Peter Thiel on Being Evil
big tech
At an Axel Springer award ceremony, the Palantir co-founder contrasted “evil” competence with “bad” incompetence — then said a Ferrari proves the point.
Peter Thiel, speaking with Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner in Berlin on Sept. 24, the Palantir co-founder said society “moralize[s] way too much.” He drew a distinction between evil as the moral opposite of good and bad as good’s functional opposite.
“If you’re evil, you’re at least competent. And if you’re evil, you’re not bad, and therefore you’re actually maybe kind of good because you’re at least getting something done.”
Thiel used the line while discussing Faust. He contrasted Christopher Marlowe’s doomed “fake scientist” with Goethe’s Faust, who obtains knowledge by “morally dubious means” but ends up redeemed.
Thiel later said, “I think it’s better to be good than evil. I want to be very clear.” But he insisted the civilization’s larger problem was neither goodness nor evil. It was “badness” — incompetence.
“Most of the time those things are not even evil,” Thiel said. “They’re not even good. They’re just merely bad.”
The full interview came during the Axel Springer Award ceremony.
The clip gives Americans a look at the moral logic of a billionaire who built Palantir and now lectures the West about the Anti-Christ, AI, power, and competence.