Bernie Sanders' AI Wealth Fund Bill Shows That He Doesn't Understand AI or Wealth

On Monday, in a New York Times op-ed, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) announced plans to introduce the American A.I. Sovereign Wealth Fund Act “in the coming weeks.” Sanders’ bill would give Americans a “direct ownership stake” in the country’s largest AI companies by creating “a sovereign wealth fund through a one-time 50 percent tax” of company stock.

While specifics of the legislation haven’t been shared, Sanders says the bill will “give the public a direct role in determining the future” of AI, rather than its use being “dictated by a handful of Big Tech oligarchs.” Sanders’ proposal would also allow the federal government to use its “voting shares and an equal representation on each company’s board” to block decisions and policies it deems harmful.

Sanders’ plan builds on similar calls to action from academics and the leaders of OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI—three of the country’s largest AI companies—advocating for a formalized process that provides Americans direct payments from the industry. President Donald Trump issued an executive order last February directing the secretaries of the Treasury Department and the Commerce Department, as well as the assistant to the president for economic policy, to “develop a plan” for a sovereign wealth fund and submit it to the president within 90 days.

Details of this fund have yet to be released. The Treasury Department and the Commerce Department did not respond to Reason‘s request for comment.

To bolster his argument, Sanders cites Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global and the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation as examples worth following, though both of them are funded by revenue from oil and gas drilling, which Sanders vehemently opposes.

Sanders’ plan that a wealth fund should provide “direct payments to the American people” rests solely on the example of Alaska’s permanent fund. In 1976, Alaska passed a constitutional amendment and a subsequent series of laws guaranteeing a payout from the state’s wealth fund to anyone who resides in the state for at least 12 months. Today, payouts from the $86 billion fund fluctuate from year to year as the government siphons money from it to bolster its coffers. Still, compared to a typical low-cost index fund, Alaska’s wealth fund performs admirably, but with much higher management fees, according to Bankrate data.

Norway’s fund, meanwhile, restricts its lawmakers from spending more than 3 percent of the fund annually, and the country has struggled to remain “apolitical” in its investments, as politicians and the public haggle over which initiatives and companies are ethical enough to fund.

And while Sanders frames “tech oligarchs” as modern-day robber barons, he proposes an idea commonly used by real oligarchs and authoritarians across the world to prop up illiberal regimes, illegally funnel money, and wield unchecked power over their citizens.

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin is draining the country’s National Wealth Fund for his war in Ukraine, against the advice of the nation’s financial monitors. Iran uses its National Development Fund to finance terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and its shadow police force, while Saudi Arabia’s wealth fund is regularly used to facilitate human rights abuses, according to a 2024 report from Human Rights Watch. While it’s unlikely that an American wealth fund would be used this nefariously, recent cases of fraud show it’s not unreasonable to assume that an unappropriated pot of hundreds of billions of dollars could tempt officials.

Sanders also appears to fundamentally misunderstand that AI is benefiting most Americans, not just the ultrarich. A retirement report from Fidelity Investments found that through the first quarter of 2026, the average 401(k) account balance was up 11 percent from the previous year.

It’s also creating nonmaterial gains. AI detection tools can identify breast cancer earlier and more accurately, while bilingual conversational agents have been shown to improve students’ language and vocabulary at an early age. If every advancement in AI is subject to government approval, as Sanders proposes, it’s unlikely that breakthroughs like these would be achieved at the pace and scale society demands.

Thankfully, it’s unlikely that the bill will pass. Still, Sanders’ comfort in proposing the idea indicates that more lawmakers from both sides of the aisle want to regulate and slow down a technology that, as Sanders writes, could be “the most transformational technology in the history of the world.”

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