Bernie Sanders might be 84 years old, but he sure acts more in touch with the general public’s views on AI than most other lawmakers, including those in the party he caucuses with. In an op-ed published by the New York Times on Monday, the Independent Senator from Vermont called for the government to take a 50% ownership stake in the frontier AI labs, including OpenAI and Anthropic. Sanders’ plan will manifest in the form of the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, a piece of legislation the Senator said he will soon introduce. That bill will call for a one-time, 50% tax on frontier AI companies (he names OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI, though there is no mention of existing Big Tech players like Google and Meta) that would be paid in stock. Under Sanders’ plan, the federal government would have a controlling share in these labs, both through voting shares and mandatory representation on each company’s board, to block any decision that would be deemed harmful to the public. It would also seed a sovereign wealth fund and allow the government to take a share of the massive projected profits that the AI industry is expected to generate (you know, assuming the whole thing isn’t a big bubble).