“Dangerous Global Oligarchy” Threatens Humanity
US Senator Bernie Sanders warned in a speech on 21 September 2026 that the world is hurtling toward “an extremely dangerous global oligarchy” whose unprecedented concentration of wealth and political power endangers democratic institutions, the environment, and humanity’s collective future as artificial intelligence rapidly advances.
“The oligarchs of today, worth hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars, having investments all over the world, fervently believe that they are the masters of the universe, and that they, through their enormous wealth and power, have been ordained to rule the world,” Sanders (I-Vt.) said in an address at the historic Riverside Church in Manhattan, where Martin Luther King Jr delivered a famous speech condemning the Vietnam War.
“Today we say to those oligarchs: This country, this world, belongs to all of us, not just you.”
Sanders used his remarks, delivered as world leaders arrived in New York City for the United Nations General Assembly, to decry a massively unequal status quo under which political leaders cater to the needs of billionaire donors and corporate interests rather than the broader population, whose wages are being swallowed by rising costs and whose communities are increasingly devastated by pollution and war.
“Instead of producing more bombs and weapons and seeing the military-industrial complex enjoy huge profits, governments throughout the world need to come together to feed the children, take care of the vulnerable, and protect our planet from the ravages of climate change,” said Sanders, calling for an end to US military assistance to Israel, which is using American-made weaponry to carry out its genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip.
“Never before in human history have so few people held so much wealth and so much power, never before in human history have we had such enormous concentration of ownership,” the senator said, warning that advancements in AI technology could dramatically intensify the crises facing humanity if control isn’t wrested from “a handful of Big Tech oligarchs”.
Sanders called on US President Donald Trump, a billionaire who has dismissed warnings about the threats posed by AI, and Chinese President Xi Jinping to “begin the process of negotiating a comprehensive treaty to establish a pause on advanced AI and a ban on AI superintelligence” when the leaders meet this week.
The progressive senator also cautioned against “despair and depression” in the face of pressing global challenges, saying, “We got to stand up, we got to fight back, we’ve got to create the kind of nation and world that you and I know we can create.”
“If there was ever a time in human history, in our country and throughout the world, that we have got to come together and create a world not based on greed but based on justice, based on decency, now is the time,” said Sanders.
– extracts from a report in Common Dreams (22 September 2026)
Ban AI Superintelligence
In his speech on 21 September 2026, Senator Bernie Sanders also called on US President Donald Trump, a billionaire who has dismissed warnings about the threats posed by AI, and Chinese President Xi Jinping to “begin the process of negotiating a comprehensive treaty to establish a pause on advanced AI and a ban on AI superintelligence” when the leaders meet that week.
The following are edited extracts from his speech.
It’s not just oligarchy that we’ve got to worry about. As the UN Secretary-General reminded us, there’s another issue that we must confront.
In my view, artificial intelligence, AI, and robotics are the most transformational technologies in the history of humanity. They have the potential to eliminate tens of millions of jobs. AI threatens the privacy of virtually every person in the world through mass surveillance – every phone call you make, every website you visit, every email that you send, somebody will know it.
It’s not only economic disruption, not only an invasion of our privacy, we’re also seeing a real challenge to whether or not democracy can survive when you have things like deepfakes that are so sophisticated on the internet that none of us will be able to tell truth from fiction.
What we are seeing from AI right now is the least capable form that this technology will ever be. Tomorrow and the next day and the next year, AI will be much, much more powerful.
It is advancing exponentially, every single day. In under 4 years, we have gone from AI that could barely write a coherent tweet to AI systems that have already escaped the control of the companies that built them.
Take a deep breath and ask yourself, where will AI be in 2 years, in 4 years, in 10 years? Will human beings be able to control this exploding technology?
If the lives of every man, woman and child are going to be fundamentally changed by this technology, then the people of our country and the people of this world must make the decisions regarding AI, not just a handful of Big Tech oligarchs.
That is why I hope very much that when President Trump and President Xi meet… I hope that they will sit down and begin the process of negotiating a comprehensive treaty to establish a pause on advanced AI and a ban on AI superintelligence.
(Bernie Sanders is a US Senator, and the ranking member of the Senate budget committee. He represents the state of Vermont, and is the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress.)