Lawfare Daily: Pope Leo XIV Takes on Silicon Valley with Christopher Hale and Renée DiResta

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He smart, get wise, download the wise app today, T-Sensee Supply. This is the end-job for premium sales. He really offered I would argue the middle road. The middle road, he says that tech is inevitable AI is inevitable. But what the church wants is a profound influence over an insurer that the human person

is put at the center of it. It's the law fair podcast, Iron Aderesta, contributing editor at Law Fair, and I'm here with Christopher Hale, who writes the sub-stack letter from Leo and ran Catholic outreach for President Obama. Hope Leo says no, we should talk a lot about guard routes, we should lock a lot about

this place and our jobs, we should tell him how is the fact those are the margins. They were talking about the Pope's new AI in cyclical, which may sound like a departure from Law Fair's usual terrain, but it isn't. The Encyclical touches on national security, autonomous weapons, information integrity, and the question at the center of AI governance, who gets to wield technological power and under

what constraints?

“So, I think maybe we can start since people were asking, actually, in the chat, what”

the Encyclical is and why it matters, maybe want to just start with the basics? Yeah, so I think that the word in cyclical is Latin and root, so it means to encircle to encompass the entire globe. The idea of Encyclical is it's a document that the Pope sends to the entire globe, for

a second battalion council, it was really meant for bishops, pushing the Catholic Church

or the teaching authority of the Catholic Church, after a second battalion council, we moved on to say that it's also for the layity, and on their Pope Francis, he said, even more so, it's for the entire world, for non-capitalist itself. Some people say it's kind of like the state of the Union address, where the Pope kind of gives what his priorities are for the year to come, but that's a little bit inaccurate

because it's not just like really one year, several years at a time, that it's supposed to go out, and so really in Francis' Pope for 13 years, and there's four in cyclicals.

“So I think what we're seeing here is Pope Leo to 14th are articulating what he thinks”

is at the forefront, that the world's facing, that the Church is facing for next three or four years. I think this will have a shelf life, he hopes, well, into the future. And one of the comparisons that I've seen, making the rounds in the commentary, is that this was released two days ago, I think, on the 25th, signed on May 15th.

This was when I think we started talking about it, which was the 135th anniversary of, I believe it's different in cyclical, one by Leo this, Pope Leo 13th, Rerem Novarm, which was responding to industrial capitalism. So how do you feel about that comparison? I think it's very apt, I mean, so Leo, Leo the 14th has not been hiding his cards here.

I was in Rome on his election, also had bad internet that day as well, on May 8th, 2025.

And two days after his election, he has his first speech as Paul, as he speaks to the

rules of the Cardinals, and he says, "I am naming myself after Leo 13th." Rerem Novarm, which you spoke of, is the inspiration he said that made him choose that name. And in fact, in that speech, he says that AI is the new things. Rerem Novarm is Latin for up new things, and AI is the Rerem Novarm, the up new things on 2025, now, 2026.

So it's very clear to him that that document is the inspiration for this document. But a lot of people in the secular society, so I think there's a little bit, I think it unfair, mismemory of what that document was. The labor movement, as we know it, the progressive movement of this 20th century, weekends, a labor unions, 40 hour work weeks, it's an intellectual birthplace, so it became a secular

movement, is really in Rerem Novarm, it is the intellectual formation of that, that it goes a couple different ways, really, you could argue that 20th century socialism as well sees

So I think what Leo 14th try to do is he wants to create the Rerem Novarm of the day, and he wants this document to get birth to new intellectual ideas for labor, for capital, for social justice, and is here in 2026, so it is deeply connected, and Leo doesn't hide the ball on that.

“And one of the things I think that stuck out for me as a person primarily in tech, for”

my career has been for the last 14, 15 years or so, is the way he nails it, I'm very

directly saying technology is not inherently evil, but it's also never neutral, right?

And that distinction being very, very important, so those of us who try to work on what is not called pro social tech, try to make that point actually quite a bit that things that I think we did badly in the age of social media that you're seeing people try to think about differently in the age of AI, how do you think about that sort of foundational framing that he puts out there?

I think it's correct. I think there's a lot of traditionalist cathletes, so these words get to go and around a strange way, but really, the far right, if you will, the very traditionalists, wing of the catholic church is very different than the secular right in the United States, but there was a lot of folks on the religious right in the catholic right who were upset

that he didn't come out, and they asked for a butlerian GI, which for folks who don't know

what that means. Absolutely, you can explain what that is, maybe I don't know if you're able to do this, even better than I am.

“So I think, let me say, what's the best way to explain that one?”

The idea that it comes out of June, which I am not a big June person summer afraid that there's probably people who are watching who could explain it a whole lot better than me, but the idea that it's a kind of a massive human rebellion against the machines, I guess, would be the way to explain that. I saw this come out a little bit also, I've read a lot of reactions to this as a person

with my own, my own reaction to it as a person in personal tech, but I too saw that, I think there were folks who were hoping for, I think you alluded to this, one of the catholic scholars who I think published in the New York Times saying, "No, it is actually evil." You do need to be resisting it, you need to be resisting, I think I also saw the sort of godlessness of the sort of post-humanist movements, the AI enhanced sort of, even biological enhancements

that you see kind of come out of the valley that kind of mode of thinking, I saw some of the calls for that too, I don't know if that's what you're referring to. Yeah, I think that what we found, and I think this was a surprise, people that people can have been following us is that he really offered, I would argue, the middle road. The middle road, he says that tech is inevitable, AI is inevitable, but what the church

wants is a profound influence over and ensure that the human person is put at the center of it. As you know, way better and I, I think that the problem with that is Silicon Valley and technology writ large is, of course, deeply ingrained with capitalism, and there isn't, if I melt tap, crack to me, if I'm wrong, the money isn't there in the same way, I mean, I only

the money is there, torsies, for these pro-human movements within, within tech and so I think we're competing against the monetary interest and for some of the old locks, he comes to the realm and he pretty much says the same thing, he says that what to our own devices andthropic, he implies this competitor as well, are able to, are able to create a tech that is human center, because the incentives aren't aligned in such a way.

“Is that fair, is that fair, I think your analysis of how you see it?”

I think, you know, I was in the Valley as a venture capitalist in 2013, right? I was 2011 to 2013, was when I moved out to the Valley and did that before going to the startups myself, and I spent a lot of time in the hardware space, and you would see the quantified self movement, right? There would be these meetups where people were talking about how we could enhance ourselves,

how we could use devices to enhance our performance, so we didn't, oh, I was not, I was sort of seen as a thing that had had been, you know, wasn't gone anywhere, people weren't investing in it, right? It was like quantified self, devices, you know, mobile social local was another thing, how could people use their phones to connect to their environment, that was a big theme

around that time, also, one of the things though that I think people who maybe, I spent about, for those who don't know, me, I spent 10 years living in the Valley, I was

there for 2011 to 2021, before moving out to DC again, there's always a, there's a sense

of adventure, and a sense of can we do this, the should we do this is maybe, a little bit not necessarily at the forefront, sometimes it's just can we do this, and so I think that is an, is a, is an, is an interesting cultural difference that sometimes is very serious unintended consequences, but that, that question of, I, it's not thought of necessarily as a moral decision, so much as a, can you take particularly as sensors became cheap as,

prototype for it easily, this question of what could you do now, it's holding an eye

aside, just, at that moment in time in the Valley then, was this question of, what could

“you do with it, what was, what was possible, and I think that question of what is possible”

is really the thing that motivates the culture of the Valley in a way that is maybe a little bit alien to people who are outside of it. I find, so I have clients to Silicon Valley, I started working with Silicon Valley clients starting the year 2023, and as you know, in the flesh, as, as a, experience, maternity, and fashion ideas, like Silicon Valley is a very different world from the rest of the country, especially quite frankly, DC and East

coast, and one of the things I find that, so, for folks who are, from the letters from Leo Community, read this in Zico, I encourage you, I'm, I'm nerds, so I, I want to point you to really, to paragraph in it, I can reach right a little bit, but there's, paragraph 120 and paragraph 220, and I think that these two, these two paragraphs actually really, I would say, are the biggest critique of Silicon Valley culture, and, um, hopefully in

a 14th says that in Christian teaching, in Catholic teaching, you talk about the limitless

“possibility, which I think is the embodiment of the Silicon Valley ethos, the move fast”

and break things, but also see what is impossible and make it possible. We also says that in Christianity, that it, you know, that we must actually embrace our fina tube, our shortcomings, our limits, and in fact, in our limits, in our shortcomings, we, we learn the fullness of our humanity, it's not something to be overcome. That idea, he says, creates this culture, so that's like the problem, and he says it creates a culture where we try to

measure everything, I mean, I'm, I'm more guilty of it than most, I mean, I have both, I have the Apple watch and the loop, I, I, I measure everything, but Leo's, we, I think this is the most beautiful, for me, um, the most beautiful part of the incidental, and chapter 220, he says, he's, he's really, um, sourcing from Pope Francis, he says, we need to learn the art of wasting time. We need to learn how to waste time with our families, with our children,

“with our neighbors, with our communities, and with strangers. And I, I hear that, Renee, I think”

a lot about, I, I consume Andrew Hueberman, I listen to Andrew Hueberman, I listen to Brian Johnson, so these two men, he ran is less extreme in Brian Johnson, but for folks who don't know them, they both are big into protocols, and measuring oneself for self-improvement, and Brian Johnson goes as far as he says that he wants to live forever, and he's not kidding, he actually claims that he's making a new religion. And I think that what Leo says is there has to be parts of our

life that are in measurable. There has to be parts of our existence that are in measurable. You cannot measure the quality of times with, with your children on an apple-wide or, or on a loop, I think that language is in some ways in an aftermath to a lot of the way Silicon Valley imagines itself, but also most importantly monetizes itself. I think there's a incentive misalignment there. Maybe, maybe you could do better night. I know there are big bits for using technology

for in-wifing town, in real-life encounters, but my sense is that's not where the money is, at least that's very minimal. There were these, I don't know how many people on here remember for square, like comment if you do. But yeah, there were apps that did seek to bring people together. I used for square as a way to meet up with people when I lived in New York when I was in my 20s, right? Everybody would check in. You would know where your friends were. It's sort of weird

to me how much information I telegraphed at the time, just letting me, you know, letting complete

Randows know I'm at this bar at this time, come find me, right? I would never do that today,

but at a different profile and different life then. I think one of the things that I see quite a bit actually is social media is not really social so much anymore. It's entertainment. It's content. It's a different style. You're not engaging with your friends. You're not using it to find friends. You're no longer connecting through your social graph. You're getting what the companies call unconnected content. That is literally the name of it. That's the name of it. That's

the name of it. It's unconnected in the sense that it's an algorithm pushing you something that it thinks you are going to like. It's supposed to feel serendipitous. It's supposed to feel charming, but what it really is is it's sort of tapping into that addiction center, right? To that sense of, and I don't mean addiction in the literal sense, who's a whole, you know, John Hight in the entire movement debating whether it's actually addictive or not actually addictive, holding all of

that aside. I just mean everybody who has ever tried to resist their phone when they are with their children knows what this feels like. The sense of, you know, I'm here. I'm in this moment, but also I know that there's some stuff happening on the internet. Also, when I take out my phone,

there's going to be a million notifications. I'm going to see the red dots and I'm going to feel

compelled to do something about them, right? So there is a behavioral component to it that I

as a person who I use agentic tools constantly in my own work, and I have come to realize that I will spend two to three hours with agents late at night these days. I don't know what your flows are like, I don't mean for writing, I mean for research, I mean tasking, things where I'm like, no, I can do six projects at once, and in some things I pause and I think like, I used to like, play games or read a book during that time. Sure. And now I'm like, okay, but my kids are in bed,

and I can turn on a cloud and I can kick off like three or four different projects. And there are things I want to be doing, but it's the sense that because I can amp up my productivity to an insane degree, I do it now. Whereas before I would be like, okay, I'm kind of tired. I'm going to read a book because the option wasn't even available to me to feel that pressure or that compulsion to go do it. And I find, I mean, I say that number one, absolutely, I find that with my

day jog, so there's this problem. I mean, it's, I guess it's better than scrolling Twitter all night, because you're, you're producing something, you're making something, but it's the same thing. I mean, I think that what Leo, Leo says is so clear, name is pontificate. He believes technology at its best can limit the work hours. Like he wants less work and more time for your family. That's like,

“if you put it in the most one way that's what he wants. But clearly, that's not what's happening.”

Our work is expanding now where we can just produce more. And there's an addictive quality to the age of some cells because all of a sudden, you know, with one unit of time, you can produce 20 units of work where a year ago is five or six. So it has this, I don't know what you, I, I don't want to say it. There's a spiritual component where you, in Christian theology, God is the one who creates. And so convalley obviously is filled with builders. So there's

this super creation moment you feel, but it can lose its sense of pregnancy and terms of proportionality. And so I'll give you the sample like so, people who do use quad, et cetera, one of the things about it is people will suggest you get what's called a Mac mini and for folks to go on with that is it's a desktop that basically, it could run 24/7 and you can now,

you, your computer is not to go off. Your computer never has to go off, et cetera. But if you use

quad, use these things on your laptop, you know, you eventually close your laptop. And now they have tools that like can keep your laptop open when it's, the lid's closed. So the entire

“it's rust is to always be working, to always be online. And that's how it's sold to us, right?”

It's not sold as, well, let's get our free time back. It's let's do the impossible. Let's build the impossible. So I think, I think there's an addictive quality for it that that is maybe modestly more noble than social media. But the end goal is to, to free up time for relationship, that is not being achieved. So one of the things, I think, I think the Vatican labels it in their sort of summary lines, portions, 126 and 129. Humanity and all this grandeur and

woundedness must never be replaced or surpassed. And he talks quite a bit about technological

progress without regression of the heart, which I thought was an interesting turn of phrase. I'm wondering if you might not talk about that component. Yeah. So the word heart, obviously, in Catholic tea and Christian teaching is not just the, that's just a physical heart. But he,

“I think what's really important to understand about hopefully are the 14th is he's the August”

Sineen. And so he's the first Augustineen Pope and saying Augustine, of course, being the patron of Augustineen's and the patron of Pope Leo. Augustine says the heart is the most important element of a Christian's life over human beings life. And he has this beautiful prose that he does. I believe it was in the city that was there in the festions that excuse me, which was this kind of his autobiography. And he says that my heart is restless until it finds rest and deep.

And the, of course, referring to the divine to God. And so I think that what Leo is referring to here is the proper notion of what they heart ought to be. The heart has restlessness. But it does in fact find rest. And so I think what he's hoping for and I think what he's looting to is this idea that we need times and our lives. We need moments and our lives where we have our restlessness finds a home that we find peace. And I think that he, he thinks

I think he argues pretty much that when we imagine ourselves to be capable of all things, to be able

to overcome the limits of death itself, there's a restlessness in us that will never be healed.

So my little bit, like you know, we tie this up. The restlessness is good if it finds a home.

a gusting would argue, it becomes evil, it becomes the agitation. And the biggest example that a gusting gives in his own life to get, you know, to make the out of a little PG13s in the novel is that in his younger years, St. Augustin, had this restlessness. He, he, he, he, he imagine himself. He says to be greater than God. He imagine himself be all powerful to be able to do all things. And he, he got into prostitution. And he, he would, he would visit, he was across to some

and go and go to Prothels. And he, he gives his very beautiful statement. He says that what he realized was that, at the end of the day, what he was looking for when he was knocking

“on the door of a brothel was not sex. He was looking for relief for God. He was for peace. I think”

that what Leo is pointing to here is that when our restlessness is pointed in the wrong direction

and this self-absorption and power, we will never find peace.

On the subject of peace, that comes up quite a bit in this encyclical. We see it in the context. I think you wrote a little bit about this too in, in your summary of it, on the idea of disarming AI, where when he, when he uses that term, I think he needs it to be freed from the lodgips that turn it into an instrument of domination exclusion or death. So he talks about the moral stakes of this power and also the question of where that power lives.

What did you think about the disarmament part? Also, I imagine that was something interesting given other people asked earlier, Chris Ola was in the room from anthropic and that, of course, had become quite a topic of conversation in the literal sense in terms of the fight with the administration over Autonomous AI power weapons. So, I want to actually start with Chris and he's going to be very quick back story and I'll go into this arm. So, I was able to confirm this week

and fact that. So, from folks who don't know, Chris were Ola, who is the founder, co-founder of antrophic. Also, at least according to his high school blogs, he's not religious, he calls this a diagnostic atheist. He, of course, spoke at the events, introducing the encyclical, and kind of strange, I'm not beautiful and honest speech about the goals of antrophic and the shortcomings of antrophic and AI and the help that they needed from the Vatican. But the reason that Chris for Ola

was in that room was too full. For about a decade, the Vatican had been working with Cillett trying. I was actually trying to help in this, and something about Cillett was trying to build relationships with Silicon Valley to get this ethical framework of artificial intelligence to be a part of the conversation. They were mostly repuffed. There was very kind ways of repuffing, very business savvy

way you never tell a pope, no, but you kind of, if you will, pat the pope on the head and move on.

But antrophic, they made a sincere effort, at least in the Vatican's mind, to engage and that meant a lot to Pope Francis, Pope Leo's predecessor, but Pope Leo 14, based on my reporting and my conversations, found that antropics stand up against the Pentagon was, quote, courageous. He consumes Western media. He watches CNN all day, like a good boomer. So, you know, it's fire CNN. According to his brother, he watches CNN all day long. And he was inspired by the antropics

“stand. So, that is, I think that was particularly why he was in the room because of this recent”

history. I find that I do find it admirable as well. That's actually how I started to get into Clyde was, because I was inspired by that moment. I switched from open AI to cheap Clyde software. So, the disarming work part, you've talked about peace in this army. Lea the 14th has used the word disarming since the beginning of his election. Right after he came out on the balcony on May 8th, he said this interesting phrase. He says, "I want a peace that is unarmed." So,

I want to use vision for saying, "Is unarmed?" So, "I myself have no weapon and is disarming."

So, I take away the weapon of the opponent, which is an incredible phrase because

how does one take away one's weapon without having one weapon of their own? How do you peacefully disarm another person? It kind of reminds me of it was a Chloe Kardashian commercial, like the Pepsi commercial in the Super Bowl, where like, she was the equivalent of putting the flower in the gun. But from a Christian worldview, it's a miracle. Like, it takes God to disarm someone

“that we're out of weapon. And so, I think that's an interesting idea. Like,”

hopefully, in a 14th has no military. He has no money, really. He actually took a bow of poverty. He only has moral influence. And the question I have myself is, is the moral influence. I hope to the answers. Yes, but is the moral influence of the Pope himself, who I find fascinating because

You can't have a contract with him. He cannot be indicted. He cannot be deported. He cannot be terrorist upon. He cannot be voted out of office. So, the answers to an authority that they

have never dealt with before. And I'm wondering, and hoping, I guess, I say, I'm hoping that

that moral authority, which is unabated, is unappetable. I would argue, and that enough to disarm AI. And so, I think that's, that is the hope. So, an unarmed Pope, we can unarm Pope, we are disarm AI. Support comes from wise. The smart way to manage the currencies you need around the world.

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the wise app today. Teas and seize apply. Do her stietsd, the specific of food developed.

And as passed, no, not at all. Then the best thing is, if you don't pass, if you don't want to do anything, then your car or a small business. And if you still know what is, we are from the DEVK channel and personally for real. DEVK says, "Go ahead." That question of how does he engage with Silicon Valley directly? There's been, I think you covered this, this back and forth. Not only with Silicon Valley, but with JD Vance,

also, right? He's sort of the most prominent Catholic in the administration.

“What was their reception to this disarmament language?”

Well, I saw the short answer of like the Post and single, it was mixed. A JD Vance gave more positive commentary than he has in the past, but I want to kind of flesh that out for just a political stance. In February 2025, right after he is inaugurating the office, JD Vance goes to Paris, this famous AI summit, all the European leaders are there. The short of the short of it is that JD Vance says that Europe and the United States,

as referring to the bio administration, was too obsessed with guard rels and regulation. And he said, "We need to focus more in innovation. I think we need to use as the word disruption innovation of a Western guard rels." And so, obviously, that statement is completely repuffed by this 42,000 word and civil. We're probably going to say, "No, we should talk a lot about guard rels." We should walk a lot about this place and our jobs, we should tell you

how is that tax those in the margins? So, there's a disagreement at the forefront. That being said, in my political work, and I'm not watching this play out,

“and maybe I think we'll probably talk about David Sachs here, but there was a course.”

That was when E-Wala's activity administration is really doge, and then David Sachs, who, you actually could probably explain his background a little bit better in the eye of it, but he served as the White House, AIs are. He has a long career in Silicon Valley that I'm unable to articulate very well. Maybe you can even give us a little back. Do you know what's about his career? I don't actually really know what got you know, like what was start was.

Yeah, so he was a partner at VC firm, craft ventures, but I think he was part of the, you know, the sort of PayPal mafia, as it's called. I don't know if that means anything to you, but okay,

really. Basically for those who are not familiar with shrimp PayPal mafia, it's the

early founding team of PayPal did extraordinarily well for themselves, and many of them went off, and then had second order successes, starting companies, and then those companies were extraordinarily successful as well. Many of them supported each other in those second order companies as well. There is a metaphor that some of us in the Valley used to describe it, which is, if you've ever seen Game of Thrones, the sort of like houses of Silicon Valley, where you know, you have like House

Teal, and you know, House for a while there was like Ron Conway, it was another one like House Conway, and there would be these like sometimes they would co-invest with each other, sometimes they would go to war with each other over at your political fights. 2016, things were still mostly sort of liberal. By the time you got to 2020, you really started to see the Valley Splendor, and those political factions became quite visible. David Sachs was a big supporter of President Trump early on,

quite friendly with Elon Musk. This comes into play in the 2024. No, God, well, you're a rean now, 2024. It's probably for election, and then you start to see the dynamics of the political realignment in the Valley taking shape. He's also got a podcast, so he's also quite out there,

the public conversation, and then he became the AI and cryptos are for the Trump 2024 administration.

“He stepped down in March, 2026, I believe, but I think he has some other, I think he has some”

role in the administration in some advisory capacity now, though not quite so directly as he did, but he was very much involved in the writing of the White House AI Act alongside Dean Ball as my understanding. Yes, I think that. So Dean Ball was an administration. So Dean Ball makes an appearance in my SNA day for folks who are letters from Leo Scars. You can see we got a little titt-tatt on Twitter, but so these are two to main architects of the President's AI policy. So they have sacks leaves

in March, and for what here's where I've been seeing, at least in the ground, is that there is

a political reality that the President has to face with that Dean Advance's worldview on

artificial intelligence, quite frankly, is it's not popular with the American people and not popular with his base. I have somewhat proprietary data, but I can share the baseline,

“but we see that the American people, their view of the word Silicon Valley, not a particular product,”

not AI, etc, is the word Silicon Valley when you ask the American people popular versus unpopular white versus dislike. On the task five years, that has gone down 25%. So Silicon Valley is deeply underwater with the American people, and the person who showed me the surveys, they said they only, example, they can see that's compares with comparable, comparable, is that Wall Street's

view of the American people Wall Street from 2003 to 2008. One of my zero-lidges claim,

but one of my deep claims is that the American people in their flesh, they might not be able to speak the economy, indicators, etc, but they know when something's wrong, but they know something's up, and they can feel it in their bones when things are going awry. And that's to say, so I have seen a shift a fight, as you can see, playing out in the Trump administration about the

“proper role of AI, and of course there is this AI executive order, but the president was going to”

sign, I actually don't know the details, maybe you are a little bit of the details of it better, but David Sachs made a phone call, and this was going to be a very, very positive step towards AI regulation, and it got, it got the next, at the last minute. So there's a, there's some interesting stuff there. There's the question of, the way I frame it is like, who has the legitimacy to regulate the companies at this point, right? That is what, that is what you're seeing play out there.

The conversation around safety got reframed as being about censorship, and this was actually what, everybody has the people in the valley have the whited mark and recent blocky on Twitter story for me. It was for saying, AI safety is not censorship, boom, that was it. We, we had been friendly back in the day, and that was it. So this became like an incredibly polarizing thing, where when you said stuff like, you know, it's like the meme, we should improve society somewhat,

not, you know, not like crazy guardrails, just like maybe like little guardrails. But this executive order is also at the same time interesting, because it was things like reviewing models or auditing models, things like that, that question of what should be auditable, what should models have to show, what should the companies have to disclose, what kinds of checks should be put on the system at a governmental level? People are very uncomfortable with the idea of the government having control

over AI because of the fear, because as you know, 50% of the American public distrusts the government at any given point in time, and which 50% it is flips back and forth, depending on which party is in power. So nobody likes the idea of the government being the overseer, right? But that then translates to the question of who gets to do it then, right? Because we have unfortunately sort of talked ourselves out of the idea that the government can do it, right? I see people saying

not this government, but funny enough people didn't want the Biden administration doing it either, Mark Anderson will tell you that. So then you have this question of should the companies do it themselves, and that's like the Fox starting the henhouse there, nobody all you people as you are alluding to, and we see this at our polling also do not trust the tech companies. They do not believe they have their best interests at heart. And this ties into also that question of

what are the potential harms that we are looking at, and is that in the realm of a very, very serious things like checks for AI's deployed in weapon systems is this do the AI get a fact wrong, right? That's a different tier of things. Some people are very, very concerned about that. There are, you know, this question of is the AI going to be proselytizing or nudging or propagandizing people in ways that are unseen. That's the source of concern for people on various sides of the

in the encyclical as well. The Vatican puts out, you know, the the Pope puts out this text with

a section on truth as a common good truth and democracy and ecology of communication. And I read those things and I thought, oh man, we're going to land right back in the safety of censorship

“discussion this week, aren't we? Because that is a fight that I think only one side fought and”

and that reframing really stuck two years back here in the states. Yeah, I think that it's one of the things that the Vatican has historically done that just does not align with the where the United States has been in the past 20 years. Is the Vatican believes strongly in international cooperative organizations with teeth, like they would they believe that the UN should have power. They believe that regulatory agencies should not just be, you know, state side that they should be global

and they should have power and in fact, I think that even as, you know, for me, I'm much more skeptical of international entities in the Vatican is, which, you know, I've got to be to the right of Rome on something. And it strikes me, though, that this is definitely where the church has

always been. Then into 162 is no liberal. Then 16th at their financial crisis said that this

here should be an international regulatory agency on currency, on trade, et cetera. So it's just as it is, this is a deep belief in the Catholic world. I think what's hard is the Catholic Church is a global organization. So they're not going to, they're not going to prioritize, you know, a national regulation they believe that as you go beyond borders. And so I think that what we're going to find is that Leo believes, Leo believes that there should be pushback against falsehood

to the information on his worldview and that there should be, there should be government and regulatory authorities that do that. I mean, like, what he said is that that democracy cannot

function without truth. And he said the government is responsible for promoting the truth.

“And I think that is what David Sachs, that's what he picked up on an attack. He said that”

he tweeted about this. He said that, you know, he has to government gets too much power of what's going to look like. And I think that is actually Silicon Valley's 5-4, just in terms of pure politics, they're, they're best pushed back that they have against Leo the 14th and against this movement writ large. Right. Now, that, that was my sense of it. Also, I think the other big theme that we maybe haven't touched on yet is the dignity of work

and the labor and economic power piece of it, where they're too, you see a lot of tension with Valley and with these different, they're very, very divergent visions of the future. I think I should also mention David Sachs, as a VC, has a portfolio, Mark Anderson, as a VC, has a portfolio. And so they do what's called talking their book, right, which is they don't want regulation that is going to negatively impact the potential growth of their portfolio companies. And so that's also when

they speak, there's an economic motivation and a portfolio that they're representing and that they are trying to maximize. So that's another component to what's happening there when you put guardrails on a system. There is a semi-ligitimate critique that sometimes you are privileging the largest incumbents in the space that the expense of the smaller ones that sometimes is true, but that is also the undercurrent of what's happening there. The thing is, with those folks in

particular, there is this vision that AI is going to create an abundance that it is going to

“create new jobs, whereas you also see on the other side, and I think an growing percentage of the”

public believes that it is going to be a very serious job killer in the short term that there is going to be a very serious unemployment, and that the government is not going to step in with a safety net, and that Silicon Valley is not going to step in with a safety net. And so I think you see that comes through with the sort of fourth industrial revolution illusions here, new ways of working or not necessarily better, promises to boost productivity. I think there's quite a lot in there

on the dignity of work, and the labor and economic power components that I want to tackle that section. A dog was most interesting about it is in the Christian world use, so there's actually really there's two iterations of the Christian world view on the question of work that I think are at play here. And the genesis work as swept by the brow as punishment for sin. So like in the original notion of work as a punishment, something not good, something that is part of our

recovery from sin we have to work. But Christianity really almost immediately kind of rejects that notion of genesis is that that works actually valuable, works good, it's sacred,

something you're participating in God's act of creating. And so what Leo says in his talking and that's fine, really remarkable is that essentially it's not like Joe Biden there or shared Brown even, that like a government check and not having a job is not going to solve the problem.

“That you need meaning with your life, you need to do something with your hands, you can't just”

simply sit around and get a dough out of cash. I think that I think that the tech Optimist, they talk about all these brand new jobs when I think there's just not a want to talk about the transition. And Leo asks the Pope, he is morally obliged to think about who will get left behind and even in the interim period and what we will do for those people who are left behind. But I don't think there's a lot of, maybe I'm running this here, we're much closer than this I am.

I don't think there's like a lot of, I would say pausing it, there's a lot of student conversation about, the other thing is like I want to pause it about what we do in the short term, besides you be, I believe even Elon Musk has said what's this gift checks, but I think that we at a 14 is pretty clear that I checked alone when it's not going to give meaning to someone's wife. I think that question of yes, you do hear the EBI conversation come out quite a bit, that ties

into all sorts of other, you know, challenging conversations in the valley because people there I don't think believe in any way that that is going to be sufficient because most of the people in the valley are there because they are strivers, but they would be happy with UBI or

“with receiving a check. And so I think that anybody with some modicum of empathy understands that”

that is just not what people want and it is just not going to play. And more importantly, I also just don't understand, you know, unless the pitchforks come out, what is going to actually motivate that what is going to actually realize that who is going to do it, who has the political capital to actually make it happen? That's the thing where, you know, I sent these rooms sometimes and they go to the conferences I raised my head and I get to the, like, okay, but who does it? When does it happen?

Give me the specifics. I would like to like the road map. I would like us to stop speaking in abstract, can we be terms and get to the actual, what is the policy implementation that we're

talking about when we say that? And you never, you never get an answer when you ask for specifics.

So I have no confidence whatsoever that that will actually happen. And this is why I don't know if you saw this, but let me completely connect that to one other small thing. The administration is coming out with that note about the alarming rise of anti-tech sentiment and extremist rhetoric. Did you catch that? That's awesome. No, so, I mean, so it's still convoluted in victim of each speech is that the argument is that our data, the number one.

You know, it's more, it's more like volume of threats against things like data centers is rising,

“like that rhetoric is actually heating up. And so that is, so there was a report, I think out of”

DHS, we're not mistaken. One of the agencies made some comment about it this week also. And so just tying those things together too, I think, unfortunately, it is that sense that rhetoric is tied to this concern. And that question that we see here is what, what alleviates that concern. And, and I thought that the way that the Pope tackled that concern very head on really, very clearly taking a moral and ethical stance on, as you're, as you're alluding to, that

question of what could people meaning? It's, it's not really being reckoned with, I don't think. And I mean, in full way here. Yeah, and one thing I just want to add to that is I think that, so number one, people I talked to have Silicon Valley, I think they'd be themselves above politics,

quite frankly, that they're too powerful to be touched by politics or even popular resistance.

There's just a deep skepticism that it will matter in the capacity. I obviously work in politics, so I, but the higher view of the, the collective will of the American people. But I think that what we in the 14 provides, why is populist faces, might, as you said, 10 torch, violent rhetoric, maybe, or 10 torch, a very negative rhetoric, and don't actually have a very, I would say, unifying and compelling vision. I think what you see here is live 14 can provide the moral grammar.

You can provide a collective cohesive vision. This, this document is shortful rhetoric and language that could be secular is very, very, very, very unifying, very cohesive and very popular. And so I hope that maybe from this, those populist movements, hopefully, I think they will find the, I, a hero in pope, we are the 14th. And maybe some sense of a better way of proceeding. I think that my sense of it is, is that the American people right now are with them,

but they need to create a collective movement that is persuasive and unifying. And maybe lead a 14th really provides some language to do so. Do you think that the in cyclical is

morally ambitious, but do you think it is operationally vague? I saw that as a critical

to just be skeletons on which governments and others can hang their policies?

Yes. So when, when we answered, so that is a Catholic or a year front by the, for the critiques, and cyclicals are not programmatic. I would really per se, at least in the Catholic understanding of them. They're supposed to provide principles and ideas and really the 14th is so clear that he wants to start processes, but not in them, not lead them per say. He wants to rep things up, but not give the structure for how things ought to look. I was just saying this, I don't know,

I, I've been on like the thousand podcasts and tell what you said outside of Cameron Wright said

“as early as the early, but I only, I did. I think what makes this remarkable,”

at least in the history of Catholic Church, this will not surprise my readers, maybe years

means to present this, but Catholic Church is a little slow sometimes. We're not always, you know,

top speed ahead of things. When Leo, the 13th wrote Rear on the Bar on the Industrial Revolution, we were 20 years into the Industrial Revolution. He had a lot of information, a lot of data. It was kind of a retrospective unifying documents from that. Then into 16th, he wrote about the financial crisis and how to respond to the financial crisis in June of 2009. So, two years after the financial crisis, Pope Francis wrote a lot out to see on attacking climate change in 2015,

really 20 years, that there's become a mainstream issue in American politics. Leo, this is different. He's actually really on the front end of this. I think that just got a less cohesion to some degrees. He's kind of taking a shot into the dark. I mean, the entire thing is so clear with Chris Ferrell has statements that I found for families. He said, "We do not know what it is we are doing." He said, "So, we do not know what it is we are building." Leo is trying to address something

“that we don't know what it is. I think that makes it a courageous talking about it. It makes it”

almost necessarily vague. I think that I will be very intrigued to read this in 10 years and see did it age like fine wine or like or like spoiled milk? Like my hope is it will be fine wine. I guess probably getting to the time of closing here, what sentence are I deference in single? Do you think people will still be quoting 10 years from now? I think that I want to go back. So, I hope everyone reads a lot, paragraph 120.

And one thing I love about the Catholic Church is we do in paragraphs, so eating at different editions, everyone has 120. I was going to read it to you and I want you to, I want you to think about this line in the context of the generation we live, the era we live, where we are told nothing is impossible to quote the gospel of Matthew, but we told that we ourselves are able to overcome all limitations. So, he says quote, "Even when limitations are experienced as inner suffering,

human wisdom teaches us not to deny nor suppress it, but to integrate it." To eliminate suffering entirely would mean in the end, distinguishing love and desire as well. Those who love in the desire cannot avoid passing through trial and suffering. And over the years we carry with us the lessons that lead their mark white scars, the memories of majority shaped by freedom and failure, dreams and disappointment. It is only thanks to this inner play of these elements that the

wonders of the soul occur within us, allow us to sit to richness of our humanity, to renounce this adventure, both tragic and splendid, and the name of presumed transcendence of all limits could be many things, but it would no longer be human. I think that is as a timeless claim. And I think that what we are the 14th, I think that I think we call this an AI incidental today. I think years from now we will see this as an incidental about re-centereding the human person

over and above the technological movements of the era. I think he's really trying to re-emmitatidal titles not on AI. The title is Magnificos, who mount a toss, on the magnificence of the human person. So I think that what he says is the human Magnificence is not just in our accomplishments, but in our failures, in our shortcomings. And to be a Christian is to say that God redeems not only the broken parts of the world, the broken parts of society, but also the broken parts of us.

“And I think that that's what Leo is saying, that those weak parts of us that were embarrassed,”

that we find shame in, that God redeems those, and we need not be afraid of our limitations, and we need not need to convince that we have to overcome them. In fact, God will redeem them,

even we always struggle them to the day we die. It's a great choice. I appreciate that you

Well, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

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