Call it the Bernie Manifesto, he won’t mind. Last week, Bernie Sanders — who would have been the Democratic candidate for president in 2016 if the Democratic Party had not been under the thumb of the Clintons — wrote in the New York Times on June 1, 2026 that artificial intelligence companies should become public/private partnerships so the benefits — if any there are — would be shared with the citizens of the United States instead of just a half dozen ultra-wealthy white men. Here’s what Sanders had to say: “Artificial intelligence will almost certainly be the most transformational technology in the history of the world. It will profoundly affect the life of every man, woman and child in our country. It will bring — and is already bringing — unimaginable changes to our economy, our democracy, our emotional well-being, our environment, and how we educate and raise our children. Further, there is a very real fear that as AI becomes smarter than humans it could eventually function independently, with potentially catastrophic consequences. “The question, then, is not whether AI will change the world. It will. The question is: Who will own and control that future? Who will benefit from it, and who will be hurt by it? Will AI be used to make life better for working families? Will it enrich our quality of life? Will it help us eliminate poverty, extend life expectancies, and solve the climate crisis? Or will the future of humanity be determined by a handful of billionaires who have promoted and developed AI, with virtually no democratic input, who stand to become even richer and more powerful than they are today?” Frankly, those seem like perfectly valid questions to those of us who gather at CleanTechnica headquarters to talk about the stories of the day. Sanders points out something that should be intuitively obvious to the most casual observer. The technology that empowers AI “didn’t just pop into Sam Altman’s head or Elon Musk’s imagination,” Sanders adds. “AI is built on our collective intelligence — our books, songs, artwork, journalism, computer code, scientific research, videos, conversations, images and ideas spanning generations.” Sanders goes on to say: “For the most part, tech oligarchs have fed this knowledge into their AI models without permission, without acknowledgment, without compensation. In other words, the creative work of millions of people — writers, artists, musicians, journalists, teachers, scientists and ordinary citizens — has essentially been stolen by some of the wealthiest people in the world. It’s time for us to reclaim it. “Since AI is built on the collective knowledge of humanity, the wealth it generates must benefit humanity. Not just Mr. Musk, Mr. Altman, Dario Amodei, and other moguls whose companies are positioned to dominate the industry. Not just venture capitalists in Silicon Valley or money managers on Wall Street who undoubtedly see AI as the next great wealth-extracting machine. “That is why I will soon be introducing the American A.I. Sovereign Wealth Fund Act. This legislation would give the public a direct ownership stake in the largest AI companies in our country. How? It would create a sovereign wealth fund through a one-time 50 percent tax — not on the profits of OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI and other companies, but paid with something far more valuable than that — the stock. “If passed, this legislation would do two crucial things. First, it would give the public a direct role in determining the future of this technology. No longer would the future of AI and the transformation of human life that it will bring be dictated by a handful of Big Tech oligarchs. The federal government would have the power, through its voting shares and an equal representation on each company’s board, to block decisions that hurt our citizens and to push for policies that help them. “Second, this legislation would guarantee that the trillions of dollars potentially generated by AI are used to improve the lives of all of us — not simply to make the richest people in the world even richer. If the big AI companies continue to grow as rapidly as many analysts expect, then the value of the sovereign wealth fund will grow as well — and the benefits to the American people will grow along with it.” Similar Proposals You might find Bernie’s idea shocking, but in fact, something similar has been proposed by the tech moguls themselves. OpenAI has proposed a “public wealth fund that provides every citizen — including those not invested in financial markets — with a stake in AI driven economic growth.” Anthropic has also proposed “national sovereign wealth funds with stakes in AI.” Elon Musk wrote recently, “Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI.” Sanders used the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund as a model. Funded by profits from selling fossil fuels to the rest of the world, it is now worth more than $2 trillion. “Instead of a few oil executives pocketing all the benefits of this national resource, Norway made the decision that this wealth should be used to improve life for all of its people,” Sanders wrote. He also pointed to Alaska, which created a sovereign wealth fund that benefits from the profits generated by selling oil to the rest of the US and the world. “Even President Trump, in an executive order, has proposed establishing an American sovereign wealth fund,” Sanders noted. “To start, the billions, if not trillions, of dollars generated by this fund would provide direct payments to the American people. And as the fund generates more and more wealth, the proceeds would be used to ensure that every man, woman, and child in our country has a decent and dignified standard of living, including health care, education, and housing. “Needless to say, I recognize that for the government to have a major stake in a company, particularly one for which AI is only part of its business, is complicated. More details — including the specific spending priorities and the mechanics of implementation — will be included in the legislation I unveil in the coming weeks. “But the principle is simple: When a public resource generates wealth, the public should share in that wealth. AI is being built on a public resource far more valuable than oil — the accumulated knowledge, creativity, and labor of mankind. “The future of AI and the fate of humanity must not be decided behind closed doors in Silicon Valley. It must not be dictated by billionaires seeking to maximize their power and profit. It must be decided by workers, parents, teachers, artists, scientists, communities, and the American people. It’s our future. We must decide it.” A Contrary View So spake Bernie Sanders, the iconoclastic, staunchly independent, self-described socialist Senator from the state of Vermont. And while his ideas are bold, others are not so sure he is on the right track. In particular, Nathan Sanders (no relation to Bernie) and Bruce Schneier have penned a counter-proposal that was published by The Guardian on June 8, 2026. They are co-authors of the book Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship that was released last fall. They laud Bernie for his bold suggestion, but think he is a little off-base with some of his ideas. They wrote: “As to the goal of reshaping AI in the public interest, we have proposed an AI Public Option. The concept is for governments, be it federal or state, to establish publicly developed and operated AI models run by public institutions under democratic control. The idea is not to eliminate corporate AI or to seize it as a public asset, but rather for government to provide a competitive baseline that private AI offerings must meet or exceed to win business — just like the notion of a healthcare public option. “The Swiss have trailblazed this approach. Apertus is a large language model built by Swiss public servants, researchers at Swiss universities, using appropriately licensed training data and pre-existing Swiss public super-computing infrastructure powered by renewable energy. “While Apertus doesn’t seriously compete with the latest OpenAI and Anthropic models on performance benchmarks, it blows them out of the water in transparency, sustainability, and compliance with EU regulations including adherence to copyright. It’s a nascent project, but suggestive of how public institutions can apply competitive pressure for corporate actors to behave responsibly. “Don’t confuse public AI with ‘sovereign AI’, the notion that every country needs to invest in domestic AI infrastructure. Sovereign AI is often invoked as a marketing scheme for big tech companies looking to sell to governments; it demands public investment without guaranteeing public control [emphasis added]. “Sanders is a bold and savvy political operator. So why is he pursuing the sovereign wealth fund strategy when he must be aware of these risks? It may be due to another argument he makes in his op-ed — that the Trump administration and the billionaire owners of AI are aligned to the idea. “It’s expedient to capitalize on rare moments of seeming alignment across diverse political factions, but it also behooves us to ask why the AI billionaires are open to this extraordinary intervention. The answer, of course, is that they believe that for every dollar ceded to government stock expropriation, they will get back more in favorable government policies to protect that newfound investment. “Energy taxation is a straightforward way to make AI companies pay for the social disruption of their technologies. Public AI represents a non-monetary mechanism for governments to shape the development of AI, complementary to direct regulation of private actors, one with a far greater chance of influencing corporate behavior towards the public interest. We urge Sanders and other political leaders to consider them.” A Two-Way Dilemma On June 9, 2026, Guardian technology contributor Blake Montgomery weighed in with his own take on this matter. “A US stake in AI companies could cut two ways,” he warned. “Trump could use the government’s leverage as a major shareholder to restrict AI development and align it with safety incentives more than financial ones. Or he could encourage AI firms to grow as lucrative and large as possible so the federal government can cash out like a venture capital firm. My money is on the latter. “Should Trump push the growth approach, it does not seem likely he would press AI startups in the US to slow things down in the name of safety, whether in the form of constraining models’ capabilities or halting the construction of hyperscale data centers. He’ll want his money’s worth.” Montgomery noted that two recent executive orders indicate that the growth at all costs approach is most consistent with the goals of the administration. The first suggested but did not mandate a government review of all AI models 30 days before their release. That order has not yet been issued. The second directed the Department of War to accelerate AI adoption, particularly with regards to national cybersecurity. In it, the president put into writing how he views AI. The US leads in AI “because we refuse to stifle this innovation with overly burdensome regulation,” he said. “Don’t expect his posture to change any time soon,” Montgomery wrote, “and don’t look to him for a check on the headlong expansion of the US’s AI giants. The only check or balance we seem to have…..is Anthropic’s own conscience. Last week, it advocated for a possible ‘temporary pause on advancing the capabilities of AI’, saying it would convene policymakers to discuss the risks of the technology. In the same post, the company said … Claude would someday soon lead to ‘recursive self-improvement’, a model with the capability to make better and more powerful versions of itself.” Montgomery said Anthropic has mastered the posture of proclaiming its own fright at just how powerful its technology is. It markets itself as “an army of coding Victor Frankensteins, so brilliant but so afraid of their own creations.” “The question I keep coming back to is this,” Montgomery said. “With all this hand wringing over AI safety, why keep developing AI? It’s not a compulsory service. Go do something else if you’re so afraid. But that seems unlikely, and you wouldn’t get rich from one of the stock market’s biggest debuts ever if you walked away now, and so I don’t think we need to accept the calls for a ‘pause’ at face value.” The Takeaway Speaking for myself, I am impressed by Sanders’ argument about how AI started by glomming onto texts, songs, and movies without compensating the authors of those works. That seems like stealing to me and it seems eminently unfair that some may benefit in spectacular fashion from the work product of others. Most CleanTechnica readers have direct experience with AI and have formed their own opinions about its strengths and dangers. We would love to hear what you have to say on Bernie’s proposal, as well as the counter-arguments presented above.