Tech's $275 Million War Chest Is the Argument for Taking It Away

On July 4, the tech industry's midterm spending came into focus: $275 million pledged across competing super PACs, split between a deregulatory camp and a safety-regulation camp, with another $100 million from David Sacks's European Innovation Council defending the administration's AI agenda ^[1]. The money was meant to buy the industry room to operate. It has instead become the argument for dissolving the industry's independence. Senator Bernie Sanders says Congress has failed to act on AI oversight because of exactly that spending. His American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act would impose a one-time 50% stock tax on AI firms with $200 million or more in annual AI sales, creating a $7 trillion fund that pays annual dividends and grants the federal government voting shares and a seven-person commission with the power to block corporate decisions at OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI ^[2][3]. That is not a tax on profits. It is a seizure of governance. Sanders makes the connection himself — the spending is the justification, the seizure is the remedy.

That Congress has not stood up for the American people in taking on AI is precisely because of the huge amounts of money. — Bernie Sanders

They have $300 million ready to go to take on any member of Congress who objects to what they are doing, and that is bad. — Bernie Sanders

The spending he describes is not symbolic. The crypto-aligned super PAC Fairshake went 6-for-6 in Texas primary runoffs, spending $6.5 million to oust a 20-year incumbent ^[4]. Apple and Google killed the California BASED Act antitrust bill through intensive lobbying alongside industry trade groups ^[5]. Tech money can remove a legislator who objects, and Sanders is pointing at that capacity as the reason Congress will not regulate AI — then proposing to take half the companies as the answer. On the other side of the aisle, Trump has called the equity-stake concept "a beautiful thing" and said his and Sanders' views on AI equity "are not far apart" ^[6]. The federal government already holds a 10% stake in Intel, purchased for $8.9 billion in August 2025 and now valued at over $41 billion — a $30 billion unrealized gain Trump publicly brags about ^[7]. That stake is the live precedent. Trump is also exploring three mechanisms for extending government equity into AI firms: exchanging federal funding for shares, allowing taxes to be paid in stock, or using a Public Wealth Fund ^[8]. A left-right convergence on government owning the companies it also regulates is not a hypothetical — it is underway from both directions. The industry's response is fragmented and, in places, self-defeating. Sam Altman pitched the government equity concept to Trump in 2025, and OpenAI has proposed a voluntary 5% stake worth roughly $42.6 billion, modeled on the Alaska Permanent Fund — a counter-offer clearly designed to pre-empt the mandatory 50% ^[9]. But OpenAI formally distanced itself from the Leading the Future super PAC even though it was funded with $25 million by OpenAI President Greg Brockman ^[10]. The company's president is funding a deregulatory PAC the company disavows, while the CEO is offering the government equity. Those are not coordinated strategies; they are a company pulling in three directions at once. David Sacks, the former White House AI czar, warned that government equity in AI firms would accelerate "corporate-government fusion" and could produce a "CCP-style social credit system" ^[6]. Yet his own European Innovation Council PAC is spending $100 million defending the administration's AI agenda ^[1]. Sacks is warning against the trajectory while funding the political machine that sustains it. He has also cautioned Republicans that nationalization frameworks built now could be weaponized by a future Democratic administration ^[11] — a partisan anxiety that fractures the pro-tech camp from within. The equity-stake push splits both parties. Senator Rand Paul called the Intel stake "government overreach and a step toward socialism," while Sanders argued taxpayers deserve returns ^[7]. The divide is not along partisan lines but along a deeper fault: whether the state should own a share of the companies building the most consequential technology in a generation. And Trump's 2026 ethics filings reveal he personally holds AI and technology stocks, including positions in a semiconductor patent-licensing firm and a Bitcoin miner pivoting to AI infrastructure ^[12] — a president exploring government equity stakes in AI firms while holding personal financial interest in the sector. Palantir CEO Alex Karp has predicted full nationalization of the largest AI companies within two years, suggesting Sanders' 50% proposal will soon seem moderate ^[11]. Karp is discussing the loss of his industry's independence as a matter of scheduling, not principle. The most aggressive version of government ownership has no near-term legislative path. Sanders' bill has no Senate vote scheduled, and Trump's voluntary approach does not force companies to participate ^[2][8]. The OpenAI 5% offer may be the first move in a negotiation over how government ownership takes shape — if it takes shape at all.