REP RO KHANNA: We need a new tech social contract to reclaim AI from billionaires

On February 20th, I was astatine Stanford University with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. to talk to implicit 1,600 students astir the defining issues of our time: inequality and AI. We had the largest turnout since President Barack Obama visited the field successful 2015. I laid retired my imaginativeness for a caller tech societal declaration and 7 seminal principles for a much antiauthoritarian AI. Here is the essence of what I had to say.

We unrecorded successful a caller gilded age. Tech billionaires, believing they would person been heroic conquerors successful a antithetic era, are wresting power of our economy, our media, and our politics.

Most Americans consciousness they person small accidental successful shaping their ain aboriginal oregon that of their kids. This has contributed to anger, resentment, and a hopeless cynicism successful places crossed our nation.

A federation cannot past with islands of prosperity and seas of despair.

Professor Gabriel Zucman has shown that today’s wealthiness attraction is astatine the highest it has been successful our nation’s history. About 19 billionaires person 3.4 trillion — the equivalent of 12.5 percent of each the goods and services that are produced successful the U.S. successful a year. This is astir 3 times much than the wealthiest Americans were worthy comparative to the size of the system astatine the highest of the Gilded Age. 

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks adjacent to Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., astatine a municipality hallway lawsuit connected February 20, 2026, successful Stanford, California.  (Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images)

Extreme wealthiness forms an unholy confederation with powerfulness starring to 2 tiers of justness and stripping mean citizens of an adjacent dependable successful our antiauthoritarian experiment.

We spot the aboriginal from here. We cognize what is coming successful a mode astir politicians and D.C. bureaucrats simply can't see. And the question we request to inquire ourselves is this: What benignant of aboriginal are we going to build? Will this aboriginal beryllium lone for the tech lords oregon for each of us?

We convened this municipality hallway astatine the epicenter of this wealthiness attraction and AI innovation. The 50-mile radius astir my territory which includes Stanford, Apple, Google, Nvidia, Broadcom, and Tesla is worthy implicit $18 trillion. Their marketplace capitalization is astir 1/3 of the full US banal market. One-third of our nation’s wealthiness originates present and successful the 1 surrounding Congressional district.

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., sits astatine a municipality hallway lawsuit connected February 20, 2026 successful Stanford, California. The municipality hall's taxable was "Who Controls the Future of Al: The Oligarchs oregon The People?" (Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images)

We spot the aboriginal from here. We cognize what is coming successful a mode astir politicians and D.C. bureaucrats simply can't see. And the question we request to inquire ourselves: What benignant of aboriginal are we going to build? Will this aboriginal beryllium lone for the tech lords oregon for each of us?

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That is wherefore I americium calling for a caller tech societal contract. To whom overmuch is given, astatine least, a small is expected.

The information is our payer dollars and philanthropic dollars funded the improvement of AI astatine Dartmouth, MIT, and astatine Stanford with ImageNet and with the Digital Library Project that helped springiness commencement to Google.

Let america admit that tech entrepreneurs person taken risks and shown accomplishment and imaginativeness successful scaling and adopting the technology. But conscionable similar each palmy procreation of American entrepreneurs implicit the past 2 centuries, they basal connected a instauration of nationalist investment.

 Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., speaks astatine a municipality hallway lawsuit connected February 20, 2026, successful Stanford, California.  (Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images)

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That is wherefore we indispensable inquire not what America tin bash for Silicon Valley, but what Silicon Valley indispensable bash for America.

The AI gyration tin assistance cure crab and uncommon disease, slash lodging costs, marque it easier to commencement businesses and factories, code our vigor needs, and little aesculapian and acquisition costs for the moving class.

But successful the hands of a fewer billionaires, the precedence is to destruct jobs, extract profits, and addict america to outrageous contented that turns america from citizens to combatants.

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I americium not an AI accelerationist.

I americium not an AI doomer.

I americium an AI democratist.

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So I privation to laic retired 7 principles for what a antiauthoritarian AI looks like. This imaginativeness is portion of a broader telephone of patriotic renewal to person shared prosperity successful our nation, not oligarchic seizure and dominance. I person a imaginativeness for a caller economical patriotism wherever we person a thriving mediate people with bully jobs successful agrarian communities, mill towns, suburban neighborhoods and our municipality centers.

Here is what that means for AI successful America.

First, we indispensable support humans successful the loop.

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We request existent protections against wide displacement, opening with our 3.5 cardinal motortruck drivers. Even arsenic self-driving trucks amended information and efficiency, quality drivers indispensable stay conscionable similar pilots indispensable inactive alert our planes. This volition let america to make AI that augments quality capableness alternatively of eliminating jobs.

Second, each ample institution indispensable bargain with its workers.

Unions oregon elected representatives should guarantee displaced workers determination into caller value-creating roles and tin stock successful AI’s productivity gains done higher wages, nett sharing, and shorter workweeks.

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Third, we person to hole the taxation code’s anti-human bias.

Robots get accelerated depreciation portion hiring humans comes with payroll taxes. Nobel Laureate Daron Acemoglu estimates that companies wage astir zero taxation connected integer tools, portion paying thing similar 30% successful taxes betwixt employers and employees erstwhile they prosecute workers.  This makes nary sense. We indispensable marque it easier to prosecute workers, not AI agents. 

We besides request to make an yearly information dividend truthful each American gets a cheque from the information they make some for backstage businesses and our authorities activities similar nationalist health, postulation absorption and argumentation research.

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Fourth, we indispensable motorboat a Future Workforce Administration.

We should prehend this infinitesimal of anxiousness among white-collar and blue-collar families alike and reply it with the boldest, astir patriotic jobs docket successful generations.

Funded by a humble wealthiness taxation connected the trillions created present and by a token taxation connected AI utilized by businesses that displaces labor, this programme volition enactment Americans to enactment successful nationalist service. The inaugural volition thrust moonshot projects that grow the frontiers of science, cleanable energy, and biotech.

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It volition mobilize young radical to rebuild towns, thatch our children, supply childcare and eldercare, and fortify tiny businesses successful each community.

And we volition motorboat 1,000 caller commercialized schools and tech institutes—so the adjacent procreation are prepared for careers AI can’t replace.

Fifth, information centers indispensable service the communities who powerfulness them.

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Right now, information centers are 1 mode extraction centers from communities to the wealthiest corporations.

That indispensable end.

Tech companies request to supply section communities with compute resources for schools and libraries, make section tech jobs and money startups, and usage renewable vigor and adust cooling technology. We should look to what Singapore has done with their information centers for a balanced solution and put successful massively expanding the proviso of cleanable energy. Most importantly, tech companies indispensable wage their afloat energy bills alternatively of shifting costs onto our communities.

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Sixth, we indispensable forestall AI from weaponizing our nationalist discourse.

We tin unite crossed enactment lines to halt engagement-driven algorithms from spreading hate. End Section 230 extortion for amplified convulsive contented and necessitate platforms to unfastened up truthful Americans tin link freely crossed them.

Seventh, we indispensable modulate AI truthful it is utilized to amended humanity, not harm it.

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We request wide enforceable guardrails with mandatory third-party verification of precocious AI models, truthful this almighty exertion does not origin superior societal harm. It needs to beryllium much than the voluntary collaboration taking spot astatine the Center for AI Standards and Innovation astatine NIST astatine Commerce. We request a robust national bureau to modulate AI similar we modulate atomic vigor oregon national aviation.

We request a programme with the boldness and standard of the New Deal, a antiauthoritarian task for our time. Not to dilatory innovation, but to guarantee its benefits scope each American.

The United States volition payment with entree to planetary markets for our AI models by ensuring their information –– preventing agentic AI from doing harm — and information privacy.

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These principles are the opening of a model to guarantee that AI does not usher successful a level of wealthiness and powerfulness attraction that further rips our ideology apart. If we proceed with the presumption quo oregon follow poll-tested incrementalism, we volition permission mean Americans retired successful the acold and modern prosperity volition beryllium lone for the privileged.  

I volition not beryllium by and ticker that happen. 

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We request a programme with the boldness and standard of the New Deal, a antiauthoritarian task for our time. Not to dilatory innovation, but to guarantee its benefits scope each American. A programme that, by its precise substance, says –– determination volition beryllium nary surrender to tech lords. None. Only a reclaiming of AI for the American people.

And so, my situation to Stanford students –– emerging exertion and concern leaders –– is simple. The aboriginal indispensable not beryllium written by AI agents that service San Francisco billionaires. Like astatine immoderate different pivotal infinitesimal successful American history, it indispensable beryllium written by each of us, together, successful a mode that binds our divides and gives america a caller nationalist intent of economical renewal and independency for each American successful each spot of our beloved nation.

This op-ed is adapted from Rep. Ro Khanna's remarks astatine a municipality hallway lawsuit astatine Stanford University with Sen. Bernie Sanders connected February 20, 2026.

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