Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is pushing Congress to treat artificial intelligence as a threat comparable to nuclear weapons, while simultaneously auditioning for a national stage with less than seven weeks until the midterms.
Pritzker, a Democrat, sat for an exclusive interview on ABC's "This Week" that aired Sunday, urging federal lawmakers to make AI regulation a top priority. He called the technology dangerous "on the level of nuclear weapons" and took direct aim at President Trump's approach to the industry, accusing the administration of letting AI companies police themselves.
The governor signed an AI safety law in Illinois in July that requires companies to submit to annual third-party audits of their safety plans and disclose safety incidents to the state. But Pritzker argued that state-level action is not enough, and that Washington's inaction amounts to recklessness.
In the interview with co-anchor Jonathan Karl, Pritzker told ABC News that AI regulation must be a national and international effort because the technology cannot be contained by any single state.
"You can't do this state by state. This needs to be a national effort as well as an international endeavor, especially together with our allies, because AI is not going to go away."
He criticized the Trump administration's posture directly, claiming officials are content to let AI industry leaders self-regulate.
"They are okay with just letting it, you know, run rampant and let the leaders of it self-govern and self-regulate, and I think that's a mistake because we clearly have seen that there are breakouts that they don't control, and they haven't had any real interest in it."
Pritzker did not specify which "breakouts" he was referring to. He offered no examples of AI incidents that his Illinois law would have prevented, and no details on what a federal framework should look like beyond the audit-and-disclosure model he signed at the state level. Comparing a commercial technology to nuclear weapons is the kind of rhetoric that sounds serious without doing any of the work of being serious.
President Trump has called AI fears a "hoax" and announced the formation of an "AI Force" aimed at accelerating growth in the industry. Sen. Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, has proposed banning superintelligence outright, a position Pritzker dismissed as impractical.
"I think that you're not going to be able to is the point. That's not going to happen because it's not like AI doesn't exist in the world already."
So Pritzker wants more regulation than Trump, less than Sanders, and has signed a state law he says is insufficient on its own. The governor is staking out the middle of an intra-party debate while positioning himself as the adult in the room, a familiar move for a billionaire Democrat with national ambitions.
The AI talk was only part of the interview. Karl pressed Pritzker on the midterm landscape and whether he plans to run for president in 2028.
Pritzker painted Democrats as the party of working families, pushing back against Vice President JD Vance, who appeared on the "All In" podcast last Wednesday and urged voters to "give us another chance." Pritzker's response was blunt.
"The problem is they've had too many chances already, and they've made mistakes over and over and over again. They don't deserve another chance. It's time to give Democrats the reins, at least in Congress right now, so that they can put a check on what Donald Trump has been doing to working families."
Vance spoke at a Republican National Committee Midterm Rally at the Mid-America Center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on September 18. Polls show Democrats favored to take back the House in November, but the same polling shows that congressional Democrats and the party itself remain, as ABC described it, "very unpopular." Progressive and Democratic Socialist challengers have mounted several successful primary bids against Democratic incumbents this cycle, a sign that the party's base is restless even as the broader electorate tilts their way.
Pritzker's economic pitch boiled down to wages and affordability. He argued that prices rarely fall and that the real answer is putting more money in workers' pockets, specifically, raising the minimum wage.
"Remember, it isn't often that prices go down. What we really need to do to make things more affordable, put more money in people's pockets, and that means raising the minimum wage."
That is a revealing admission from a sitting governor. Pritzker is conceding that Democratic economic policy will not bring prices down. His solution, government-mandated wage increases, shifts the burden to employers and small businesses without addressing the underlying cost pressures that voters say they feel every day. It is the kind of proposal that polls well in a focus group and lands hard on the balance sheet of a family-owned restaurant.
Pritzker acknowledged that public trust in government has eroded and offered a theory for why Trump won in 2024.
"One of the reasons Donald Trump won the first time around was because he was promising to blow it all up. Right? He was going to drain the swamp. And why were people looking for it? Because nobody ever did anything for them."
He then pivoted to the Democratic bench for 2028, praising the field without naming names, and without ruling himself in or out.
"All I can tell you is that I believe we have some really great people who are contemplating running for president. It may be the best bench that we've seen among Democrats for many, many years."
Karl asked what qualities the next Democratic nominee should have. Pritzker's answer sounded less like commentary and more like a stump speech draft.
"The question is, who's bold enough, right? Who's really putting [a] big agenda out there and has proven that they can get something done."
Pritzker is running for reelection as governor and supporting Democratic candidates around the country. His current term, if he wins again, would end in 2029, conveniently after the 2028 presidential race is decided. He did not confirm or deny a White House bid.
The interview was a showcase: AI regulation as a national security frame, a populist economic pitch, sharp attacks on the administration, and a refusal to close the door on higher office. Pritzker wants voters to see a governor who gets things done. What they got Sunday was a politician who compared a search algorithm to a hydrogen bomb, admitted his own party cannot lower prices, and declined to answer the one question everyone watching actually wanted answered.
When a politician compares a technology to nuclear weapons but cannot describe a single specific danger, the alarm is not about AI, it is about ambition.
