And Now, MAGA—and MTG, Even!—Have Joined the Anti–Data Center Movement

The mass mobilization against data centers is
coming to a boil this week, and the tech aristocracy is turning paranoid. No
wonder: The AI zealots of Silicon Valley have staked their souls on President
Trump’s commitment to
blitz-scaling these rural facilities.

On Tuesday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed an
executive order imposing a yearlong statewide moratorium on
data-center construction. This panics the AI overlords. If a commie-style ban
can make it in pro-business New York, it can make it anywhere.

“The real worry in the industry isn’t New York
specifically, it is the precedent,” said Joseph Hoefer, a key
AI lobbyist, about the response of Silicon Valley to Hochul’s move. “The concern
is real, and it moved fast.”

And then there’s the mounting popular disgust
with facilities that guzzle water and power from rural communities, giving
nothing back.

“Data centers—why would you want that?” Tucker
Carlson said recently on a podcast. “Why are you
telling me all of the bad things that are going to happen, not telling me
really any of the good things, and then telling me that it’s inevitable and I
can’t have electricity or water because the machines need it?”

Indeed. We know that data centers drain water reserves and strain electrical grids. But their round-the-clock “brute
force” lighting also eliminates dark nights, wreaking havoc on the
circadian rhythms of humans and animals.

As for air pollution, according to a recent study, just one data
center in Northern Virginia pumps out enough aerosolized waste to cause
respiratory diseases and premature deaths to the tune of $53
million to $99 million in health damages annually.

And then there’s the headache- and
insomnia-inducing noise pollution. No wonder seven in ten Americans now
oppose data centers, including a majority of Republicans.

Caleb Max, another AI lobbyist, describes this polling
on data centers as  “devastating” and warns, “If the
industry doesn’t wake up quick and start solving this, it’s going to get a lot
worse.”

All of which brings us to tomorrow, July 18,
when Humans First, an activist
group fronted by staunch America First conservatives and supported by Marjorie
Taylor Greene, is planning a national day
of protest to fight the facilities across the country, from Alabama to New
Mexico, Missouri to Idaho, West Virginia to Wyoming.

With conservatives in the fight, AI’s foes can
no longer be dismissed as tree-huggers, degrowthers, and union thugs. This
leaves almost nothing in Silicon Valley’s rhetorical arsenal.

The idea that the data centers are noble
citadels in the AI war with China doesn’t exactly fire up the popular
imagination.

The 2010s concept that our Silicon Valley
overlords are entitled, as geniuses, to turn American towns into sacrifice
zones—that also rings hollow.

So this week the oligarchs resorted to the last
refuge of a scoundrel: They described the protests as a psy op.

Trump megadonor Marc Andreessen amplified a thread alleging that
Humans First is really an anti-ICE socialist outfit. The thread pointed to a
March article about Humans First called “Built to Deceive: How the
Effective Altruist Machine Infiltrated the Conservative Right on AI,” by Jordan
Schachtel, an AI zealot with Blaze-and-Breitbart bylines and a Substack
called The Dossier. (On Friday, Schachtel
argued in the newsletter AG—yes, American Greatness—that data centers power
“the new American Industrial Revolution.” )

Aspiring trillionaire Elon Musk, along with mere
billionaire David Sacks, co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on
Science and Technology, showered X love on Schachtel’s gotcha when it came out.

But the exposé is not as revelatory as they
think it is. Schachtel chronicles how a small group of EA activists committed
to AI safety—not socialism—fostered Humans First to engage conservatives in the
fight against data centers. Then they handed it off to them. That sounds like
coalition-building, not deceit. (The “pro-human” mobilization against data centers has
been ideologically diverse from the
start.)

In May, Humans First published an open letter urging Trump
to pump the brakes on data-center construction: “We write as committed America
First leaders to thank you for considering an Executive Order to vet
potentially dangerous frontier artificial intelligence (AI) models before they
are released.”

This remarkable appeal, both populist and
pro-regulation, is signed by marquee rabble-rouser Steve Bannon, as well as
other leading lights of America First, the MAGA splinter group.

Amy Kremer, another
signatory and the chair of Humans First, is an inveterate Tea Partier who
founded Women for Trump and organized the rally that
spun into the January 6, 2021 insurrection in Washington.

Cathy Latham, who also
signed the letter, is a former Georgia elector who was indicted in 2023 for
signing “alternate ballots” certifying Trump as president (Trump pardoned her.) Outside of
data centers, Latham’s interests include “advocacy for transparent,
non-ideological education that prioritizes critical thinking, American history,
and conservative values over ‘woke’ or Marxist influences.”

Kremer, for her part, considers the
data-center protests “the most important fight of our lifetime” because “this technology
could wipe us off the face of the planet.” This week, she wrote in
RealClearEnergy, “The same disconnect that gave rise to the Tea Party in 2009
is happening again in 2026. Instead of a battle over bailouts and Obamacare,
this time the battle is over runaway big tech, dangerous AI, and AI hyperscale
data centers.”

The right comes by its skittishness about data
centers honestly. Even Schachtel concedes: “Their AI skepticism might be fairly
perceived as genuine, rooted in years of commentary on transhumanism and
civilizational risk involving Silicon Valley elites having power over the
average American.”

So have right- and left-wing populists really
made common cause at last—or is someone playing someone? If the left is pulling
the levers, America Firsters may end up supporting green policies or government
regulation. If the right’s in charge, DSA types might have to recognize that
conservatives, in Schachtel’s words, “arrived at doomer-adjacent conclusions through a distinctly
conservative and Biblical lens.”

Not bad. The only losers are the oligarchs. And
religious tolerance, along with a government that works for the people, seem
like a pretty American place to converge. ...