"Thiel, the founder of data intelligence company Palantir Technologies ... 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."

There is so much wrong with this guy. How do these nuts rise to such positions of power?

From personal observation, many Christians see oil as a unlimited natural gift from God and view alternative energy sources with disdain. Not sure if that was a deliberate strategy on Big Oil's part but it effectively solidifies massive political support.

By similarity if Thiel can equate AI regulation or restricting government AI funding with the Antichrist he could guarantee political support for decades.

I don't recall Thiel ever lecturing about religion or the Antichrist prior to his involvement with government contracts. It's hard to believe any of this is sincere.

I can't speak specifically about Peter Thiel, but I get the impression that two things affect some extremely wealthy people later in life regardless of their intelligence or benignity: 1) they get encapsulated in a bubble, and 2) they run out of things to achieve, so their obsessions start to become more and more odd. As to number 2, it's almost like those telomeres that keep the integrity of DNA, where every time a cell divides, the telomere gets shorter and shorter, until the cell gets weird.

"Thiel’s views stand in stark contrast to those of Pope Leo, who has warned of the dangers of artificial intelligence and called for stronger regulation to minimise its risks."

While we may not get recordings of these events, he wrote a (long, strange) essay on the antichrist late last year: https://firstthings.com/voyages-to-the-end-of-the-world/