Early Monday morning, April 6, an assailant fired 13 rounds into the front door of Indianapolis Councilman Ron Gibson’s home. A note left on the doorstep read, “No Data Centers.” Gibson’s eight-year-old son was inside at the time.
This was an act of political violence against a public servant and his family. No policy disagreement justifies targeting a residence where a child sleeps. However, this event forces a necessary question: Does the anti-AI movement possess a limiting principle?
When activists and astroturf groups spend years asserting that artificial intelligence poses a civilizational catastrophe and that data centers destroy communities, they must reckon with the logical conclusion of that rhetoric. This violence is not a detached incident; it is a predictable outcome of escalated alarmism.
The movement appears caught between two identities. It is either a genuine revolution in which “true believers” act on the conviction that humanity is at stake, or it is a performative outrage — “clicktivism” — fueled by apocalyptic language used for political utility rather than its truth. Neither path leads to a stable or productive society.
This hyper-reaction and doomsaying are familiar. During the net neutrality debate at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under Chairman Ajit Pai, staff, including myself, received death threats because of claims that undoing Title II telecommunications regulation would be the “end of the Internet as we know it.” The internet survived, and the rhetoric intensified. Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have introduced legislation to freeze all new data center construction. As they proudly note, at least twelve states have considered moratorium bills.
While presented as a grassroots uprising, the anti-data center movement functions more like a sophisticated “astroturfing” campaign. This involves creating the facade of widespread, spontaneous public support for a cause while the momentum is actually manufactured by elite entities. The Future of Life Institute received a single cryptocurrency donation valued at over $660 million, while the broader “AI Existential Risk Ecosystem” has directed over a billion dollars toward AI existential risk advocacy.
This is regulatory capture masked as moral concern. These organizations use their capital to mobilize local communities against infrastructure projects under the guise of safety. Yet, as Pirate Wires has documented, many claims regarding water consumption and grid instability rely on misleading or inaccurate statistics. In fact, the entire myth about water usage stems from an uncorrected error in a 2025 book by tech journalist Karen Ho.
There is a stark hypocrisy in this opposition. Every critic posting against data centers on social media relies on the physical infrastructure they seek to dismantle. Data centers power the cloud and the AI tools that 58 percent of small businesses now utilize. One cannot demand the destruction of the digital economy’s foundation while simultaneously benefiting from its output.
Public discourse regarding energy, water, and land use is a vital part of democracy. Civil discussion in public hearings is the proper forum for debate. Shooting at a councilman’s door is an assault on that process.
Councilman Gibson stated that this violence would not deter him. It shouldn’t. The United States should lead the way in AI development and enable all Americans to participate in the digital economy. However, those fostering public panic must decide: are they leading a revolution or a performance? If it is a performance, it must end.
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Nathan Leamer is the executive director of Build American AI and a former policy advisor to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.
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