This may partly explain Peter Thiel’s recent decision to temporarily relocate to Argentina.
As most readers will already know, the co-founder of Palantir, Peter Thiel (anagram: The Reptile), has temporarily relocated to Argentina, after meeting with President Javier Milei and his minister of deregulation, Federico Sturzenegger, in April. A host of reasons have been floated as to why Thiel has made this unexpected move, including Thiel’s obvious appreciation for Javier Milei’s particular brand of faux libertarianism, which closely mirrors his own.
Milei’s reactionary anti-statism, summed up with his phrase, “I love being a mole inside the State. I’m the one destroying it from within”, coupled with his contempt for even the most basic liberal principles, no doubt sits comfortably with Thiel’s own feelings about politics and the modern state. Like much about Thiel, those feelings are riddled with contradictions, given that government agencies have always been Palantir’s largest and most significant customer base.
Indeed, Palantir itself came into existence as the result of a sneaky spinoff of DARPA’s hugely controversial Total Information Awareness (TIA) program. Its first ever investor was In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the Central Intelligence Agency. And if Thiel’s dark vision for our future becomes a reality, the State will still exist but it will be controlled, lock, stock and barrel, by private corporations like his. And it will be even more powerful and controlling.
Another possible factor in Thiel’s move is the Milei government’s near-total subservience to the US and Israel, whose militaries, government agencies and companies are among Palantir’s most important clients. Milei’s enthusiasm for some of Silicon Valley’s more dangerous ideas, as well as the no doubt tempting possibility of being able to implement those ideas with much greater ease in Argentina than the US, may have also played a part in Thiel’s decision.
The explanation that strikes me as least likely is that Thiel is fleeing the US out of fear of the country’s current direction — a bizarre notion given that Thiel is one of Trump’s most influential backers, has helped to shape US policy during both of his administrations, and is the patron of Vice-President (and possibly future president) JD Vance.
Thiel could, of course, just be looking for a place far enough away from the worst of the nuclear fallout in the event of WW3. But then he already holds New Zealand citizenship after spending just 12 days there in 2011. Perhaps he’s just shopping around. Or, as Drey argues below, “this is not a man running from the state; this is a man shopping for the next state to optimise…”
The “Peter Thiel is fleeing America” story is so unserious. Fleeing what? His protégé is vice president, his companies feed on government contracts, and his politics are already sitting in the room. This is not a man running from the state; this is a man shopping for the next… pic.twitter.com/jNreP25ktQ
— Drey (@thedreydossier) May 29, 2026
Argentina, even as it was before Milei’s presidency, offers an even juicier prize for the likes of Thiel that is broadly overlooked: land. As investigative journalist Whitney Webb posited in a recent tweet, Argentina’s biggest draw for Thiel may be that it “allows wealthy, foreign billionaires to establish de facto parallel states in the country, where the federal government declines to intervene, even to protect its own citizens and laws”:
Roughly seven years ago, I traveled to Argentina and wrote about how UK billionaire Joe Lewis (who Trump recently pardoned after he was found guilty of insider trading) had established one such “parallel state” in Argentine Patagonia, and even controls a private airport that the Argentine state doesn’t even pretend to monitor. (Article link is below)
Lewis is a Jewish-British financier whose family trust owns Tottenham Hotspur football club and who was pardoned by Trump last year on 16 charges of insider trading.
It was in 1996 that he bought 13,000 hectares of land surrounding Lago Escondido, in Río Negro. As Spain’s El Diario reports, the vast plot of land, just six kms from Argentina’s border with Chile, was purchased through a national company with Argentine shareholders, since Argentine Law prevents foreign ownership of land less than 50 kms from the border.
Lewis fenced off the land, built a mansion and a private airport and, for almost 20 years, fought in court to prevent public access to the lake. The Superior Court of Justice of Río Negro, three years ago, ruled in his favour: the Tacuifi road had to be closed and those who wanted to access the lake would have to do so via mountain paths.
The case of Lago Escondido is one of the most egregious examples of “foreignization” of land in Patagonia, but it is not the only one. According to a report by the Land Observatory, around five percent of Argentine territory is in foreign hands — that’s more than 13 million hectares, roughly equivalent to the entire area of Lewis’s native England.
As Webb points out, this begs the question:
Did Milei allow Thiel the opportunity to experiment with one such “parallel state”? Given how Thiel and his associates are eager to create “network states” along similar lines, and Milei’s own ideological leanings and personal ties to that crowd, it is an angle worth considering…
In the 2000s, as foreign purchases of Argentine land surged, the Cristina Fernández de Kirchner-controlled Congress responded by passing Law 26,737 in 2011, which placed a 15% limit on the purchase of land by foreign companies or individuals in any given province. The law also established that no foreign nationality can exceed 30% of that 15% allowed, and that the same foreign owner cannot own more than 1,000 hectares in the core area in question.
The Milei government now wants to eliminate all those restrictions, and it hopes to be able to count on the support of the governors of Argentina’s 23 provinces to get its bill across the line. That’s right: Milei and his handlers literally want to allow the unlimited sale of Argentine land to foreign investors. From El Diario (machine translated):
“The Land Law is to regional economies what the Glacier Law was to mining,” said Sturzenegger, during a conference organized by the Argentine Rural Confederations, where he promised that, if the limits on foreign ownership were eliminated, more than $15 billion of capital would enter. The Minister of Deregulation’s argument was that if all restrictions on foreign ownership were eliminated, investments in all productive areas of the country would be unblocked.
This is not the first time that the government has tried to move against the Rural Land Law. As soon as he became president, …Milei issued… a [“Mega-Decree”]… that included the elimination of Law 26,737. The Justice Depertment however, accepted an injunction presented by the Malvinas Islands La Plata Center for ex-combatants that warned that eliminating the law “…poses a direct threat to the principles of territorial integrity and national sovereignty.”
The problem was not only the removal of the 15% cap for foreign individuals or companies, but that it swept away all other existing restrictions, even for foreign nation states*. The Rural Land Law also prohibits the acquisition of land located in strategic areas, such as those that contain permanent bodies of water or are located in border security zones… Milei sought to eliminate everything.
It is not hard to see why such a free-for-all would appeal to a man like Peter Thiel, who is already a huge proponent for charter cities. He was a key financial backer of Próspera, a controversial libertarian charter city established on the Honduran island of Roatán. The project allowed foreign investors to operate independent of Honduran laws and taxes, functioning as a “crypto-libertarian paradise”. It didn’t long for local residents to begin kicking up a fuss.
Honduras’ previous Xiomara Castro government tried to pull the rug from under Próspera’s feet by doing away with part of the law that allowed charter cities to operate as more or less autonomous territories on Honduran soil. Próspera’s response was to sue the government for $10.8 billion — enough to bankrupt the country. Now that the right-wing National Party is back in power, charter cities like Próspera will once again have free reign.
As John P. Ruehl reported in an article posted by Naked Capitalism in September, Thiel has also poured money into Praxis (originally Bluebook Cities), which envisioned a full breakaway state, as well as an eco-industrial city in Bhutan that never got off the ground:
Billing itself as the “world’s first network state” and drawing inspiration from tech entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan, Praxis claims to have more than 87,000 digital “Praxians,” and has floated possible locations from the Mediterranean to Greenland.
Another Thiel-backed startup explored creating an eco-industrial city in Bhutan; however, the government “disavowed the startup’s project and plans to announce its own mindfulness-focused ‘megacity’ instead,” stated the startup news website Dash Startup.
If Milei is able to eliminate Law 26,737, Thiel would face no such restrictions in Argentina. And lest we forget, Argentina is the world’s eighth largest country, and it is rich in energy, lithium and water. Another advantage for Thiel, as already mentioned, is that the Milei government is not just aligned with the governments of the US and Israel and their respective corporate partners/owners, it is totally subservient to them.
Milei has been instrumental in promoting the Isaac Accords, which seek to strengthen political, economic and technological ties between the Jewish state and Latin American countries. Earlier this week, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) President Ilan Goldfajn signed a declaration of intent in Washington to promote the creation of the “Isaac Accords” Fund. From AJN Noticias (machine translated)
The fund will contribute to the attraction and provision of public and private sources of financing for development projects, and will pave the way for Israeli companies to expand into emerging markets in Latin America and the Caribbean, while promoting sustainable growth, economic development, strengthening regional innovation and expanding public-sector collaboration. the private sector and international development institutions.
According to the joint document, the fund is expected to include three main components: a technical assistance window to support project preparation, feasibility studies and capacity building; a blended framework that will support activities through preferential funding; and a specific structure for raising private capital, with the support of the Israeli government.
The fund aims to support public and private sector activities in Latin American and Caribbean countries, while providing resources for the use of innovative financial tools, allowing Israel to promote Israeli solutions to major challenges in those countries.
Smotrich traveled to Washington in order to meet with leaders of Latin American nations and expand the Isaac Accords, the new diplomatic-economic initiative with Latin American countries, Walla reported.https://t.co/i7EX8VK4uO
— The Jerusalem Post (@Jerusalem_Post) May 31, 2026
Here is Jared Kushner spelling out how Pax Judaica will spread in West Asia and North Africa via the Abraham Accords. It will subjugate the whole region for the Jewish State to become a Jewish Empire.
The same process is happening in Latin America via their Isaac Accords.
It’s… https://t.co/7IaoqONb7r
— David Miller (@Tracking_Power) June 3, 2026
In a speech last year, Demian Reidal, the then-head of Milei’s Council of Advisors, told oil executives and billionaire investors gathered at the LatAm forum about the investment opportunities in Patagonia, especially for those looking to set up AI data centres. “The only problem” he said, to a lfaint chorus of chuckles, is “these areas are populated by Argentines”:
“We have large tracts of land with access to energy and water, cold climates, which is the icing on the cake for cooling AI systems; and in addition, we are in an area without armed conflicts, without tsunamis, or earthquakes. There aren’t many places on Earth with those qualities. Obviously, the problem is that these areas are populated by Argentines.
“Tenemos grandes extensiones de tierra con acceso a energía, agua y climas fríos. El único problema son los argentinos”
Así el Jefe de Asesores de Javier Milei ofrecía la Patagonia a los agentes extranjeros que hoy se relamen con los incendios pic.twitter.com/ULlc7Q5hGQ
— Arrepentidos de Milei (@ArrepentidosLLA) January 9, 2026
In another speech, Reidel, one of more than half a dozen former JP Morgan bankers who have served the Milei government, put it no less bluntly: Argentina’s comparative advantage lies not only in its resources or human capital but — above all — in its political willingness to eliminate regulations. From Untold Mag:
In his view, Argentina’s true asset is its capacity to offer itself to the world as a libertarian paradise — a sacrifice zone with low wages, minimal labour and environmental protections, and nonexistent ethical constraints around AI development. This would position it above other hubs like the European Union, shackled by its environmental and labour laws, or China, where the state maintains ironclad control over data.
Even with its 2024 Mega-Decree suspended by the courts, the Milei government has tried to push ahead with a new law that would allow unlimited sale of Argentina land to foreign investors., According to various environmental, scientific and indigenous community organizations, this new law could put at risk national sovereignty and the access of local populations to their own territories.
The question is: will the proposed law get enough support to pass Congress on Thursday? After the government offered a number of sweeteners to its coalition partners, including a clause giving provincial governors the final say on whether foreign corporations can purchase land in their province, the signs are that it will. Which I imagine will be welcome news for Peter Thiel.
“They want to enable the purchase of strategic land by companies like Palantir,” said one opposition politician quoted by El Diaro. “For them, the world has no limits, it’s all theirs.”
* Since vast tracts of Patagonian forest burned to the ground during the summer months of December, January and February, just as Milei is seeking to loosen restrictions on foreign state ownership of land in Argentina, speculation has grown that the government has agreed to allow the construction of an Israeli settlement, or settlements, on parts of the burnt land.
In an article for Agencia Nova, Nicolás Hourclé reports that a recently leaked secret government file, labelled MS-26, exposed government plans to receive up to 300,000 Israeli refugees in the event of worsening tensions in West Asia:
The main catalyst… is “Joshua Private Neighbourhood, Prophet of Israel”, under the file number AR-MOPU-ISR-0426-7781, which aims to establish a private neighborhood in areas affected by Patagonian forest fires.
The “Joshua Private Neighbourhood, Prophet of Israel” project has extraordinary dimensions: 35 thousand hectares for housing, 20 thousand for agricultural production and 20 thousand for reserves and reforestation. In total, it would be 100,000 hectares under private control.
This “private undertaking” would include financing from the Argentine State, private investment and international programs, in addition to the incorporation of its own bilingual educational system (Spanish-Hebrew), with schools, universities and institutes within the premises. It would be a closed community model that has the dimensions of a city rather than a gated community, and it is expected to begin development in April 2026.
As far as I’m aware (and I will be happy to be corrected on this point), there is no concrete evidence to actually support these claims. They are, for the moment, conjecture. Meanwhile, the legacy media and fact checkers in Argentina are treating the claims as an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory similar to the Plan Andina theory of the 1960s that alleged plans to establish a Jewish state in parts of Argentina and Chile. No great surprise there.
However, there is circumstantial evidence that at least lends a certain amount of credence to these theories:
Milei has subordinated Argentina’s foreign policy almost entirely to US and Israeli interests. He even recently declared himself the “most Zionist president on the planet”. If any national leader was willing to give away a slice of his or her national territory to help the Zionist cause, it would be Milei.
Milei has already signed agreements with the Netanyahu government that essentially grant Israeli citizens residing in Argentina access to the full gamut of government benefits, including pensions, maternity leave and disability allowance, even as the Milei government guts public spending and welfare benefits for most Argentine citizens.
There are also credible reports of Israelis being caught starting fires on Patagonia’s hiking trails. In 2011, for example, an Israeli was caught setting a fire that burned 17,000 acres of Chilean Patagonia.
Before the fires began raging over the summer, the Milei government reduced the operating budgets for fighting forest fires by more than 80 percent.
The Milei government has also unveiled plans to repeal land-use restrictions that currently prevent real estate developments and intensive agricultural activities on recently burnt land for periods of up to 60 years.
Patagonia was always on the short list of possible locations for the establishment of a Jewish State. In the late 19th century, the father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, described Argentina as “a country with an immense area, sparse population and a moderate climate”.
Lastly, this wouldn’t be the first time Argentina, and the southern cone of Latin America in general, had served as a bolthole for international war criminals of a fascist persuasion.
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