OpenAI’s Lehane likens backing a data centre ban to the 2002 Iraq vote

AI will be the number-one issue of the 2028 US presidential election, says Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer. His memo, titled “2028: The AI Election”, sets out five questions he says candidates must answer to build an AI agenda. Politico published the Chris Lehane memo in full on Monday, a day before the US midterm elections. Lehane compares 2028 with the 1932 election, when Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal rewrote the social contract. He writes that a candidate who sets out a “compelling third path” will have a chance to define a new contract. That path runs between those who would let AI advance “without speed limits” and those who would leave it “in the hands of a self-appointed elite”.