Let’s be real: if you thought AI was just about chatbots and self-driving cars, you’ve been looking through the wrong end of the telescope. Bernie Sanders didn’t come to play. He came to rewire the entire economic foundation of the digital age. And he’s not asking. He’s demanding.
This isn’t a tax hike. It’s a reckoning.
A one-time, 50% tax on the stock of the biggest AI firms—those making over $200 million a year in AI revenue—would instantly generate a $7 trillion public wealth fund. That’s more than the GDP of Japan. More than the combined market cap of Apple, Microsoft, and Google. And every single American? They’d get over $1,000 a year, forever. Not a handout. Not a stimulus check. A dividend. From the machines that are replacing their jobs.
This isn’t charity. It’s restitution.
We built these technologies. We fed them our data, our attention, our labor. And now, a handful of billionaires are hoarding the profits like medieval lords. Sanders isn’t angry because he’s jealous. He’s furious because it’s unjust.
And yes—he’s right.
The people who built the internet didn’t get to own it. The people who created the smartphone ecosystem didn’t get to profit from it. And now? The same script is playing out again. Only this time, the stakes are higher. AI doesn’t just automate tasks. It automates power. Decision-making. Surveillance. Influence. And it’s all locked inside corporate vaults.
Sanders is trying to crack them open.
I’ve read the op-eds. I’ve heard the Silicon Valley apologists. "This is confiscation," they scream. "It’s theft!" But here’s the thing: if you own a factory that runs on public infrastructure, public education, public research—and you pay zero in return—you’re not a capitalist. You’re a freeloader.
This isn’t about punishing success. It’s about ending theft.
And if you think that’s radical? You haven’t been paying attention.
The real radical idea? That the public gets nothing.
The Sovereign Wealth Fund That Could Change Everything
Imagine waking up next January and seeing $1,050 deposited into your bank account. No application. No form. No means test. Just… money. From the machines.
That’s not fantasy. That’s the arithmetic.
Sanders’ plan doesn’t just create a fund—it creates a perpetual income stream. The $7 trillion fund isn’t meant to be spent down. It’s meant to be invested. And it’s projected to generate hundreds of billions annually in returns. Five percent of that? That’s $350 billion a year. Divided across 330 million Americans? That’s $1,060 per person. Every. Single. Year.
And that’s just the dividend.
The rest? That’s for housing. For healthcare. For universal broadband. For rebuilding public schools that have been gutted over decades. This isn’t a welfare program. It’s a structural shift. A new social contract.
The fund would be managed by a board of trustees—seven people, nominated by the president, confirmed by the Senate. They’d be the public’s proxy. Not regulators. Not bureaucrats. Owners.
And here’s the kicker: they’d hold voting shares in the AI companies themselves.
That means if OpenAI decides to train its next model on copyrighted novels without permission? The Commission can vote to block it. If Anthropic tries to sell AI-generated therapy bots to minors? The Commission can veto it. If xAI merges with SpaceX and turns satellite networks into AI surveillance grids? The Commission can say no.
This isn’t oversight. This is ownership.
And it’s the first time in history that the public has ever been given a direct, legal stake in the technology that’s reshaping their lives.
Think about that.
You don’t own your phone. You don’t own your search results. You don’t own your social feed. But under Sanders’ plan? You’d own a piece of the machine that decides what you see, what you think, and what you’re allowed to believe.
It’s not just a policy. It’s a revolution.
And it’s the only one that makes sense.
Because if you’re going to let algorithms decide who gets hired, who gets loans, who gets parole—you have to let the people who live under those algorithms decide who runs the algorithms.
Otherwise, you’re not building democracy. You’re building a digital feudalism.
And I don’t know about you, but I’m done with serfs.
For a detailed breakdown of the legislation—including how the AI Public Trust would operate—see our coverage on Bernie Sanders’ $7 trillion plan.
The Corporate Split: Breaking Up the AI Monoliths
Here’s where it gets even messier.
Sanders doesn’t just want a tax. He wants a divorce.
Under his bill, any company that generates $200 million or more in AI revenue must legally separate its AI division from its non-AI operations. No more hiding behind conglomerates. No more burying AI profits inside electric car sales or social media ad revenue.
This hits Elon Musk’s xAI dead center.
xAI, you may recall, was spun out of Tesla and SpaceX. Then it merged with X. Then it merged with SpaceX. Now? It’s a tangled web of corporate entities, all feeding into a single AI engine that’s quietly rewriting the rules of global communication, finance, and warfare.
Under Sanders’ plan? That’s illegal.
xAI would have to be carved out—fully independent. No shared infrastructure. No shared servers. No shared board. No shared profits.
And if Musk wants to keep his SpaceX and Tesla empire intact? He’d have to sell his stake in xAI. Or the government would.
This isn’t about targeting Musk. It’s about targeting structure.
Because here’s the truth no one wants to say: the real danger isn’t AI. It’s concentration.
When one person controls the AI that runs your social feed, your car, your home, your hospital, and your defense systems? That’s not innovation. That’s tyranny.
And the only way to break that power is to break the companies.
It’s not antitrust. It’s anti-monopoly.
And it’s long overdue.
The same logic applies to Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon—any company that’s built an AI product with more than $200 million in annual revenue.
You want to sell ads? Fine. You want to sell cars? Fine. But if you’re selling AI that makes life-or-death decisions? You don’t get to hide behind your other businesses.
The public deserves to know who’s in charge.
And if that means splitting up a $2 trillion conglomerate? Good.
Let them fight over the scraps.
We’ll be sitting at the table with our dividends.
The Industry’s Panic: From "Confiscation" to "Catastrophe"
Predictably, the AI industry is losing its mind.
David Sacks—Trump’s former AI czar—called the plan "straight up confiscation of property" on the All In podcast. He’s not wrong. It is confiscation. But he’s missing the point.
Property? What property?
The data? That came from us.
The talent? That came from public universities.
The computing power? That came from government-funded research.
The infrastructure? That came from taxpayer-funded broadband.
The algorithmic breakthroughs? That came from open-source code we all built together.
And now? They’re claiming it as theirs?
Sacks says he has "sympathy" for Sanders’ goals. But he prefers "voluntary" solutions. Like maybe, just maybe, the CEOs will be nice and donate 5% of their profits.
That’s not justice. That’s begging.
And it’s the same line they’ve been selling since 2010: "Trust us. We’re good people."
Remember when Facebook promised they’d never sell your data? When Amazon said they’d never use seller data to compete? When Google said they’d never build a surveillance state?
We believed them.
And then we woke up.
This time? We’re not sleeping.
Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, reportedly stayed "far apart" from Sanders in their meeting. He’s not against public benefit—he’s against public control.
And that’s the real conflict.
Altman wants to be the benevolent dictator. Sanders wants to end the dictatorship.
There’s no middle ground.
And that’s why this plan won’t pass.
Not because it’s radical.
But because it’s honest.
The Republican Congress? They’re owned by the same donors who fund the AI giants. They’ll kill this bill before it hits the floor.
Trump? He might say he wants a "stake" in AI—but he wants it for himself. Not for the people.
So what’s the point?
The point is this: Sanders isn’t trying to win.
He’s trying to awaken.
He knows this bill won’t pass. But he also knows that if he doesn’t say it out loud, no one else will.
Because the truth is terrifying.
If we don’t take back control of AI now, we never will.
The machines don’t care who owns them.
But we do.
And if we wait until the algorithms are making our laws, our elections, our medical decisions? It’ll be too late.
This isn’t about policy.
It’s about survival.
And Sanders? He’s the only one screaming loud enough to be heard.
Explore all AI Policy & Ethics coverage.
The Real Enemy Isn’t AI—It’s the Myth of Meritocracy
Let me tell you something you won’t hear in the corporate boardrooms.
The people building these AI systems didn’t do it alone.
They didn’t wake up one day and magically invent transformers.
They stood on the shoulders of decades of publicly funded research. Of NSF grants. Of DARPA projects. Of university labs where professors taught students how to code for free.
They used open-source frameworks built by volunteers.
They trained on data scraped from public websites.
They ran their models on cloud servers subsidized by taxpayer dollars.
And now? They’re telling us they’re the geniuses.
That they’re the innovators.
That they deserve to own the future.
That’s the lie.
The real innovation wasn’t the code.
It was the society that made the code possible.
And if we let them keep the profits? We’re not just losing money.
We’re losing our story.
We’re letting them rewrite history.
They’ll tell the next generation: "This was built by billionaires. By geniuses. By visionaries."
And we’ll believe them.
Because we’ve been trained to.
But it’s not true.
It was built by us.
Every click. Every search. Every like. Every tweet.
We fed the machine.
And now it’s eating our future.
Sanders’ plan doesn’t just redistribute wealth.
It redistributes dignity.
It says: you didn’t build this alone. And you don’t get to keep it all.
That’s the real threat.
Not the tax.
Not the fund.
Not the commission.
It’s the idea that the public deserves to own what they helped create.
And that? That terrifies them.
Because if we believe that… then what’s left for them?
Nothing.
And that’s why this fight matters.
Not because it will pass.
But because it must be said.
And if you’re still waiting for someone else to fix this?
You’re already losing.
The machines don’t wait.
And neither should we.