US Senator Bernie Sanders has made a radical proposal to temporarily halt the multi-trillion dollar race to build artificial intelligence infrastructure in the US. The politician has criticized Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg and Gates.
US Senator Bernie Sanders has made a radical proposal to temporarily halt the multi-trillion dollar race to build artificial intelligence infrastructure in the US. The politician has criticized Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg and Gates.
In his video address, the politician announced his intention to seek a national moratorium on the construction of new data centers, which are the physical basis for the operation of neural networks. Sanders argues that the technology is developing too rapidly, and neither lawmakers nor ordinary citizens have time to understand the consequences of these changes. In his opinion, the pause is necessary to “give democracy a chance to catch up with technology” and ensure that the benefits of AI will be received by all segments of the population, and not just the richest people on the planet.
The senator identified three main reasons for slowing progress: the concentration of technology in the hands of a handful of techno-billionaires, the real threat of mass job cuts, and the negative impact on human psychology.
I will be pushing for a moratorium on the construction of data centers that are powering the unregulated sprint to develop & deploy AI.
— Sen. Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) December 16, 2025
The moratorium will give democracy a chance to catch up, and ensure that the benefits of technology work for all of us, not just the 1%. pic.twitter.com/PoV5ziA4oQ
Sanders called for thinking about a future where people stop interacting with each other, spending all their time with devices, and emphasized that he does not like such a future.
Separately, the senator took a dig at the tech giants, saying that they only think about super profits, not about ordinary citizens.
“Look at who is building data centers: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates… Do you believe that these multi-billionaires think about the impact of artificial intelligence on the working class and the entire world? I don’t think so,” Sanders noted in his address.
Sanders became the first national politician to propose such a drastic measure, not just regulating the industry, but physically stopping capacity expansion.
The senator's initiative is in stark contrast to the plans of tech giants. Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Google, and Apple have collectively spent hundreds of billions of dollars on capital investments in AI through 2025 alone.
