Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel launched a series of controversial criticisms and predictions about AI and Western democracy during remarks at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado on Tuesday. In his most provocative statement, Thiel accused Pope Leo XIV of serving the interests of China with his stance on AI.
CNN reports that Thiel, co-founder of Palantir and PayPal and an early Silicon Valley supporter of President Donald Trump, accused Pope Leo of inadvertently functioning as a Chinese communist agent by advocating for AI regulation. He also warned of what he described as an impending democratic-socialist takeover of the United States Democratic Party.
The tech investor delivered his remarks during a nonrecorded panel alongside political scientist Francis Fukuyama. During the event, Thiel specifically targeted the Vatican and Pope Leo, the first American pope, claiming he was unintentionally advancing Chinese interests by advocating for stronger international oversight of AI. Breitbart News previously reported that in May, Pope Leo issued his first encyclical titled “Magnifica Humanitas” or “Magnificent Humanity,” declaring that artificial intelligence “must be disarmed” and calling for greater international regulation of the technology:
Pope Leo frequently returns to the theme of uniformity versus communion, stressing that the quest for uniformity is sterile, mechanistic, and prone to tyrannical abuse, while communion is voluntary and joyous, bringing people together with each other and God. The encyclical asserts that, while AI might become smarter than any one of us, it will never be able to match the unexpected and delightful achievements of all of us — the unpredictable genius of magnificent humanity.
The pope’s Tower of Babel analogy draws parallels between the development of AI and the construction of the ancient Tower of Babel, “an impressive feat” constructed with “a single language, a single technology, a single direction.”
The Tower of Babel was nevertheless doomed because “it was a project conceived without reference to God, supported by a uniformity that eliminated diversity and that chose homogenization over communion.”
The hubristic architects of that tower sought to impose a single language and purpose upon all men and women of their day, but they wound up understanding each other less than ever — an apt analogy for the bubbling morass of AI-influenced social media where every language can be instantly translated but people are losing their desire to cherish the beauty and subtlety of communication.
Thiel argued that because the Pope’s message could influence Americans but would likely be ignored in China, the encyclical would only slow down one side of the race between the United States and China to advance AI development. “In his own view,” Thiel said, that means Leo is “working for the Chinese Communists.” The Aspen audience responded to his characterization of the pope as a Chinese agent with laughter. The Vatican did not respond to a request for comment on Thiel’s statements.
Tensions between Thiel and the Vatican are not new. In March, Thiel delivered an invitation-only lecture series on the Antichrist in Rome, located just blocks from the Holy See. The lectures reportedly disturbed Vatican officials and prompted two Catholic universities to publicly clarify they were not involved in hosting the events. Thiel has previously argued that the Antichrist might manifest not as an individual but as a world government that seizes power by promising protection against threats such as AI or global warming.
The discussion between Thiel and Fukuyama, titled “Humanity at the End of History,” represented a significant shift from their last debate fourteen years ago. In 2012, the pair focused primarily on causes of what Thiel considers technological stagnation, discussing income inequality, clean energy technology failures, and gridlock in US infrastructure projects like high-speed rail.
This time, however, the conversation addressed the broader fate of Western democracy in more dramatic terms. Fukuyama, known for his “End of History” thesis proposing that liberal democracy might represent government’s final form after the Cold War, argued that the greatest danger lies in abandoning institutions that have sustained democracy.
Thiel countered by claiming those institutions have become engines of paralysis, arguing that decades of technological stagnation have pushed Western politics toward greater instability. “The weird ways that politics has gone haywire is telling me something very deep,” Thiel said. His political views have drawn criticism from some writers and thinkers who characterize his distrust in democratic institutions and enthusiasm for elite-led governance as a form of techno-authoritarianism.
Responding to Fukuyama’s argument that liberal democracy remains humanity’s best political system despite growing extremism, Thiel warned that far-left forces are increasingly dominating American politics. “I think there’s going to be a democratic-socialist takeover of the Democratic Party,” Thiel said. His comments come as self-identified democratic socialists have gained influence within the Democratic Party, notably with last year’s election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and subsequent victories by democratic socialist candidates in mayoral and congressional primaries this year.
“The Republican Party doesn’t matter that much. It’s the less important one,” Thiel said. “When the Democratic Party goes, this country is over.”
On the eve of the 250th anniversary of the United States’ adoption of the Declaration of Independence, Thiel also offered his interpretation of the American Revolution. “There are all these anti-Trump protests: we don’t want kings, we want rule of law,” Thiel said. He framed the American Revolution not as a campaign against King George III but as a revolt against an all-powerful British parliament whose lawmakers exercised totalitarian control.
In Thiel’s interpretation, the US Constitution was designed as a corrective to Britain’s tyrannical rule of lawyers, with a presidency built to be more powerful than King George III. He contrasted the United States constitutional system with today’s European Union, which he described as a stagnant, rule-bound bureaucracy where people are NPCs, or non-player characters in video games, with no power to make decisions. “The EU is rule of law,” Thiel said. “It is like bad AI.”
AI is impacting areas of life far beyond the economy, impacting education and faith in particular. Breitbart News social media director and author Wynton Hall explains in his instant bestseller Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI that conservatives at the government level as well as within the family unit must help young people create a bright future working with AI as a tool, not as a replacement for humans. Hall recently wrote that leftists will attempt to weaponize the fear over potential job loss at the hands of AI to sway the midterm elections.
Read more at CNN here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.