Wired reports that "More than 1,000 pages of unpublished reports from the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and fusion centers obtained by WIRED show a national shift taking place to surveil this new and worryingly broad category of people and activities deemed an emerging threat."
One troubling aspect of this phenomenon is that it's largely bipartisan. A Gallup poll published last month showed that "an average of 7 in 10 Americans oppose data center construction in their area, including 48% who strongly oppose such facilities being built locally," says the pollster. "Only about a quarter reported favoring local construction of data centers, with just 7% strongly in favor."
It seems that if the AI companies aren't going to slow down and try to understand what is happening with this exciting, volatile, revolutionary technology, then the American people will slow it down for them.
Federal law enforcement is particularly concerned about the effect of widespread economic disruptions as a result of large-scale AI adoption. A New York Intelligence and Counterterrorism Bureau report goes into detail about the potential threat.
"The chaotic atmosphere that may result from emergent AI technology in the next five years may fuel large-scale protests that devolve into civil unrest and anti-tech violent extremist activity, especially in large urban areas such as New York City," the report reads.
One of the major threats in the New York intel report comes from a shadowy, anti-technology group known as "Zizians." Their leader, Jack "Ziz" Laota, a transgender woman, is facing several state and federal charges, with the trial on hold while the court determines if he is mentally competent. The FBI has been investigating the group, and several members — including LaSota, Michelle Zajko, and Daniel Blank — have been arrested on weapons, trespassing, and related charges.
They are, at bottom, a tiny, radicalized, rationalist offshoot of Silicon Valley online culture whose extreme ideology and escalating confrontations have led to multiple deaths. Six bodies are already on their account, and their movement is growing.
The problem for law enforcement is how they differentiate between anti-tech nutcases like the Zizians and others who may oppose the development of AI for more practical reasons.
While the Zizian ideology is extremist in nature, a less extreme version of the same fears surrounding the cataclysmic potential of AI are a common concern among AI alignment experts, machine learning engineers, and even frontier AI companies. Nonetheless, the Intelligence Bureau warns that "paranoid views regarding AI" may proliferate in the aftermath of the Zizians' trial, thanks to their "attempt to reason the belief that a godlike incarnation of AI is imminent," and belief that "humans must best use their time in the present to devote themselves to ensuring its compliance with human morality, or face existential consequences for failing to do so."
The NYPD intel assessment follows the department’s collaboration with the FBI last year to monitor the Signal chat of an activist group coordinating volunteers to monitor public hearings at immigration courts in New York. According to documents obtained by The Guardian, the FBI surveilled activists as part of a broader investigation into "anarchist violent extremist actors," one of the threat categories named in the new counter terrorism strategy.
The Signal chats are far more than simply "coordinating volunteers to monitor public hearings," as Andy Ngo discovered when he infiltrated one of those groups. "Signal has become the preferred platform for mass coordination — used to share real-time locations, vehicle descriptions, and individual targets, as well as tips for minimizing legal accountability," wrote Ngo.
There is evidence that these data centers and the protests surrounding them are being used by more than anti-data center activists.
A Western Pensylvania [sic] fusion center, for example, claimed that "adversarial actors, including state-sponsored entities, criminal groups, and extremists, such as homegrown violent extremists or environmental extremists, may target US data centers" and that "these actors could also exploit the strategic importance of data centers to the US economy, using them for activities like cryptocurrency mining or leveraging third-party entities, such as front companies, to gain access to US data and infrastructure.
A report from the Northern Virginia Regional Intelligence Center warned that AGAAVEs—anti-government, anti-authority violent extremists—influenced by government-related grievances and conspiracy theories, have engaged in pre-operational planning targeting data centers and other critical infrastructure facilities to disrupt government operations. But in the breakdown of Suspicious Activity Reporting indicators, the intelligence report lists activities that could easily be carried out by peaceful protesters, legal experts say.
Do you think the radicals don't know that? They are piggybacking their illegal activities on the legitimate, peaceful protesters' planning and actions to hide their own actions and intent.
It's not a new problem for local and federal law enforcement. Trying to predict who might be violent and who might be a legitimate protester has always flummoxed LEOs and the Feds. You can't point to one protest and say that the Feds are targeting innocent people without having all the facts that the government is privy to.
I think the warning is that the left's next big protests will be against AI and data centers. We'll see the same histrionics, the same drama, the same kind of confrontations aiming to provoke authorities into a violent response.
What's different this time is that the radicals are likely to be joined by some on the right who will be used as pawns in their power game.
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