President Donald Trump has expressed support for the federal government taking equity stakes in major AI companies, echoing a proposal by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for 50 percent public ownership of the sector. The convergence of these political poles is documented in "The Trump-Sanders plan to nationalize AI," a report published June 15, 2026, by Clyde Wayne Crews at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The report argues that the shift from regulating AI to owning it represents a fundamental transformation from capitalism to political management of the technology sector.
When asked about discussions with AI companies regarding federal equity stakes, Trump said he wants the public to share in AI-generated wealth through arrangements "where the American public essentially becomes a partner with … the companies." The Trump administration has already embraced federal ownership stakes in strategically favored firms, including Intel, using justifications involving supply chains and national competitiveness. Sanders recently proposed a 50 percent public ownership stake in major AI companies. In June 2026, Trump himself said of Sanders and equity stake proposals: "As far as economics is concerned, we have certain things that aren't that far apart."
According to the report, once Washington becomes "military partner, subsidizer, regulator, customer, shareholder, and dispenser of political favors all at once, the distinction between public and private decision-making begins to disappear." The report finds that government participation in profits inevitably becomes government participation in direction — not just of individual firms, but of entire sectors. AI companies themselves are helping design these frameworks: OpenAI's "Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age" blueprint promotes public wealth funds, workforce-transition programs, wage supports, portable benefits, and expansions of government programs, with invitations for the public to add more. The report describes this dynamic as "misalignment by design."
The report explains that AI is proving especially vulnerable to federal control because progressives, Trump, and many AI companies are "increasingly singing from the same hymnbook." The premise driving this convergence is striking: government must manage, direct, and redistribute wealth not because AI will destroy prosperity, but because it may create too much. Universal Basic Income advocates have long argued that automation would require new forms of redistribution, and the COVID era saw UBI-adjacent pilot projects emerge. Now, the prospect of converting AI-generated wealth into a permanent stream of politically distributed benefits is proving irresistible, even if redistribution shrinks the economic pie. The report characterizes the shift from "mere" industrial policy to equity stakes to an AI welfare state as completing "the transformation from capitalism to political management via a permanent, non-reformable administrative state."
The report concludes that AI will create immense wealth, but the critical question is whether that wealth emerges through competitive enterprise and voluntary exchange — expanding prosperity, opportunity, and independence — or through a politically managed system in which government and favored firms jointly direct innovation and distribute the proceeds, expanding dependence. The greatest danger, according to author Clyde Wayne Crews, is not that AI becomes misaligned with humanity, but that AI becomes aligned with political power. The old fear was that artificial intelligence would take over society; the emerging reality is that government already has.