They're surprisingly libertarian, concludes author:
Who is the Antichrist, the biblical antagonist whose rise marks the beginning of the end-times? Peter Thiel recently took a stab at answering this age-old question.
The billionaire and co-founder of PayPal and surveillance company Palantir recently delivered a series of four lectures on behalf of ACTS 17 Collective—a nonprofit dedicated to Acknowledging Christ in Technology and Society (ACTS)—about the Antichrist. Reason acquired recordings of the lectures, which ran the gamut from theology and history to science and economics. While Thiel does not explicitly identify who the Antichrist is, he outlines an Antichrist-like system he fears will arise this century.
"Thiel recognizes state power as a double-edged sword, identifying the American empire as simultaneously "the natural candidate for Katechon"—the entity that delays the emergence of the Antichrist—"and Antichrist; ground zero of the one-world state, ground zero of the resistance to the one-world state.""
Although Thiel doesn't explicitly reference Crisis and Leviathan (1987)—the celebrated book by American historian and economist Robert Higgs—he warns that the former precipitates the latter. In his first lecture, Thiel cites Matthew 24:6 to insist that "the Antichrist will come to power by talking about Armageddon non-stop" and 1 Thessalonians 5:3 as evidence that the Antichrist will rise to power by promising "peace and safety." In his second lecture, Thiel explains how "a new, reformed government called 'Leviathan,'" as described by political philosopher Thomas Hobbes in his 1651 political treatise, that wields supreme power to cow men into peaceful cooperation, will be ridden by the Antichrist "to take over the world."
and here:
for all of his hand wringing that the Antichrist will come to power this century and bring about total destruction, Thiel refuses to prescribe a "systematic formula" to fight this figure, which might be the most libertarian aspect of his lectures. Instead, he encourages the audience "to think for [themselves] for a little bit." Thiel returns to the importance of free will in his final lecture, saying that there "are choices we have to make" to resist the rise of the Antichrist and that "it's for people here to make choices; to decide."