AOC says Congress should break up Apple amid looming price increases

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said she believes Congress should look to break up companies like Apple amid reports that the tech giant may soon raise prices on phones and laptops as its processing chip supply chain is strained.

“We need to break up a lot of these companies that are very, very large, and we need to ensure consumer protections for people,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

His remarks reveal one of the many ways lawmakers are grappling with the realities of the AI ​​race as companies feel the pinch of global demand for processing power and local communities grapple with the costs of using it.

Like many other progressives, Ocasio-Cortez has advocated for a more government-led response, citing distrust of corporate influence.

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“The problem is, these big corporations think they are the government. They want to be the government. They want to have completely uncontrolled power,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

In recent weeks, Apple’s outgoing CEO Tim Cook has signaled that the company may soon have no choice but to pass on some of its rising costs to consumers.

“Unfortunately, price increases are inevitable,” Cook told the Wall Street Journal in a recent interview.

“We are doing our best to reduce the large increases being communicated to us and trying to protect our customers from increases, but the situation has become unsustainable.”

For years, companies like Apple have dominated demand for the processing chip market, the part of a computer that acts as the brains of a device. These chips, which require extremely complex manufacturing, allow computers to perform calculations, process data and execute commands.

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., walks down the House steps after a vote at the U.S. Capitol on April 23, 2026. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc)

Now that AI companies are also increasing demand, Apple finds itself competing for dwindling processor supplies, increasing the company’s costs.

Beyond her views on the relationship between government and business, Ocasio-Cortez said she believes it’s time for Congress to revisit ways that could reduce the rising costs of the AI ​​race at the domestic level. In particular, he believes it is time for lawmakers to address the energy burden of data centers.

Ocasio-Cortez said so when asked if she believes Congress should consider something beyond the Creating Beneficial Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) Act, President Joe Biden’s signature technology investment bill signed into law in 2022.

“The CHIPS Act was passed before we saw this major advancement in artificial intelligence, so the CHIPS Act was passed before data centers even existed, so it wasn’t designed to anticipate the massive amount of supply that those centers were absorbing,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

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U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) speaks with members of the media as she arrives at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, on May 21, 2026, for the final votes of the week. Ocasio-Cortez criticized the recently released DNC post-mortem on the timing of the 2024 elections and its lack of any mention of Gaza. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

The CHIP act included $11.2 billion to modernize the nation’s energy grid, establish clean energy innovation programs, and $39 billion for domestic semiconductor manufacturing incentives, among other provisions.

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The bill did not address the energy consumption problem caused by data centers.

“We subsidize a lot of these pieces of these AI data centers,” Ocasio-Cortez said.