Thiel calls Pope Leo XIV 'working for Chinese Communists' on AI

Peter Thiel used a stage at the Aspen Ideas Festival to argue that Pope Leo XIV, the first US-born pope, is effectively 'working for the Chinese Communists' by calling for AI regulation. According to CNN's report, Thiel's reasoning was mechanical rather than theological: the pope's message could influence some Americans but is unlikely to be heeded in China, so any restraint it produces would slow only one side of what Thiel framed as a 'race between the US and China' to advance AI. The audience reportedly laughed at the line.

The encyclical in question, 'Magnifica Humanitas' ('Magnificent Humanity'), came out in May and declared that artificial intelligence 'must be disarmed,' calling for greater international regulation of the technology. That is roughly the extent of the doctrinal specifics the reporting gives you. The panel itself, titled 'Humanity at the End of History,' paired Thiel with political scientist Francis Fukuyama and was nonrecorded, with reporters allowed to take notes. The Vatican did not respond to a request for comment.

Why this matters beyond the theatrics: the argument Thiel made is the same argument that has been used against almost every serious US AI safety proposal for the last two years, applied here to a moral authority rather than a bill. If 'any restraint on our side is a unilateral handicap' becomes the default response even to a papal encyclical, it becomes harder to hold a serious domestic debate on oversight without it collapsing into geopolitics.

The honest caveat is that we do not know from the reporting what 'Magnifica Humanitas' actually proposes in concrete terms beyond 'disarmed,' whether Fukuyama pushed back on stage, or whether Catholic institutions plan a formal response. The friction is not brand new either: Thiel gave an invitation-only lecture series on the Antichrist in Rome in March, close to the Holy See, which reportedly unnerved the Vatican and prompted two Catholic universities to publicly distance themselves.

The more interesting thing to watch is not the soundbite but who now feels obliged to answer it — Vatican-aligned voices, US lawmakers sympathetic to the pope's concerns, or the AI safety community that has just had its argument publicly reframed as foreign-adversary sympathy.