Peter Thiel says the pope’s AI encyclical was ‘working for’ China

Peter Thiel has called Pope Leo XIV a “useful idiot” for the Chinese Communist Party over the pope’s call to regulate AI. The PayPal and Palantir co-founder spoke to Axel Springer chief executive Mathias Döpfner on the MD Meets podcast, released on Thursday.

The interview came before Thiel received the Axel Springer Award in Berlin on Thursday. Axel Springer owns Politico, which reported the remarks first, and Business Insider. Fortune reported on his comments about Germany.

“The Communist Party of China is not going to listen to the pope. There’s a chance people in the U.S. will. And so in effect, the Pope’s encyclical was working for the Communist party,” Thiel said.

“I’m not saying he was an agent of the communists, but he was at least acting as a useful idiot for the CCP,” he added.

The encyclical

Pope Leo published his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, in May. In it, he called on world leaders to regulate AI. Thiel argued that the text would do nothing to slow China, Politico reported. Instead, it could lead the US and its allies to impose heavy rules on AI, he said.

The Vatican did not respond to requests for comment from Politico or Business Insider. The Vatican has since expanded its AI campaign with an AI4Peace association.

It is not the first time Thiel has attacked the pope over AI. Speaking in Colorado in July, he said the pope was acting as a “Chinese communist agent” by calling for regulation, Politico reported.

‘What we’re doing to ourselves’

Thiel also said Americans themselves, not China, are mostly to blame for the growing US backlash against AI. He was “inclined to believe” China could be fuelling some anti-AI content, he said. But China was not the main force behind the shift.

“This is mainly what we’re doing to ourselves. It’s often somewhat too easy to simply blame it on China,” Thiel said.

Germany’s ‘fear of success’

Thiel, who was born in Frankfurt, also criticised German entrepreneurs. German founders tend to sell their companies before they grow into global businesses, he said.

“If you have something that works, you’re not going to scale it to this extreme degree like an Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg,” he said.

Among the richest Germans of Generation X or younger, all had inherited their wealth, Thiel said. In the US, most had built it themselves.

Thiel is a partner at Founders Fund, which has invested in OpenAI, Palantir and Scale AI, among other AI companies.