The battle for control of AI begins: money and total control.
I will soon be introducing a bill to give the public a 50% ownership stake in the largest AI companies in America.
This would guarantee that the trillions created by AI are used to improve the lives of all of us — and block oligarch decisions that harm the American people.
I will soon be introducing a bill to give the public a 50% ownership stake in the largest AI companies in America.
This would guarantee that the trillions created by AI are used to improve the lives of all of us — and block oligarch decisions that harm the American people. pic.twitter.com/y3ERWOsRfs
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) June 2, 2026
Stephen L. Miller (NOT the WH Chief of Staff, but the other one):
Mostly the concern I see on the political right over AI is cultural because there’s nothing more that the political left and the Democratic Party wants them to get their claws into AI.
Because once an AI is programmed to tell people that boys can become girls it’s the death of truth.
Data centers being built isn’t the problem, the data in those data centers is.
David Sacks (silicon Valley tech investor and Co-Chair of Trump’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology):
I can see why Bernie Sanders’ proposal (for the government to take a 50% stake in AI companies) resonates, including with many on the right. …
What could be more in the public benefit than using half the wealth generated by these companies (which trained for free on the collective knowledge of humanity) to pay down the national debt? There is no ideological bias in that philanthropy.
The blob’s control will greatly increase:
There’s just one problem. Nationalization of AI will accelerate the corporate-government fusion we’re already sliding toward.
Conservatives rightly fear a Central Bank Digital Currency. They ought to be even more concerned about Central Government AI — a system with even more totalistic power over information, decision-making, and human behavior.
We saw how social media was weaponized to censor conservatives (including President Trump) in the last Democrat administration. The definition of “trust & safety” expanded to mean protecting the public from supposed psychological harms, micro-aggressions, and disinformation (you know, like hearing conservative ideas or true facts about Covid).
That “safety” agenda as applied to AI will be vastly more powerful and Orwellian.
AI won’t just moderate posts; it will curate reality — with the ability to rewrite history, enforce ideological conformity, influence policy at scale, mass surveil Americans, and condition the benefits of the many systems it controls on approved behavior.
America won’t win the AI race if we beat China but end up with a CCP-style social credit system in the U.S. — and that is the danger as the government becomes more deeply involved in AI development and assumes direct ownership and control.
Conservatives are right to fear where this is all headed but ought to think more carefully about how regulations they are flirting with now (that are widely celebrated among those with a long history of lust for Big Government) will be used against them the next time a Democrat administration is in power.
On the one hand AI can be used to give a leftist blob near total control over our lives. On the other, AI can be used to fully understand government spending and fix the leaks and fraud, thereby crimping the style of the party of patronage.
In any case, now that someone else has built it, Bernie and the lefties want to own it.