NEWSWEEK: Bernie Sanders’ AI Ownership Plan Is More Extreme Than He’ll Admit

When American progressives invoke Scandinavia, they almost always get it wrong.

Senator Bernie Sanders’ new American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, by which the federal government would forcibly own half of every major artificial intelligence company in the United States, is the latest example. Like much of Sanders’advocacy promoting Nordic social welfare models, the senator omits what makes them financially possible with respect to private property, fiscal discipline and other basic tenets of capitalism. “Soaking the rich” and public ownership of productive companies are not features of Denmark, Norway, or Sweden. The idea of a “sovereign wealth fund” is not inherently bad. OpenAI’s Sam Altman has hinted at his preference for some form of public benefit tied to artificial intelligence revenues. Dario Amodei has said much the same. These funds can help mitigate potential future economic and social disruptions and ensure that future generations benefit from a major industry—Sanders cites both Norway’s and Alaska’s wealth funds linked to oil revenues as examples.

However, sovereign wealth funds are typically built by countries with budget surpluses and the ability to invest for future needs, which is challenging for the U.S., given that it runs persistent annual budget deficits and carries over $38 trillion in accumulated debt—with a debt-to-GDP ratio exceeding 100 percent.

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