Staff Reports
Senator Bernie Sanders just put a fine-point on the left’s long march toward government control of industry. He announced legislation to create the “American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act” that would seize a one-time 50 percent stake in the biggest U.S. artificial intelligence companies — paid for in stock, not cash — and place those shares in a federal fund with voting power and board seats. He frames it as “public ownership” of a technology built on our shared culture. Call it public ownership if you like; in practice it means government ownership, full stop.
What Senator Sanders is proposing
The plan is simple on paper and ugly in practice. The federal government would take half the stock of major AI firms like OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI through a one-time share levy. Those shares would go into a sovereign wealth fund that gives the federal government voting rights and equal representation on corporate boards. Sanders says this would prevent “oligarchs” from calling the shots and would steer AI’s trillions of dollars into public benefit. It reads like a bad history lesson in socialism: seize productive assets, then trust the state to distribute the benefits fairly.
Why this is a dangerous and naïve idea
First, the public doesn’t “own” anything when bureaucrats hold the stock. What Sanders calls a public stake really means unelected officials and political appointees making decisions about product design, research priorities and speech controls inside private firms. Second, forcing a 50 percent stock levy wrecks investor trust. Startups and venture capital rely on clear property rights and predictable returns. Strip half of a company for the state, and money, talent and crucial innovation will go elsewhere — possibly to competitors in countries that don’t want to nationalize tech. That’s not protectionism; it’s self-inflicted economic sclerosis.
Legal headaches and national-security backfires
Beyond politics, this plan would spark major legal fights. A one-time confiscation of stock would invite takings claims under the Fifth Amendment and years of court battles. It would also create perverse national-security outcomes. Do we really want Washington holding half the shares of cutting-edge A.I. firms while adversaries watch? If Silicon Valley faces more political risk than foreign competitors, we cede strategic advantage. And let’s be honest: government control doesn’t mean more privacy or less bias. It means bias chosen by the people in power.
There are real problems in A.I. that deserve serious attention — worker displacement, privacy risks, misinformation and platform accountability. But nationalizing half the tech sector is not a solution. Good conservative fixes are clear: targeted regulation, liability rules for harmful uses, stronger enforcement of existing antitrust and labor laws, and aggressive public investment in R&D and workforce retraining. Those strategies protect citizens and preserve innovation without turning boardrooms into branches of government. Senator Sanders is right that A.I. will reshape our lives. He’s wrong to think Washington should own half of the future.
