Technology

Anti-Data Center Group Planned Massive ‘Revolt.’ Barely A Soul Showed Up

Data center (Azraelito/Wikimedia Commons)

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A grassroots effort to turn Americans against artificial intelligence and data centers struggled to draw a crowd.

Humans First, a self-described conservative anti-data center group led by former Tea Party activist Amy Kremer, began its national “Data Center Revolt” bus tour, featuring 35 stops in 27 states, on Sept. 12 in Austin, Texas, as part of a fight against what the group dubs “Big AI globalists,” according to the organization’s website. As tour stops across the country repeatedly draw small crowds, questions remain about the organization’s national reach and its undisclosed financing.

A small number of supporters and journalists turned out for a Thursday bus stop at Bren Mar Park in Alexandria, Virginia, the Daily Caller News Foundation learned upon observing the event. Among the attendees were protesters with the Alliance for Secure AI who held signs featuring anti-data center messages.

The hour-long protest consisted of speeches from Kremer and allies before a brief question-and-answer session. A total of 18 participants initially registered for the event, according to Humans First’s event posting.

About 20 people turned out for a recent Humans First stop in Effingham County, Georgia, the Current GA reported. Attendance at some of the group’s July 18 rallies was thin, Reuters reported, including about a dozen people in Atlanta and Tyler, Texas. 

“LOL I’ll assume these questions were a joke, if they aren’t then let me know when anyone out in rural America shows up for a pro-data center rally and then we will be happy to compare notes,” Humans First spokesperson Chris Barron told the DCNF, when asked about the low turnout at the organization’s protests.

“This is what community looks like!,” Humans First said in a Thursday Instagram post showing participants at the organization’s stop line up in front of the tour bus in Jacksonville, Florida.

Innovation Council, a pro-AI advocacy group, cast the tour as manufactured.

“This is what the astroturf Humans First ‘bus tour’ looks like in practice,” Innovation Council said in a Sept. 12 X post responding to Kremer’s announcement of the bus tour. Attached to the post was a video showing sparse attendance at a Humans First protest.

“[This] bus tour has exposed the truth: The anti data center campaign is merely a manufactured op by dark anti-American forces and foreign governments,” a spokesperson for the Innovation Council told the DCNF. “Those who’ve been bought off by this effort should come clean now and try to retain whatever thread of credibility remains.”

Humans First was scheduled to stop in the heart of Washington, D.C., on Thursday as part of the tour, but canceled that same morning due to permitting delays, the organization told the DCNF.

The group, however, did not publicly announce the cancellation of the DC stop, which was reportedly planned for 12 p.m. Thursday at “Moving and Cleaning Solutions, Ellipse Rd NW, Washington, DC,” according to Humans First’s Facebook post.

“[L]ast minute changes means [sic] … that we had an event in Mannasus [sic] this morning, [and] are now driving the bus around central DC,” Humans First told the DCNF when asked about the event at around 12:30 p.m. Thursday afternoon.

Allies of the tour argue that large crowds are not the goal of the tour.

“I don’t think their intention or their expectation when they put the bus tour together was that they would have a million people show up,” Brendan Steinhauser, CEO of the Alliance for Secure AI, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “[H]aving that mobile billboard running around the country can help add to all the other things they’re doing.”

‘Nobody Trusts Big Tech’

Jason Van Beek, chief government affairs officer at the Future of Life Institute and former general counsel to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, said he spent 20 years on the Hill watching tech go “from democratizing influence” to “this almost sort of monopolistic thing.”

“Nobody trusts big tech. We need to make sure that we maintain control of these systems. Humans are in control. We put humans first,” Van Beek told the DCNF.

That distrust, he argued, is why the response to these issues belongs in local communities.

“[O]n data centers, like Humans First, I think is more about local control, and there’s data center … ratepayer protection pledges … federally, which is hard to enforce, I would imagine, probably,” Van Beek told the DCNF.

Cathy Latham, Humans First’s Texas state director, said the fight is secrecy at city hall, not federal AI restrictions.

“I’m really fighting the NDAs and the lack of transparency,” Latham told the DCNF. “We have found where the data center development took the mayor and the city council to Hawaii to sign the forms, out of the purview of the people.”

Latham, too, wants to keep the fight local.

“If you put a blanket federal policy, it could not work well in California, but it might not work well in Florida,” Latham told the DCNF. “So that’s why, to me, it’s a state and local issue.”

Latham, a retired school teacher and a “strong Republican,” argued that tech companies are unable to regulate these technologies on their own.

“I saw what the cell phone did. I saw what social media did to kids, and that was big tech regulating themselves, and they still can’t do it,” she said.

Other supporters argue pushback to data centers is part of a larger concern about the speed of AI development.

“If you drive a car, you have a couple elements in your car, right? You have a brake and you have a gas pedal. Well, I’m saying … we need to have a steering wheel too … because right now we’re not headed in a good direction,” Robert Arnakis, director of external affairs and coalitions at the Alliance for Secure AI, who spoke at the Alexandria, VA, event, told the DCNF. He agreed with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s Sept. 12 call to “pace” the AI race.

Arnakis explained that he sees both “good things” and “bad things” about AI, but due to recent hacking incidents involving AI agents, the technology should be treated like nuclear weapons.

“I’m old enough to remember when Ronald Reagan met with Mikhail Gorbachev, and they said we’re going to take a time out on the nuclear race … and do what’s in the best interest of humanity,” Arnakis told the DCNF. “Why aren’t we having that conversation?”

Where The Fight Is Landing

Humans First describes itself as a conservative group fighting for an “America First approach” to AI on its website. Humans First has not publicly shared its budget or donors.

Kremer previously said the Center for AI Safety (CAIS) gave Humans First a loan to get the organization started, she told Fox News Digital in August.

CAIS received roughly $10.5 million from Open Philanthropy and $6.5 million from FTX, according to InfluenceWatch.

Open Philanthropy is the charity fund of Facebook co-founder and Democratic donor Dustin Moskovitz.

Other data center opposition gathered significant local support and potentially reshaped an election.

Residents of Mona, Utah, gathered in opposition to a 3 million-square-foot data center project in Juab County, Deseret News reported on Sept. 8. The local residents said they were unaware of the project and were working to appeal the permit, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.

In Box Elder County, Utah, opposition to Kevin O’Leary’s proposed Stratos data center project packed a fairground gym, according to New Lines Magazine. Utah Senate President J. Stuart Adams, who supported the Stratos project, lost his June primary election, and former commissioner Lee Perry said the data-center vote cost him the primary election, Newsweek reported.

O’Leary was sued by two nonprofit organizations on July 17 after claiming the groups were “proxies for the Chinese government” due to their criticisms of his project.