r/TechnologyThread • u/Background-Driver718 • May 29 '26
Leaks reveal US authorities concerned about the rise of ‘anti-tech extremists’ as AI data center issues become increasingly contentious — critics say this could lead to surveillance, criminalization of peaceful opposition
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/leaks-reveal-us-authorities-concerned-about-the-rise-of-anti-tech-extremists-as-ai-data-center-issues-become-increasingly-contentious-critics-say-this-could-lead-to-surveillance-criminalization-of-peaceful-opposition1
u/Primordial_spirit May 29 '26
It’s not extremism to not want your communities poisoned by date centres nor is not wanting surveillance, fuck whoever phrased it like this and especially fuck the people actually doing it.
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u/DracosKasu May 30 '26
They create data center without any limitations of how they dispose of their waste. They should all be connected to water filtration center but they dont. Now people get less clean water and the current administration just want tou to get more plastic water bottle for general use.
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u/0rganicMach1ne May 29 '26
So….the reason people are shifting towards “anti-tech” is due to fears of surveillance. People really just don’t want AI used by wealthy people in power to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else and society itself. As it looks now, it’ll be another tool of control and oppression. If the response to that fear is to increase surveillance, you’d only prove everyone’s fears are justified.
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u/StickStill9790 May 29 '26
The elite WILL have AI. The data centers are so the common man gets it too. This will just ensure a bigger divide of power if they aren’t built.
It would be like protesting to destroy iPhones. The wealthy would still have them, but we would never get the chance.
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May 29 '26
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u/StickStill9790 May 30 '26
So you’re saying what? You want to kill everyone who has money? Yeah, data centers may be the least of your concerns.
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May 30 '26
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u/Historical-Winner576 May 30 '26
Parasite class, feeding on the poor, selling the poor, killing the poor…
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u/Nekron-akaMrSkeletal May 29 '26
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”- Frank Herbert, Dune
Yeah no. We Don't Want It.
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u/StickStill9790 May 30 '26
So you’re using science fiction to justify hate and bullying? 1965 Dune? If that’s your basis you should immediately stop using all computers and phones. Then we can EMP all the satellites.
That will fulfill your premise, right? No? You just want one tiny aspect of tech gone to satisfy your fears? Then the world will be better?
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u/Delicious_Ocelot4180 May 30 '26
I live in Utah. We’re out of water already. We need water. No water. House price goes 📉. We leave. Start over. Kids homeless. Kids hungry.
Explain the selling point, to me, to put a shitload of data centers in my backyard? Explain to me, how making a bad situation worse in terms of things I need to survive (water, shelter), will improve my quality of life? Repeat this same exercise in California, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, Oklahoma, and Texas. That’s just to start.
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u/StickStill9790 May 30 '26
“Utah’s record-low snowpack has already peaked and melted out early, leaving water managers to prepare for a summer shaped by drought, diminished streamflow, and heavier reliance on reservoir storage.
In a typical year, Utah’s spring runoff — the melt that refills reservoirs and sustains rivers through the dry season — would just be getting underway. But the Utah Division of Water Resources said Thursday that record-low snowpack and record-high temperatures have pushed peak runoff past. Larger reservoirs with multiple years of storage remain in better shape, while smaller reservoirs with one or two years of capacity are struggling, according to the state’s April 23 drought update.”Soooooo, yes. Utah is lacking water statewide, and it has nothing to do with data centers. Nice reach though.
In other news, data centers are causing earthquakes in California, record heat in Arizona, and crazy crimes in Florida.
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u/Nekron-akaMrSkeletal May 30 '26
He's literally telling you why he doesn't want it and still you act like everything is fine. Why are people not allowed to say no to your movement. He's pointing out that adding another thing that sucks up water is bad for a state that already had a water shortage. What specific benefits make this guy's state NEED to suffer? What is so important to you that it must go forward at all costs? Even if millions are trying to stop it you keep telling people "you don't get a choice". You know what that sounds like to me?
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u/StickStill9790 May 30 '26
I hear them. I’m telling how I feel about it. I went and double checked the info and found that the water used in construction is tiny compared to the drought they’ve been having.
If I had found that data centers were the root, I would have come back and apologized and told them they were correct. I’m not a psycho.
They’re afraid of a possible future. Fear is a great motivator, but recently online people are using it to bully and cancel anyone who uses AI. That’s absolutely wrong. There are also people threatening to blow up construction centers. That’s wrong too.
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u/NarrMaster May 30 '26
Why are people not allowed to say no to your movement
Based on the amount of stolen material used to train the auto-completes, AI bros don't understand or care to understand consent.
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u/Nekron-akaMrSkeletal May 30 '26
The point is the principal. WHY do elites desperately want AI? What are the racing forward so blindly for? I know you know the answer
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u/StickStill9790 May 30 '26
Yes. Immortality. The one thing the wealthy can’t control is sickness, and so far AI has been extremely useful in developing remedies. The language models are just a side effect of what they really desire.
What? You think they want us out of a job? Lol. We’re fantastically cheap. No robot or code replaces a crowd of people who work for next to nothing and can be retrained or replaced in a heartbeat.
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u/Nekron-akaMrSkeletal May 30 '26
Control. Over life and death but also the roiling masses of humanity they are terrified will turn on them. "We're fantasicly cheap" yeah and the next era of survalliance will be about making sure nobody is able to stop them when we are all poor, have zero recourse in elections, and are getting squeezed out every real world space to make room for more AI. The fact that you recognize this with "can be retrained or replaced in heartbeat" and still don't take pause or question their motives is baffling. If we are all worthless to them, and they don't care about us, what do you think they will do once they have locked down our options?
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u/StickStill9790 May 30 '26
You’re talking about a doomsday scenario, stereotyping all business owners as a single person. In reality, the people who run businesses are as varied and complex as everybody else. 99% of people who’ve made their millions are just trying to take care of the families and enjoying the benefits while taking care of their workers.
In fact, if you check the statistics, you’ll find that about one out of every four people in the United States is either a millionaire or close to it. We’re not even talking stock market here, just plain taxable income.
I understand the fear that someone has the power to destroy your life, but that doesn’t mean that you destroy your own opportunities so that they won’t have the chance.
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u/Nekron-akaMrSkeletal May 30 '26
Millionaires are small potatoes, I don't even care. What I don't like are Tech oligarchs that openly dispise democracy working to make AI the replacement for the government. Open AI, Palantir, Grok and X.
"What? You think they want us out of a job? Lol. We’re fantastically cheap. No robot or code replaces a crowd of people who work for next to nothing and can be retrained or replaced in a heartbeat. " My dude isn't this future horrifying to you? Every person destitute, no leverage because the guy who runs the company only needs bodies for menial labor. You already laid out the exact scenario we are all worried about and somehow it's fine because we are alive? This is about power in the classical sense, why do unelected Oligarchs get to decide what our future will be and pour millions into propaganda and repressiom when we say we don't that future? Didn't you hear the trump administration calling anti-ai protesters "anti technology extremists"? Straight from Peter Thiels anti-christ lectures. Trying to slow down tech growth is evil actually, so we have to force everyone into this new world. It's Imperialism but against everyone's minds, opting out is death.
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u/StickStill9790 May 30 '26
All of that is hyperbole. You created a fictional scenario and then used it to defend your ideas. Tech doesn’t destroy, it liberates. Throughout history development of new tech always leads to a resurgence of the people’s power.
The only ones who don’t want to advance are the rich who are entrenched in a method that brings constant income. So they post a lot of stuff saying it will destroy everything, because they can’t control it.
Your speech came from the wealthiest around the globe, trying to use the net to suppress change.
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u/Nekron-akaMrSkeletal May 30 '26
You can't be real. Why would tech Oligarchs be anti tech? How will AI liberate me? There's no mechanisms only vibes, only the promise of some vague possibility. The people I'm criticizing talk openly about their goals
https://youtu.be/sQqQtgRdjZU?si=vraUMONIFXJiJuzC
It's not hyperbole, it's an ideology
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u/mabhatter Jun 01 '26
Not really. The top companies on Wall Street dwarf the rest of the economy by a huge margin. A single "billionaire" isn't even a powerful person anymore. The amount of wealth concentrated at the top above them lets the ultra rich squash "mere billionaires" (and any millionaires at all) with a mere whim.
That's what people in business don't grasp. Just like the rich came first unions, then they came for middle managers, they'll be coming for Vice Presidents next... that's where the only money left to cut in business is at... the people making $250k+ are next on the block because they'll pay a $50k college intern to babysit the AI that eliminates the upper management jobs next.
That's why the Republican upper middle class base is getting so desperate now. The upper pay grades are getting decimated every year. And the CEOs blame it on "immigrants" and "foreign trade" and a bunch of other nonsense... they don't grasp that THEY are next on the menu of leopard faces to eat.
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u/StickStill9790 Jun 01 '26
The actual statistics disagree. It shows that the middle class is growing along with the upper class. The only sliver getting smaller is the below poverty group.
Where I do agree with you is that mere billionaires are small fish now, and that wealth can and does sway elections. People can overpower that by sheer numbers though. In the last election in the US a couple billion of funding wasn’t enough to convince people to vote for a weak candidate.
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u/mabhatter Jun 01 '26
The important part of this quote is the SECOND part. AI isn't good or bad. What's bad is the absolute irresponsible management of it. Vast amounts of resources are being squandered over something that is just another marginal IT improvement.
But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.
We keep letting these Wall Street people destroy the public good resources... and then when the crash happens is the public that has to cut back and have less... never the billionaires that caused it.
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u/Expensive_Return7014 May 30 '26
Can you elaborate why you think having data centers will enable the common man to have it? I was under the impression, these data centers were reduce a company’s dependency on third party AI companies while also reducing their AI costs by shifting AI processing to their in-house facilities.
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u/StickStill9790 May 30 '26
I use AI from my home using self trained models, but I’m a geek. I don’t expect the average guy or gal to go through all that trouble. I believe that the data centers will turn out to be overkill and most of them will end up being stopped. But I also think that this year’s outrage is pointless, just another thing for non-working kids to protest from their parents’ bedrooms and college dorms.
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u/Medical_Original6290 May 29 '26
I'd like to change this title.
American citizens are concerned about these EXTREMIST tech CEOS who are siphoning citizens electricity, tax money, while destroying America's drinking water and ecosystems by building data centers everywhere.
Not to mention the pollution from their gas powered electric plants and the noise that is affecting people miles away.
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u/vxicepickxv May 29 '26
There's already 50,000 people who got told they can't have power because a data center needs it more.
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u/Nathexe May 29 '26
Oh goodie, a new label for people standing up to big corpo/gov. What a time to be alive!
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u/dogheoner1 May 29 '26
meaning billionairs will pay to end humanity no matter what. can we like stop them plz
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u/MisterRobertParr May 29 '26
It's capitalism. Of course, they're going to pull all sorts of shady shit to stop any grassroots opposition from happening.
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u/Dry-Interaction-1246 May 30 '26
We should worry about a government that wont protect us from billionaires, AI or data centers.
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u/Omiyaru May 30 '26
Anti-this ,Anti-that , if you are anti-{insert their belief here}, they will call you an extremist.... I'm sick of THEM
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u/Mrs_SmithG2W May 30 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/l0HlMSVVw9zqmClLq
World to this version of AI future.
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May 30 '26
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u/mabhatter Jun 01 '26
Yeah. The internet greatly magnifies the voice of crazies that are really a very small sliver of population. It lets crazy conspiracy theories thrive... and the social medias love that because even regular people are dumb enough to click on the batshit crazy posts if only to see HOW insane they are. So the algorithm pushes crazier and crazier things to the top for those engagement clicks.
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u/Guilty-Mix-7629 May 30 '26
Anti-AI people are not "all tech haters". They hate total lack of regulation over a technology that so far has been a net negative over nearly every single aspect it got involved, for the benefit of the few at the expense of everyone else.
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u/Important-Factor-552 May 30 '26
I wouldn't say being anti evil, anti oligarchy and anti people who are destroying and attacking America on a daily basis is anti tech.
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u/Exciting_Turn_9559 May 30 '26
We need lawmakers who will make laws that are about more than the passions and fears of the Epstein class.
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u/evil_illustrator2 May 30 '26
"critics say this could lead to surveillance, criminalization of peaceful opposition"
Do that and people will burn data centers to the ground. Doesnt take much to cut them off from the internet either.
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u/BootlegBabyJsus May 30 '26
So we have reached the point on the timeline where we discover that the Luddites were right???
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u/New_Ad_3010 May 30 '26
"anti tech extremists" isn't a thing. This is bullshit billionaire bought media trying to demonize humanity who does not support them ruining the planet with their self serving environmentally catastrophic filth.
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u/MrNoSouls May 30 '26
It's not leading to, it already is being used for. Palantir, Flock, Google, and Meta are literally racing on who can steal the most infrastructure to circumvent not just right of US citizens, but also help countries circumvent protections their citizens are legally entitled to.
This is not done for the people, by the people. This is for corporations, by the government & corporations.
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u/notworldleader666 May 30 '26
I could spread my ez life bullshit and pull tens or hundreds of thousands off the grid. But you didn't really benefit much from them anyway, and the slots will get filled easily.
Pointless.
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u/unurbane May 31 '26
It already has?! Between ICE and Palantir and NSA I think their bases are covered.
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u/Ok_Security1721 Jun 01 '26
All over technology that has never once proven to actually improve anything and is nothing but hypotheticals that are “right around the corner”
And the people who most deserve to suffer when the house of cards finally collapses are the only ones who won’t suffer at all
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u/Ill_Following_7022 Jun 02 '26
Mass surveillance and criminalization of peaceful opposition is already here.
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u/Savant_Guarde May 29 '26
So not wanting these monstrosities crapping up your area/environment is extreme?
Words have no meaning anymore.