Business Titan Cops to Using AI to Pen Blockbuster WSJ Op-Ed Criticizing His Protégé Scott Bessent: ‘Of Course I Did’

Kathianne BonielloAug 25th, 2026, 1:48 pm
 
bessent inset and druckenmiller

Scott Bessent (inset, AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson) and Stanley Druckenmiller (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

A billionaire investor who slammed U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal quickly copped to using artificial intelligence while writing the piece, according to a report.

Stanley Druckenmiller, who once worked with Bessent and has been described as his “mentor,” dismissed using AI, telling NOTUS it was the equivalent of using a calculator to solve a math problem.

“There’s a reason I moved from an English major to being an economics major,” Druckenmiller told the outlet. “I’m not embarrassed by it … I write everything using AI now for the same reason I use a calculator when I do math problems.”

The 73-year-old former hedge fund manager’s opinion piece, “Let the Bond Market Speak,” made waves in the business world Monday after Druckenmiller used the platform to go after Bessent’s decision last week to double his department’s buyback of government debt in a bid to drive down the nation’s interest rates.

Bessent now plans to buy back $4 billion instead of $2 billion in debt.

Druckenmiller, who works as CEO of Duquesne Family Office LLC, wrote that the Treasury Department should:

…do the only thing that durably lowers long-term yields: address the primary deficit. Reform entitlements gradually and honestly, through means testing, indexing changes, eligibility adjustments phased in over decades—so that the burden is shared across generations instead of dumped on the youngest.

The reward is enormous: A credible fiscal package would do more for the long end of the curve than a buyback program 1,000 times this size.

The nation’s debt officially reached more than $40 trillion last week.

NOTUS used an AI detector called Pangram to scan Druckenmiller’s piece.

“Of course I used AI,” he said when asked.

WSJ Editorial Page Editor Paul Gigot called AI a “fact of modern life” in a statement to Mediaite.

“People will use it to assist in their work and their writing, including with research, checking grammar, editing and more,” he said. “The question for us is whether what we publish from contributors reflects an author’s original argument, and if the author has the standing and credibility to make it. In Stan Druckenmiller’s case, we have had a relationship with him for many years, and nobody can doubt that his op-ed is his genuine opinion.”

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