Thiel Says Pope’s AI Regulation Call Serves Chinese Interests

Peter Thiel accused Pope Leo XIV of inadvertently serving as a Chinese communist agent by calling for international regulation of artificial intelligence during a Tuesday appearance at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado, Cnn reported. Thiel, a co-founder of Palantir and PayPal and an early supporter of President Donald Trump, spoke on a nonrecorded panel with political scientist Francis Fukuyama.

Reporters took notes on the proceedings.

He pointed to the pope's May encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas,” which declared that artificial intelligence “must be disarmed” and urged greater oversight. Thiel argued that the message would slow only the United States in its competition with China. “I think there’s going to be a democratic-socialist takeover of the Democratic Party,” he said.

The Aspen audience responded to Thiel’s characterization of the pope with laughter. The Vatican did not respond to a request for comment. In March, Thiel delivered an invitation-only lecture series on the Antichrist in Rome, blocks from the Holy See; two Catholic universities stated they were not involved in hosting those events.

Thiel said the U.S. ” He described Palantir as “not joined at the hip” with the “U.S. deep state” and noted that neither he nor Palantir CEO Alex Karp holds government security clearances.

Thiel claimed the AI firm Anthropic would “rig the elections in 2028” in support of Democrats. Anthropic declined to comment and pointed to one of its recent blog posts on election integrity and political bias.