The Pope's Warning On AI & China's Space Ambitions

Hi readers, happy Tuesday! Hope you had a nice long weekend. Today we’re covering the Pope’s message on AI, the re-heating conflicts in the Middle East, ebola’s spread, Russia’s bombing of Kyiv, Tulsi Gabbard’s resignation, a shooting outside the White House, and China’s space ambitions.

“Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.” ― Thomas Edison

The Pontiff Pontificates On AI

On Monday, Pope Leo published the first encyclical (a document circulated to archbishops, bishops, and other parts of the Catholic Church) of his papacy. The document, a 43,000-word letter entitled Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”), discusses the dangers of AI and the necessity of regulating the technology.

The Pope wasn’t too kind to AI, stating that it weakens humans’ creativity and patience and can also damage people’s psyches by simulating empathy. “It is essential that the use ⁠of AI, especially when it touches on public goods and fundamental rights, be guided by clear criteria and effective oversight. ... Ownership of data cannot be left solely in private hands but ​must be appropriately regulated,” he wrote. “What is needed is a more active political involvement that is capable of slowing things down when everything is accelerating,” he went on, adding that that political environment should include “robust legal frameworks, independent oversight, informed users ​and a political system that does not abdicate its responsibility.”

He also discussed the growing number of armed conflicts taking place across the globe. “Humanity is slipping into ​a violent culture of power, where peace no longer appears as a responsibility to be taken on, but as a fragile interval between conflicts,” Pope Leo wrote. “The ‘just war’ theory which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated,” he added. “The use of force, violence ‌and weapons reflects ⁠a relational poverty that always has disastrous consequences for civilian populations.”

More-War-ial Day

Memorial Day was, unfortunately, not marked by an end to the U.S.-Israel-Iran war. While the Trump administration had hinted that a peace agreement might be reached yesterday, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baqai put those hopes to rest, saying that Tehran isn’t ready to ink a peace deal. “It is correct to say that we have reached a conclusion on a large portion of the issues under discussion,” he said. “But to say that this means the signing of an agreement is imminent – no one can make such a claim.” The deal that’s being worked on apparently involves a 60-day ceasefire extension, reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and a plan for future negotiations regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

The U.S. didn’t help things along, either. After Tehran announced that a deal wasn’t imminent, the U.S. military launched strikes on multiple targets across southern Iran. Describing the attacks as “self-defense strikes,” U.S. Central Command spokesperson Tim Hawkins said that the strikes’ “targets included missile launch sites and Iranian boats attempting to emplace mines.” 

Israel also joined in on the offensive, launching a wave of attacks across Lebanon (despite recently extending a ceasefire with Hezbollah) on Monday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the country was still “at war with Hezbollah” and said that he’d ordered the IDF to “deal them a crushing blow.”

The Ebola Episode Is Evolving

• The ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has led to civil unrest as relatives of the deceased push to recover their loved ones’ bodies. On Sunday, police fired shots in the air at crowds gathered outside an ebola treatment center in the town of Mongwalu, where the bodies of two deceased ebola patients were being held. Sunday’s unrest followed another incident last Friday, which saw people set an isolation tent on fire.

• The cause of the unrest is that there’s a tension between traditional burial practices and how health authorities need to handle the bodies of ebola patients. In the DRC, relatives of the deceased bathe and clothe the bodies of their loved ones before burial – the problem is that ebola is transmitted through blood and other bodily fluids, which means handling the bodies of the infected puts people at risk of contracting the disease.

• Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the spread of ebola has outpaced its response efforts. “We are urgently scaling up operations, but at the moment the epidemic is outpacing us,” said WHO director-general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, adding that there’s a growing risk that the disease will spread to neighboring countries. 

Bringing Out The Big Bombs

• On Sunday, Russia launched a mass drone and missile attack on Kyiv. The assault, which saw Moscow fire multiple Oreshnik ballistic missiles at Kyiv, killed at least two people, wounded 83 others, and started fires at more than 50 sites across the Ukrainian capital.

• According to Ukraine’s Air Force, the Russian attack involved 600 strike drones and 90 missiles – it claimed that Ukrainian air defenses were able to take down 549 of the drones and 55 of the missiles (another 19 missiles reportedly missed their targets).

• “It was a terrible night, and there had never been anything like it in the entire war,” said one Kyiv resident. “I am very sorry that I have to say goodbye to Kyiv now, I am not staying there anymore, there is no possibility. My job is gone, everything is gone, everything has burned down.” The extensive damage was largely caused by ballistic missiles hitting their targets – while Ukraine has the capabilities to take down smaller missiles, it’s running short of the interceptors needed to protect itself from ballistic missiles.

Additional World News

• Wave of child abuse cases shakes schools in Paris (BBC)

• UAE accused of training Colombian mercenaries for Sudan's war (AP)

• What Are the Abraham Accords, Trump’s 2020 Mideast Deals? (NYT, $)

• Single-sex toilets must exclude transgender people, says EHRC (Guardian)

• More than 500 children have died in an outbreak that the world is virtually ignoring (NPR)

• Australia-India-Japan-US Quad seeks relevance as foreign ministers meet in New Delhi (Reuters)

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The Whistle Blows On Tulsi’s Term

• On Friday, Tulsi Gabbard announced that she would be stepping down from her position as director of national intelligence. The former Democrat has plenty of reasons to leave the White House – she’s been embroiled in a highly-classified whistleblower controversy since February, and has also made statements signalling that she disagrees with Trump’s decision to wage war with Iran. 

• Her stated reason for leaving the Trump administration, though, is more personal. “Unfortunately, I must submit my resignation, effective June 30, 2026,” she wrote in her resignation letter. “My husband, Abraham, has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer. He faces major challenges in the coming weeks and months. At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle.”

• The whistleblower complaint against Gabbard was supposedly so sensitive that it was literally locked in a safe, according to the Wall Street Journal. The complaint apparently involved U.S. intelligence officials intercepting correspondence between two foreign citizens regarding Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner – Gabbard has been accused of burying the complaint in order to protect herself, stalling the process so that Congress couldn’t hold her accountable.

A Not-So-Secret Threat To The Secret Service

• On Saturday, a gunman fired multiple shots at a Secret Service checkpoint just outside of the White House. Secret Service agents returned fire, shooting and killing him in the process, but a bystander was injured in the scuffle (it’s unclear whose bullet hit them). Authorities have identified the shooter as Nasire Best, a 21-year-old man from Dundalk, Maryland.

• Best was already known by the Secret Service before last weekend’s shooting. In June of 2025, he tried to block a White House entry lane overseen by the Secret Service, telling agents that he was actually Jesus Christ. After being detained for that incident, Best was taken in for a mental evaluation – just a few weeks later, he tried to break into the White House again. The pattern of behavior led a judge to issue a decision ordering him to stay away from the White House grounds. 

Additional USA News

• Waymo suspends services in six US cities after flooding (Semafor)

• The origins of Memorial Day and how it has evolved (AP)

• One dead, 36 injured in explosion at New York dry dock (Reuters)

• Explosion threat at southern California chemical tank eliminated, firefighters say (Guardian) 

• Trump’s Self-Indulgent Streak Deepens G.O.P. Fears He Is Risking Losses in Midterms (NYT, $)

• Louisiana’s Prison Budget Proposal Stands to Cost Louisiana Taxpayers Millions (ProPublica)

China Shoots For The Stars

• China just launched a major space mission which – if successful – will break a major space record. On Sunday, the country’s space agency launched the Shenzhou-23 mission, which is bringing a crew of three astronauts to China’s Tiangong space station via a Long March 2-F rocket. 

• The three astronauts – 39-year-old former air force pilot Zhang Zhiyuan, space engineer Zhu Yangzhu (also 39), and 43-year-old Lai Ka-ying (the first person from Hong Kong to visit space) – will travel to the Tiangong space station, conducting multiple scientific projects while there. Depending on physical and psychological tests, one of them will be selected to spend a full year aboard the space station, which would make them the first human to live in Earth’s orbit for a full year.

• Beijing is pushing to bring Chinese astronauts to the Moon by 2030 and also hopes to establish a manned base on the Moon by 2035. The Shenzhou-23 plays into those ambitions by testing the Tiangong space station’s viability as a checkpoint in space for future missions. “A year in orbit pushes both hardware and humans into a different operational regime compared with the shorter Shenzhou missions of the programme’s earlier phases,” said one expert. 

Additional Reads

• How to be defiant (Psyche)

• Ferrari unveils first fully electric car (BBC)

• Google’s new anything-to-anything AI model is wild (Verge)

• A Swimmer Broke a World Record at the Enhanced Games (Wired, $)

• A Very Lonely Caterpillar, Possibly the Last of Its Kind, Has Died (NYT, $)

• Why we need a Memorial Day for civilian victims of war (Vox) 

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“Shenzhou” roughly translates to “divine vessel” or “divine boat.”

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