Peter Thiel interview: Fifty years of stagnation—is AI civilization's last chance for self-rescue?

Original title: "Peter Thiel Interview: Fifty Years of Stagnation, Is AI Civilization's Last Self-Rescue?"
Original author: Sleepy

Editor's Note

Interviewing Peter Thiel has never been a comfortable affair.

He never accommodates the interviewer's assumptions, nor does he offer any cheap consolation. While the entire Silicon Valley rushes to take sides in the binary opposition between "accelerationism" and "doomism," Peter Thiel sits across from Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner, fitting the stagnation of the physical world, Goethe's Faustian bargain, the emerging global authoritarianism, and that almost offensive line—"99% of leaders are utterly incompetent"—seamlessly into a single cognitive framework.

This conversation took place on Döpfner's high-end interview program "MDMeets." Döpfner helms Europe's most powerful media group, which owns Bild, Welt, Politico, and Business Insider; but before Thiel, this dialogue feels more like a dissection of the internal pathologies of Western civilization.

In the current mainstream narrative, civilization is being swept forward by the roar of superintelligence. But in Thiel's coordinate system, the West has actually been standing still for the past fifty years. Bits race ahead in virtual space, while atoms stagnate in the physical world. AI is not an added technological miracle, but civilization's last self-rescue to break free from the zero-sum quagmire and avoid the collapse of the generational contract.

Following this main thread, he launched a full-throttle intellectual barrage.

The following is the interview content

Stagnation Theory

Q: You have consistently emphasized over the past few years that the West lacks sufficient technological breakthroughs, even directly using the word "stagnation." But today, the focus of public discussion is the exact opposite—people feel AI is accelerating too much. Have you changed your mind, or do you still think current technological progress is far from enough?

Peter Thiel: In some ways, I have indeed changed my mind. But let me step back first, to the "stagnation theory" I proposed twenty years ago.

It is extremely difficult to comprehensively measure technological development; the dimensions of science and technology are simply too vast. But the core logic is actually quite clear: since the 1970s, the overall pace of technological development has slowed down.

Computers, the internet, mobile connectivity, software—these reflect our headlong rush in the world of "bits," but in the world of "atoms," physical breakthroughs have been minimal.

Most engineering disciplines that deal with atoms are no longer even a track for young people to pursue success. Mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, aerospace are all receding; as for nuclear engineering, it was widely regarded as a poor career choice as early as the 1980s.

For various reasons, this slowdown has truly occurred. In my view, it is precisely this comprehensive technological stagnation that has become the root of many systemic crises in modern society.

For example, why politics is becoming increasingly polarized is because when the economy loses incremental growth, the birth of every winner means the defeat of a loser, and society completely degenerates into a zero-sum game, causing the overall ecosystem to deteriorate sharply.

Taking a longer historical cycle, we have been trapped in the quagmire of stagnation for these decades. The internet of the late 1990s was once a huge growth engine, surpassing everything before it in magnitude, but it still failed to push the entire civilization into the next qualitative stage.

Perhaps today's AI is larger in scale than the internet, or at least it has the potential to reignite incremental growth, regardless of whether what follows is honey or poison.

But the reason I still defend the "stagnation thesis" is that, precisely because of the emergence of AI, today finally no one comes to refute my statement that "in the decades before this, we were actually standing still."

Extinction Probability

Q: In recent weeks, Dario Amodei, Sam Altman, and Elon Musk jointly issued warnings, saying "this monster could completely spiral out of control." How do you view this wave of high-profile warnings? Is this some kind of PR tactic, expectation management before a trillion-dollar IPO, or are they genuinely afraid of AI superseding human civilization?

Peter Thiel: The debate about AI is extremely complex in its dimensions.

There are indeed scenarios that lean toward science fiction settings but carry a touch of realism. If you create something far smarter than the human mind in every respect, is it possible for it to completely derail and break free from humanity's reins of control?

Everyone has seen wasteland sci-fi like The Matrix or The Terminator. Personally, I don't think the probability of such extreme catastrophe is very high. But from another angle, even if the probability of destruction is only 5% or 10%, that's enough to send chills down one's spine.

The most dangerous consequence of this kind of public discussion is that it directly pushes social sentiment into an extremely defensive, even thoroughly conservative, "precautionary" dead end.

Q: If we really calculate by probability, there was recently an experiment that posed the same question to six major large language models: "Does AI pose a risk of causing human extinction?" The probabilities given by the models fell between 1% and 10%. Is this merely the models absorbing the pessimistic emotions projected by humans, or is it a genuine existential crisis?

Peter Thiel: Let us assume for the moment that this is a real existential crisis. No one can guarantee that the probability is absolutely 0%.

But that by no means implies that we must permanently slam on the brakes and retreat into a precautionary bunker. Because if you do nothing for the sake of absolute safety and let civilization stop evolving in every dimension, this society will instantly fall apart.

The only psychological pillar that still allows the European and American middle class to endure the present is the firm belief that the next generation will live better than they do. The core intergenerational contract of our society lies in gradual breakthroughs generation after generation, such as the growth of material wealth, breakthroughs in medical health, and upward mobility on the social ladder.

Once this contract is torn up, the entire society will fall into chaos in extremely distorted ways. The facts are by no means so.

Zero growth is by no means neutral, and time cannot flow backward.

Q: But if this danger truly exists, is it realistically possible to put the brakes on AI? If the United States slows down while the other side of the ocean advances at full speed, are we not unilaterally giving up our advantage while solving nothing?

Peter Thiel: In theory, only if truly deep and seamless coordination is achieved on a global scale could you actually put the brakes on technology. But behind this there is a terrifying premise: you would need a single world government with absolute real power and coercive enforcement capacity.

The classical liberalism in my bones reminds me that this is completely jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire, even a therapy more dangerous than the disease itself. The more likely outcome is that we create a set of pseudo-global governance filled with endless transnational meetings and empty declarations.

There is also the risk that the West slows down unilaterally while the other side of the ocean advances at full speed.

The Pope recently issued an encyclical on AI, or more precisely an "anti-AI encyclical." The rulers on the other side of the ocean will never listen to the Pope, but tens of thousands of Westerners will take it seriously. The ultimate objective effect is nothing more than turning the Pope into a "useful idiot" in the opponent's camp.

Q: I spoke with the founders of two leading AI platforms, and they insist they have evidence that competitors are spreading anti-AI panic through American social platforms to steer public sentiment and expand their own advantage. Have you observed similar signs?

Peter Thiel: I haven't dug deeply into the specific chain of evidence, but I'm inclined to believe it's true. In my view, though, that's not the core driver of the situation. What's really dragging us into trouble is precisely what we ourselves have done within the West.

I'd also love to simply write off Greta Thunberg as an agent sent by the opposing camp, but she is entirely a product bred from within our own Western society.

Q: But does Greta Thunberg really have that much destructive power over American public sentiment?

Peter Thiel: Her peak may already be behind her, but Western society has inflicted this kind of self-consuming internal friction on itself far too many times.

I have always been a harsh critic of China, and we must face this great-power confrontation with the utmost seriousness; but in many cases, lumping the West's own weakness and defeat onto China is far too cheap and lazy.

Q: Then why is there such a strong anti-AI wave in the United States right now? In Europe, as long as people feel they can participate, public attitudes are actually quite mild or even positive; but in the United States, which is widely seen as embracing technology, people are taking to the streets with placards. Where does this contrast come from?

Peter Thiel: Because the real technological transformation is happening in the United States, while Europe was left behind long ago.

In my framework, Europe has fallen so far behind that it has even lost the possibility of catching up. In the United States, domestic companies are under enormous anxiety about having to completely restructure their businesses through AI. In our business at Palantir, for example, sales growth to U.S. enterprise clients is exploding, and every company is being chased by the urgency of "accelerate or be eliminated."

In Europe, by contrast, a bottomless inertia still hangs over everything. They think, "We can wait a bit; don't do tomorrow what can be put off until the day after tomorrow."

Bad, not evil

Peter Thiel: The masses no longer believe that tomorrow will be better; all interest games have degenerated into brutal zero-sum battles.

AI is by no means a panacea. But if incremental growth cannot be revived, those parties entrenched at the far left and far right of the political spectrum will only see their bases expand further.

Q: Should we stop making moral judgments about new technologies? Technology is like a knife: it can chop vegetables or kill people. Why are the public and elites always habitually inclined to pass moral judgment on new technologies?

Peter Thiel: We are far too inundated with moral judgments about technology.

On the moral scale, the opposite of "Good" is "Evil"; but on the functional scale, the opposite of "good" is merely "Bad."

A Ferrari is an "evil" car because its fuel consumption per gallon is astonishingly high; but a Trabant (the shoddy little East German car) is a "bad" car because it can barely even move on the road.

An evil person at least still possesses the ability to carry out their will and achieve their goals.

In Marlowe's Faust, the protagonist is a charlatan peddling inferior pseudoscience and ultimately falls into hell; but in Goethe's version, although Faust makes a pact with the devil, the outcome brings about real creation, and he ultimately receives redemption.

The true collapse of today's entire society is filled with badness and incompetence. 99% of politicians, business magnates, and corporate executives are not evil at all; they are simply utterly incompetent. This is the elephant in the room that we truly ought to confront.

Incompatible Freedoms

Peter Thiel: That was an essay I hastily wrote late one night for the Cato Institute's libertarian online publication. Two weeks after publication, I wrote a formal clarification.

What I was really calling for at the time was a certain "depoliticization" and "de-escalation" of public life. My criticism was aimed at those libertarian colleagues who put all their chips on "remaking the world by winning elections."

Q: Are you worried about the continued polarization of global society and the systemic collapse of moderate leadership?

Today's moderate political elites underestimate the structural crisis triggered by technological stagnation and the breakdown of the intergenerational contract. Look at the UK: in just one decade, it has cycled through seven prime ministers like a revolving door, yet not one of them has produced a real plan to reverse the social decline.

Q: In the Berlin election, Die Linke won 25% of the overall vote, but among young voters aged 16 to 24, its vote share reached 47%. How do you view this radicalization of the younger generation?

Peter Thiel: You have to seriously confront the visceral survival predicament of the younger generation. In Berlin, rents are absurdly expensive, new housing construction is blocked at every turn, and young people find themselves with almost no hope of upward mobility.

Germany and much of Europe have long degenerated into a gerontocracy dominated by the elderly and serving the elderly across the board. The reason extreme parties can make electoral gains is simply that they at least openly discuss the pain points that moderates pretend not to hear, even if the remedies the extremists offer are completely useless.

Q: What about the other pole of the political spectrum, the Alternative for Germany (AfD)? Do you see it as a conservative alternative, or is it equally worrying?

Peter Thiel: The swelling of the AfD essentially exposes the incompetence of the establishment parties—they have failed to chart an inclusive economic blueprint for Germany, and they do not even possess the basic ability to balance the fiscal budget.

On the diplomatic front, there should be full public debate around Ukraine, China, and Israel, but I believe the AfD's answers on all three core battlegrounds are wrong.

Q: In 2016, you were one of the very few people in Silicon Valley to publicly endorse Trump. Looking back today, how do you analyze his gains and losses over his past two terms?

Peter Thiel: Trump's sudden rise was essentially the inevitable product of traditional establishment elites delivering a dismal record on long-term growth stagnation, the aftereffects of globalization, and the geopolitical quagmire in the Middle East.

His first administration was filled with endless bureaucratic factional infighting; by his second administration, he overcorrected and placed loyalty tests above everything else, resulting in the selection of a group of enforcers with severely inadequate professional competence.

Q: You were J.D. Vance's earliest supporter and mentor. What irreplaceable qualities did you initially see in him?

Peter Thiel: I have always had a preference for truly brilliant minds. Vance is a person with deep thinking, an open mind, and great personal charm. He once worked at my Mithril fund and wrote "Hillbilly Elegy." When he ran for the U.S. Senate in Ohio in 2022, I supported him.

Q: Looking ahead to 2028, who do you think will be the most central contenders for both parties?

Rich Like an Argentine

Q: What inspiration can Argentina's Javier Milei bring to the Western world mired in difficulties?

Peter Thiel: Argentina is a mirror, fully demonstrating where a society will head after experiencing a century of "below-average mediocre growth." In 1900, "rich like an Argentine" was a very popular slang phrase.

What Milei is confronting today are life-and-death level problems. At the macro level, the Western world, mired in the quagmire of uncontrolled deficits, has only three options: drastically cut spending like Milei, endure socialist-style tax stagnation, or use borrowing to push debt into the future.

Typical moderate politicians like Germany's Friedrich Merz chose the third path with their eyes closed.

Q: Since you repeatedly emphasize that you are an "unelectable politician," why do you still invest so much thought and energy in politics?

Peter Thiel: I have sufficient self-awareness to know that I am absolutely not someone who can run for public office. But the reality is that politics has penetrated into every pore of society. It is toxic, yet it is also the air we have no choice but to breathe.

I have invested a great deal of multidimensional thinking into politics because I have been working hard to isolate that layer of toxic gas.

Q: In the geopolitical landscape of U.S.-China confrontation, where should Europe place itself?

Peter Thiel: Europe should become a reliable ally of the United States. Restarting Europe's economic engine and maintaining a healthy business cycle are entirely in line with America's strategic interests.

Looking back at the late 1960s, Europe overtook the competition in the high-end aviation industry by pouring its efforts into building the Concorde supersonic passenger jet. But in today's AI battle, the severity of Europe's lagging behind even exceeds the predicament of France clinging to the Minitel local network in the 1990s.

Q: Why has Germany, known for engineering and manufacturing, never produced a globally established technology giant for decades?

Peter Thiel: Beyond a conservative culture that fears failure, the more deep-rooted ailment here is "fear of success."

European entrepreneurs and capital have never dared to push a company's boundaries to the extreme, nor dared to build disruptive giant machines like Musk or Zuckerberg.

The data is even more brutal. Among the 50 richest people in the United States, 12 belong to Generation X or younger generations, and among these 12, 9 are purely self-made entrepreneurs.

In Germany's list of the 50 richest people, 20 are from Generation X or younger, but all 20 are heirs to family wealth without exception.

For decades, this soil has not produced even a single entirely new, scaled-up trillion-dollar technology giant.

Outsiders, Flesh, and the Antichrist

Q: You once said that intellectually you try to drive Germany from your mind, but emotionally you cannot completely erase it. Where does this sense of rupture come from?

Peter Thiel: I grew up speaking German at home with my parents and grandparents. Germany has always been at the core hub of the European continent and Western civilization. To save the entire West, Germany is crucial.

Q: Talk about your two co-founders Alex Karp and Max Levchin. What founder traits do they possess?

Peter Thiel: Top founders often possess an extremely rare dynamic tension of "Insider/Outsider." They have both the institutional access to penetrate the corridors of power and the raw drive of outsiders to break the mold.

Alex Karp and I graduated from Stanford Law School together back in the day, bona fide members of the elite inner circle, yet he has always had the blood of a marginal rebel running through his veins; Max Levchin came alone from Ukraine to Chicago at 16, carrying within him that almost ferocious hunger to break the mold.

Q: Why are you always so committed to contrarian thinking?

Peter Thiel: Contrarian thinking is never about being contrarian for the sake of being different; its core lies in defending the capacity for independent thought.

In a technological society filled with Adam Smith's "pin factory" style of narrow professional specialization, we must carve out a place for generalists who can weave together history, science, economics, and human psychology across disciplines.

Q: In your personal life, what hobbies do you pursue purely out of passion, with absolutely no commercial rationale?

Peter Thiel: Chess. It is a game that combines extreme intellectual beauty with a dangerous addictiveness.

Q: How have four young children reshaped your perception of the world and your time horizon?

Peter Thiel: It completely shatters your existing scale of time. By 2100, my eldest daughter will be 81 years old. When you realize that, your brain is forced to think about what civilization in the 22nd century will actually look like.

Q: Why do you bet so much of your resources and attention on the fields of health and longevity?

Peter Thiel: Looking back at the early modern optimism pioneered by Bacon, Franklin, and Condorcet, the most fundamental mission of science was to completely lift humanity out of its existential predicament, ultimately conquering terminal illness and death itself.

And our collective abandonment of this noble pursuit today is a staggering regression of civilization. If biology is reunderstood as an underlying information science, then the entire aging process is in essence computable and reversible.

My current top priority bet is to completely conquer brain atrophy, cognitive impairment, and Alzheimer's disease.

What I hold is an ontological identity rooted in the physical body and deeply influenced by the Christian tradition. What I pursue is the true continuation of bodily life, not uploading slices of my brain consciousness to some cloud program; cold code does not constitute the real me.

Q: The last question is still your most famous one. What truth do you believe in deeply that almost no one agrees with?

Peter Thiel: Three years ago I began giving a public lecture series on the "Antichrist." At the time I thought this must be an extremely heretical, provocative, contrarian view.

But now I have gradually come to realize that it is far less contrarian than I imagined. Many people privately, in fact, secretly admit that we are entering an incipient global authoritarian system.

At the metacognitive level, the real absurdity is that in public everyone says the "Antichrist" is the ravings of a madman; but when the spotlight goes out, in private they all silently agree with my judgment.

Epilogue

In Silicon Valley, selling the future has always been the easiest way to get rich.

Some peddle superintelligence that leads to divinity; some peddle indulgences for the apocalypse that offer exemption from destruction.

Peter Thiel wants to buy neither.

Throughout the conversation, his coldest deconstruction was to uproot the reality everyone takes for granted.

The clamor of fifty years of digital prosperity is nothing but a collective hallucination in which bits obscure atoms; the public's moral judgment of new technology is essentially a cover for its own mediocrity and incompetence; and those global governance appeals that raise the banner of "security" are, without exception, hypocritical channels leading to a single authoritarian system.

But in this conversation, filled with Faustian bargains, imperial decline, and geopolitical confrontation, what strikes people most is not those grand deductions, but several pauses in Thiel's life.

A venture capitalist who has bet his whole life on the technological singularity refuses to upload his consciousness to the cloud; a pragmatist who believes in capital and power spends his late nights obsessed only with online international chess that has no commercial ROI; and a prophet who has deduced countless zero-sum dead ends recalibrates the anchor of his time coordinates simply because he calculated that his eldest daughter will turn 81 in 2100.

He spent twenty full years going against the times, and finally waited for AI to confirm the stagnation thesis. But he clearly has no interest in stopping to enjoy this belated correctness.

In the chair opposite Depfner, what Thiel left behind was actually a huge cool-toned question mark. If the runaway advance of technology is destined to be unstoppable, and human society is inevitably ruled by the mediocre 99%, then before the narrow gate leading to the 22nd century, are we rushing toward redemption, or toward that endgame everyone tacitly conceals?

He gave no answer. He did not even leave behind a single word of blessing.

Just as in the thousands of chess endgames he had played, the clock is still ticking, the pieces have crossed the river, and the true players never leave the board early.

The End.

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