Joe Allen wanted to know the robot’s name. I thought the double whiskey we were chugging at the hotel bar had finally scrambled his brains as he sprinted toward a delivery bot. I was panicking. My only shot at getting Allen alone for an interview was a drive to the airport. I’d flown into Atlanta specifically to tap this guy, the anti-tech prophet who rose to fame on Steve Bannon’s War Room. But the moment I arrived, Allen said he had to bounce immediately.
Good thing his flight kept getting delayed. That gave me time to trail him. We went to meet some friends nearby. He dodged questions about who they were. Instead, he pitched the “inverse singularity.” The theory is simple and terrifying. We rely on AI for everything. Eventually, our intellect and creativity collapse under the weight of that reliance. His friends at the restaurant didn’t know much about me. One of them called Allen for an ETA. “I’m bringing a friend,” he told him. Then a pause. “Well, a frenemy.” He gave me a side-eye that suggested he was using me for content.
Downtown Atlanta is flooded with these bots. They deliver burgers. They bring tacos. Allen caught up to one. It had white lights on the front. Eyes. He read the name on the side: “CJ.” It reminded me of his book, Dark Aeon: Transhumanism and the War Against humanity. Who did CJ replace? A human worker. The robot’s eyes looked past me. Limply. Pathetically.
People ask what I’m doing here. I tell them data centers are hated. I’m checking if they hate AI too. It’s true. But this obsession is eating me alive. I’ve spent years writing about energy and the environment. I have never seen vitriol like this. It’s religious. It’s furious. And the weirdest part? It’s uniting the political extremes.
A friend just sent me a post. A white Christian nationalist account on X. It’s an AI-generated cartoon of Smokey Bear. He stands in front of a burning structure that looks like a data center. The text says: “ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT DATA CENTers.” What is happening?
There was a time you lived next to one and didn’t care. For decades, they just appeared. Quietly. Built in places with fiber and cheap power. Silicon Valley. DC. They stored our photos. They streamed our shows. They handled the stupid and important tasks we do online every minute of the day.
But now? The rage is shocking. NIMBYism used to be the only driver. People distrusted mysterious corporations building things in their backyards. Now it’s a full-blown movement. A recent Gallup poll found 70% of Americans oppose data centers in their area. Attacks on politicians. Threats against tech CEOs. Moratoriums passing in New York. Bans in deep-red Texas counties. People are getting arrested at public meetings in California and New Jersey.
Washington was asleep at the wheel. They weren’t ready for the backlash. Honestly, Congress couldn’t handle it. They can barely text. The first to cry foul were right-wing populists. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Thomas Massie. Greene tweeted in June 2024 about using eminent domain to build “the future Skynet” on private property. She called it un-Republican.
Meanwhile, Steve Bannon was cooking up something else. Trump’s former advisor uses Allen on War Room constantly. By late 2024, when the Trump administration tried to lift AI regulation bans, Bannon’s coalition stopped them. Bannon told ABC News he was mobilizing the base. “I want you to go to every church,” he told Allen. “Every MAGA meeting.” Get them on the ground floor.
The AI safety world is usually a small, incestuous club. People live in London or Berkeley. They argue in group chats. Should we halt AI? It will kill us. Or should we race ahead? It will save us. Allen broke into that world. An outsider. He speaks their language but adds a conspiracy tint. Since his 2023 book, he’s debated everyone. Gary Marcus. Max More. Nell Watson. Even appeared with Max Tegmark, a top AI scholar, on War Room. The insiders started spamming group chats. “Joe! Joe! Joe!”
In late 2024, the Center for AI Safety hired Allen to advise a new group. “Humans First.” A rallying cry. Their goal was to get regular people to demand guardrails. To protect humanity’s purpose. The event I attended in Georgia was their second stop.
The hall was half full. Students from a new AI safety club. A camera crew from More Perfect Union, a leftist channel obsessed with anti-data-center videos. Wealthy Atlantans in their thirties. Glossy hair. Partners in tow.
Jeremy Ornstein started the talk. A Humans First staffer with wild hair. Background in climate organizing. “A tiny group in control is racing ahead,” he said. Obama cadence. Power and profit.
Then Allen came out. Flag buckle on his belt. “Howdy, Georgia.” He stood before a whiteboard. He’d doodled a Jetsons-style robot aiming a ray gun at dazed stick figures. “HUMANS FIRST” in big letters. Underlined four times.
He showed clips of Sam Altman. Cut with Marshall Applewhite, the Heaven’s Gate cult leader. The metaphor? AI leaders believe we need to shed our bodies. Ascend. Meet the super-intelligents. The audience laughed nervously.
Allen’s lectures mash up right-wing talking points with psychedelic dystopias. He talks about tech oligarchs replacing humanity with robots. It sounds insane. Until you remember. Elon Musk has a brain-chip company. Sam Altman wrote that humans are just the “biological bootloader” for digital intelligence. Then we fade away.
“Even if machines are smarter,” Allen boomed, “you have to fight. If you don’t, you’re a weakling. You lay down and let the machine roll over like a monster truck. No one wants that.” I felt a sudden rush of agreement. Yeah. Hell yeah.
He ended with a shout to the crowd. To the greens: “Earth first!” To the patriots: “America first!” To everyone with fire in their veins: “In a machine age, humans first.” I almost stood up.
The “friends” he dragged me to meet were the same well-dressed Atlantans from the talk. We chased robots. Drank whiskey. Then joined them. I asked if he had any nice tech memories. He rattled off some alt-Gen-X stories. Jane’s Addiction websites. Rotten.com. The real moment? Ted Kaczynski.
Allen wrote about finding the Unabomber’s manifesto online in the late 90s. Kaczynski, the math genius who bombed executives, wrote Industrial Society and Its Future. The government published it to stop the bombs. Allen called Kaczynski’s logic clearer than any techie’s.
The influence shows. On War Room, Allen acts like a preacher. Warning of dystopia. His work touches on body horror. What happens to our souls when our bodies digitize? I asked why people hate data centers. He gave me an answer that chilled me.
“If you see a fetus,” he said, “watch the brain grow. Neurons forming. It’s amazing.” Data centers? Think of them as the neurons of the Antichrist. That’s what we’re witnessing. The False Messiah.
We got to the restaurant. The friends made space. Ordered bread. One of them was Hannah Cox. An influencer with 100k followers on X. Her husband works in tech. He’s been “completely blackpilled” by AI taking jobs. She calls herself “politically homeless.” She came to Allen’s talk. Not because she likes him. But because she feels something is wrong.
Her feed is different from mine. She tells me her timeline is united. Everyone believes data centers are for surveillance. Ubiquitous fear. It feels like a conclusion we’ve already reached.
Two days after dropping Allen at the airport, I drove to Troup County. South of Atlanta. Met Gage Bailey, a local activist. He was waiting. Coffee shop. Stacks of documents in front of him. Color-coded. An iced drink with a mountain of whipped cream.
Bailey is a Democrat. Environmental science degree. Heard about data centers in spring 2024. An acquaintance mentioned one on old industrial land. No details. No power usage stats. No water draw info. So Bailey started researching. Wrote a 13-page memo. Footnotes everywhere. Primary sources. He wanted to know the environmental cost.
Like many of the first folks involved in this fight, Bailey didn’t start out hating technology. He started by hating the lack of transparency. But the anger grew. And now, it’s spreading.
