Humans First has spent the summer telling Americans that conservatives have risen up against AI data centers. The group, which is one of several astroturf organizations that have popped up in recent months to influence policy in D.C., was incorporated by staffers from a far-left San Francisco AI nonprofit, and its funding traces to left-wing activists who bankrolled Defund the Police and Abolish ICE. The astroturf has a purpose: to convince Republican lawmakers on the national and state levels that a sweeping federal ban on American technological infrastructure is a right-wing idea.
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It is not.
The con continues apace. Axios previewed their July protests in an article headlined “Conservatives plan nationwide protest against AI data centers.” Business Insider followed with a glowing profile of its chair: “Meet the MAGA darling mobilizing Americans against Big AI.” Once the demonstrations happened, local CBS affiliates described Humans First as the “conservative movement that organized” them, and an ABC station reported that protests had swept the country under a “conservative group.” The Hill and the New Republic, among others, used similar labels.
The group has spent untold millions to basically gaslight the nation into accepting the idea that banning frontier technologies is MAGA. When we explore its founding, the con becomes very clear.
Just start with the incorporation records, which list staffers from the Center for AI Safety (CAIS)—a San Francisco nonprofit affiliated with the left-wing Effective Altruism movement—as the real founders of Humans First. After yours truly reported this news, NBC News confirmed that CAIS incubated the group and extended it a startup loan.
CAIS, in turn, is heavily funded by Open Philanthropy, an EA staple that recently rebranded as Coefficient Giving, which relies almost entirely on the fortune of Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna. The Washington Examiner traced the group’s early money there.
For whatever reason, Moskovitz and Tuna do not attract the same attention as George Soros, but the couple has bankrolled Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign and supported some of the most destructive left-wing causes of the past decade. They supported efforts to defund the police and abolish ICE and helped to install the rogue prosecutors who make life miserable for law enforcement and overall civil society.
They’re now using the money to try to destroy American technological infrastructure through groups like Humans First.
The astroturf outfit did not even begin as a conservative organization. It launched as an explicitly bipartisan organization and only later rewrote its own website to call itself a “conservative social movement dedicated to ensuring that the future of AI is in the hands of everyday people.” Its early staff included a fanatical climate change activist and an events organizer for Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. Some “grassroots conservative movement,” right?
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The group supported and funded simultaneous protests against data centers on July 18. Fox News found that Humans First had enlisted Green Party figures and Democrat-aligned activists as local organizers, including an Illinois Green Party chapter running the event outside Chicago. In Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the local newspaper reported that the speakers included a Democratic state house candidate, a Democratic state senate candidate, and Tony Dastra, the Green Party’s candidate for governor.
The protests often drew more press than protesters. In Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, no one showed up at all. In Gilroy, California, a handful appeared, and they were not there about data centers. No, they were holding signs attacking ICE. Local coverage in Atlanta, a metro of six million, counted six whole people.
Putting all of that aside, there is nothing conservative about a sweeping government ban on a technology. The precautionary principle is a left-wing invention to support degrowth objectives, and conservatives have spent decades fighting it. The same logic has strangled civilian nuclear power since the Nixon era. It is also the logic behind pipeline blockades, fracking moratoriums, and an environmental review regime that makes it take a decade to replace a small-town bridge. Just look to the high-speed rail project in California to see how this movie ends.
Humans First essentially exists so a Democratic legislator can tell a Republican legislator that the opposition is bipartisan. “Hey look, even conservatives are marching!” They want to confuse lawmakers and convince them to reject abundance, embrace lunacy, and lean into the hysteria of our time.
Conservatives do have real complaints here, and they deserve honest answers. Taxpayers shouldn’t have to deal with rising utility costs, which means that counties should not hand out sweetheart abatements that shift the burden onto homeowners. Neighbors of a new buildout deserve a hearing and cooperation. In short, this is the ordinary business of self-government. That isn’t solved by a federal or statewide freeze that hands the ultimate veto over community priorities.
The country that builds the most robust and efficient technological infrastructure is best positioned to thrive for the next several decades. For America to win the AI race, degrowth forces like Humans First and its fellow astroturf organizations need to be exposed and swept away into irrelevance.
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