The Pope, AI, and the Surveillance State

Thirteen years ago, having been present at the dawn of the “surveillance state,” I asked a basic question in print: “Is America on the Eve of an Electronic Wave of Terror?” I posed it because I saw a pervasive and pernicious bipartisan consensus that unleashed information intrusion and fostered power in a government out of control.

The left instinctively trusts and encourages big government as the way to improve society. The right instinctively trusted big government on national security. What both camps often overlook is the human factor: who, or what bureaucracy, actually executes policy? Conceptually, motives can be pure, but in practice some on both the left and right can and will abuse the trust and responsibility given to them by American citizens.

Now we have entered a new, AI‑driven revolution that is being coupled with earlier electronic surveillance capabilities. The result is the very real potential of global anti‑humanity surveillance states on steroids, especially in regimes that see comprehensive digital control as a strategic objective, not a danger.

Against this backdrop, the Vatican has offered a timely warning. Marking the 135th anniversary of Rerum novarum (Latin for “new things”), Pope Leo XIV has released his first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas: “On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence”. He appeals for the safeguarding of humanity, promotion of truth, dignity of work, social justice, and peace, and insists that AI must serve the human person rather than concentrate power over the human person.

As I learned in 4th Grade at St. Patrick’s on Staten Island, an encyclical is a formal, pastoral letter written by the Pope and addressed to the bishops, clergy, and faithful of the Catholic Church; this one, over 42,000 words long, is also addressed to “all people of good will.” It does not carry the absolute weight of the dogma of papal infallibility, which, by definition, claims the Pope is preserved from the possibility of error by the Holy Spirit. Precisely because this encyclical is not an infallible pronouncement, it is a powerful foundation, within robust, always‑questioning intellectual boundaries, for addressing, as we were taught using a Top Gun briefing technique, “Good and Others.”

That framework, when honestly applied, is one of the world’s best tools for continuous improvement, provided the team is humble enough to handle absolute candor and disciplined enough actually to fix the “others.” There is a way to embrace the good of the Pope’s profound caution while avoiding over‑wrought AI virtue signaling: break down a bifurcated AI path going forward.

It is very simple. Take the lesson from physics, where brilliant minds distinguish between “theoretical physics” and “applied physics.” There are, of course, murky edges that merge theoretical and applied boundaries, but the analogy holds strongly enough to guide strategy.

In my specific concern with AI and the electronic surveillance state, theoretical AI research can and should be unconstrained, much like research in biological terror weapons, where the enemy always gets a vote and U.S. national security officials must understand emerging threats. Mapping and modeling adversary capabilities, probing the limits of AI systems, and exploring dual‑use technologies in the lab are necessary if we are to anticipate what authoritarian powers can and will do.

However, in applied AI the Pope has provided thoughtful insights into both the use and the abuse of these tools. Applied AI shows up in concrete systems: national surveillance architectures, law‑enforcement databases, credit and social‑scoring regimes, and increasingly in weapons, targeting, and “decision support” for warfighters. This is where Magnifica humanitas bites, warning that AI can easily exacerbate inequality, displace workers, and entrench the dominance of powerful corporations and states if it is not actively governed.

Using “Good and Others,” we can ask, for each applied AI system: where does it enhance human dignity and security, and where does it undermine them?

“Good” includes AI‑enabled pattern recognition that helps deter attacks, detect malign activity, or support medical care for wounded warriors without turning human beings into mere data points.

“Others” include bulk collection that treats entire populations as suspects, opaque black‑box scoring systems that quietly deny people opportunities, and any AI‑enabled targeting that blurs the line of human responsibility for lethal force.

Understanding the different intellectual domains of thought and action between theoretical and applied AI may help preclude overreaction by political leadership in crafting policy guidance or inevitable legislation, overreactions that are often well‑intended but stifle needed research while doing little to restrain actual abuse. We need to know what is possible in order to constrain what is permissible, especially when adversaries are racing ahead with their own AI‑driven surveillance and battle‑management systems.

Just ask Galileo Galilei and the Catholic Church. His pointing out that the Earth was not the center of the universe triggered a war between blind faith and pure science. It was never that simple, of course; the conflict had many dimensions—science, biblical interpretation, very forceful 17th‑century politics (think Inquisition), and, as always, bruised egos.

The Church’s apology came rather late, centuries after the fact:

“Theologians… failed to grasp the profound, non‑literal meaning of the Scriptures when they describe the physical structure of the universe. This led them unduly to transpose a question of factual observation into the realm of faith.” — Pope John Paul II, October 31, 1992

The lesson for our AI future is clear. We must avoid turning empirical questions about AI capabilities and threats into rigid dogmas, whether religious or secular, while also refusing to hand unconstrained technological systems a blank moral check. The Pope’s encyclical calls for ongoing discernment, an institutionalized “Good and Others”, that keeps the human person, not the machine and not the state, at the center.

Understanding the difference between pure AI research and applied AI action, especially in the context of the surveillance state I have long warned about, may foster the robust debate we urgently need on all things applied AI. The encyclical covers many applications of AI.

It should never be read as a constraint on the intellectual imperative of the human mind in this brave new world of pure AI research. Instead, it should guide us on where to draw the line between using AI to defend free societies and allowing AI to become the operating system of a new electronic reign of terror.

Ed Timperlake was fortunate to attend both St. Pats and fly at Top Gun, and was also a graduate teaching assistant at Cornell trying to understand computers and decision‑making.