Back in April, when Sam Altman floated the idea of a sovereign wealth fund to provide U.S. citizens “with a stake in A.I.-driven economic growth,” he probably didn’t expect to capture the interest of both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Altman had been on something of a goodwill tour, testing a softer, more human policy message in Washington. But where OpenAI offered an inch, Sanders wanted a mile. On June 1, the Vermont senator pitched a one-time, 50 percent tax on the largest A.I. companies in the U.S.—paid in stock, not cash. “The federal government would have the power, through its voting shares and an equal representation on each company’s board, to block decisions that hurt our citizens and to push for policies that help them,” Sanders wrote. Nationalization, in other words.