OpenAI's Chris Lehane wants AI policy written before the 2028 race

OpenAI is done waiting for Washington to figure out AI. Chris Lehane, the company's chief global affairs officer, published a new essay arguing the 2028 presidential race could be the moment AI policy gets settled — and he wants politicians to start drafting plans now instead of just echoing anti-AI noise and the backlash against data centers.

Lehane reaches back to Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, the 1930s package of federal programs and reforms that followed industrialization and the Great Depression, and argues Americans today feel the same loss of control over their economic futures. His answer: a 'compelling third path' where people actually share in AI's upside. He sketches five priorities, stretching from worker protections and education to AI safety and data center construction.

The timing is deliberate. The essay lands right after Democrats flipped control of Congress in the midterms, riding a wave of voter fury over the cost of living — even though AI itself wasn't a dominant campaign issue. Data center opposition, though, went bipartisan in several races, and Lehane may be betting AI only gets louder from here as voters worry about electricity bills, job losses, and profits pooling at a handful of wealthy companies.

Kate Brennan, who leads AI and corporate power policy at the AI Now Institute, told TechCrunch the rhetoric is a sharp turn from OpenAI's agenda last year, when the focus was speeding up AI development, cutting regulatory barriers, and building out infrastructure. Her read is blunter: the original New Deal protected workers and reined in corporate power, and it's unclear how Lehane's version would hold AI companies accountable for the disruption their own tech creates. 'Invoking a New Deal metaphor is to invoke state capacity to actually benefit the public,' she said. 'This is written by a private company that is trying to advocate for policies for its own benefit. It is ahistorical at best and harmful at worst.'

On the tax code, Lehane floats incentives for workers to pick up AI skills, easier capital access for entrepreneurs, and fresh takes on employee ownership and profit-sharing. Notably, none of that is binding — nothing forces companies to share AI-generated wealth or foot the bill for workers they displace. Brennan said a revised corporate tax rate, tax incentives for hiring humans over automating them, or limits on outsized market power would make more sense. She also said the whole framework assumes mass AI adoption already delivering for society, something she noted has yet to happen.

Data centers get the same treatment. Lehane nods at local concerns, then leans on the construction jobs and tax revenue they bring — and warns that politicians backing a moratorium could hand America's edge to China, comparing that position to the 2002 vote authorizing the Iraq war. He also wants age-appropriate safeguards around AI companions for minors, pushes back on keeping AI out of classrooms, and calls for enforceable safety standards, independent evaluations, public oversight, and kill switches. Brennan called those stances 'disingenuous,' pointing to OpenAI's 2024 opposition to California's SB 1047, which would have mandated catastrophic risk evaluations and shutdown capability, and its later push to limit state regulation. The company has since backed some state safety laws and said it's open to embedded independent evaluators. TechCrunch asked OpenAI for specifics on Lehane's proposals and the company's positions; it didn't respond before publication.