What Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon Have in Common

Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Greg Casar are set to release legislation next week that would ban the development of artificial superintelligence, Casar announced at the Pro-Human Assembly hosted by the Future of Life Institute at the Marriott Marquis in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday. Sanders told AI company CEOs to "stop pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into super PACs," criticizing Leading the Future, the industry-funded PAC that spent millions to defeat former New York Assembly member Alex Bores' congressional bid, while Representative Lori Trahan outlined a more moderate, bipartisan approach. The event, which also drew Steve Bannon and Ashley Judd, showed broad appetite for regulating AI but no clear path to concrete congressional action.

You’re reading The TNR Blue Book. Get daily scoops, strategy, and developments inside the liberal ideas factory delivered right to your inbox. Sign up for free https://newsletter.tnr.com/f/40 . The conversation around regulating artificial intelligence has rapidly become so wide-reaching that on Tuesday, Bernie Sanders , Steve Bannon , and Ashley Judd all wound up at the same conference dedicated to tackling the technology’s risks. But while the event showed that there’s a real hunger to take on AI oligarchs, it’s still not clear how that will translate into concrete action. The “Pro-Human Assembly,” hosted by the nonprofit Future of Life Institute at the Marriott Marquis in downtown Washington, D.C., brought together AI industry researchers, policymakers, and civil society organization leaders in a particularly fraught moment, following a week of dire warnings https://newsletter.tnr.com/lt.php?x=4lZy~GE2IISi5XB70NtFgxRuAn Sk AkwuoyY5Q5Jnei5HCtz0y7xeFs3HEgikA0 ueglPHHJFCh95 ~yNIYVvFy13Aoia about AI risks and alarming disclosures https://newsletter.tnr.com/lt.php?x=4lZy~GE2IISi5XB70NtFgxRuAn Sk AkwuoyY5Q5Jnei5HCtz0y7xeFs3HEgikA0 ueglPHHJFCh95 ~yNIYVvFy13Aoiq about recent safety incidents. House members’ short speeches opening the conference illustrated just how divided Congress is on the right approach to regulating AI. Representative Greg Casar delivered the most stirring remarks, garnering multiple rounds of applause. “The answer is simple,” he said of the solution to AI threats. “We ban AI systems that are too powerful for humans to control.” The room applauded vigorously. That comment previewed legislation https://newsletter.tnr.com/lt.php?x=4lZy~GE2IISi5XB70NtFgxRuAn Sk AkwuoyY5Q5Jnei5HCtz0y7xeFs3HEgikA0 ueglPHHJFCh95 ~yNIYVvFy13Aoj8 that he and Senator Bernie Sanders are set to release next week, which would ban the development of artificial superintelligence. Casar also directly called out Leading the Future, the AI industry-funded PAC that has spent millions to elect candidates it thinks will advance its agenda for relatively loose federal regulations on AI. Later in the afternoon, Sanders joined Casar’s criticism, directly addressing the CEOs of AI companies: “If you believe in democracy, if you believe that the people have the right to determine their future, stop pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into super PACs,” he said. Later in the day, Leading the Future’s most prominent victim, Alex Bores , spoke to the crowd. Bores championed state-level AI regulations during his time in New York’s Assembly, and Leading the Future spent millions to defeat his bid for Congress earlier this year. In his speech, Sanders presented his familiar anti-oligarchy messaging. “Virtually all of the decisions regarding the development of AI have been made by a handful of the richest people in the world,” he said, “whose chief goal is to achieve even more wealth and more power than they already have, no matter what the impact their work has on ordinary people.” Sanders used the opportunity to plug his American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act https://newsletter.tnr.com/lt.php?x=4lZy~GE2IISi5XB70NtFgxRuAn Sk AkwuoyY5Q5Jnei5HCtz0y7xeFs3HEgikA0 ueglPHHJFCh95 ~yNIYVvFy13AojK , which would distribute the wealth of AI companies and give the public a role in their management, and his call for a data center moratorium https://newsletter.tnr.com/lt.php?x=4lZy~GE2IISi5XB70NtFgxRuAn Sk AkwuoyY5Q5Jnei5HCtz0y7xeFs3HEgikA0 ueglPHHJFCh95 ~yNIYVvFy13Aljq alongside Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez . Representative Lori Trahan , who recently has positioned herself as a leader on AI, outlined a more moderate position. Much of her speech focused on the philosophical concerns of AI development—at one point, she quoted Hannah Arendt ; at another, she called human beings “ends in ourselves.” Only toward the end did she mention her bipartisan legislation on AI, introduced with GOP Representative Jay Obernolte , and she was careful to frame it as a small incremental step that should be easy for everyone to get on board with. “We need a long sequence of small correct decisions, and we need to start making them today,” she said. “So let me tell you one Congress could make.” Trahan pitched her legislation as a commonsense regulation that won’t overly stifle AI companies. Leading the Future hasn’t endorsed Trahan and Obernolte’s bill, but said in August https://newsletter.tnr.com/lt.php?x=4lZy~GE2IISi5XB70NtFgxRuAn Sk AkwuoyY5Q5Jnei5HCtz0y7xeFs3HEgikA0 ueglPHHJFCh95 ~yNIYVvFy13Aoja that the lawmakers “deserve particular credit” for their bipartisanship. On Monday, Obernolte met with https://newsletter.tnr.com/lt.php?x=4lZy~GE2IISi5XB70NtFgxRuAn Sk AkwuoyY5Q5Jnei5HCtz0y7xeFs3HEgikA0 ueglPHHJFCh95 ~yNIYVvFy13Aojq OpenAI chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane . According to Obernolte, Lehane “was actually asking how he could be helpful.” Steve Bannon , the media executive and former strategist for President Donald Trump , sounded a lot like Senator Sanders in the opening line of his address: “American citizens are not going to be supplicants to the oligarchs.” Bannon acknowledged that the two appeared to be odd bedfellows, but said that he and Sanders are “trying to rise above our partisanship.” But while the two men’s willingness to appear back-to-back on the same stage could signal a new coalition of the populist left and right, other parts of Bannon’s speech suggested that it might not be that simple. Sanders, for example, implored President Trump to strike a deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping to slow AI development. Bannon, by contrast, took a far less conciliatory tone. “We should quarantine every aspect of the ecosystem of artificial intelligence away from the Chinese Communist Party,” he told the crowd, calling for the U.S. to stop training Chinese students in tech and to kick Chinese-owned companies out of the country. Those moments made the hope of a horseshoe-shaped coalition feel less possible, and created a rather awkward silence in the room. Ultimately, the conference gave a hint of the messaging Americans are likely to hear for the rest of 2026 and beyond—a populist approach to tackling AI companies, the importance of bipartisan cooperation, and the corrupting influence of money in politics. What Congress might do legislatively, though, remains unclear. —Emma Janssen More bad news on affordability: A report from United Way of the Greater Capital Region finds that “nearly half of New York households are struggling to make ends meet despite earning incomes above the federal poverty line,” Spectrum News 1’s Noah Love reports https://newsletter.tnr.com/lt.php?x=4lZy~GE2IISi5XB70NtFgxRuAn Sk AkwuoyY5Q5Jnei5HCtz0y7xeFs3HEgikA0 ueglPHHJFCh95 ~yNIYVvFy13ApiK . That may sound extreme, but it’s in line with what a Brookings Institution report https://newsletter.tnr.com/lt.php?x=4lZy~GE2IISi5XB70NtFgxRuAn Sk AkwuoyY5Q5Jnei5HCtz0y7xeFs3HEgikA0 ueglPHHJFCh95 ~yNIYVvFy13Apia this summer estimated regarding households across the nation. New York Governor Kathy Hochul is on an affordability blitz this week, announcing https://newsletter.tnr.com/lt.php?x=4lZy~GE2IISi5XB70NtFgxRuAn Sk AkwuoyY5Q5Jnei5HCtz0y7xeFs3HEgikA0 ueglPHHJFCh95 ~yNIYVvFy13Apiq that the state’s energy rebate checks to an estimated 8.1 million households will be sent September 21. On Tuesday, she announced an “all-of-government push” to enroll https://newsletter.tnr.com/lt.php?x=4lZy~GE2IISi5XB70NtFgxRuAn Sk AkwuoyY5Q5Jnei5HCtz0y7xeFs3HEgikA0 ueglPHHJFCh95 ~yNIYVvFy13Apj8 some 2.5 million households on a utilities discount program that her administration expanded eligibility for in January. While polls https://newsletter.tnr.com/lt.php?x=4lZy~GE2IISi5XB70NtFgxRuAn Sk AkwuoyY5Q5Jnei5HCtz0y7xeFs3HEgikA0 ueglPHHJFCh95 ~yNIYVvFy13ApjK consistently show Hochul leading her Republican opponent, Bruce Blakeman , she’s not a wildly popular https://newsletter.tnr.com/lt.php?x=4lZy~GE2IISi5XB70NtFgxRuAn Sk AkwuoyY5Q5Jnei5HCtz0y7xeFs3HEgikA0 ueglPHHJFCh95 ~yNIYVvFy13Apja figure to have at the top of the ticket, and there are several competitive House races in New York where Dems could use a bump. As Politico’s Nick Reisman put it https://newsletter.tnr.com/lt.php?x=4lZy~GE2IISi5XB70NtFgxRuAn Sk AkwuoyY5Q5Jnei5HCtz0y7xeFs3HEgikA0 ueglPHHJFCh95 ~yNIYVvFy13Apjq last week: “Success would enable the governor to reverse the perception—stoked by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi four years ago—that her 2022 campaign’s weak showing against Republican Lee Zeldin kept the House in GOP hands.” —Heather Souvaine Horn The Center for American Progress releases a report https://newsletter.tnr.com/lt.php?x=4lZy~GE2IISi5XB70NtFgxRuAn Sk AkwuoyY5Q5Jnei5HCtz0y7xeFs3HEgikA0 ueglPHHJFCh95 ~yNIYVvFy13ApkK on “The Long Game on Energy Affordability.” Energy efficiency, writes its author, Frederick Bell , is what will reduce people’s energy bills in the long term. Right now, the Iran war and other developments have created what Bell calls an “affordability trap: The public’s demand for immediate relief can entice policymakers to reduce or eliminate investments that keep energy bills lower over time in order to find savings today.” In case you missed it: Data for Progress released a new poll https://newsletter.tnr.com/lt.php?x=4lZy~GE2IISi5XB70NtFgxRuAn Sk AkwuoyY5Q5Jnei5HCtz0y7xeFs3HEgikA0 ueglPHHJFCh95 ~yNIYVvFy13Egi8 this week with the striking finding that “voters blame Republicans for rising gas prices by a 30-point margin.” That includes 36 percent of Republicans blaming their own party for the spike. Book of the Week: End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World By Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor THE GIST: Klein and Taylor first coined “end times fascism” in The Guardian last April, in one of the shrewdest pieces to emerge from the chaos of the early months of the second Trump administration. “The forces we are up against have made peace with mass death,” they wrote. “They are treasonous to this world and its human and non-human inhabitants.” The piece referred to billionaires, Christian fundamentalists, and ethnonationalists working together on behalf of the same sinister ends. In End Times Fascism, Klein and Taylor elucidate the threat posed by this coalition and also explain how to fight back. PRAISE: The environmentalist and author Bill McKibben has said https://newsletter.tnr.com/lt.php?x=4lZy~GE2IISi5XB70NtFgxRuAn Sk AkwuoyY5Q5Jnei5HCtz0y7xeFs3HEgikA0 ueglPHHJFCh95 ~yNIYVvFy13Egia that End Times Fascism “will be a playbook for how a lot of progressives respond to the fix we find ourselves in.” CRUISING THE INDEX: Like almost all of Klein and Taylor’s work, End Times Fascism is not mere polemic—it mixes history, theory, and reportage in novel and trenchant ways. The book covers Sam Altman, Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Elon Musk, as well as doomsday preppers, “great replacement” neo-Nazis, and billionaires with persecution complexes. Although rooted in the bad last couple of years, its scope is wider, encompassing the rise of Nazism and World War II, race, reconstruction, and the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, and the wider state of global fascism. TNR’S QUICK CRITICAL ASSESSMENT: End Times Fascism sings with its authors’ intellect and experience as two of the most wide-ranging writers on the left. Disclosure: Taylor is also a TNR contributor. But the best thing about the book isn’t its persuasive diagnosis of all that ails this moment but its roadmap for how to get us out of this mess, which is both clear-eyed and surprisingly joyful. “End times fascism’s war on earthly life calls on us to develop a more inclusive and expansive form of universalism than the one developed in the twentieth century,” they write. Amen. —Alex Shephard Political Trivia Question of the Day Speaking of the Federal Reserve, historians of the Fed generally agree that this chairman was the worst Fed chair of all time. Who was he, and why is his reputation so low? Sign up for The TNR Blue Book https://newsletter.tnr.com/f/43 to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.