OpenAI policy chief pitches New Deal-style AI agenda ahead of 2028 election

OpenAI's chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane, has published an essay arguing that the 2028 US presidential election could be a defining moment for artificial intelligence, and he wants politicians to start building policy responses now rather than react to public anxiety after it peaks. According to TechCrunch, which reported on the essay, Lehane is calling on lawmakers to address Americans' concerns about the technology directly instead of merely echoing anti-AI sentiment and the backlash against data center construction.

A New Deal framing for AI

Lehane compares AI's potential to reshape the economy to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, the set of federal programs and reforms enacted after industrialization and the Great Depression upended the old economic order. He argues that Americans today feel a similar anxiety about losing control of their economic futures, and he urges politicians to find a "compelling third path" that lets ordinary people share in AI's benefits. As TechCrunch notes, the essay lands just after Democrats flipped control of Congress in the midterm elections, a vote driven largely by frustration over the cost of living.

Five policy priorities

Lehane lays out five priorities spanning worker protections, education, AI safety and data center development. On the tax code, he suggests incentives for workers to learn AI skills, easier capital access for entrepreneurs, and new approaches to employee ownership and profit-sharing. TechCrunch points out that none of these amount to binding requirements that would ensure workers actually share in AI-generated wealth or that companies pay the costs of displacing workers.

Education and child safety also feature prominently. Lehane stresses age-appropriate protections around AI companions for minors and argues against keeping AI out of classrooms, warning that doing so could widen inequality between wealthy students and children in rural communities. TechCrunch observes that this argument takes for granted that AI improves learning, a claim the outlet describes as unproven and one critics say deserves more examination than funding or human teachers could provide.

Data centers and a China warning

On infrastructure, Lehane acknowledges concerns about data centers while emphasizing the construction jobs and local tax revenue they could bring. He then warns that politicians who support a data center moratorium could jeopardize America's lead over China, comparing that stance to the 2002 vote authorizing the Iraq war. The rhetorical move matters because, as TechCrunch reports, opposition to data centers surfaced as a bipartisan concern in several midterm races, even though AI itself was not a dominant campaign issue.

Safety rhetoric versus OpenAI's record

Lehane also calls for enforceable AI safety standards, independent evaluations, public oversight, and the ability to restrict AI systems or shut them down with a kill switch. But TechCrunch notes that recent studies show OpenAI and other labs have not published comprehensive plans for what they would do if a model escaped human control.

Kate Brennan, who leads AI and corporate power policy at the AI Now Institute, told TechCrunch these positions are "disingenuous," citing OpenAI's history. In 2024 the company opposed California's AI safety bill SB 1047, which would have mandated catastrophic risk evaluations and shutdown capabilities, and it later sought to limit state regulation on the grounds that states could undermine American innovation. OpenAI has since shifted some positions, backing several state safety laws and saying it would be open to independent evaluators embedded in the company. Brennan also argued that invoking the New Deal means invoking state capacity to benefit the public, whereas Lehane's essay comes from a private company advocating policies for its own benefit — something she called "ahistorical at best and harmful at worst." TechCrunch says OpenAI did not respond to a request for more specifics before publication.

Why it matters

The essay signals how the AI industry intends to position itself ahead of 2028: not resisting all regulation, but shaping it so that broad AI adoption and infrastructure expansion remain the default. Affordability is already set to dominate the next presidential race, and voter worries about electricity bills, job displacement and gains flowing to a handful of wealthy companies are likely to pull AI into that debate. The open question, as TechCrunch's reporting makes clear, is whether Lehane's framework would meaningfully redistribute economic power or quietly entrench it — and that question will likely define the fight over AI policy over the next two years.