Technology, elites and the crisis of democracy: the Peter Thiel case between real power, ideology and new global structures. ---- Look at this stuff! ---- "Look at this stuff!". These are the words with which a respected person reports on Facebook the press release from the Vincenzo Gioberti Cultural Association[1], which in recent weeks has organised a series of private conferences with Peter Thiel in Rome. Not to share it, but to clearly distance itself from it. It is precisely from there that a name little known to most people appears: Peter Thiel.
And from there a world opens up.
Because that text points to something much more concrete: a segment of the global tech elite that no longer recognizes the presuppositions of liberal democracy and is developing alternative models for organizing society. The point, however, isn't just what's being said, but the very fact that these ideas are also circulating in Europe.
Who is Peter Thiel?
Peter Thiel is one of the men who helped build the infrastructure of contemporary digital capitalism. He is not a theoretician external to the system, but an actor within its crucial junctures.
Born in Germany in 1967 and raised in the United States, Thiel studied philosophy and law at Stanford University, an environment that played a central role in the birth of Silicon Valley. Already at this stage, a critical political and cultural orientation toward liberal democracy and egalitarianism emerged, a position that would become more radical over time.
His entry into the tech world came in the late 1990s with the founding of PayPal, one of the first global digital payment platforms. From that experience, what would later be called the "PayPal Mafia" was born, a network of entrepreneurs and investors destined to occupy key positions in the digital economy. After selling PayPal, Thiel became one of the first major investors in Facebook, contributing to the growth of one of the key social infrastructures of contemporary capitalism.
But it was with the founding of Palantir Technologies in 2003 that his journey took on an even more marked meaning.
Palantir isn't just a technology company: it's a company that operates at the intersection of data, security, and political power, collaborating with governments, the military, and large corporations. It's here that Thiel's trajectory becomes most clearly defined: not just an entrepreneur, but a builder of decision-making tools. At the same time, Thiel is becoming increasingly vocal in the political arena. He was a major contributor to Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and has supported several figures on the American new right, helping to build a bridge between Silicon Valley and radical conservative circles.
His thinking also fits into this intertwining of technology, finance, and politics. Thiel has repeatedly expressed critical views regarding democracy, going so far as to assert that freedom and democracy are not necessarily compatible. His reflections draw on diverse sources from the thought of René Girard to the political theory of Carl Schmitt and intertwine with themes such as transhumanism, the crisis of the West, and the role of elites. In this sense, Peter Thiel is not simply a successful entrepreneur, but a figure who embodies a broader transformation: that of economic elites who do not simply operate within the system, but question its foundations.
Palantir: The Power of Data
Palantir develops software used by militaries, intelligence agencies, police forces, and large corporations. These systems integrate huge amounts of data from satellite imagery to financial flows, sensor data, and communications and transform them into operational tools for decision makers.[2]
It's not just about gathering information, but about correlating it, making it readable and usable in real time. In this sense, they've been described as a veritable "control room," capable of concentrating and coordinating data from diverse sources to guide action.
Gotham software, one of the company's main products, allows users to map territories, analyze relational networks, and track individuals, and is used in both the military and in security and control activities.
In several cases it has been used to support intelligence operations, border management and complex scenario analysis.
This ability to integrate data and transform it into decisions represents the real quantum leap. Here, data is no longer information: it's command.
Palantir doesn't interpret power: it operationalizes it.
Finance and power
In recent years, more than 100 European banks, pension funds, insurance companies and asset management firms have significantly increased their investments in Palantir, bringing the total value of their holdings to tens of billions of dollars.[3]
This is significant not only for the numbers involved, but also for the context in which it occurs. Despite controversies surrounding the use of its systems in military, immigration policies, and surveillance activities, capital continues to flow.
This indicates that we are not facing a deviation, but a structural trend: technological power is not limited, but progressively incorporated into the global financial system. Technology, security, and capital thus tend to converge in a single operational space.
The Roman transition also fits into this framework. In recent weeks, Thiel has brought together a select audience of academics, financiers, and political figures in Rome for confidential meetings. The stated theme the Antichrist might suggest a marginal theoretical exercise. But the news paints a different picture: that of an environment in which economics, technology, and worldview are intertwined.
We are not faced with an isolated episode, but rather a true political-cultural laboratory in which individuals who already operate at the decision-making nodes of the system meet.
The crux, in fact, is not mystical but structural: the possibility of a world in which the strong become ever stronger, and in which the concentration of power appears as a natural consequence of the transformations underway.
Strategic use of uncertainty
The language of crisis and collapse isn't a prediction. It's an operational lever that directs capital and power. It serves to organize the present, justify investments, and redefine strategic priorities. In this sense, uncertainty is no longer a problem to be managed, but a space to be protected.
This transformation is particularly clear when observing the evolution of warfare over the last twenty years .
In 2003, the invasion of Iraq still represented a model of advanced industrial warfare: massive bombing, air superiority, the use of large-scale ground forces, and territorial occupation. Control was exercised through physical presence, logistics, and the ability to maintain and defend positions.
Today, in the Middle Eastern scenario, the conflict takes on different forms and the dynamics linked to the crisis with Iran demonstrate a model based on targeted operations, massive use of drones and missiles, and the integration of surveillance and data analysis systems.
The battlefield has shifted from territory to networks, from physical presence to information control.
The spread of low-cost drones and AI-driven systems has radically changed the relationship between attack and defense, making it possible to strike sensitive targets without direct territorial control and compressing decision-making times to unprecedented levels. In this context, power is no longer measured solely in terms of military strength, but in terms of access to data, processing capacity, and rapid decision-making.
War is no longer just destruction: it is information management.
Conclusion
The issue isn't whether these ideas are true or false. The issue is that they're already helping shape the world we live in.
We are not witnessing a theoretical provocation or a marginal deviation, but a transformation affecting the relationship between technology, capital, and power. A transformation in which command tends to concentrate, decisions become opaque, and democratic spaces shrink.
In this context, the language of crisis and uncertainty doesn't simply describe reality: it constructs it. It legitimizes new hierarchies, justifies new tools of control, and selects who has access to decision-making nodes and who is excluded.
This is where a libertarian reading becomes necessary again.
Not to defend a liberal democracy already profoundly hollowed out, but to question the direction in which power is reorganizing itself. A direction that tends to escape collective control, to concentrate in a few centers and to operate through increasingly less visible infrastructures.
The issue, then, isn't just technological. It's political.
And it concerns the very possibility of building forms of autonomy, conflict, and collective decision-making in a world where power tends to become an all-encompassing system.
Note
[1]The Vincenzo Gioberti Cultural Association draws on the tradition of classical and Christian thought and develops an explicit critique of political modernity, in particular democracy and the State. In its documents it proposes a reinterpretation of pre-modern models of social and political organisation, even going so far as to evoke forms of "new feudalism".
[2]Cédric Guigon, Palantir, a private Big Brother?, «RSI», 09/30/2025, (https://www.rsi.ch/info/dialogo/Palantir-un-Grande-Fratello-privato--3153216.html).
[3]Sebastiaan Brommersma, Casper Rouffaer, Salsabil Fayed, European funders bet big on tech giant Palantir despite concerns over human rights and democracy , «Follow The Money», ( https://www.ftm.eu/articles/european-investors-palantir-investment ); Daniele Grasso, Who invests in Palantir without too many scruples , «Internazionale», 31/03/2026, ( https://www.internazionale.it/notizie/daniele-grasso/2026/03/31/palantir-investimenti-europei ).
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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