Sacks Slams Sanders AI Ownership Plan
Benzinga reported Friday that former White House AI adviser David Sacks has sharply rejected Sen. Bernie Sanders’ proposal to hand the federal government a 50% equity stake in the country’s largest AI companies. Sacks argued the plan would ultimately produce something far more dangerous than the corporate dominance Sanders wants to curb.
Why Sacks Says the Plan Backfires
Writing on X, Sacks acknowledged the political appeal of Sanders’ AI nationalization push. He conceded that leading AI laboratories have drawn legitimate criticism, particularly for directing philanthropic dollars toward causes that many conservatives view as ideologically driven. He described the practice as “Soros-maxxing” and said he could “almost” endorse the Sanders proposal as a self-inflicted penalty on those companies. But he stopped well short of actual support.
Sacks argued that placing a government stake at the heart of the most powerful AI systems would not check corporate power. It would instead merge state authority with that power entirely. He compared the dynamic to conservative anxieties over a central bank digital currency, then contended that government-directed AI would be orders of magnitude more consequential.
The Social Credit Comparison
The venture capitalist warned that a state-controlled AI architecture could effectively “curate reality” for American citizens. It could enforce ideological conformity at scale, conduct mass surveillance, and tie access to public services to behavioral compliance. “America won’t win the AI race if we beat China but end up with a CCP-style social credit system in the U.S.,” Sacks wrote in his post.
That framing positions AI nationalization not as a regulatory safeguard but as a structural threat to civil liberties. Sacks has previously warned about accelerating corporate-government fusion across the technology sector.
Background on the Sanders Proposal
Sen. Sanders has pushed for aggressive public intervention in the AI industry as frontier models grow more commercially dominant. His argument centers on the idea that transformative technologies developed with significant public research investment should not generate private windfalls exclusively. The 50% ownership proposal is among the most sweeping legislative ideas floated in Washington’s ongoing debate over AI governance.
Sacks served as AI and crypto policy coordinator in the early months of the current administration before returning to the private sector. His views carry weight inside Silicon Valley circles that remain closely connected to federal technology policy.
The debate over who should own and govern AI infrastructure is accelerating as labs including OpenAI and Anthropic push deeper into commercial deployment.
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