Tech billionaire Peter Thiel, an outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump, has recently set “new roots” in Argentina as a potential “Plan B,” The New York Times reported, fueling widespread panic among onlookers given the billionaire’s past remarks about fearing a nuclear apocalypse.
“Chilling to read in the N.Y. Times article about Peter Thiel now living in Argentina that in the event of a nuclear war that devastates all of North America, Argentina ‘would hardly [be] affected at all,’” wrote author and former Ivy League professor Joyce Carol Oates Friday in a post on X. “Presumably the major reason that this far-right billionaire has left the US to live in Argentina.”
Thiel is the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, and has long supported Trump, contributing $1.25 million to his 2016 campaign and being appointed to his transition team’s executive committee. The tech billionaire has also cozied up to the president during his second administration, scoring lucrative government contracts for his company Palantir.
Thiel has a home in Argentina's capital city Buenos Aires, and according to insiders who spoke with the Times on the condition of anonymity, he has also quietly purchased a plot of land in Uruguay, which sits on Argentina’s border to the east, a property that “observers have speculated could include a bunker to shelter from nuclear apocalypse.”
The Times reported that he is now living in Argentina and has enrolled his children in a local school.
Thiel's "Plan B" has also sparked concerns given his close relationship with Vice President JD Vance, whose rise to prominence and eventual ascension to the White House he helped fuel.
“Peter Thiel is cooking up a plan B for fleeing the United States and hunkering down in Argentina, which I hope is an indicator of how bad he thinks it’s going to get for the new right and how dramatically JD Vance has failed as a viable political vehicle for Thiel’s agenda,” wrote journalist Pedro Gonzalez in a social media post on X to his nearly 175,000 followers.
Thiel’s move also sparked fears given his deep connection to generative artificial intelligence.
“We’re about to get very bad news about AI, aren’t we?” asked content creator Aidan Mattis in a social media post on X that was viewed more than 2.1 million times.
chilling to read in the N.Y. Times article about Peter Thiel now living in Argentina that in the event of a nuclear war that devastates all of North America, Argentina "would hardly affected at all."
presumably the major reason that this far-right billionaire has left the US to… https://t.co/9DsDEsyg8c
— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) May 29, 2026
