{"id":289427,"date":"2026-07-14T11:50:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T15:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/14\/how-apocalyptic-worldviews-are-moving-from-the-fringes-to-the-corridors-of-power\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T12:25:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T16:25:07","slug":"how-apocalyptic-worldviews-are-moving-from-the-fringes-to-the-corridors-of-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/14\/how-apocalyptic-worldviews-are-moving-from-the-fringes-to-the-corridors-of-power\/","title":{"rendered":"How apocalyptic worldviews are moving from the fringes to the corridors of power"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/how-apocalyptic-worldviews-are-moving-from-the-fringes-to-the-corridors-of-power-286581\">How apocalyptic worldviews are moving from the fringes to the corridors of power<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/how-apocalyptic-worldviews-are-moving-from-the-fringes-to-the-corridors-of-power-286581\">https:\/\/theconversation.com\/how-apocalyptic-worldviews-are-moving-from-the-fringes-to-the-corridors-of-power-286581<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-07-14 11:50:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"theconversation.com\">theconversation.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>It recently emerged that tech billionaire Peter Thiel is running a secret society that brings together fellow CEOs and billionaires with political leaders. Members reportedly include figures like Nato supreme commander Alexus Grynkewich and son-in-law of US President Donald Trump, Jared Kushner.<\/p>\n<p>Thiel, a German-American entrepreneur and activist, was a co-founder of PayPal and software firm Palantir. Revelations about the society \u2013 known as \u201cDialog\u201d \u2013 have attracted widespread attention. And Thiel himself gave a confidential lecture series in San Francisco this year, in which he framed issues of politics and technology in biblical terms. <\/p>\n<p>Thiel has said he believes that humankind faces existential threats from nuclear war or runaway artificial intelligence (AI) that could lead to \u201cArmageddon\u201d. In such an end-times era, so the thinking goes, only the most ingenious \u2013 like those in the secret society \u2013 would survive.<\/p>\n<p>Thiel is an extreme, but by no means isolated, case. Other powerful people in politics and technology are viewing today\u2019s world through a lens of civilisational crisis and impending catastrophe.<\/p>\n<h2>Politics of the end times<\/h2>\n<p>Over the centuries, political leaders have often invoked fears of decline and collapse. In ancient times, Augustus, the first Roman emperor, championed the narrative that Rome faced moral collapse to justify concentrating power in his own hands. Yet the current moment of \u201cend-times politics\u201d is different on several fronts. Threats, both real and imagined, spread faster than ever, diffused through social media algorithms that favour hysteria and conspiracy.<\/p>\n<p>In Silicon Valley, influential figures routinely discuss AI as either humanity\u2019s salvation or an extinction event. Palantir CEO Alex Karp has described the AI race as \u201cour Oppenheimer moment\u201d, when the world\u2019s rich nations must decide whether to halt the development of a dangerous technology or tip the balance of power in its favour.<\/p>\n<p>Yet the&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/how-apocalyptic-worldviews-are-moving-from-the-fringes-to-the-corridors-of-power-286581\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How apocalyptic worldviews are moving from the fringes to the corridors of power https:\/\/theconversation.com\/how-apocalyptic-worldviews-are-moving-from-the-fringes-to-the-corridors-of-power-286581 Publish&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":289428,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/745632\/original\/file-20260702-64-o1yqt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&rect=0%2C457%2C5478%2C2739&q=45&auto=format&w=1356&h=668&fit=crop","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-289427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289427"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289427"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289429,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289427\/revisions\/289429"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}