May 26, 2026 - US Carries Out "Self-Defense" Strikes in Iran

My first night as the host of my own talk radio program came in 1993. It was a Sunday night and I was on from 8pm until midnight. Then I'd arrive at my law office the following morning at 8am. Well, I was terrible. My footing unsure. My nervousness palpable. My focus dubious and dependent upon newspapers in a pre-internet world. In my opening segment, I talked about a recently released Papal encyclical from Pope John Paul II. Huh? The title was "The Splendor of Truth" and it was a major statement on moral teaching. I've listened to the (cassette) tape many times since, self-deprecating of that night's content selection. And yet, today on radio, 33 years later, I will again be talking about a Pope's encyclical. This time with justification.

Pope Leo XIV - the first American Pope - released Magnifica Humanitas yesterday. "Magnificent Humanity." Forty-three thousand words on artificial intelligence and whether it will enhance human dignity or destroy it. He signed it on May 15th - the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, his predecessor Leo XIII's landmark response to the Industrial Revolution. The deliberate echo is the point. He is saying: we are here again.

The document raises five warnings about AI - that it erodes human judgment, substitutes for genuine human connection (Mingling!), deepens inequality, destabilizes democracy, and makes war easier to wage. On that last point, he writes that AI makes war more "feasible" and less subject to human control. He adds four words that cut through all of it: "Artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed."

Consider the backdrop. The U.S. military used AI systems to identify targets during the Iran strikes - a system capable of flagging over a thousand sites every day. Meanwhile, the co-founder of Anthropic - the AI company the Pentagon blacklisted for resisting unrestricted military use of its technology - stood alongside Leo at this morning's Vatican presentation.

Which is why today I'm asking: will AI-assisted warfare ultimately save lives? Resist the temptation to just vote "no." Research has shown that fear, vengeance, and psychological stress cause even trained soldiers to commit atrocities that a dispassionate system would never commit. And there's the deterrence argument - if AI makes your military so overwhelming that adversaries won't engage, wars don't start in the first place.

In 1993, I had no business leading with an encyclical. Today, I'm not sure there's a better place to start.

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