Populist-conservative broadcaster and political strategist, and one of the figures named in reporting on the defeat of federal AI preemption.
Role in the preemption fight
Woolf's Transformer reporting credits Bannon with ending the last compromise attempt: he "killed Ted Cruz's last-minute compromise — a 5-year moratorium with limited exemptions — by phoning Marsha Blackburn's office," arguing "You just can't let these tech bros not have any regulations for a decade. It doesn't work."
The framing in that quotation is the analytically interesting part: the objection is to the industry's political position rather than to any specific AI risk, which is what allowed the populist-right objection to converge with labour-union and child-safety objections on the same vote. The reporting places Bannon opposite Musk, Andreessen, and Thiel in a split it describes as running through the Trump coalition itself.
Positions on AI development and China
At the Future of Life Institute's Pro-Human Assembly in Washington on September 15, 2026, Bannon spoke directly after Sen. Bernie Sanders. He called AI the defining issue of the time and set out a nationalist approach, saying technology leaders have money and power but not the public's trust: "We're not doomers. But we aren't gonna give these guys carte blanche. Their arrogance is overwhelming." He called for curbs on any exchange of chips, technology or knowledge between the United States and China: "Kick them out. Take all Chinese nationals out of the labs and back to mainland China." NPR reported that the two shared the stage while showing little agreement on how the technology should be regulated (Source: npr.org). See AI Political Cleavages.
Relationships
- related: How MAGA learned to love AI safety — Nicky Woolf (Transformer, October 2025) — the canonical citation for this position
- related: Marjorie Taylor Greene, Sen. Josh Hawley, State-Level AI Regulation, AI Industry Discourse Analysis