Right Tech billionaire Peter Thiel is accusing Pope Leo XIV of doing the work of the Chinese Communist Party with critic e artificial intelligence.
According to a Thursday report by CNN, Thiel told the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado on Tuesday that the pope was unwittingly serving as a “Chinese communist agent” when he issued a Encyclical with 42,000 words which required strict regulation of AI, a technology which the Pope said increases the “danger of dehumanization” around the world.
Thiel argued that this kind of thinking was dangerous, CNN reported, because it could result in the US losing the “race” to build the most advanced AI in China. Because of this, Thiel continued, the Pope is essentially “working for the Chinese Communists” by trying to curb AI development.
Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, has long criticized AI critics in harsh terms. Over the last year, he has been giving a series of lectures in which he has said that opponents of AI development are working as agents for the Antichrist.
Journalist Christopher Hale, who writes Letters From Leo, pointed out on Friday that Thiel in the past has even speculated that Pope Leo could be “a manifestation of the Antichrist.”
Thiel said he instructed the vice president JD Vancea longtime political ally who received major funding from the tech billionaire for his 2022 Senate campaign to ignore the pope’s moral guidance despite influencing Vance to convert to Catholicism, Hale added.
“Thiel planted the vice president’s Catholic faith,” Hale wrote, “and he now tells wealthy festival audiences that the leader of that faith works for a communist government.”
In addition to his attacks on the Pope, Thiel also warned of “a democratic-socialist takeover of Democratic Party”, pointing to recent victories in New York and Colorado by candidates supported by the Democratic Socialists of America.
Thiel said this “takeover” would doom the US, arguing that “when the Democratic Party goes, this country is gone,” according to CNN.
of New York Times reported In May, Thiel has grown so concerned about the political situation in the US that he has created a “base” for himself in Argentina, which is currently being governed by the ideologically minded libertarian president, Javier Milei.
“Thiel, who has a history of picking up seats, is hedging his bets against them United Statesis considering making Argentina another Plan B,” the Times reported. “Born in Germany and raised in the United States, he took up citizenship in New Zealand in 2011 and applied for a passport to Malta in 2022.”
