Bernie Sanders, who represents the Soviet Union in the Senate, is leading the backlash against AI companies. AI is a rapidly evolving technology, difficult to understand even for experts, a huge part of the economy, and with national security implications. So of course you need an octogenarian communist to set the agenda with the help of China.

In February, Sanders called for the AI wealth to be distributed among all Americans. Then in March, he called for a national morator

ium on data centers, which are necessary to generate that wealth he wants to distribute. Then in June, he argued that Americans own half the stocks of all AI companies, which will go out of business without data centers. If you think about it, it is the socialist playbook: I cause the bankruptcy, but we all share the pain.

Sanders is all over the place with his anti-AI crusade, and one of those places he is over is China.

One big talking point Sanders & Co. keep using is the necessity for international cooperation, a throwback to the climate change panic era. On April 29, Sanders convened a panel on the Capitol Hill, featuring AI experts from the United States and China, who fit the left-wing definition of diversity: People who look different but think the same. All participants agreed that the United States should regulate the industry, which would necessarily slow down its development and growth, including economic growth.

The Chinese participants were Xue Lan, from Tsinghua University, and Zeng Yi, the dean of the Beijing Institute of AI Safety and Governance, both from China and have ties with the Chinese government.

Among several of Xue’s affiliations is being the counselor to the State Council of China, established by the Chinese Communist Party-controlled National People’s Congress and headed by Li Qiang, who is the second highest-ranking official in China, Xi Jinping’s second in command, and a high-ranking member of the Communist Party.

Zeng is the leading official on all things AI in China. Beijing Institute, which he is the dean of, is funded by the Beijing local government, also controlled by the Communist Party.

Sanders’s panel unanimously advised their American audience that America should pause the construction of new data centers, which are key to the development of AI and the fastest growing part of the U.S. economy. Michael Sobolik, a leading China expert at the Hudson Institute, was right on the money:

China wants to slow down the U.S. economy and beat us in the AI race, and Sanders is bringing in people funded by the Chinese government who are Chinese nationals to tell us that we should slow that the U.S. economy and fall behind in the AI race.

This is climate change all over again. The United States, under Barack Obama, reached all sorts of international agreements and adopted all kinds of policies that harmed U.S. growth, which China was never going to do, all in the name of saving humanity and the earth. Fifteen years later, all those policies have been discredited, but we have paid a huge economic price for them. Now, the left needs a new scary thing to stop economic growth.

During the climate change era, the Chinese kept talking about the threat of climate change without doing anything about it. The Democrats used the Chinese talking points to argue in favor of regulations without looking into how the rhetoric did not match their policies. China is using the same playbook with AI now.

Data centers total employment contribution (direct and indirect) stands at roughly 6 million a year in the United States. AI is growing five times faster than the rest of the economy. It is a key part of our military, from finding targets to optimizing logistical support to surveillance to weapons development research to new drones. Why wouldn’t China want to stop its growth in America?

This is not to say that we should let it loose. Yes, we should examine potential threats it poses, and we should, when we can, reach international agreements for the whole world to adopt the same regulations.

During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union worked together to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons. President John F. Kennedy, nobody’s idea of soft on the Soviet Union, personally led the effort, until his assassination. Halfway through the negotiations, Kennedy almost went to war with the Soviet Union over Cuba, but the negotiations resumed more than a year later. The result of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement in 1968, which remains the most successful international treaty to this day. But nowhere during these debates were prominent American officials bringing in Soviet experts to lecture Americans, and all of the advocates had strong credentials against communism.

Maybe AI needs a similar international framework, and it is certainly worth debating. But Sanders, who wants America to be communist like China, is the last person to trust on this. Well, second to last. The last people to trust are Sanders’s Chinese guests.

The Soviets had a phrase for Americans who would sincerely repeat the communist talking points for the Soviets: useful idiots. Back then, these were journalists and intellectuals. It is extremely concerning that China’s useful idiots are members of Congress now.

But that is where the Democratic Party, under its Sanders wing, the Democratic Socialist of America, is headed toward: Bringing in foreign enemies to tell us how to run our lives.

By: Chuck Warren