Did we read the same books?
A pack of surveillance, weapons, and money companies took their names from J.R.R. Tolkien — a man whose life's work was one long warning that the hunger to watch, arm, and dominate is exactly what turns a person into the villain.
This one's a little different for us: part roll call, part book report. We grade what Tolkien actually wrote, document who named what, and let the irony sit where it lands.
What this page is about
Peter Thiel and the founders in his orbit love The Lord of the Rings. You can tell, because they keep naming things after it: Palantir (surveillance software), Anduril (autonomous weapons), Erebor (a new bank for defense and crypto), plus the venture funds Valar and Mithril, a supplement startup called Lembas, and — we are not making this up — a home-surveillance company that went with Sauron.
Here's the thing. Tolkien's books are not neutral about any of this. The whole moral engine of the story is that the desire to dominate others — through machines, through weapons, through a stone that lets you see everything — is the thing that corrupts and destroys. The heroes win by giving power up. So a generation of surveillance-and-weapons founders branding themselves with the props of the villains is, at minimum, a funny thing to notice — and maybe a telling one. We grade what Tolkien wrote, list the companies, and close with what a couple of other world-builders meant.
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The same investigation, restaged one beat at a time. Step through it here, or present it fullscreen.
Did we read the same books?
A pack of surveillance, weapons, and money companies took their names from Tolkien — whose life's work was one long warning that the hunger to watch, arm, and dominate is what turns a person into the villain.
The books are about giving power up
Tolkien's central theme was that the will to dominate — 'the Machine' — corrupts.
FACTThis isn't fan interpretation; Tolkien said it plainly in his letters. He described the recurring evil in his work as 'the Machine' — his word for using power and devices to dominate other wills, 'the corrupted motive of dominating.' The One Ring is the purest form of it: a tool of total control that cannot be used for good, which is why Gandalf and Galadriel refuse it even to fight evil. The moral of the story is that power-over-others is the temptation, not the reward.
“The Machine… all use of external plans or devices instead of the development of inner powers or talents — or even the use of these talents with the corrupted motive of dominating.”
A palantír, in the books, is a trap: it ensnares whoever uses it and feeds them to the enemy.
FACTOf all the names to pick for a surveillance company, 'Palantir' is the sharpest self-own. In the books the palantíri are the seeing-stones — and every named user who looks into one is either destroyed or deceived by it. Saruman is corrupted through his; Denethor is driven to madness and suicide by his; and the stones become a direct channel for the Dark Lord to manipulate the people who thought they were the ones watching. It's a cautionary object. The lesson is that the all-seeing tool sees you back.
The villains are the ones who industrialize and dominate; the Shire is the thing worth saving.
FACTSaruman — the wizard who turns to the enemy — is described by Treebeard as having 'a mind of metal and wheels,' who 'does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him.' He strips the forest and turns Isengard into a war factory. The book ends not with a battle but with the hobbits going home to heal a Shire that industrial 'progress' had scarred. Tolkien's sympathies are with the small, the green, and the free — not with the towers and the machines.
“He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment.”
The roll call
Every one of these is real, and most of them trace back to one man's reading list. Founder, what it is, and why it belongs in the big club.
Palantir
named for the seeing-stonesThe government's surveillance-software giant: data-fusion tools sold to the Pentagon, spy agencies, police, and ICE. Named after the very object that, in the books, corrupts and deceives everyone who dares to use it.
The club: Thiel is the spine of the tech right, and Palantir is where its politics meet the surveillance state's budget.
Anduril
named for Aragorn's reforged sword, 'Flame of the West'A defense-tech company building autonomous drones, AI targeting, and the surveillance towers now dotting the US border. Backed early by Thiel's Founders Fund. It named itself after a hero's sword — but builds the automated war machine the heroes were fighting.
The club: The war-machine profiteer of the new right; a private arsenal wired into border and battlefield contracts.
Erebor
named for the Lonely Mountain — the dragon's hoard of goldA brand-new digital bank for startups, defense contractors, and crypto firms, which won conditional federal approval and raised about $350 million at a ~$4.35 billion valuation. They named their bank after a mountain full of treasure that a dragon sat on until it was killed for it.
The club: The finance layer for the military-tech stack — and a direct cousin of our private-dollar cluster.
Valar Ventures
named for the Valar — the angelic, god-like powers of creationThiel's fintech-focused venture fund. Named after the closest thing Tolkien's world has to gods.
The club: More Thiel money; the naming habit runs all the way through his portfolio.
Mithril Capital
named for mithril — the priceless dwarven metalThiel's late-stage venture fund, named after the rarest, most valuable material in Middle-earth — the stuff of Frodo's life-saving mail shirt.
The club: Thiel again. At this point the theme is not subtle.
Lembas
named for the elven waybreadToday, 'Lembas' is an AI-and-supplements wellness startup. It's also a name Thiel used before: 'Lembas LLC' and 'Rivendell One' turned up in filings as holding vehicles for his early Facebook shares. The bread that never runs out, used to hold the shares that kept multiplying.
The club: The naming obsession extends even to the shell companies.
Sauron
named for …the Dark Lord. The literal embodiment of evil. The Eye that watches everything.Someone built a luxury home-surveillance system and decided the right brand for it was the all-seeing Eye of the villain of the entire saga. There is no deeper analysis to add. That is the analysis.
The club: When your surveillance company is named after the setting's embodiment of surveillance-as-domination, the mask isn't slipping — there is no mask.
What's a joke, and what's a fact
- The facts are the names and the businesses. Every company here exists, is named from Tolkien, and does what we say it does — surveillance, weapons, banking, venture money. That part is documented, not comic.
- The theme is the author's, not ours. That Tolkien's work is about the corruption of the will to dominate is his own stated view, from his own letters. We're not projecting a modern politics onto him; he wrote it down.
- Their defense, carried. Thiel and company would say the names are apt, not ironic: a palantír is a tool to see danger, Andúril is the good king's blade, and they cast themselves as the West defending against a real enemy. Fair enough — but the books are blunt that the seeing-stone deceived its own users, and that's the part the branding skips.
- The verdict is a question, and it's yours. We're not grading anyone “evil.” We're noting that when the people building the surveillance-and-weapons economy reach for their heroes, they keep grabbing the props of the enemy — and asking what that says.
What Lucas and Cameron were actually warning about
Tolkien isn't the only myth-maker whose fans forgot the moral. Sit George Lucas down — as James Cameron did for his 2018 series on science fiction — and he'll tell you exactly who the Empire was supposed to be. The scrappy rebels fighting a high-tech superpower were modeled on real insurgents; as Lucas put it, “the little guys won. The highly technical empire — the English Empire, the American Empire — lost. That was the whole point.” The Ewoks-versus-stormtroopers fantasy was, in his telling, the Vietcong versus the United States.
And Lucas has been just as blunt about how a free society dies. His prequels were built around a single idea he stated flatly around the 2005 release of Revenge of the Sith: “Democracies aren't overthrown; they're given away.” Not seized in a coup — handed over, with applause, to someone who promised safety. It is hard, in our founder's view, not to read that line against a present in which the tools of the state are being quietly handed to a handful of private empires — some of which, fittingly, are named after the bad guys.
That's the throughline of the Tech Right hub, and it's why the surveillance side of it lives in Surveillance States. The men who built these companies grew up on the same stories the rest of us did. The difference is which characters they saw themselves in.
Questions worth taking seriously
Isn't this just a company picking a cool-sounding name?
Sometimes a name is just a name. But when the same small circle names a surveillance firm, a weapons firm, a bank, and two funds all from one book — a book whose entire point is that domination corrupts — the pattern is worth a raised eyebrow. We are not calling it a confession; we are saying it is funny, and a little revealing.
Aren't the names actually fitting — the palantír helps you see threats?
That is the founders' own defense, and we carry it. The catch is textual: in the books, the palantír doesn't just help you see — it lets the enemy see you, and it wrecks everyone who relies on it. If your brand is the all-seeing stone, the story you're quoting ends with that stone destroying its user.
If you are named on this page
If you are named on this page, or are a party materially affected by the claims made here, and you wish to respond, correct the record, or add context, use the Contact page. Responses are published verbatim alongside the original claim, with the sender identified and the date of receipt. The channel stays open for the life of the page.
This site aggregates and grades a record that other outlets and primary sources have already put on the record. Every FACT-graded claim above is sourced to court filings, government reports, sworn whistleblower disclosures, published investigative journalism, or named-source statements. The citations are the accountability mechanism; this section is how you get on the record too.
The record
- The Bulwark — How the Tech Right Learned to Love Mordor
- Quartz — the hidden logic of Peter Thiel's Lord of the Rings company names
- Crikey — why are tech companies named after Lord of the Rings
- Benzinga — Palantir, Anduril, Erebor: the Lord of the Finance Rings
- Banking Dive — Erebor bank gets conditional federal (OCC) approval
- Council of Elrond — ‘A Mind of Metal and Wheels’ (Treebeard on Saruman)
- The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien — ‘the Machine’ and the motive of domination (Letter 131)
- AMC — George Lucas on Star Wars and Vietnam (Story of Science Fiction)