Da Blog

Peter Thiel needs to re-read the Lord of the Rings

October 14, 2025 Mark Brians

*p/c Storebror9689 via wikimedia commons, public domain*

Users can communicate over great distances with one another and particularly power operators of the master-stone can bend the other stones to their will and utilize the whole web of palantiri as a kind of surveillance network to cast their minds across vast stretches of Middle Earth.

…It is such stones that allow Sauron and Saruman to communicate with one another. It is another such stone that allows Denethor to spy on Sauron.

Here’s where things get real: ‘Palantir’ is the name that venture-capitalist-turned-apocalyptic-theologian Peter Thiel gave to his surveillance firm…

Wise fool

November 18, 2024 Mark Brians

Sauron, dark Lord of Mordor, is a “wise fool.” His knowledge and cunning is great, but he reckons wrong because he reckons only according to his own scales — of power, control, and anxiety. Sauron learns that the Ring is abroad and calculates carefully:

“He supposes that we are all going to Minas Tirith [the great stronghold city of the “good guys”]; for that is what he himself would have done in our place. And according to his wisdom, it would have been a heavy stroke against his power. Indeed he is in great fear, not knowing what mighty one may suddenly appear, wielding the Ring, and assailing him with war, seeking to cast him down and take his place.”