Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel delivered a series of provocative warnings and predictions about the future of artificial intelligence and the West on Tuesday, accusing Pope Leo XIV of inadvertently serving as a “Chinese communist agent” by calling for AI regulation.

Thiel’s Remarks at the Aspen Ideas Festival

Thiel, a co-founder of Palantir and PayPal, was an early supporter of President Donald Trump in Silicon Valley. He also helped launch Vice President JD Vance’s career: Vance worked at Mithril Capital, an investment firm Thiel co-founded, before Thiel backed his transition into politics.

During the event, Thiel took direct aim at the Vatican, accusing Pope Leo XIV — the first pope from the United States — of unintentionally advancing Chinese interests by pushing for stronger international oversight of artificial intelligence.

In May, Leo used his first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas” (“Magnificent Humanity”), to declare that artificial intelligence “must be disarmed” and call for greater international regulation of the technology.

Thiel argued that the pope’s message could influence some Americans, but is unlikely to be heeded by people in China, thereby threatening to slow down only one side of the “race between the US and China” to advance AI.

Thiel’s Views on the US Constitution and Democracy

Thiel also discussed his views on the US Constitution and democracy, arguing that the American Revolution was a revolt against an all-powerful British parliament, and that the US Constitution was designed as a corrective to Britain’s “tyrannical rule of lawyers”.

He contrasted the United States’s constitutional system with that of today’s European Union, which he described as a stagnant, rule-bound bureaucracy, under which people are “NPCs” — non-player characters in video games — with no power to make decisions.

Original reporting: KTVZ (Central Oregon) — read the source article.