Artificial Intelligence

No One Can Control the Future

Certainly not Bernie Sanders on AI

Katherine Mangu-Ward | From the August/September 2026 issue

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(Illustration: Andrew Thomas-CNP/CNP/Polaris/Newscom)

In a recent New York Times op-ed, the senior socialist senator from Vermont argued that artificial intelligence was "built on our collective intelligence"—our "books, songs, artwork, journalism, computer code, scientific research, videos, conversations, images and ideas spanning generations." The most important question, he said, is not whether AI will change the world but "who will own and control that future."

He proposed a one-time 50 percent tax on the largest AI companies, to be paid in shares held by a government-run sovereign wealth fund. The federal government would get voting shares, board representation, and the power to "block decisions" it decides are bad for citizens.

This is the worst idea Bernie Sanders has ever had, in a long and illustrious career of terrible ideas.

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In 2012, President Barack Obama delivered a line that would haunt his reelection campaign and my nightmares: "If you've got a business—you didn't build that." Obama was talking about roads, bridges, schools, and the internet. His defenders insisted he was being caricatured after the line became a GOP meme. But the broader claim was clear enough: Private accomplishment is downstream of public investment, giving the state some moral claim on the fruits of success.

He was wrong about that. Simply existing in a geographical area where the state monopolizes violence and infrastructure does........

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