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Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump agree on almost nothing. But they do agree that the public should own a piece of the AI industry. The Vermont senator and the president disagree on both the structure and stake of public ownership, but the idea is being discussed at the highest levels of government. Even OpenAI and Anthropic back versions of the idea, though Anthropic’s is a tax rather than a stake. Let’s tune in.

Week in Review: Most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of July 12, 2026 Get caught up on the latest technology and startup news from the past week. Here are the most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of July 12, 2026. Sign up to receive these updates every Sunday in your inbox by subscribing to our GeekWire Weekly email newsletter.

A coalition of activists and community organizations plans to rally Sunday outside Anduril’s Seattle office, protesting the defense technology company’s development of artificial intelligence-powered military systems and its growing presence in the region.

This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Silicon Valley legend Vinod Khosla’s family is leading a group that’s buying the Seattle Seahawks for a record $9.6 billion. We dug into hours of his talks and interviews to answer the big questions: Who is this guy, why does he want an NFL team, and what does his track record tell us about the kind of owner he’ll be? Plus, the blind spot that could get him into trouble. Featuring highlights from his 2015 talk at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Ditch your smartphone for a flip phone for a month? This group wants Seattleites to try Geek Life: Fun stories, memes, humor and other random items at the intersection of tech, science, business and culture. SEE MORE Seattle helped create the modern smartphone era. Now, nearly 40 people in the heart of one of the world’s biggest technology hubs are voluntarily putting theirs away.

One of the biggest hits ever produced by Seattle’s independent video game scene is joining the Magic: The Gathering multiverse later this month. Sort of. Magic, the long-running collectible card game published and developed by Renton, Wash.-based Wizards of the Coast, frequently puts out special crossover editions via its Secret Lair imprint.

Anand Subbaraman is departing as CEO of Icertis, the Bellevue, Wash.-based contract management software company said Friday. Chief Financial Officer Rajat Bahri and longtime executive and Icertis board member Jim Moffatt will serve as interim co-CEOs as Icertis searches for its next CEO. Subbaraman took the helm in August 2025 when Icertis co-founder Samir Bodas stepped down. Bodas had been the company’s only CEO since launching the business in 2009.

One of Amazon’s top cloud leaders will be joining Meta as the Facebook parent company considers turning its massive AI buildout into a cloud business of its own. That’s the report from the Wall Street Journal overnight, quoting anonymous sources saying that Dave Brown, the senior Amazon executive who led AWS compute and AI services, will join Meta in the coming weeks to work on its data center build-out.

The Seattle Sounders paused before Thursday night’s rivalry match against the Portland Timbers to honor one of their own. Before the match at Lumen Field, the club paid tribute to S. “Soma” Somasegar, the longtime Microsoft executive, Madrona venture capitalist and Sounders minority owner who died in May at age 59. Fans stood in silence as Somasegar’s image appeared on the stadium video boards.

For the first time in several years, there are indications that the worst may be over for the Seattle region’s battered office market — and artificial intelligence companies appear to be playing a leading role. The regional office market (spanning Seattle, Bellevue and the surrounding Eastside) posted positive net absorption during the second quarter, meaning companies occupied more office space than they vacated, according to a new report from commercial real estate firm JLL.