Three days after the Vatican called for AI to be ‘disarmed’, the Mistral CEO defended his company’s defence-AI work, arguing Europe cannot afford unilateral restraint.
Arthur Mensch, the chief executive of French AI startup Mistral, pushed back directly on Thursday against Pope Leo XIV’s call to “disarm AI,” arguing that European companies cannot afford to step back from defence-AI work when adversaries are actively deploying the technology.
The remarks, made three days after the Vatican published Magnifica Humanitas, the Pope’s first encyclical, mark one of the most direct corporate responses yet to what has rapidly become the Catholic Church’s most consequential intervention on AI.
“We’re all for peace,” Mensch said, “but if you look at our rivals and adversaries in the world, they’re using artificial intelligence. As long as we have adversaries that are threatening, and they are threatening, we do need to have our own capabilities.”
The 💜 of EU techThe latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!The Mistral CEO’s framing is the structural defence of military-AI development the European tech sector has been working toward since the Ukraine war, but his decision to articulate it as an explicit rebuttal of a sitting Pope is what makes Thursday’s remarks notable.
