How Does Lack of Religion Lead to AI Doomerism?
Seriously, how does it? I don’t know. But I might have some idea on these remarks by Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar.
Religions are fascinating. Dominating the world in kaleidoscopic forms—as animist and naturist practices of tribes, cultured polytheistic takes of emerging civilizations, syncretic beliefs of pantheistic unions, and demanding monotheistic staves of sordid empires and political regimes.
And no matter which camp you belong to, including that of atheism, you cannot live devoid of religion. It’s always there, perhaps in its more modern incarnations of idol (read: movie star, singer, capitalist businessman, orange leader, etc.) worship, but it is oh-so there.
So, when I came across this absurd claim by Palantir’s CTO, that lack of religion was the driving force behind AI’s doomerism, I found myself abhorrently affronted and apathetically aghast. Surely, such a highly educated, well-earned, ethnically diverse, and respected member of the American—erm—elitist society would have a better grasp on the material world?
Right?
I wasn’t having any of it. So, I stroked my threadbare mustache, put on my best olive tweed blazer, and donned my skepticism pince-nez to find a golden thread of disappointment between AI doom, religions, and a company that draws its name from Tolkien’s epic. This, I said to myself before starting this piece, should be fun.
Eyes, Smoke, and Mirrors
For the general populace who have to toil their way for the fruits of their labour, AI has not been the godsend (gods-send? How many gods are we talking here?) that the tech world sugarcoats it to be. When not casually declining résumés efficiently or demeaning the hard work of writers and artists on a Tuesday morning, you can find AI transforming into a vehicle for inflation of hype.
It’s the kind of tech circlejerking where one company, say ClosedUI, finds itself shaking hands with chipmakers that run its AI, say MAudia, and database giant, say Delphi, to create an ecosystem in which the latter companies lift the former’s product into greater focus. Along the lines, you can find smaller AI, cloud, and datacenter startups getting seeded by these giants in a massive loop that resembles the dot-com bubble, both literally and figuratively.
(I don’t need to add winks for you to decipher those company names, right?)
That’s a trimmed explanation of the actual AI bubble in the making. Bloomberg does a great job looking into it, and so does Hank Green. I suggest you, dear reader, check out both. The bottom line is, what may look like a booming market with its trillions of dollars of valuation is just a few companies feeding the illusion.
So, like any healthy, free-breathing human, the alarm bells should be ringing in you, me, and everyone on this soon-to-be-grey earth. But Palantir’s CTO doesn’t think so.
Here are his words, for your attention:
“I think the secularists in Silicon Valley are filling the God-shaped hole in their heart with AGI. It’s like, OK, the models get better. Why do you think that this cliff is going to happen where they somehow turn us into house cats?”
“The people who have religion are the most skeptical of this. The people who are transhumanists — it becomes what they wish were true, and then they run around with the doomerism”
In all fairness, these do not feel comforting the way he might have thought in his head. The AI- and AGI-focused corporations are all but secular. Sure, they dress themselves with all the right toppings and sauces of ethnicities and faiths. But if the recent flip by OpenAI in going for-profit is any indication, I think the overlords of future AI overlords are very much capital worshipers—fundamentalist monotheistic zealots that fiercely believe in the power of money.
And secularists in Silicon Valley? Like Palantir, with one of its offices in Palo Alto? Let’s not forget that the founder, Peter Thiel—labelled the “intellectual architect of Silicon Valley’s contemporary ethos”—himself chairs many venture capital firms.
Clearly, the tech people, legacy or new blood, all belong to the religion of capital gain. It’s their one true god. Thiel, when not bastardising Tolkien’s tokens, can often be found giving lectures on the antichrist. In one such episodic euphoria of lectures within San Francisco—the seat of the tech-see—he plants seeds of fear mongering against government intervention for AI regulations, calling them antichrist.
But we are not here for Thiel—even though his antichrist-obsessed lectures demand a separate essay of ridicule. That’s a discussion in deconstruction and derision for another time. Sankar, with his polished position as CTO of Palantir, should have had a trickle of self-reflection when spewing gutsy remarks, which strangely echo his company’s founder-cum-chairman’s religious positioning. Especially when his track record skews away from religious tenets.
One Software to Rule Them All
In August 2025, a Fortune report tracked how the rise of Palantir found its shares surging by a good 25%, hitting the market cap of $411 billion. When compared to the previous year, the stocks enjoyed a jump of 550%. These benefits translated very handsomely into skyrocketing the net worths of Peter Thiel and his C-lackeys. Shyam Sankar, in this wealth downpour, found his net worth rising upwards of $1.3 billion. All thanks to AI.
I don’t know if any religions of the world fit into this overinflated AI bubble that reserves capital gains for a select few—I’m pretty sure the Abrahamic and Dharmic religions of the world are all socialist, altruistic, and welfare-of-the-people kind. Where does Sankar’s brand of religion fit into his personal narrative?
And even if one were to give the benefit of the doubt (only for hypothetical reasons; the uber-rich don’t need it) in terms of finding riches through dedicated hard work, the route that Palantir and Sankar have taken is wrought with moral bankruptcy and fraud.
Bloomberg’s 2018 feature story on Palantir opens more eyes than those in Mordor’s shadow. Created as a spymaster’s tool to augment surveillance for the U.S. special forces and covert ops, the data mining company soon found itself becoming a beloved public sector tool to catch fraud and trace employee activity in the finance sector. But this soon took a sinister turn when Palantir became less of Tolkien’s communication device it was named after and more of Peter Jackson’s vision of the Eye of Sauron—a never-blinking overwatch of constant vigilance across the land of the living, or in this case, the United States and its people.
The story of this fraud detection collective has its own little fraud, which should surprise nobody. In the depths of Palantir’s nefarious use lies the shifty tactics of Shyam Sankar in obtaining an IP by another corporation, i2, to create their all-seeing eye. The result? A lawsuit.
Here’s an interesting paragraph from Reuters on this:
According to i2, Palantir employee Shyam Sankar obtained i2 software representing himself as a principal of SRS Enterprises, a company registered under the names of his parents in Florida. Sankar then allegedly proceeded to analyze i2’s software and use the results to develop tools to import data from i2’s software for use in Palantir’s analytical tools.
The lawsuit was, as it always happens, settled out of court. There’s more dirt under Sankar’s nails, but Palantir’s doing the role of Grima Wormtongue to quieten the general mood.
Of course, the company is openly in cahoots with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). With ICE’s $30 million “donations,” Palantir is developing an AI-based ImmigrationOS to unearth and deport what the current U.S. administration calls illegal aliens. That sits perfectly right with the religious ethos of Sankar, himself the son of Indian immigrants.
You and I shouldn’t be surprised, though. In the Gospel of Monetary Gains, the only truth is the dough that falls into your pockets. Morality is a bystanding spectator that zips out its phone to document what happens. It’s then quickly frisked away for being anti-American, anti-Christian, or any of the various “anti” flavours that the Trump administration disfavours.
There is also something about the way Silicon Valley merchants of tech and gold portray themselves: prophets and saviours against a sea of heretics. Thiel harping on the chords of antichrist against government regulations and Saran downplaying the rising—and very visible—AI bubble with a lack of religion fit cleanly into this motif. It’s among this cast of billionaire elites that you’ll find the masks of pious hellbent on selling you their vision against the dooming world.
It’s also on-brand for them to flip our insecurities and brand them in our consciousness. The means don’t matter, as long as they are able to manipulate the crowd. Why do they need to surround themselves with such myths? Perhaps it’s the self-important image they carry in their minds that they want to project onto the world. And why won’t they? If they don’t weave the fiction, no one will buy their crap.
When Tolkien sharpened his pen on the whetstone of epic fantasy, he created a masterful MacGuffin in the rings of power—three for the elves, seven for the dwarves, nine for the men.
In this modern fantasy of AI doomerism and tech evangelism, the elves are billionaires, the dwarves our governments, and the men remain men, mortal and on the lowest rung of the ladder.
It’s a loose adaptation of the epic, but let’s not forget: There was but one ring to rule them all.
I think we all know how that story ends.
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