Leftist Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Trump ally Steve Bannon spoke together at a conference Tuesday to trash-talk AI technology.
Both men demanded that Congress intervene and establish burdensome regulations to control the growth of AI technology.
Bannon, a right-winger, called for listeners to “rise above” partisanship and work together to regulate AI. Echoing Sanders’ leftism, he also suggested that America’s tech leaders are oligarchs — including, presumably, Elon Musk, whom Bannon is no fan of (and vice versa).
“To handle it [AI tech] correctly, number one: we can never trust what an oligarch says…they’re disingenuous and they lie,” Bannon insisted.
BANNON: Bernie Sanders did a very good job of summarizing the risk. He and I have quite different opinions of the President, but we have to rise above partisanship.
This is a hinge in history. We have to handle it correctly.
We can NEVER trust what an oligarch says. They’re… pic.twitter.com/WtP1lqxRB2
— Bannon’s WarRoom (@Bannons_WarRoom) September 15, 2026
The irony wasn’t lost on his critics, who contended that Bannon is the king of liars.
Meanwhile, Sanders fear-mongered about AI with numerous doomsday theories.
“Civil libertarians warn us that AI is in the process of eviscerating our privacy rights by making it easier to collect and analyze every email that we send, every text, every website visit, and every trip that we make in our car, resulting in the creation of a mass surveillance state,” he said.
“Political scientists warn that AI could threaten the integrity of our elections and political institutions,” he added. “Go to the internet right now, and with sophisticated deepfakes, you will find it increasingly difficult to determine truth from fiction.”
“If AI surpasses human intelligence, as many scientists believe could happen, this technology will escape human control with potentially catastrophic consequences.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders warned of the “alarming threat” of artificial intelligence and called for more AI regulation. pic.twitter.com/8dR74PnZUa
— ABC News (@ABC) September 15, 2026
Sanders also warned about AI surpassing human intelligence.
“There is another, even more alarming danger posed by AI, and that is that if AI surpasses human intelligence, as many scientists believe could happen, this technology will escape human control with potentially catastrophic consequences,” he said.
Conservative critics like Ben Shapiro have responded by warning listeners to not take Sanders seriously.
“When Bernie Sanders says anything, you should probably believe the opposite,” Shapiro said on a recent episode of his Daily Wire show.
Continuing his remarks, he mocked Sanders for wanting to prevent and ban the emergence of an AI superintelligence.
“I have no idea how he plans on banning superintelligence,” Shapiro said. “Nobody is actually aiming at this point for full-scale superintelligence of the sort that he’s talking about, because people understand that if you had the ‘singularity,’ there are inherent risks to that. Everyone agrees that you need a human being running the process.”
Shapiro, for his part, confidently believes that the Sanders-Bannon alliance is part of a clever “op” meant to benefit some AI developers over others.
Do you see the op yet? https://t.co/3kfm8LUATz
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) September 14, 2026
Namely, regulation would help left-wing AI developers like Anthropic.
“Anthropic, which leans to the Left, is leading this camp,” Shapiro said. “Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s founder, compared President Trump to a feudal warlord when explaining why he voted for Kamala Harris in 2024.”
“He [later] came out on CNN and said that he basically agreed with Jacob Coxon, which is astonishing, because Coxon came out and basically ripped into Anthropic and said that they are running us directly toward a human apocalypse,” the Daily Wire host added.
How would regulation help Anthropic? Because it uses closed-source AI technology.
“The closed-source economic model relies on highly profitable AI models that charge per token; the more you use their AI, the more you have to pay,” he explained.
“Then there are open-source, often called open-weight, AI models,” he continued. “This means that the core mathematical files that make the model work are published online for free. It doesn’t mean the entire formula; it means the general ingredients.”
What difference does any of this make? Plenty.
Regulation would weaken and slow down open-source AI technology, giving the advantage to closed-source AI developers.
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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