this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2026
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Almost everyone in this thread seems to be assuming the US would pay for half the shares/equity of these companies.
That is not what is being proposed.
What is being proposed is that the US Govt simply seize half the shares/equity/board voting powers in these companies, without paying a cent for them.
It is a half-nationalization.
Not a half-bailout.
EDIT
I go into more detail and explain in this comment in this same thread:
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/26357349
they still have half the liability.
What liability?
What does that even mean?
If I own a stock, a share of a company... what does that make me liable for, just owning the stock?
Do you think that like, if I own a stock, and the company gets sued or something... I personally have to help the company pay out the damages the company is liable for?
No that's not how stocks or the law works.
If the company's stock decreases in value after people hear about it having to pay out from a court case, then yeah the stock has less value now... but the government seized the stock, it got it for $0 dollars.
So there's no net loss.
Good clarification. I'm convinced we will end up bailing them out anyway. We should nationalize and operate as a public good if generative AI is that important to society.
I genuienly struggle to think of a kind of economic thing that better qualifies as a public utility.
Completely agree that this kind of technology, with such broad and immense ongoing, as well as potential implications, cannot be allowed to be directed by the whims of wealthy capitalist conmen rent seekers.
Nationalization doesn't change the fact that for example OpenAI plans to burn $100B in 2026 without any profit so taxpayers will inherit $50B debt just from 2026. Moreover it doesn't stop those companies for raising more debt from for example corporate bonds emission just by saying 50% of their capital is government owned. That would allow them to literally raise trillions.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/12/30/openais-cash-burn-will-be-one-of-the-big-bubble-questions-of-2026
https://archive.ph/8Ej9z
If OpenAI fails, and the government owns half of it...
The assets and power the government acquired for no monetary cost simply becomes zero.
The other part of simply seizing half the shares is that the government (presumably a number of ministers/officials in charge of the new sovereign wealth fund) now has half the voting power of the entire board.
That is a pretty direct way to wield influence as to the decisions the company can make, how the CEO can behave.
You want maybe the accounting to actually deprecate the GPUs they have or lease over a realistic timeframe, instead of a totally bullshit one?
Half of your shareholders now demand this.
C Suite refuse to comply?
Begin the process of firing them.
OpenAI don't own any GPU, they lease it from Microsoft or from Oracle. Oracle bought GPU by emitting billions of dollars of corporate bonds. OpenAI only owns AI models that they copy to datacenters. Same is with Anthropics. They own no datacenter or GPU they just lease it from other parties.
Bernie Sanders is putting taxpayers responsible for overspending on datacenters and make datacenters bailout. He should propose that all models should be open to public if they are used by government organizations so it can be independently audited by researchers. That would prevent those companies to cause harm to people.
xAI is now (or will very soon be) part of SpaceX.
They physically own massive 'Colossus' datacenters with tons of GPUs.
As to leasing vs owning, I already addressed that.
If you are the government and you are half of the shareholders, you can pressure your own AI company, or the companies from whom your AI company leases GPUs from to be more honest and transparent regarding accounting methodologies.
Bernie is not proposing that any taxpayer money be put toward this at all.
The only actual expense here would be the minute cost of simply hiring some people to run and manage the sovereign wealth fund. Miniscule in comparison to the potential equity value of $$$s being managed. Think something like the administrative cost of running say, the SEC or FTC, in comparison to the amount of money moving around that they can affect.
He is proposing the government simply half nationalize these companies, as Trump not long ago did with TikTok.
If the government is half of every US based AI company's board, they can also very effectively pressure them to make the models open source.
Not sure if you don't understand the concept of nationalization, but basically, thats when the government looks at something and says 'i own this now, because I say so'.
Theres no payment. Its... why I use the word 'seize'.
Same way Marx argued that workers should 'seize' the means of production: Just take them.
xAI bought twitter in '25, and then Space-X bought xAI in Feb of this year. So it's already done, and twitter is a bonus!
You're right!
I was mixing up the acquisition/merger and IPO timelines.
SpaceX is another flop. It's main income is from NASA. $30B in long term debt, they estimate $1.75T valuation only year they showed any profit was in 2024 and it was $242M. Just to compare the private company that literally landed on moon Firefly Aerospace is worth $7B valuation debuted last year. -38% on NASDAQ. I'm not from US you're living in some bad dream right now. Wake up people because they are fucking you in the ass and you're clapping.
For perspective SPCX is mostly (74%) a service company for Starlink.
I agree that SpaceX is a fiscal shitshow.
Would you rather own half of it for no cost?
Or own none of it for no cost?
If you own half of it for no cost, you have a substantial ability to ... tell it what to do, with its people, its assets, its stuff, its technology.
If you own none of it for no cost, you do not have this ability.
In both scenarios, if the stock value goes to zero, you lose nothing, because you paid nothing.
Again, you seem to be struggling with the concept of nationalization.
The government just takes stuff over, because it says so, and it is the government.
No one is compensated, no one is paid.
In the US, cops can do this thing called asset seizure.
You get pulled over for a dead taillight.
You own a carwash and you're on your way to deposit the month's excess cash into the business account at your bank.
Cop decides you smell like marijuana, finds your cash and your well kept accounting records.
Doesn't matter, that might be drug money, cops take the money.
Imagine that, but with stocks instead.
But is it critical infrastructure ?
Country should own roads, hospitals, power plants, water, lend land for farmers instead of Bill Gates owning 1 / 4000 of your farm land, communal housing, things that serve people so country should make sure everyone have access to it. Not what serve corporations and rich and push money there. Probably half of your 401k money are already there if you follow the dots.
It would be better to nationalize or buy office buildings from corporations and use this money. Tax their assets from tax havens. Tax them until instead of crying they start begging. Now your country are treating those companies like little babies.
You have different mindset, that's what I'm trying to explain.
You should have free healthcare and free education like in Europe. Cheap transportation across country in trains, bike lanes. Cheap food and houses. Be happy. Why you can't travel by train from New York to Los Angeles ? Russia that everyone laughs from and hates because their politicians are idiots, they can travel from Moscow to Vladivostok.
Instead of that you're launching farts towards moon and chasing demons in computers.
People over power.
You are having an entirely different conversation at this point.
I'm talking about the specific proposed law from Bernie.
You're talking about a whole whole lot more than that.
Yeah, I agree, we need to make a whole lot of changes over here, but... that's way off topic.
True but most of the value of these LLMs comes from ingesting data produced by the public, with a healthy amount of copyrighted data.
Would you be in favour of class action lawsuits to compensate for the intellectual theft instead?
No, not instead.
In addition to, sure.
Class action lawsuits as a primary counter action to damages?
... why not just ... stop the damages from happening?
If you have 50% of the shares, you have a controlling interest on the board.
You can significantly just tell the company what to do, what policies to have.
Going through through the courts to compensate the damage after the fact is massively more expensive and time consuming... its hitting someone with your car and they paying their medical bill 2 years later.
Why not just not hit them with the car?