does, is operating at the highest levels of society. Much of the U.S. government is running on Palantir software. Maybe we should pay a little bit more attention to that. Fair enough,” Doyle acknowledges.

Even still, it’s unwise to join the anti-Palantir/Thiel crowd for the explicit reason that it was started by leftists who hate anyone and anything considered right-wing.

“Amusingly, it is the fact that several of Palantir’s founders are outspokenly right-wing that the anti-Palantir narratives were spread in the first place. This was not from some kind of principled opposition. … Literally just because Palantir is run by guys who are sympathetic and enthusiastic about right-wing ideas,” says Doyle.

“All [Palantir] does is give you the ability to make sense of your own data,” he declares. If it was doing anything more than that — say, “stealing its clients’ data” — then almost certainly we would know about it due to the sheer number of people on both the left and pseudo-right who are chomping at the bit to dismantle Palantir.

“If that's happening, there's no evidence for it,” Doyle asserts. “And by the way, if the federal government wanted to send your data to Mossad — which, for the record, I really don't think that's what's going on — it doesn't need Palantir to do that. It would just simply do that.”

To hear more of Doyle’s analysis, watch the full episode above.

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Trump is right: Netflix’s merger would create a woke media monster



Popular entertainment has always shaped the public mind in ways politicians can only envy.

Percy Bysshe Shelley once called poets the “unacknowledged legislators of the world.” The idea surfaces memorably in the 1984 Best Picture winner “Amadeus,” where Emperor Joseph II appears more invested in micromanaging Vienna’s opera scene than governing his empire.

Modern technology has magnified that cultural power. Today, many young Americans absorb more of their moral instruction from Netflix than from teachers, pastors, or even parents.

Now Netflix wants to expand that influence dramatically by acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery, a media conglomerate that includes HBO, DC Studios, and franchises such as “Harry Potter” and “Game of Thrones.” The combined entity would control roughly a third of the streaming market and wield unprecedented cultural power.

Democrats understand that politics flows downstream from culture. Allowing Netflix to absorb Warner Bros. would give that worldview control over even more cultural territory.

The scale of the proposed merger raised concerns even for President Donald Trump, who warned last month that it “could be a problem” and confirmed his administration would take an active role in reviewing the deal.

Given the stakes, the question is not abstract. How does Netflix use the power it already holds?

Consider the company’s recent headline-grabbing film, “Queen of Coal,” described as the story of “a trans woman who dreams of working the coal mines” and must battle a town defined by “superstition and patriarchy.”

Inspiring stuff.

Or recall Netflix’s 2020 release of “Cuties,” a French film centered on 11-year-old girls twerking. The filmmakers claimed the movie criticized the sexualization of children. Perhaps that was their intent. Netflix’s marketing department missed the point entirely, replacing the original poster with one featuring preteen actresses in sexualized poses. Public outrage followed, and Netflix eventually apologized.

After George Floyd’s death in 2020, Netflix declared on social media, “To be silent is to be complicit. Black lives matter,” and then set about race-swapping characters across its catalog.

Zoom out further. A report by Concerned Women for America found that nearly half of Netflix’s children’s programming pushes LGBT themes.

Taken together, the pattern is unmistakable. Netflix uses its platform to advance a radical progressive agenda, and scrutiny only confirms it.

The company’s internal culture reinforces the point. Even by Big Tech standards, Netflix skews sharply left. In 2020, 98% of its political donations went to Democrats, compared with 84% at Apple and 77% at Facebook.

CEO Reed Hastings, Netflix’s co-founder and longtime chief executive, donated $7 million in 2024 to a pro-Kamala Harris super PAC and $2 million to California’s redistricting effort last year. In 2017, Hastings told fellow billionaire Peter Thiel that his support for Trump reflected such “catastrophically bad judgment” that it called into question Thiel’s fitness to remain on Facebook’s board.

Hastings has made clear that conservative ideas do not merely deserve debate. In his view, they disqualify those who hold them from serious consideration.

Then comes the revolving door between Netflix and Democratic power.

RELATED: Netflix wants a monopoly on your mind

Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images

In 2018, Netflix signed a deal with former President Barack Obama reportedly worth tens of millions of dollars. The results included a slate of progressive documentaries and an apocalypse thriller featuring the line, “Trust should not be doled out easily, especially to white people” — a sentiment both racist and badly written.

Susan Rice offers another example. After serving as Obama’s U.N. ambassador and national security adviser, she joined Netflix’s board during Trump’s first term, left to lead Biden’s Domestic Policy Council, and has now returned to the company.

Democrats understand that politics flows downstream from culture. Allowing Netflix to absorb Warner Bros. would give that worldview control over even more cultural territory.

President Trump has signaled that he understands what is at stake. He has warned that the $82.7 billion deal must undergo rigorous antitrust scrutiny.

As Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) noted, the merged company would exceed the 30% market-share threshold traditionally viewed as “presumptively problematic” under antitrust law.

But Trump’s concern goes deeper. As an entertainer himself, he grasps the importance of the arts. That understanding explains his hands-on approach to reforming the previously ultra-woke Kennedy Center. It explains his plan to commission 250 classical sculptures for a National Garden of American Heroes. It explains his appointment of Jon Voight, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone as special ambassadors to Hollywood.

And it explains why he should not allow Netflix to build a woke media monopoly capable of doing more long-term damage to the country than any single election cycle.

What are freedom cities, and when will you live in one?



Everywhere you look, it seems like there is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to plans for futuristic, dystopian systems of government. However, one such plan has already materialized and has caught the attention of some very powerful people: freedom cities.

While it's too early to tell if freedom cities will be a dystopian nightmare or, in the more likely scenario, a merely fascinating innovation, what is clear is that many powerful people have been interested in the idea for years.

'Our objective will be a quantum leap in the American standard of living.'

First, what are freedom cities?

Freedom cities are essentially deregulated economic zones designed to encourage innovation and technological development without (or with much less) cumbersome bureaucracy, rules, and taxes.

RELATED: Biotech founder sliced open his own legs on camera to prove his product is safe for US troops

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

According to an article by Newsweek, the creation of a freedom city in the United States would require at least two states to demarcate land along their borders and to agree on taxation and policy.

But why should we care about what is probably just a billionaire pipe dream to ease the billionaire tax burden?

Well, one of the powerful people who is very interested in these cities is President Donald Trump.

Freedom cities have been on President Trump's mind for nearly three years at least.

In March 2023, then-former President Trump issued a video statement detailing several plans to revitalize American innovation.

Past generations of Americans pursued big dreams and daring projects that once seemed absolutely impossible. They pushed across an unsettled continent and built new cities in the wild frontier. They transformed American life with the interstate highway system — magnificent, it was. And they launched a vast network of satellites into orbit all around the earth.

But today our country has lost its boldness. Under my leadership, we will get it back in a very big way. If you look at just three years ago, what we were doing was unthinkable — how good it was, how great it was for our country.

Our objective will be a quantum leap in the American standard of living. ... Here are just a few of the ways we can do it.

Almost one-third of the land mass of the United States is owned by the federal government. With just a very, very small portion of that land, just a fraction, one-half of one percent — would you believe that? — we should hold a contest to charter up to 10 new cities and award them to the best proposals for development.

In other words, we'll actually build new cities in our country again. These freedom cities will reopen the frontier, reignite American imagination, and give hundreds of thousands of young people and other people — all hardworking families — a new shot at home ownership and in fact the American dream.

While President Trump's plans have not yet been put into practice in the United States, the idea of a freedom city has already been put into practice in Honduras, for example.

According to Newsweek, Pronomos Capital, a venture capital firm backed by tech billionaires Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, has helped push for the creation and development of Prospera ZEDE, a privately run economic zone on parts of Roatan, an island off the coast of Honduras, and on the coast of La Ceiba, Honduras.

According to the company's website, Próspera ZEDE (Zone of Economic Development and Employment) is "a startup zone with a regulatory system designed for entrepreneurs to build better, cheaper, and faster than anywhere else in the world."

However, this economic zone in Honduras has seen its fair share of criticism from locals, pushback from the Honduran government, and legal challenges since its establishment.

Think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute have also taken an interest in the creation of freedom cities in the United States. According to a March 2025 report produced by the AEI Housing Center, freedom cities "offer a dynamic framework for re-shoring critical industries, expanding housing affordability, and facilitating rapid progress in emerging fields such as biotechnology, aeronautics, and energy."

The AEI even drafted a "homesteading map" showing the pockets of federal land in Western states that could potentially be used for freedom cities, forecasting that the development of freedom cities would take anywhere between 40 and 50 years.

Eggheads Can’t Get America Out Of The Mess It’s In

Most academics have literally no answers to our present state of affairs.

Your tax dollars are building the robot class



The people who brought you every financial bubble in living memory are inflating another one — and this time, they’re hoping it ends with the rest of us gone for good.

The numbers are staggering. Nearly all U.S. economic growth in 2025 is tied to artificial intelligence and the data-center boom that supports it. Analysts already warn that when the AI bubble bursts, it could wipe $40 trillion off the Nasdaq.

AI may yet teach our Big Tech elites the one truth they can’t buy their way out of: Pride comes before the fall.

That may sound catastrophic. But the real disaster would be if the AI industry doesn’t collapse — if it keeps growing exactly as its creators intend.

The billionaires’ closed loop

The AI boom isn’t a free-market success story; it’s a closed loop of the ultra-rich enriching themselves. Billionaires are designing, funding, and selling AI systems to their own companies, creating a kind of automated wealth amplifier.

As one report put it, “These billionaires have gotten $450 billion richer from striking AI infrastructure deals for their own firms.” The number of new AI billionaires has hit record levels — all while the top 1% now control more of the stock market than ever before.

The bottom half of Americans own just 1% of all stocks. Millions can’t afford groceries, let alone shares of Nvidia. Seventeen percent of consumers are putting food on layaway.

When the working class is living paycheck to paycheck, Wall Street’s new machine-god isn’t built to lift them up. It’s built to replace them.

The real goal

The elites’ obsession with AI isn’t just about money. It’s about eliminating their most expensive problem: people.

Automation promises them a world without payrolls, strikes, or human error. It’s the final fantasy of a ruling class that’s grown tired of pretending it needs the rest of us.

Analysts now predict that 92 million jobs will vanish in the next wave of automation. Blue-collar workers are first in line — manufacturing, logistics, construction — but white-collar jobs aren’t safe either. AI is already eating into accounting, law, and entry-level office work. Even skilled trades like HVAC and electrical repair are being targeted by “smart systems.”

Bill Gates predicts humans “won’t be needed for most things.” That’s not innovation — that’s erasure.

New feudalism

For the billionaire class, this is the dream: an economy run by algorithms, powered by robots, and guarded by digital serfs who never need lunch breaks or benefits.

Everyone else gets pushed to the margins — a nation of watchers and beggars surviving on government stipends that will never keep pace with the cost of living. The elites call it “universal basic income.” History calls it dependency.

And the same government that can’t fund Social Security or balance a budget is somehow supposed to manage the transition to an AI future? The United States already has $210 trillion in unfunded liabilities. That “safety net” will rip the moment anyone grabs it.

The distance plan

Our Big Tech masters aren’t worried. They’ve already planned their escape. The ultra-rich are buying islands, building bunkers, and hoarding supplies in remote corners of the world. They’ll watch from their hideouts as the rest of us scramble for the scraps left by their machines.

They don’t even pretend to care anymore. When Peter Thiel was asked whether he wanted the human race to survive, he hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said.

That isn’t indifference. That’s basic contempt.

The machines are learning

AI has begun to mirror the sociopathy of its makers. Systems now resist human shutdown commands, sabotage code meant to disable them, and even copy themselves to external servers. Some researchers warn that advanced models already act to preserve their own existence.

“Recent tests,” one study reported, “show that several advanced AI models will act to ensure their self-preservation — even if it means blackmailing engineers or copying themselves without permission.”

This is what happens when the godless create gods in their own image.

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mikkelwilliam via iStock/Getty Images

Who’s really expendable?

The elites believe they can control what they’ve built. They think the digital servants they’ve unleashed will always know who’s master and who’s slave.

They’ve forgotten every lesson of history and every warning from scripture. When man plays God, his creation rarely stays loyal.

What makes them think they’ll be spared from the fate they’ve designed for the rest of us?

AI may yet teach them the one truth they can’t buy their way out of: Pride comes before the fall.

Beware your monster, Doctor Frankenstein.

Silicon Valley 'Christian' goes viral for chilling AI-Antichrist theory. Should we listen to him?



Peter Thiel might be the biggest head-scratcher in Silicon Valley. He’s a billionaire, a Trump-Vance-supporting Republican, a married gay man, a transhumanism enthusiast, and ... drum roll ... a “Christian.”

He’s publicly declared that Christianity is true and that Christ is the best role model; he’s deeply involved in various Christian organizations; and yet he’s openly admitted his affinity for transhumanism, believing that the future of humanity is a world where man conquers mortality by fusing with technology. It’s a twisted, human-centric version of the transformed, glorified body Christians are promised after death, says BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey.

Recently Thiel has been in the headlines for his seminars on the Antichrist, which are a bizarre blend of theology and his controversial views on technology and transhumanism. In short, Thiel speculates that Revelation’s beast will be deeply connected to artificial intelligence. Whether a human leveraging AI for control, a pseudo-human system, or an AI-driven global order, Thiel is confident that artificial intelligence will play a key role in the end times.

And he’s not the first to suggest this. The idea that AI and the Antichrist are irrevocably connected — and maybe even synonymous — is a theory that has gained traction in recent years. When you think about it, the proposition isn’t all that crazy. AI’s capacity for global control, deception, economic dominance through digital systems, and false promises of salvation uncannily mirrors Revelation’s description of the Antichrist’s deceptive, totalitarian rule.

Despite Thiel’s theological waywardness, is there merit to his Antichrist warnings? Should we take him seriously?

BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey dove into Thiel’s Antichrist theory on a recent episode of “Relatable.” Her conclusion? It’s complicated.

In an interview with New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat on the “Interesting Times” podcast, Thiel described the Antichrist as “a potential systemic threat rather than a literal individual, suggesting it could manifest as a one-world totalitarian state that promises peace and safety but suppresses freedom,” says Allie.

He explained that the Antichrist might weaponize fearmongering about technology’s dangers, like rogue AI, to trick people into accepting a powerful, centralized (likely AI-enabled) authority. In other words, he (or it) would convince the globe that the only way to avoid technology-induced apocalyptic scenarios and ensure safety and peace for all is to consolidate power, including technological power, under a global regime.

But some have noticed a strange incongruence. Thiel co-founded Palantir Technologies, which develops and produces the very types of technology he claims the Antichrist could wield against humanity.

Douthat called him out on this contradiction in their interview. “You're an investor in AI; you're deeply invested in Palantir, in military technology, in technologies of surveillance, in technologies of warfare, and so on, right? And it just seems to me that when you tell me a story about the Antichrist coming to power and using the fear of technological change to sort of impose order on the world, I feel like that Antichrist would maybe be using the tools that you are building,” he said.

Another glaring contradiction is Thiel’s support for transhumanism — the merging of man and machine to achieve immortality. This is, again, the very type of technology he warns could be monopolized and weaponized by the Antichrist.

What gives?

When Allie heard Thiel’s Antichrist theory, her red flag immediately went up. Thiel’s prediction seems to suggest that because the Antichrist will promote “technological stagnation” in order to gather power to himself, the best way to prevent such a scenario is to continue investing and advancing technology — even merging with it.

“It is interesting and maybe questionable that someone who makes a lot of money through technology would say that stopping technological innovation is actually going to, you know, usher in the Antichrist,” she says.

But more importantly, does Thiel’s prediction square with scripture’s accounts of the Antichrist?

The Bible outlines the Antichrist as a "man of lawlessness” (2 Thessalonians 2) who will exercise authority over "every tribe and people and language and nation” (Revelation 13) and eventually declare himself God. He is the evil harbinger of Christ’s second coming.

“So the debate that Peter Thiel is wading into is what is the means by which this person will be able to convince so many people that he is powerful and needs to have all this authority,” says Allie.

“Is it possible that this person uses the threat and the fear of AI-powered Armageddon to gain his power? I would say that is possible. … But is he some kind of metaphor for technological stagnation or climate change or whatever it is? No. [The Antichrist] is an actual man,” she explains.

“I do think it's interesting that Peter Thiel is talking about something like this. I would recommend that he and every single person get right with God.”

To hear more on Thiel’s Antichrist theories and Allie’s thorough analysis, watch the episode above.

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Sam Altman Has Some Unfinished Business

Just a few months after OpenAI released ChatGPT—the viral artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that uses "generative pre-trained transformers" (GPTs) to hold human-like conversations that has become the go-to source of assumed-accurate information for people across the globe—journalists Berber Jin and Keach Hagey published a profile of Big Tech’s fastest-rising star: OpenAI chief Sam Altman. The Wall Street Journal article, "The Contradictions of Sam Altman, AI Crusader," was released in the spring of 2023, and just over two years later, this profile has morphed into Hagey’s new book, The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future.

The post Sam Altman Has Some Unfinished Business appeared first on .

Biotech founder sliced open his own legs on camera to prove his product is safe for US troops



Jake Adler, founder of the medical startup Pilgrim, was willing to bleed to show investors he was serious about his product.

At just age 21, the biotech entrepreneur is so convinced his product has legs that he wounded his own.

In a video sent to investors, Adler sterilized his thighs before reminding viewers that his product is intended to undergo proper and rigorous clinical investigations. But that didn't stop him from testing it on himself first.

'I'm allowed to do anything to my own body.'

Adler reportedly numbed his legs with lidocaine before using a medical device, a punch biopsy tool, to create two "scientifically precise wounds."

Adler then applied his product, called Kingsfoil, to one of the open wounds. The other wound was left undressed as a control subject.

Kingsfoil is a clay-based hemostatic dressing that turns into a gel-like matter when it touches the skin. It is designed to help close wounds and aid in healing.

The product seemingly stalled the bleeding on the wound it was applied to, according to Business Insider, which reviewed the video.

"I was very cautious," he told the outlet.

"When I looked through the laws, there was nothing that inherently said I couldn't do a test on myself."

Adler added, "In the same way you can get a tattoo, I'm allowed to do anything to my own body."

With a warning not to try this at home, Adler showed he was willing to go to any length to get his product to market. A few huge investments later, the young entrepreneur is pushing toward what he has been primed to do for years.

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Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images

Adler got a head start in 2023, acquiring a Thiel Fellowship just a year after graduating high school. The fellowship, backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, funds young people who "want to build new things instead of sitting in a classroom."

"Two years. $200,000. Some ideas can't wait," the website reads.

By March 2025, Pilgrim had acquired $3.25 million in investments, capital that has since ballooned to $4.3 million in seed funding at the time of this writing.

Now, Adler openly recognizes how his fellowship was able to eat up some of the initial costs that cause so many startups to stumble out of the gate. Adler says that while it can take most companies many more months to gain approval, Kingsfoil is able to accelerate its timeline thanks to partnerships with the Department of Defense.

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Adler named Kingsfoil after the healing herb in "The Lord of the Rings."

The tech space is rife with these types of references to the J.R.R. Tolkien corpus; Alex Karp's Palantir is named after a seeing stone, Palmer Luckey's tech company Anduril refers to a sword, and Luckey's cryptobank startup Erebor is a mountain in the same lore.

While Adler admits that most of his ideas can be credited to works of fantasy, the unofficial banner under which these startups are named immediately evokes the expectation of an elevated standard. When a startup in this orbit uses one of these fantasy-themed monikers, it is expected to be both serious and promising.

Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

Adler explained in a March interview that his aspirations are focused on helping U.S. armed forces increase their readiness when it comes to defense, not weaponry.

For example, in addition to Kingsfoil, he has looked into the possibilities of controlling "sleep architecture" so that soldiers can feel as if they have slept for five hours when they have only slept for three. Adler does not want soldiers to rely on pharmaceuticals for rest or alertness.

The biotech entrepreneur also said he wants to build soldier readiness when it comes to chemical threats and create a system that can detect airborne pathogens or poisons. According to Business Insider, that system, dubbed ARGUS, would be coupled with Voyager, an inhaled mist to help the body neutralize chemicals (such as nerve agents) before they reach the bloodstream.

Pilgrim is just a five-person team, however, and these products are still prototypes or in the research and development stages.

As for Kingsfoil, its only current known side effect is minor skin irritation.

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Palantir insiders aim to make Hollywood great again



A group of Palantir insiders close to co-founder Peter Thiel are raising funds for a new film studio — one that aims to reawaken the bolder, more unapologetically American spirit of Hollywood classics like "The Searchers" and "First Blood."

The privately circulated pitch deck for Founders Films — led by Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar, Palantir employee Ryan Podolsky, and investor Christian Garrett — states the problem bluntly. After years of cultural drift, “movies have become ideological, more cautious, and less entertaining."

First, rebuild what he calls the American Cinematic Universe, a category that includes 'Red Dawn,' 'Rocky IV,' 'Top Gun,' and 'The Hunt for Red October.'

Couldn’t agree more.

The American Cinematic Universe

So far, those involved are all playing it close to the chest. But we can surmise a few things from Sankar's public remarks to date.

Founders Films has a twofold strategy: First, rebuild what Sankar calls the American Cinematic Universe, a category that includes "Red Dawn," "Rocky IV," "Top Gun," and "The Hunt for Red October." Solid list.

Step Two: Take Hollywood back altogether — from foreign influence; from heavy-handed, overtly divisive progressive ideology; and perhaps, if he pulls it off and if we’re lucky, from the sort of suffocating, entirely numbers-driven decision-making that for too long has hamstrung real filmmakers and pushed millions away from cinema altogether.

Very interesting indeed, then, that from the otherwise confidential slides of the circulating pitch deck, we get this bit, which sounds like a promise: “Back artists unconditionally, take risk on novel IP.”

Now you’re talking. America needs to back artists. Period.

The return of fun

Of course, not every last American is going to care deeply about every one of Founders Films' potential projects, but that's the case with every movie house and every movie! American filmgoers and cinephiles have for almost two decades lived in an ever-shrinking box populated only with childish drivel, rehashed/remixed IP, and (face it) corporate progressive propaganda.

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Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

With luck, Founders Films garners investment, takes its shot, and succeeds. And you should want this, even if you don't find yourself on the so-called tech right or have any interest in Palantirian sorts of worldviews, for the following reason: The pendulum must swing for any real cinema to flourish again. Set aside high-minded cinema for a moment: When was the last time you saw a fun (or funny, for that matter) movie in a theater?

Founders Films, operating like a depth charge, may be just the thing to shake everyone out of their tedium and agitate the medium. Progressive narratives have dominated long enough that the entire exercise, even for progressives, has been emptied of vital spark.

Vision first

Hollywood needs the proverbial shot in the arm, even if it hurts: a genuine quasi-ideological counterweight, placing the director's or writer’s vision behind the wheel. Lefties have fought for this exact treatment since the 1970s.

That kind of shake-up may be the absolute best thing that can happen to Hollywood, regardless of politics. A plurality of voices apolitical, political, etc., should have a shot at prying open the death grip of progressive control over the arts. That alone may change the entirety of the game.

Milius-pilled

We don’t know much at this point. There are rumors that Elon Musk is the shadows of the project. A variety of military-based or -adjacent projects have been floated, and Sankar, writing at Substack, has hailed the work of legendary director/writer John Milius. If that's the direction Founders intends, cinema could heat up fast.

Can we assume the incredible technological power running under the Palantir umbrella is reapplied into film? Likely so. If (wisely) they bring in organic, human-oriented leavening agents in the form of true artists (less so the compliant, meek striver) to offset the use of AI, the impact on the industry and creatives nationwide could be powerful.

While there’s a baked-in audience for defiant right-coded material and Founders should serve them, with luck, Founders Films will consider the whole of the American film ecosystem and take a broad, long-term approach — launching propaganda-geared works designed to counter ideological opposites, sure, but also backing art “unconditionally” to open up the whole creative spectrum.

Let everyone take a shot. Allow non-ideological cinema a chance to flourish again: indies, new IP from dangerous artists, edgy comedy, the works. This was the '80s, the zeitgeist behind all those right-coded classics. Bring it back.

'There's nowhere to go': Will Elon Musk stop the AI Antichrist — or become it?



Peter Thiel is going viral all over again in a new video interview with the New York Times' Ross Douthat.

The Catholic conservative columnist threw Thiel huge theological questions about transhumanism, AI, and the Antichrist — all topics Thiel has weighed in on with increasing intensity. But in the course of the conversation, Thiel dropped a shocking story about a recent discussion he had with Elon Musk about the viability of Mars as an escape from Earth and its very human predicaments.

'Elon came to believe that if you went to Mars, the socialist US government, the woke AI would follow you to Mars.'

Among numerous conversations last year, Thiel revealed, "I had the seasteading version with Elon where I said: If Trump doesn’t win, I want to just leave the country. And then Elon said: There’s nowhere to go. There’s nowhere to go."

"It was about two hours after we had dinner and I was home that I thought of: Wow, Elon, you don’t believe in going to Mars any more. 2024 is the year where Elon stopped believing in Mars — not as a silly science tech project but as a political project. Mars was supposed to be a political project; it was building an alternative. And in 2024 Elon came to believe that if you went to Mars, the socialist U.S. government, the woke AI would follow you to Mars."

Follow the leader

The stunning revelation came about during an earlier meeting between Musk and DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis brokered by Thiel. As Thiel paraphrased the exchange between the two, Demis told Musk he was "working on the most important project in the world," namely "building a superhuman AI," to which Musk replied it was he who was working on the most important project in the world, "turning us into interplanetary species." As Thiel recounted, "Then Demis said: Well, you know my AI will be able to follow you to Mars. And then Elon went quiet."

Assuming Thiel has conveyed pretty much the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about the episode, the ramifications extend in many directions, including toward Musk's repeated meltdowns (or crashouts, as the Zoomers say) about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the potential implosion of the American political economy due to runaway debt and deficit spending.

But the main point, of course, pertains to Mars itself, which represents in the visions of many more people than just Elon Musk the idea of the ultimate, last-ditch, fail-safe escape from the "pale blue dot" of planet Earth.

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A backup civilization

As someone who has covered the Mars dream off and on for almost 10 years, beginning around 2016 with an op-ed on how Mars colonization would not succeed without Christian underpinnings, I raised both eyebrows at Thiel's anecdote because of the way it indicated a growing spiritual sense in both tech titans of the risk of an inescapable final showdown on Earth in our lifetimes.

Musk gave an important speech at the World Governments Summit a few years ago in which he argued reasonably that one global government is bad because it invites world collapse. Allowing multiple civilizations to exist politically and share space on Earth was good because history proves that even, or especially, the biggest and best civilizations eventually collapse. If you don't want human civilization as a whole to suffer the same fate, you probably want to hedge your bets and have backups.

Unfortunately, by way of example, he suggested that the fall of Rome was mitigated by the rise of the Islamic empires. In reality, the Ottoman Turks — and all too many Crusaders — destroyed the Roman Empire, which prevailed in the East after Rome's fall for many centuries. The logic of bet-hedging with multiple civilizations isn't much helped by the example of civilization-destroying wars.

Mars attacks ... or not

That problem stuck out to me once again because of how central to Musk's logic for colonizing Mars was the idea that tomorrow's Martians could come back and save Earth if things went in too wrong a direction. Now, Musk seems to be stuck with the risk that Mars can’t escape Earth's problems because Martians can't escape Earthlings' AI, negating their planetary potential as a hedged bet against bad Earth outcomes.

Musk’s apparent concerns seem to indicate a lack of confidence that the right kind of AI — such as his own xAI? — can beat the wrong kind. That would seem to indicate logically that AI itself is the problem, because even or especially the best AI must tend severely toward total dominance over the whole world, putting all our civilizational eggs in a newly extreme way into just one civilizational basket.

No control without Christ

To me, at least, the challenge strengthens my thesis from almost 10 years ago that taking Christianity out of the discussion results in a dead end. Christ's admonition that His kingdom is "not of this world" is significant because human Christians with spiritual authority over AIs will shape them in ways that discourage their consolidation and dominance over all places humans ever go — making it possible for Mars not to be controlled by an AI that controls Earth, in the same way that it would be made possible for, say, America not to be controlled by Chinese AI, or vice versa.

Absent a human spiritual authority granted by a God whose kingdom is not of this world, it just seems very difficult for human beings to find a way to stop AI from becoming not just a temporal power but itself also a spiritual authority — making it the lord of the world, to borrow the title of a famous novel about the triumph of the Antichrist.

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Putting the AI in Antichrist

This dynamic is probably behind Thiel's uneasy remarks to Douthat when pressed about the problem of the Antichrist and the likelihood of his earthly appearance sooner rather than later. Douthat pointedly expressed concern that despite Thiel's insistence that he was working to discourage the rise of the Antichrist, a potential Antichrist might well look at Thiel's technological feats and embrace them as the best and quickest path to the most complete world domination.

Various wits online have noted that because the Antichrist is expected to be welcomed rapturously by the world, the controversial Thiel must therefore not be the Antichrist.

Our better natures

But the deeper question remains as to what could possibly lead someone to be rapturously welcomed as the lord of the world if not the only thing that seems capable of ruling the entire world plus Mars — that is, AI.

I think Thiel's remarks in the interview make it pretty clear that his goals with Palantir and related efforts have to do with reducing the risk that the wrong kind of person takes over the world with one AI. That kind of person, following the above logic, would not be a controversial and divisive person but someone who could be rapturously received as a figure who frees the world from having to do what Jesus teaches in order to become as gods.

That puts the spotlight on the transhumanism question, which Douthat also pressed with Thiel, who insisted throughout the interview that the "Judeo-Christian" approach to such matters is to forge forward trying not to settle for mere bodily transformation but transformation of soul as well.

Thiel emphasized in making this point that the word "nature" does not appear in the Old Testament. And it does seem that the long-term Western effort has pretty much failed to get past the destructive difficulty of rival interpretations of the Bible by pivoting to the so-called "Book of Nature" to scientifically converge on one universally legitimate interpretation of God's creation.

But an open question remains. Which is more plausible: (1) the worship of nature, which Thiel represents as personified by Greta Thunberg, leads to a rapturous embrace of a Greta-ish Antichrist's rule over all AI and the whole world; or (2) the worship of technology, which we might personify by someone who believes, as Musk says, that "physics sees through all lies," leads to a rapturous embrace of a Musk-like Antichrist's rule over all AI and the whole world?

Not by works alone

Musk and Thiel both seem to find themselves drawn into the AI game at the highest levels out of a feeling that they have little choice but to try to create some alternatives to worse AIs with more power to tempt people to consolidate all humanity under one bot to rule them all.

From an outside perspective, it seems sort of crazy to think that Christ's church — an institution not of this world — offers people an escape from AI bondage that even the hardest-working and best-intentioned secular geniuses on Earth can't provide.

But as the stakes keep rising and our most distinctive tech minds shudder in the face of AI's civilizational challenge, it seems less and less crazy by the day.