What's New Since the Encyclical

Pope Leo XIV called out Big Tech and demanded autonomous weapons controls. Washington responded — badly.

The debates the Vatican warned about are now active policy fights, and the people in charge are not covering themselves in glory.

The AI Overwatch Act: What It Actually Does

The AI Overwatch Act (HR 6875) passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee on January 21 by a vote of 42 to 2. That's about as bipartisan as Congress gets.

The bill would give Congress authority to block exports of advanced AI chips — primarily Nvidia and AMD GPUs — to adversary nations like China. It treats these semiconductors the same way the U.S. treats arms sales: subject to legislative oversight.

The concern is real. According to former deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger, China cannot domestically produce the quantity of advanced chips its AI sector demands. American chips are the gap-filler. Letting them flow to Beijing is not a commercial decision — it's a strategic one.

The Trump Administration's Counterargument

The Trump administration has flipped the old bipartisan consensus on chip exports.

The new theory, according to analysis by Lawfare, is that American interests are better served by selling chips to China — capturing billions in chipmaker revenue and a 25% tariff for the U.S. Treasury — than by ceding the market to Chinese domestic alternatives. White House AI czar David Sacks has criticized the bill. The White House opposes it.

The administration's argument essentially says "sell chips to our main geopolitical rival so our companies make more money." Whether that serves American security interests remains contested.

The Industry Argument Against the Bill

The Washington Examiner and WSJ both make the commercial case clearly: roughly two-thirds of revenue for leading American chipmakers — AMD, Broadcom, Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments — comes from outside the United States. For Broadcom, Intel, and Qualcomm, international revenue exceeds 75%.

Without global scale, these companies cannot fund the R&D that keeps America ahead. Cutting their revenue base would damage the innovation engine.

But "we need global sales" and "we should sell to China" are two different claims. The industry often conflates them.

The Alliance Problem Nobody's Covering

Japan deserves closer attention here.

In 2023, Tokyo revised its Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act controls, restricting 23 categories of advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Japanese firms like Tokyo Electron and Screen Holdings took commercial losses to align with U.S. and Dutch export policy. They did it because they trusted Washington's policy would remain coherent and consistent, according to analysis by Japan Forward.

The AI Overwatch Act introduces congressional veto politics into individual export licensing decisions. Historically, those decisions have been made by executive agencies with classified intelligence access and diplomatic context. If licensing becomes subject to partisan gridlock and legislative votes, allies like Japan have every reason to question why they sacrificed commercial interests for a policy Washington cannot maintain.

The Anthropic-Pentagon Fight Is Still Live

Separately, the standoff between Anthropic and the Department of Defense is ongoing — and it illustrates exactly the autonomous weapons problem Leo XIV flagged.

Anthropic refused to sign a DOD contract unless the Pentagon promised not to use its AI for autonomous killer robots or domestic mass surveillance. The Pentagon, according to Defense Undersecretary Emil Michael in a March 2026 CNBC interview, called that an attempt to "insert their policy preferences in the middle of an operation" and designated Anthropic a "supply chain threat" — a label that would have forced Amazon, Google, and Nvidia to cut business ties with the company.

Anthropic sued. The case is in court. Nothing is resolved.

CEO Dario Amodei wrote in a 2026 essay that "we are so close to these models reaching the level of human intelligence, and yet there doesn't seem to be a wider recognition in society of what's about to happen."

Meanwhile, Sen. Bernie Sanders is pushing a moratorium on new AI data center construction until "strong national safeguards are in place," as he said at a 2026 press conference. A moratorium would hand China a strategic advantage it would absolutely exploit.

What VP Vance Said

Vice President JD Vance called Pope Leo XIV's AI warnings "profound" on Tuesday, according to The Hill. That's notable. It's also not a policy commitment.

What This Means for Regular People

The U.S. government cannot agree on whether advanced AI chips are a product to sell or a weapon to control. It is simultaneously fighting a tech company that refused to enable killer robots and attacking a bill designed to prevent those same chips from reaching Beijing. The Pope wrote 42,300 words about this. Congress passed a committee vote 42-2. The Pentagon sued one of its own AI contractors.

Nobody is in charge. And China is watching every minute of it.