Sanders and Bannon Push for AI Limits, but Split on China
Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon called for restrictions on artificial intelligence at the Pro-Human Assembly in Washington on Tuesday.
Both warned about the potential dangers of AI and demanded strict guardrails against Silicon Valley's oligarchs. The Guardian
They jointly pushed for AI that stays under human control at the Tuesday event. Axios Their supporters described the position as putting AI "humans first." A bipartisan group of members of Congress appeared alongside Sanders and Bannon at the assembly in Washington, D.C. CBS News
Yet they offered competing visions for what they termed a cold war with China over AI.
Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, called for international diplomacy and a global agreement including Beijing to ban development of super-intelligent machines, systems that could outthink humans and act on their own. He said Donald Trump is due to host Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington next week for an AI summit. Sanders urged Trump to negotiate a comprehensive treaty with Xi to establish a pause on advanced AI development and a ban on super-intelligence. He compared the moment to Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev signing a treaty that eliminated an entire class of missiles to avoid nuclear conflict.
Bannon spoke directly after Sanders at the assembly. They did not share a stage. Bannon is host of the War Room podcast and former White House chief strategist under Donald Trump.
He called for an aggressive economic and technological quarantine of China on AI. He demanded the immediate expulsion of Chinese nationals from U.S. research laboratories, an end to training Chinese engineers and technologists, and total severance of capital flows. He also demanded immediate executive action to isolate Beijing's tech sector, including blocking chips and American technology transfers.
Trump and other Republicans have cited the AI race with China to justify moving full speed ahead with the technology.
The broader context here is a split over whether competition with Beijing requires restraint or acceleration. Sanders treats advanced systems as a shared risk that diplomacy can contain, while Bannon treats decoupling as the precondition for safety. Both positions break with the argument that the United States must build faster to stay ahead. Neither approach fits neatly into existing partisan lines, which helps explain the bipartisan attendance and the unusual pairing on the program.
Looking at what this means for next week, the White House faces two different definitions of toughness. One would measure success by a joint pause. The other would measure it by exclusion. The test will be whether those demands move from speeches toward treaty text or executive orders, and whether Congress converts this pro-human alignment into legislative language.
