Senator Bernie Sanders recently warned that AI is a threat to everything that Americans hold dear and that its future must be decided by the American people. I’m a little surprised that no one on his staff thought to intervene before the 84-year-old Vermont socialist said that in public.

Congress, in its infinite wisdom, now eyes legislation to tame the growth of artificial intelligence. Committees will convene, bills will be drafted, and politicians will grandstand about protecting jobs, privacy, and the very soul of the republic. This is pure futility. If a technology is possible and economically interesting, someone will eventually build it. Human ingenuity does not bow to subcommittee hearings or regulatory frameworks. Attempts to legislate technological progress have always failed, often hilariously so, revealing lawmakers as reactive relics rather than visionaries.

History is littered with such episodes. In the late 19th century, Italian commentators claimed that telegraph lines “pulled the rain away” from cities, as if wires could somehow disrupt the weather itself. When the printing press spread in Europe, critics decried it as a “whore” that would flood the world with errors, cheapen knowledge, and corrupt public morality by letting common folk interpret texts without priestly gatekeepers.

Public and political objections to automobiles were fierce. In early 20th-century America, city dwellers viewed cars as tyrannical intruders on pedestrian streets, with protests and calls for strict speed controls and subordination to horse-drawn traffic. The 1993 U.S. Senate hearings on violence in video games, led by Senators Joe Lieberman and Herb Kohl, dragged industry executives before Congress over titles like Mortal Kombat and Night Trap. Grim footage of pixelated gore prompted threats of federal regulation, as if lawmakers could halt the digital entertainment revolution. Aiming the gaming industry continued largely uninterrupted, and today’s immersive virtual worlds present violence that makes the 1993 version seem almost charming by comparison.

These episodes share a common thread: panic from those clinging to the status quo. Politicians, moralists, and commentators predict doom—lost jobs, moral decay, societal collapse—yet progress progresses, largely because capability breeds inevitability. Cars reshaped cities and economies. Printing democratized ideas, sparking enlightenment. Video games became a cornerstone of modern creativity.

I don’t know what an AI future looks like, but I know its direction of travel and it’s happening quickly. In just the past few months, models have leaped forward in reasoning, creativity, and real-world utility at a pace that mocks five-year legislative timelines. What seemed science-fiction yesterday is prototype today. Congress can posture and pass symbolic rules, but if the US decides to slow-walk a technology that is economically and strategically valuable, don’t expect the rest of the world to slow down with us.

David Moon is president of Moon Capital Management. A version of this piece originally appeared in the USA TODAY NETWORK.