AI, Argentina and the Antichrist: Thiel’s Vision Blooms
Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, has shed light on billionaire Peter Thiel’s reason for suddenly planting roots in his country.
In a Financial Times op-ed, Milei announced plans to make Argentina the world’s top destination for tech billionaires seeking to escape regulation, legal liability, and taxes. Milei’s op-ed trumpeted new legislation that would do three things:
1. “Keep AI unregulated,” providing a haven for companies wishing to develop the technology without guardrails or government rules.
2. Create a new business category for what Milei called the “non-human corporation.” These would be companies supposedly “operated by AI agents or robots” that could “exercise independent judgment in unpredictable environments.” These non-human companies would receive major protections in the form of limited liability for whatever decisions they might allegedly make on their own, without human intervention.
3. Allow tech companies to duck taxes. Milei’s legislation would impose low corporate tax rates and also allow shareholders to “select the corporate governance law of their choosing.”
Milei made it clear that he intends his legislation as an “invitation” to attract tech moguls to his country, highlighting his nation’s “world-class energy and mining resources” and “geopolitical stability.” The president heralded his plans for Argentina as the dawn of a new Dutch East India Company, the joint-stock corporation founded in 1602 that was granted sweeping, quasi-governmental monopoly powers to carry out trade activities in Asia.
“The logic of 1602 still applies today,” wrote Milei. “Companies run by new technologies such as AI agents require the same legal framework that has underpinned capitalism for over four centuries, one suitable for development and experimentation.”
In essence, Milei plans to turn Argentina into a top destination for the Network State cult. His plan to create a new framework by which tech moguls (and their machines) can escape regulation, laws and taxes is an almost-perfect expression of the Network State idea promoted by Thiel protégé Balaji Srinivasan, who calls for Silicon Valley to secede from the United States. The only thing missing from Milei’s proposal is an option for tech billionaires to create their own private nations on Argentine soil.
The core idea of the Network State traces back to the 1997 book The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State, which imagined a future in which a wealthy class of “cognitive elites” would leave the United States for more pliant countries that would allow them to escape taxes and laws. The combined wealth of these elites would be powerful enough to create a competition in which weak countries would compete for their patronage by giving them whatever they want.
Milei’s call to eliminate regulations for AI and allow the creation of “non-human companies” makes it clear he will do anything to cater to the desires of tech billionaires. It is no coincidence that he is making this announcement as the global media is abuzz with Thiel’s odd decision to (temporarily) relocate to Argentina.
Thiel has been traveling the globe, preaching about the Antichrist though he is neither a scholar, a theologian, nor particularly religious. His long lectures identify many possible Antichrists, including anyone who opposes the accelerated development of AI or raises questions about its potential risks.
Some consider Thiel’s Antichrist lectures a mere kooky distraction, but that’s a misreading. Thiel is delivering a coded message. His Antichrist lectures are a political argument wrapped in a thin layer of religious symbolism. Decoded, Thiel is calling on his anti-democratic tech brethren to frame today’s political struggles as an existential threat—a literal battle between good and evil—and he has named their enemies. Chief among them: anything that stands in the way of uncontrolled technological acceleration.
Specifically, Thiel has a name for critics and opponents of AI: “legionnaires of the Antichrist.” (Milei, a believer in “interspecies communication,” is well-known for hiring a spirit medium to communicate with his dead dog, Conan. The dog’s spirit reportedly told Milei that God would make him president of Argentina. No word on whether Conan has weighed in on his AI legislation.)
Now, Milei is answering Thiel’s call to create lawless playgrounds for tech fascist oligarchy. He seeks to make Argentina an experimentation zone for unregulated AI and “non-human companies.” The Sovereign Individual specifically named Argentina as a place where 21st century oligarchs should migrate and colonize. Milei and Thiel seem hellbent on realizing this self-fulfilling prophecy. However, it remains to be seen whether other billionaires will begin flocking to Argentina as the Trump regime wobbles toward disaster.
The Nerd Reich Is Coming!
This is only a glimpse of what you’ll learn in my forthcoming book, The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and The War On Democracy. It details how a cult of venture capitalists—led by Thiel—are pushing a self-fulfilling prophecy of societal collapse. If you can, please pre-order it today!
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