Tuesday May 26, 2026
Magnifica Humanitas: the Pope’s Warning on AI
Yesterday America paused to honor the men and women who gave their lives so the rest of us could keep ours. Memorial Day is a day for reflection and for remembering what freedom actually costs. I spent part of mine reading from the new encyclical from Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas. First we honored those who died building this country. Now we are deciding how we will let technology shape what they left us.
The first American pope has chosen AI as the subject of his first major teaching. That choice is itself a statement. Popes write encyclicals to formally address the important issues facing the Catholic Church, including moral and social questions, and to respond to political, economic, technological, or cultural changes. Leo is telling us where he believes AI sits on this list. Early in the letter he writes that every generation runs the risk of creating an inhumane and more unjust world, and the line stayed with me. He frames this moment through a comparison of two biblical cities. Babel, a city built on pride and humanity’s attempt to elevate itself to divine status, and Jerusalem, a city of shared labor and prayer, where humanity opens itself to God, peace, and unity. The question Leo puts to the reader, Catholic or not, is which one we are building right now.
I continue to see great opportunity in AI. I write about it almost every day in this newsletter. The companies and founders pushing this frontier are doing something extraordinary, and the productivity gains will reshape industries we have not even named yet. None of that is in dispute. The Pope is not telling us to walk away from AI. He is telling us to walk into it with our eyes open, and that is a message worth considering.
The Pope warns that AI’s power is already concentrating in a small number of private hands exceeding the reach of most governments. Algorithms are quietly deciding who gets a loan, a job, a diagnosis, an insurance rate. Autonomous weapons are approaching a point where no human is meaningfully in the loop, and accountability, as Leo puts it, must never be collapsed into the machine.
Children are being raised by products engineered to imitate friendship. Workers are being told their dignity is a cost to be optimized away. Those who control digital platforms have a considerable ability to affect the collective imagination and to present a particular vision of desirable reality. Power, as he puts it, should be constantly guided by the pursuit of truth and respect for human dignity.
This is not just a message to the Catholic community. It is a message for everyone. The men and women we remembered yesterday died for a country whose founding promise was the dignity of the person. That promise does not retire because the tools changed. Pope Leo wants us to learn how to engage with the digital world in a human way. Read the letter. Then decide which city you are helping to build.
◾ DeepSeek permanently cuts token prices by 75% (TNW)
◾ Pope Leo XIV releases encyclical on AI ethics (Vatican)
◾ SpaceX launches Starship V3 on first test flight (Space.com)
Government & NGO Actions
◾ Trump AI executive order postponed over China-race delay concerns (WSJ)
◾ NASA announces agency wide realignment to accelerate National Space Policy (NASA)
◾ White House approves $9B for US intel agencies to buy advanced AI chips, compute (NYT)
◾ India issues ISP block against Polymarket, Kalshi expected next (Crypto Briefing)
◾ South Korea deputy PM warns of AI-driven wealth disparity (CNBC)
◾ Indonesia classifies Polymarket as gambling, blocks platform (Komdigi)
◾ China bars top AI talent from foreign travel (Bloomberg)
◾ Georgia partners with Tether to launch GEL₮ stablecoin (Tether)
◾ SEC delays plan to allow crypto versions of US stocks (Bloomberg)
◾ CFTC accused of suspending employees who flagged prediction market firms (NYTimes)
◾ ECB warns tighter euro-stablecoin restrictions promote ‘digital dollarisation’ (Reuters)
◾ SEC approves Nasdaq listing of bitcoin index options (SEC)
◾ Rep Comer (R-KY) opens probe into prediction market insider trading (House Oversight)
Financial Notices & Public Company Releases
◾ Canada approves WonderFi $WONDF acquisition by Robinhood $HOOD (Newsfile)
◾ Bitwise launches Canton ETP tracking native token (GlobeNewswire)
Restructuring, Hacks, Losses & Legal Updates
◾ New York lawsuit tests whether dormant bitcoin counts as abandoned property (Cryptonews)
◾ Fenwick & West to pay $54M to settle FTX customer claims (Reuters)
Crypto Protocols, Applications & Business News
◾ $ICE to launch Brent, WTI perps on OKX (Business Wire)
◾ Binance denies Iranian IRGC funding flowed through exchange (Richard Teng/X)
◾ Hyperliquid launches canonical prediction markets (Finance Feeds)
◾ OKX unveils white-label spot, perps, prediction market stack (OKX)
◾ Report: 70% of 2026 physical attacks against crypto holders occurred in France (Joe Nakamoto/X)
AI Models, Applications & Developments
◾ Anthropic readies public release of Mythos (TestingCatalog)
◾ Anthropic co-founder Olah says AI oversight must extend beyond Big Tech (Reuters)
◾ Anthropic adds 28 security, compliance integrations for Claude (Help Net Security)
◾ Huawei plans new smartphone chips (CNBC)
◾ Sam Altman says AI unlikely to trigger ‘jobs apocalypse’ (Reuters)
◾ Anthropic posts initial update on Project Glasswing (Anthropic)
◾ Anthropic to close $30B round at $900B valuation (Bloomberg)
The Attention Economy, Gaming & Interactive Shifts
◾ $META quietly launches Reddit-style app Forum (TechCrunch)
Space Systems, Satellites & Cosmic Activity
◾ DARPA preps robotic deep-space repair satellite for year-end launch (DARPA)
◾ Space Force awards Viasat, SES $437M satellite contract (SpaceNews)
◾ NASA adds six missions to SpaceX commercial crew contract (SpaceNews)
◾ FAA signs off on Blue Origin New Glenn 3 investigation report (Aviation Week)