Tech billionaire accuses Pope Leo XIV of aiding China on AI

German-American entrepreneur and former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel, in his recent interaction with the Aspen Ideas Festival audience on Tuesday, told them that Pope Leo XIV is "working for the Chinese Communists", a claim tied to the pontiff's calls for stronger international oversight of artificial intelligence.

At a panel discussion that was not being recorded along with political scientist Francis Fukuyama, Thiel believed that while the pontiff's advice on regulation of artificial intelligence may resonate with Americans, it won't have much impact on the Chinese government, and thus whatever restraint will follow will affect only the American part of what he calls the AI race between Washington and Beijing.

This logic, according to Thiel, is the reason why he believes that the pope is "working for the Chinese Communists".

Thiel's statements made a reference to Leo's first encyclical, entitled "Magnifica Humanitas", released in May, which states that artificial intelligence "must be disarmed" and warns against a "Tower of Babel" generated through technology characterised by greed and indifference to the dignity of humans.

According to the encyclical, artificial intelligence is able to reduce the difficulty of arduous, repetitive or dangerous work but warns that financial gain should not result in large-scale job losses and further condemns the misuse of AI to spread misleading stories and autonomous weaponry systems that can enable wars."

This comment comes amid an ongoing war of words between the pope and the Trump administration, which escalated following criticism by Leo of US military strikes against Iran and a subsequent reply from Trump referring to him as "weak on crime".

Thiel is an ardent supporter of President Donald Trump, who was instrumental in kickstarting the political career of Vice President JD Vance. Thiel's lecture on the Antichrist has been controversial among Vatican officials and has already drawn condemnation from at least two Catholic universities.