{"id":285300,"date":"2026-07-03T07:08:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T11:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/03\/billionaire-peter-thiel-attacks-popes-ai-stance-says-hes-working-for-chinese-communists\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T09:30:40","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T13:30:40","slug":"billionaire-peter-thiel-attacks-popes-ai-stance-says-hes-working-for-chinese-communists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/03\/billionaire-peter-thiel-attacks-popes-ai-stance-says-hes-working-for-chinese-communists\/","title":{"rendered":"Billionaire Peter Thiel Attacks Pope\u2019s AI Stance, Says He\u2019s \u2018Working For Chinese Communists\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/siladityaray\/2026\/07\/03\/billionaire-peter-thiel-attacks-popes-ai-stance-says-hes-working-for-chinese-communists\/\">Billionaire Peter Thiel Attacks Pope\u2019s AI Stance, Says He\u2019s \u2018Working For Chinese Communists\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/siladityaray\/2026\/07\/03\/billionaire-peter-thiel-attacks-popes-ai-stance-says-hes-working-for-chinese-communists\/\">https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/siladityaray\/2026\/07\/03\/billionaire-peter-thiel-attacks-popes-ai-stance-says-hes-working-for-chinese-communists\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-07-03 07:08:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.forbes.com\">www.forbes.com<\/a><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"topline-heading\">Topline<\/h2>\n<p class=\"topline-summary\">Billionaire Peter Thiel attacked Pope Leo XIV and mocked the catholic leader by accusing him of being an agent of \u201cChinese Communists,\u201d in response to the pope\u2019s grave warnings about the impact of artificial intelligence if the technology is left unregulated by governments.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"-webkit-line-clamp:2\" class=\"Ccg9Ib-7 _8XF2kHYM\">Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, attacked the Pope over his stance on artificial intelligence.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n<h2>Key Facts<\/h2>\n<p class=\"timeline-fact\">According to CNN, Thiel called out the pope while speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado earlier this week, while also claiming that the Democratic Party was under a \u201cdemocratic-socialist takeover.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"timeline-fact\">Referring to the catholic leader\u2019s first encyclical, \u201cMagnifica Humanitas,\u201d Thiel said the Vatican\u2019s calls for regulation of artificial intelligence could slow down only one side in the U.S.-China AI race, as leaders in Beijing are less likely to listen to the pope\u2019s plea.<\/p>\n<p class=\"timeline-fact\">The billionaire then argued that in his mind, this meant Leo\u2014the first-ever American Pope\u2014was  \u201cworking for the Chinese Communists.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"timeline-fact\">The remarks reportedly triggered laughter from the audience.<\/p>\n<p class=\"timeline-fact\">Thiel is a long-time supporter of President Trump and a key backer of Vice President JD Vance, whose administration has been engaged in a public feud with the pope.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"subhead-embed color-accent bg-base font-accent font-size text-align\">What Did The Pope Say In His Encyclical?<\/h2>\n<p>Pope Leo issued his first encyclical in May this year, where he warned that the push to expand artificial intelligence use, mass automation, and tech advancements is being used to build a modern \u201cTower of Babel\u201d that reflects a world defined by greed, immorality and lack of respect for human life. The manifesto noted that while technology relieving humans of \u201carduous, repetitive or dangerous tasks\u201d and providing \u201cintelligent support\u201d was desirable, the \u201cpursuit of profits must not lead to choices that \u201csystematically sacrifice jobs.\u201d The pope\u2019s document also warned of the use of AI to \u201cconstruct distorted&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/siladityaray\/2026\/07\/03\/billionaire-peter-thiel-attacks-popes-ai-stance-says-hes-working-for-chinese-communists\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Billionaire Peter Thiel Attacks Pope\u2019s AI Stance, Says He\u2019s \u2018Working For Chinese Communists\u2019 https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/siladityaray\/2026\/07\/03\/billionaire-peter-thiel-attacks-popes-ai-stance-says-hes-working-for-chinese-communists\/ Publish&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":285301,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/imageio.forbes.com\/specials-images\/imageserve\/6a4797c28d8ab60fe9e002bf\/0x0.jpg?format=jpg&height=900&width=1600&fit=bounds","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-285300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285300"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285300"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":285302,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285300\/revisions\/285302"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}