With the inhumanly-rapid rise of AI, Theil's suggestion sounds all-too-likely to me (and to many others, I suspect).
And I think it might not be a dictionary-definition government but rather an intertwined group of corporations, NGOs, and governments large and small, all using and being used by AI.
. . . Thiel, the chairman of big data and artificial intelligence giant Palantir, has argued the Antichrist will manipulate humanity by promising solutions to contemporary existential threats.
He has earmarked topics like AI, environmental crises and bioweapons as pathways to that outcome.
But rather than a single person, Thiel has suggested the Antichrist could take the shape of a centralized global government that gradually strips away individual rights and freedoms.
Thiel's secretive conference, titled Peter Thiel, began Sunday and is slated to run until Wednesday.
. . . Rather than a figure like Dr. Strangelove out of the 1964 black comedy film, Thiel said the Antichrist was 'far more likely' to resemble Greta Thunberg.
When Thiel was asked whether he was concerned that he or Palantir could represent the very concerns he posed, Thiel shot that down.
'I obviously don't think that that's what I'm doing,' he said.
(more)
Rev. 9:9 The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. 2 When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss.
11 They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in Greek is Apollyon (that is, Destroyer). (Apollo/Nimrod)
Rev. 17: 8 The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and yet will come up out of the Abyss and go to its destruction. The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because it once was, now is not, and yet will come.
The Eclogues
By Virgil Written 37 B.C.E Eclogue IV
Now the last age by Cumae's Sibyl sung Has come and gone, and the majestic roll Of circling centuries begins anew: Justice returns,
returns old Saturn's reign, With a new breed of men sent down from heaven. Only do thou, at the boy's birth in whom The iron shall cease, the golden race arise, Befriend him, chaste Lucina; 'tis thine own
Apollo reigns. And in thy consulate, This glorious age,