Something has been happening quietly that deserves more attention than it’s getting.
The United States government now holds roughly a 10% equity stake in Intel. It has secured equity positions in rare earth mining and U.S. Steel. Bernie Sanders has proposed the government acquiring a 50% equity share of AI technology companies through a tax structure.
The era of public investment in private industry is not coming. It is already here.
The question nobody is asking clearly enough is — who controls those stakes? Who manages the money? What voting rights does the government hold? And most importantly — who benefits?
Because right now the answer to that last question is not the American people.
The Alaska Model
The Alaska Permanent Fund is the most successful example of public benefit investment in American history. When Alaska’s oil was extracted the state recognized a simple principle — this is a public resource being monetized by private companies and citizens should receive a direct share of the value generated.
Alaskans receive annual dividends. Not promises. Not infrastructure projects named after politicians. Actual checks.
One reason the model has survived decades of political change is exactly that tangibility. Citizens see the benefit directly. Politicians find it very difficult to raid a fund that sends checks to voters.
AI Is A Natural Resource
Here is the argument that reframes everything.
Artificial intelligence is built on the collective knowledge of humanity. Every book ever written. Every scientific paper ever published. Every conversation, creative work, and piece of human expression ever digitized. Living and dead — we all contributed to the foundation these systems are built on.
That makes AI a public resource being monetized by private companies.
Sound familiar?
If Alaska’s oil wealth belongs partly to Alaskans — if the value extracted from a public resource should benefit the public — then the wealth generated by AI belongs partly to all of us. Not to the handful of people who happened to own the compute infrastructure when the moment arrived.
Think of public pension funds. Teachers’ retirement funds own enormous amounts of stock in American companies. But teachers don’t decide what products those companies build. Ownership and control are not the same thing.
That distinction is everything.
The Public Investment Authority
What is needed is not government control of AI companies. It is a structured, independent, constitutional firewall between public ownership and political manipulation.
Call it the Public Investment Authority.
Independent management. Multi-year board terms that survive changes in administration. Strict conflict of interest rules. No elected officials serving on the board. No lobbying employment afterward. Annual public audits. Full transparency.
We must be honest about what we are building against.
Politicians will try to abuse it. Corporations will try to capture it. Lobbyists will try to influence it. Insiders will try to profit from it.
The time to build the safeguards is at the beginning — not after the insider trading scandals arrive. And they will arrive if the structure isn’t right from the start.
No insider trading. No elected officials. Fixed terms. Independent audits. Public transparency.
A fund that politicians cannot raid. A fund that sends tangible benefits to citizens rather than promises to constituents. A fund that owns shares without controlling companies — the same way Alaska owns a share of oil revenue without telling Exxon how to drill.
The Precedent Already Exists
The government taking equity stakes in strategic industries is no longer a radical proposal. It happened with Intel. It happened with rare earth mining. It happened with U.S. Steel.
The only question is whether those stakes benefit the American people or simply give politicians another lever to pull.
The Public Investment Authority answers that question before it becomes another scandal.
Build the firewall first.
The investment is already happening whether we build it or not.
