Yet there was not just remarkably little public appetite for confiscating half the equity of internet companies and redistributing it through a government-run fund: there was none. Certainly, artificial intelligence has generated genuine concerns. A third possibility is that artificial intelligence itself feels more immediate and personal than previous technological revolutions. But confiscating ownership after firms have invested billions of dollars in research and accepted enormous commercial risks would establish a troubling precedent extending well beyond artificial intelligence. If American citizens increasingly see extraordinary innovation as justification for extraordinary government force, the most important story may not be artificial intelligence at all.