{"id":94496,"date":"2026-07-03T15:41:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T15:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/94496\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T15:41:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T15:41:11","slug":"pope-serving-as-chinese-communist-agent-by-criticizing-ai-says-tech-billionaire-peter-thiel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/94496\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Serving as &#8216;Chinese Communist Agent&#8217; by Criticizing AI, Says Tech Billionaire Peter Thiel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/tag\/right-wing\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Right-wing<\/a> tech billionaire Peter Thiel is accusing Pope Leo XIV of doing the work of the Chinese Communist Party with his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/news\/pope-leo-artificial-intelligence\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">criticisms<\/a> of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/tag\/artificial-intelligence\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">artificial intelligence<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>According to a Thursday report from CNN, Thiel told the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado on Tuesday that the pope was inadvertently serving as a &#8220;Chinese communist agent&#8221; when he released a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vatican.va\/content\/leo-xiv\/en\/encyclicals\/documents\/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">42,000-word encyclical<\/a> that called for strict regulation of AI, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/tag\/technology\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">technology<\/a> that the pontiff said heightens the &#8220;risk of dehumanization&#8221; throughout the world.<\/p>\n<p>Thiel argued that this sort of thinking was dangerous, CNN reported, because it could result in the US losing the &#8220;race&#8221; to build more advanced AI to China. Because of this, Thiel continued, the pope is essentially &#8220;working for the Chinese communists&#8221; by trying to tap the brakes on AI development.<\/p>\n<p>Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, has long decried AI critics in harsh terms. Over the last year, he has been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/news\/peter-thiel-antichrist-lecture\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">delivering<\/a> a series of lectures in which he has said that opponents of AI development are working as agents for the Antichrist.<\/p>\n<p>Journalist Christopher Hale, who writes the Letters From Leo newsletter, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thelettersfromleo.com\/p\/peter-thiel-accuses-pope-leo-xiv\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">noted<\/a> on Friday that Thiel in the past has even speculated that Pope Leo could be &#8220;a manifestation of the Antichrist.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Thiel has said that he instructed Vice President <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/tag\/jd-vance\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">JD Vance<\/a>, a longtime political ally who received major funding from the tech billionaire for his 2022 Senate campaign, to ignore the pope&#8217;s moral guidance despite influencing Vance to convert to Catholicism, Hale added.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Thiel seeded the vice president\u2019s Catholic faith,&#8221; Hale wrote, &#8220;and he now tells wealthy festival audiences that the leader of that faith works for a communist government.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In addition to his attacks on the pope, Thiel also warned about &#8220;a democratic-socialist takeover of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/tag\/democratic-party\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Democratic Party<\/a>,&#8221; pointing to recent victories in New York and Colorado of candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America.<\/p>\n<p>Thiel said that this &#8220;takeover&#8221; would doom the US, arguing that &#8220;when the Democratic Party goes, this country is over,&#8221; according to CNN.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/tag\/new-york-times\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">New York Times<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/05\/28\/world\/americas\/peter-thiel-argentina.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">reported<\/a> in May that Thiel has grown so concerned about the political situation in the US that he&#8217;s created a &#8220;foothold&#8221; for himself in Argentina, which is currently being governed by ideologically likeminded libertarian President Javier Milei.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Thiel, who has a history of collecting backup countries as he hedges his bets against the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/tag\/united-states\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">United States<\/a>, is considering making Argentina another Plan B,&#8221; the Times reported. &#8220;Born in Germany and raised in the United States, he received citizenship in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/tag\/new-zealand\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">New Zealand<\/a> in 2011, and applied for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/10\/15\/technology\/peter-thiel-malta-citizenship.html\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">a passport in Malta<\/a> in 2022.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Right-wing tech billionaire Peter Thiel is accusing Pope Leo XIV of doing the work of the Chinese Communist&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94497,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[405,25,7537,36659,4699,4040,2761],"class_list":["post-94496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-agentic-ai","tag-ai-agents","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence-agents","tag-democratic-socialists-of-america","tag-jd-vance","tag-peter-thiel","tag-pope-leo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}