Regardless of whether AI will lead to a “job apocalypse” or make work optional, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) is warning “the battle of our time will be AI”—and he predicts it’ll be particularly difficult for new grads entering the workforce, who face an 5.6% unemployment rate.

“I will bet anybody in the audience that goes to 30 or 35% within the next two years,” Warner said. “And if we don’t figure this out—I say this as a pro-AI, pro-tech guy—we’re going to get screwed.”

Warner’s estimate may seem extreme, but it tracks with AI leaders who are towing the line between warning the public of their tech predictions and starting widespread panic.

“If you take Dario, Sam, you take all the evangelists. I think they are literally consciously pulling back on their predictions because of the short-term economic disruption,” Warner, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said during a panel at the Hill and Valley Forum, a conference bringing together Washington policymakers and Silicon Valley executives on Tuesday.

Warner, speaking at the panel entitled “From Capital to Capability: Rebuilding U.S. Industrial Strength” at the event, has often made statements to similar effect. Last week, Warner blasted the White House’s framework to regulate AI, saying it “lacks significant substance.” The Trump administration laid out general policy areas for Congress to address, including children’s privacy, intellectual property rights, and developing “an AI-ready workforce.” In a statement, Warner faulted the White House for shutting down the Senate Intelligence Committee’s bill on national security threats from advanced AI and ignoring AI-powered misinformation entirely.

The senator warned that it’s in the companies’ hands, not the government’s, if they want to reduce the adverse effects of AI.

“If you expect the government officials alone to solve this, you’re missing the boat. We desperately need your input and ideas and suggestions,” Warner, who is the former founder and managing director of venture capital firm Columbia Capital.

Warner pointed to Anthropic’s Claude’s footprint on software and HR job losses as reasons for AI executives to temper their public comments. Last month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that companies are “AI-washing” layoffs and using the technology as a scapegoat for workforce reductions. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has pulled back since his declaration last May that AI could wipe out 50% of entry-level office jobs. In more recent comments, he’s shied away from specific predictions about the scale of AI-related job loss, and instead, wrote the technology will cause “unusually painful” disruption in a wide-ranging 20,000-word essay in January. Yet, a recent survey of CFOs found that only 0.4%, or about 502,000 roles out of about 125 million roles, are expected to be lost this year.

Warner explained that AI disruption is different from the labor transformation that globalization caused because it will affect white-collar jobs.

“If we go way back in time, like three or four years ago, we would have said the policy prescription is, ‘let’s make everybody learn how to code.’ At least that was well intentioned, but completely the wrong answer,” Warner said.

Warner says the government ‘desperately’ needs industry input

Warner acknowledged the limits of the federal government to handle the potential economic fallout of AI disruption.

“We’re going to need the capabilities of the AI community to help us figure it out, and candidly, the largest players help pay for it, because I think this transition will be exponentially bigger than I believe today is going to be exponentially bigger and quicker than even what I believed five months ago.”

Students are already thinking of potential AI job displacement-proof careers before they even graduate. He gave the example of business: 1.63 million students, or nearly 9% of students, were enrolled in business bachelor’s degrees in 2025, making it the most popular degree in the U.S. Yet, the business and financial services industry is one of the most AI-exposed sectors.

“Those are where jobs are going to go. Maybe, Anthropic and OpenAI ought to go ahead and put up a fund to convert people from being business administration majors to nurses, at least in the short term,” but advised against government retraining programs, like Trade Adjustment Assistance for Workers., which he said, “have mostly been bullshit.”

He pointed to how the government has struggled to regulate social media with dozens of bills that have failed to pass.

“Social media is tiny compared to AI,” he said. “I cannot stress enough that if we don’t get this transition right, all of the innovation opportunities, all of the healthcare opportunities, could get snuffed out.” He pointed to immigration barriers against international talents, such as the Trump administration’s $100,000 fee on H-1B visas, typically held by Indian and Chinese tech workers.