Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko publicly rejected Senator Bernie Sanders’ AI jobs warning. The senator argues artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics could wipe out millions of American jobs.
Sanders paired the warning with a renewed call to ban super PACs. Yakovenko answered with a string of posts defending markets, profit, and decentralized finance (DeFi).
Sanders’ AI Jobs Warning Meets a Free Market Rebuttal
The Vermont senator said Congress has abandoned workers threatened by automation because of industry money.
Is Congress doing anything to help the millions of workers who could lose their jobs to AI and robotics? No.
They’re intimidated by the hundreds of millions the AI industry is pouring into super PACs.
We must ban super PACs and crack down on corruption. pic.twitter.com/G0ZiOoIpll
— Sen. Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) June 7, 2026
The spending claim tracks with disclosures. Leading the Future, an AI super PAC network backed by OpenAI president Greg Brockman and Andreessen Horowitz, raised $125 million in late 2025.
The group has pledged at least $100 million for the midterms.
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Yakovenko, whose blunt posts have sparked community backlash before, fired back in a series of posts.
“Senders [Sanders] is focusing on hypothetical sci fi problems because he is completely f’ing useless at solving any real problems,” the Solana co-founder posted in the thread.
Capital, Trillionaires, and the DeFi Defense
Yakovenko widened the argument across more than a dozen replies. Billionaires hold capital rather than hoarded wealth, he argued, and surplus production is what raises living standards.
He also claimed 500 more trillionaires would roughly double the global standard of living, all else equal. Reportedly, his family left the USSR with $50 per person, he shared, casting central planning rather than AI as the real threat to workers.
The thread looped back to crypto. Any profitable market will be rebuilt endlessly as a smart contract, he wrote, months after he gave away code for a perpetuals exchange.
There is no last train. Anything that is generating a profit that can be built as a smart contract will be built, over and over. That’s the whole point of DeFi. Reduce the cost of finance to the cost of software.
Did you try it? What is it missing?
— toly 🇺🇸 (@toly) June 7, 2026
He has made a similar crypto regulation argument to Congress, urging lawmakers to back builders.
Polling suggests voters may not side with either camp. Americans report growing distrust of crypto and AI while PAC money floods the races.
Solana ($SOL) traded at $65.36 at press time, up nearly 6% in 24 hours. The coming primaries will test whose framing carries more weight with lawmakers.