Against World Order: Alien Threats and the American Katechon

Stories about UFOs and aliens are again intruding on our news cycle. The conspiratorial aspect of these stories continues to get the most attention, but increasingly, there are reputable journalists taking the issue seriously. According to Ross Douthat, for example, segments of the national security elite have been “conditioned to use ‘aliens’ as cover for their secret operations.” This past summer, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon had used disinformation to fuel “America’s UFO Mythology.”

But as government programs get declassified, there is growing recognition that the subject of “non-human intelligence” (NHI) and “unidentified anomalous phenomena” (UAP) represent something more than conspiracies and coverups. Some international relations scholars are working on the topic, and new research is underway in the emerging academic field of UAP Studies. Former President Barack Obama made headlines in February when he said on a podcast that aliens are real (before then backtracking), and days later, Trump announced he would release the government’s UFO records.

Beyond the headlines and conspiracies, influential figures like Peter Thiel, along with elements of the intelligence community, see the “alien threat” intertwined with religion.

Beyond the headlines and conspiracies, influential figures like Peter Thiel, along with elements of the intelligence community, see the “alien threat” intertwined with religion. Thiel is now taking his Antichrist message to Rome, but reports indicate that his apocalyptic vision is encountering resistance at the Vatican. No word on the role of aliens, but this paper will show that there is a connection.

No Laughing Matter

Despite his declared Straussianism and corresponding caution when speaking publicly, Peter Thiel shared his startling views about aliens in his 2024 interview with Joe Rogan, where he demonstrated familiarity with the work of UFO researchers like Jacque Vallee and Diana Pasulka. Leo Strauss was a political philosopher who believed in esoteric writing that at times aims to conceal dangerous truths that might destabilize social order. Thiel says in the Rogan interview that disclosure of UFOs could have such a destabilizing effect.

We may be tempted to laugh when Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna (R, FL-13) and Congressman Tim Burchett (R, TN-2) turn to the Bible to make sense of interdimensional phenomena, which were presented to them by intelligence agencies as a security threat. But there are high-level groups in the Pentagon who believe NHI are demonic beings, and that only by turning to Christian fundamentalism can American souls be saved. That is nothing to laugh about.

Thiel also takes the threat seriously, even if Rogan is the only place he publicly discusses it. Knowing that some retired senior intelligence officers think the truth about UFOs is “indigestible,” and that others claim aliens will arrive soon and trigger mass panic, Thiel is careful in what he says. Unlike Congresswoman Luna, who, after being shown classified evidence of “energy orbs, bizarre shapes like jellyfish in the sky” and “incomprehensible forms that our 3D brains are unable to fully process—like a 4D projection warping reality,” invoked the Book of Enoch to characterize these strange phenomena as demonic, Thiel employs a different logic. He concludes that since UFOs are so good at cloaking themselves and “scrambling the brains” of experiencers, drawing definitive scientific conclusions is impossible at this stage. Instead, he frames it as a national security problem and uses techno-libertarian logic, but somehow, he too ends up using theological terms.

Conservatives in and out of government have followed Thiel in taking the alien threat seriously and treating it in spiritual terms, including JD Vance, Tucker Carlson, and Rod Dreher. Marco Rubio is more circumspect. Appearing in the documentary The Age of Disclosure, where 34 current and former U.S. government, military, and intelligence officials admit to an 80-year cover-up regarding NHI and reverse-engineered technology, Rubio acknowledges that Navy pilots, admirals, and generals have revealed secret programs that not even presidents are made aware of, but he is not publicly saying what is being concealed and how it endangers us. Strauss might call that being “political.”

A Straussian Strategist With a Schmittian Streak

Although Thiel is open about Strauss’s impact on his thinking, he may be closer to Carl Schmitt in his understanding of “the political,” which Schmitt defines as the struggle between friends and enemies. Before joining the Nazi party, Schmitt was part of the German conservative revolutionary movement, and his ideas continue to influence segments of American conservatism.  

In his essay “The Straussian Moment,” which has circulated widely for nearly two decades now, Thiel formulates a vision of the future based on a pre-Hobbesian conception of prophetic lawgivers, combined with an anti-Hobbesian view that elevates the historical significance of violence over and above the necessity for peace and order. In his support for new tech “founders,” Thiel also incorporates the ideas of some of Strauss’s disciples who focus on the founding of new political regimes.

Like Strauss, Thiel sees Hobbes’s views on freedom, rights, and equality as proto-liberal, despite Hobbes’s authoritarianism. But Thiel shares Schmitt’s assessment that Hobbes’s focus on achieving peace at all costs gives rise to a liberal modernity that endeavors to overcome the friend/enemy distinction and thus deprive “the political” of its essence. Thiel’s post-liberal critique of Enlightenment ideals contains a crusader’s call-to-action, which shares much with neoconservatives and Christian nationalists in the way it identifies a clear enemy, but his understanding of René Girard’s ideas about civilizational scapegoats and his reinterpretation of Schmitt’s Katechon show how Thiel’s reading of Strauss is more strategic than philosophical.

Thiel’s post-liberal critique of Enlightenment ideals contains a crusader’s call-to-action.

For Strauss, esotericism is, in part, a political response to the dangers posed by philosophy, which sometimes unveils dark and dangerous truths. Those who make it out of the cave may see things other than light and love. Some Straussian philosophers treat concealment as a security mechanism designed to preserve social order by withholding destabilizing truths. Others see esotericism as a pedagogical framework for higher wisdom to be disclosed through philosophical initiation. Strategists like Thiel apply concealment differently: for them, it is a form of power and gatekeeping, to be used to help friends and harm enemies. Like Schmitt, Thiel encodes these concepts in religious terms.

For Carl Schmitt, the Katechon is a restraining force that takes the form of state power, which maintains social order by preserving national identity and eliminating political enemies. Thiel gives Schmitt’s concept new meaning: instead of the Katechon using state mechanisms to hold back the dissolution of national power, Thiel sees nationalism as a means of preserving the freedom of creative individuals by preventing a global control system from arising.

But not all control systems are the same. A state-based surveillance system administered by tech elites, which enhances national military power, would actually be Katechontic, since it would represent a strong force against “globalist” interests. Global regulatory mechanisms upholding humanitarian law would signal the emergence of the Antichrist because they represent a future where differences between nations have been overcome and “the political” has come to an end. The loss of that political space is a threat to creators and founders who see competition and conflict as unleashing vital forces.

And that is where the aliens enter. Thiel declares openly that an alien threat is the only force strong enough to overcome the friend/enemy distinction at the national level. Only one thing can bring about a final end to great power politics: “Absent an invasion by aliens, there can never be a world state.” Years later, Thiel goes further, suggesting that the Antichrist might even invite belief in an alien threat if it would facilitate the creation of a world state. This accounts for his complaints to Douthat about liberal elites invoking global crises to promote global solutions. The alien threat would be the ultimate human crisis, which could bring about the final system of world order. But if the threat is presented in religious terms—“aliens are demons,” and world order is a sign of the Antichrist—then political space remains open for nations to continue their battles and for heroic founders to fantasize of future feats.  

But what does this have to do with aliens, or with the Antichrist, or with US policy? When discussing the Antichrist at the Hoover Institution in 2024, just months after his talk with Rogan, Thiel said the path to a totalitarian world state entails ceaseless fearmongering by liberal elites about existential risks, including nuclear war, climate change, and AI, from which only a global system can protect humanity. Here he stayed silent about the aliens and mocked his own appearance on Rogan by suggesting he was trapped in an unserious place and asked to discuss unserious matters.

Straussians know that mockery is a useful political tool, and alien talk invites ridicule from the conservative smart set. But a different conservative leader, much ridiculed by the brains of his time, brought this ostensibly unserious subject to the world stage with characteristic charm and simplicity. To understand how Thiel’s Katechon influences Trump’s policies, we need first to hear what Reagan said about aliens.  

The Katechon Prepares for the Aliens

In a 1987 UN speech, Ronald Reagan invoked the shared human aspiration for peace at a time when international hostilities made such hopes seem fantastical: “[P]erhaps we need some outside universal threat to make us recognize our common bonds. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.” Twenty years later, with the Cold War over, Thiel upends Reagan’s fantasy about aliens. Overcoming human differences and establishing a framework for global peace, in Thiel’s view, would not be the realization of our deepest aspirations. It would constitute the arrival of the Antichrist.

Like most post-Cold War conservatives, Thiel rejects the legitimacy of the UN, but unlike conservative isolationists or traditional nationalists, Thiel aimed at “a truly global Pax Americana.” On the surface, he aligned himself with the “Benevolent Global Hegemony” that neoconservatives were then promoting. But Thiel was not endorsing democratization. Though he was calling for the “secret coordination of intelligence services” on the model of the Five Eyes, he was not offering an updated form of British imperialism, nor was he invoking HG Wells’ “Open Conspiracy.” He was and is subverting it.

For Thiel, the establishment of a world state requires a global crisis, or confluence of crises, and national security entails defending the nation against such crises in a way that prevents the emergence of a one-world order. The uber case of a global crisis is an alien invasion that would bring together all of humanity, as Reagan fantasized. Thiel’s Katechon aims to ensure that does not happen.

Starting from these premises, three policy paths become discernible:

(1) American Caesarism: Harper’s described the Katechon as a “leader who operates above the normal order of law and morality in order to stave off the coming of the Antichrist.” By presenting himself above international law, withdrawing the US from global organizations, and creating a rival governing system, Trump represents Katechontic Caesarism. Thiel learned from Strauss that regime cycles mean Caesarism is only a temporary solution, which leads to elite rebellion and then back to a pre-constitutional situation. Still, even the revolving movement from one regime to another is Katechontic in that it ensures ongoing regime change and prevents any final system from taking hold. No external threat or crisis will establish a permanent global regime if a nationalist Caesar perpetuates regime cycles.

(2) Theocratic Nationalism: The American hegemon that underwrote the postwar “liberal international order” embraces religious nationalism and turns against the imperialism envisioned by strategists like Zbigniew Brzezinski, who imagined America becoming “the first, only, and last truly global superpower” as it yields national sovereignty to an emerging supranational “regent.” Brzezinski’s plan relies on “a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat” to sustain public consensus as the empire transitions toward a post-national world state. Katechontic nationalists have a counter vision. Expansionist plans to incorporate new states, seize strategic territories, and treat longstanding allies as vassal states are expressions of a nationalism with no plans to yield sovereignty to the Antichrist. An alien threat might rally public support for post-national fantasies, but for Thiel and for theocratic nationalists, the “demons” will keep us divided. The American Katechon differs from other forms of world order in that it maintains a national locus of power and thereby preserves a world defined by geo-political differences.

(3) Spheres of Influence: Trump’s National Security Strategy envisions a world system built on spheres of influence, not global hegemony. Reasserting great power rivalry is Katechontic because it prevents a one-world liberal order. Despite the dangers posed by great power conflict, there is a shared anti-liberal, authoritarian nationalism animating ruling elites in America, Russia, and China, which incentivizes coordinated efforts to dismantle the “liberal international order.” Military studies indicate that their respective space programs each take the alien threat seriously, but without full disclosures of the nature of the threat, it is impossible to know whether the great powers are coordinating their efforts or viewing the danger strictly in terms of their own national interests. Either way, the alien threat is katechontically useful. Authoritarian states will either seek their own survival in a world still divided among competing nations, or they coordinate their national military forces against an external threat; either way, a one-world liberal state is staved off. All three Katechontic policy paths may accelerate as a result of the conflict in Iran: (1) wars present potential Caesars with the state of exception, which justifies the suspension and supervention of international law, (2) religious rhetoric surrounding this conflict empowers theocratic nationalists and militarizes reactionary forces, and (3) the possibility that this regional conflict expands beyond the Middle East will require increased cooperation among the great powers to prevent a global conflagration. This is a katechontic war for strategists like Thiel, because it summons forces that prevent world order.

Conclusion

Fearing how nations would use the nuclear technology they unleashed, scientists like Oppenheimer and Einstein pushed for global regulatory frameworks to promote world peace. Reactionary forces within the national security state now view such utopian dreams as apocalyptic nightmares. For Theil, the sign of the Antichrist is not nuclear war, climate catastrophe, or unregulated AI, but rather the visions of those who want to solve these challenges through coordinated global efforts. We must add UFOs to the list of challenges.

For Theil, the sign of the Antichrist is not nuclear war, climate catastrophe, or unregulated AI, but rather the visions of those who want to solve these challenges through coordinated global efforts.

In his forthcoming book The Last Humans: UFOs & National Security, international relations scholar Alexander Wendt argues that discovering that UFOs are piloted by NHI could destabilize civilization and undermine the international state system. Whereas this generation’s Oppenheimers and Einsteins may see these challenges leading to a world beyond national conflicts, Thiel and his allies stand opposed to a world order where “the political” comes to an end.

Recent statements by senior intelligence officers about secret UFO programs, ongoing congressional UAP investigations, and the President’s pending release of the government’s UFO files will bring more public attention to the subject, but it may also accelerate the militarization of space. The US Space Force explains that spacepower provides “security from threats in space, like natural hazards (radiation, debris, and orbital decay) and deliberate adversary counterspace capabilities (the domain is contested, congested, and competitive).” Public documentation omits references to NHI threats, but that may soon change.

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Eli Karetny is the Deputy Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. He teaches political theory and international relations at Baruch College – CUNY and is an advisory board member of the Society for UAP Studies. You can follow him on LinkedIn and X.