FBI Builds ‘Anti-Tech Extremism’ Files as AI Backlash Grows

A new category of domestic threat called anti-tech violent extremism has surfaced inside federal intelligence files, and it points at Americans who oppose artificial intelligence and the data centers that power it. More than 1,000 pages of unpublished reports obtained by WIRED show the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS, the federal agency that runs domestic security), and regional intelligence fusion centers tracking the residents who fill town halls and county budget meetings to fight new server farms.

Civil liberties lawyers who have read the documents see a familiar cycle. Over the past two decades, the same intelligence apparatus has wrapped a terrorism vocabulary around peaceful movements, from environmental campaigners to Occupy Wall Street, and quietly retired each label only after the surveillance was exposed.

A New Threat Label Buried in Fusion Center Files

The term does not appear in any public domestic extremism handbook. That is the first thing that stands out about it. The reports group ordinary tech pushback under a single security heading that, until now, had no published definition and no formal place in the government’s catalog of threats.

The warnings inside the files run hot. The New York State Intelligence and Counterterrorism bureau told partners that the disorder around emerging technology could drive “large-scale protests” and tip into civil unrest or sabotage in major cities within the next five years. A fusion center in Western Pennsylvania circulated a separate concern: that homegrown factions or foreign adversaries might use front organizations to reach the country’s data center infrastructure. Both readings treat opposition as a security problem before any crime has occurred.

What unsettles the lawyers is the everyday conduct the files flag as a possible precursor to violence. According to the reporting, the indicators include:

• Photographing or filming a data center site
• Observing or loitering near a facility
• Voicing strong critical opinions about AI or a planned build
• Attending a public meeting where a project is on the agenda

None of that is illegal. Each of it is also how local opposition to any large construction project normally looks. This is not the first time the bureau has cast a wide net in the name of digital safety; it follows the FBI’s earlier alarm over data-harvesting mobile apps aimed at the general public.

The Electricity Bill Driving the Backlash

The anger the files describe is not abstract. It shows up on power bills. Data centers are the fastest-growing load on the American grid, and in regions thick with them, households are already paying for the build-out.

One Virginia resident opened a January 2026 electricity bill of $281, up from roughly $100 the month before. In areas with heavy data center clusters, electricity prices have climbed 267 percent over five years. Utilities asked state regulators to approve a record $31 billion in rate increases across 2025, and federal lab projections put data centers on track to consume about 12 percent of all US electricity by 2028.

Public mood has moved with the meters:

• 78 percent of Americans told a November 2025 national survey they were somewhat or very concerned that new data centers would raise their energy bills.
• 267% jump in electricity prices over five years in the regions most saturated with server farms.
• $31 billion in utility rate increases requested from state regulators in a single year.

Add round-the-clock noise and heavy water draws on local supplies, and the result is a steady stream of residents at zoning boards and budget hearings. Those are the same rooms the intelligence reports describe monitoring. The grievance is a kitchen-table cost. The official response is filed under counterterrorism.

Fusion Centers Have Run This Play Before

Fusion centers were stood up after the September 11 attacks to share threat intelligence across local, state, and federal agencies. Almost from the start, watchdogs documented them drifting from terrorism toward ordinary political activity. The new label fits a pattern researchers can date precisely.

The FBI first used “black identity extremist” in an assessment dated August 3, 2017, then dropped it in July 2019 after critics tied it to COINTELPRO (the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program that illegally targeted civil rights leaders in the 1960s). Before that came the Green Scare, the late 1990s and mid-2000s stretch when lawmakers and agents branded environmental and animal rights activists as terrorists. In 2011, DHS-funded fusion centers ran hour-by-hour surveillance of the peaceful Occupy movement. In 2018, the Virginia Fusion Center monitored tree-sitters opposing the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), coordinating with a corporate stakeholder in the project.

The records on those earlier episodes exist largely because civil liberties groups forced them out. The American Civil Liberties Union has spent years in court trying to pry loose fusion center and task force surveillance files documenting exactly this kind of mission creep.

The Memo That Turned Beliefs Into Indicators

The new monitoring did not appear in a vacuum. It tracks a federal directive issued on September 25, 2025, the National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.” The memo names a set of beliefs as common threads behind violent conduct.

Those listed categories include:

• Anti-Americanism
• Anti-capitalism
• Anti-Christianity
• “Extremism on migration, race, and gender”
• Hostility toward “traditional American views on family, religion, and morality”

The memo hands the National Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) the job of coordinating investigations into political violence. Legal analysts at the ACLU and the Brennan Center for Justice stress that the order creates no new federal crimes and no domestic terrorism designation regime; its force is rhetorical and directional, steering existing investigative powers toward protected belief. You can read the directive itself in the White House presidential action on domestic terrorism and political violence.

The timing matters. The same administration has pushed hard for rapid corporate infrastructure growth and signed executive orders aimed at overriding restrictive state-level AI rules. Opposition to data centers, in that frame, can read as opposition to a national priority, which lowers the bar for treating a town hall complaint as a security concern.

The Real Crimes and the Wider Net

There is a genuine violent case at the center of all this. The Zizians, an informal group of rationalists with extreme beliefs touching on AI and animal rights, have been linked to six deaths across several states. Jack “Ziz” LaSota, described by authorities as the group’s apparent leader, faces a federal armed-fugitive charge, and a Maryland judge ordered a competency review in March 2026 as related drug and weapons trials were pushed to June. That is real criminal conduct, and no civil liberties argument disputes prosecuting it.

The objection is the gap between that case and the rest of the net. The same documents that note genuine threats also log nonviolent, constitutionally protected events, including anti-Elon Musk “Tesla Takedown” rallies and routine civic forums. Suspicious activity reports, the lawyers warn, are easy to fill with bias and thin on fact.

As people continue to organize for a better future, we’re likely to see more surveillance and criminalization of this opposition, just as we have of Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, and environmental movements in recent decades.

That warning came from Spencer Reynolds, a senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program, speaking to WIRED. His point echoes a broader unease in the field, captured in earlier warnings from a senior engineer about surveillance and AI weapons. If the label sticks the way “black identity extremist” did for two years, the test is whether courts and records requests pull the files into daylight before the next election cycle, or whether the next exposure arrives only after the surveillance has already shaped who feels safe speaking at a public meeting.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is “Anti-Tech Violent Extremism”?

It is an informal threat grouping that appears in unpublished FBI, DHS, and fusion center reports, used to describe people who oppose artificial intelligence and data center construction. It has no public definition and does not appear in any official domestic extremism handbook, which is part of why civil liberties groups object to it.

Is It Illegal to Protest a Data Center?

No. Attending town halls, filming a facility from public property, and voicing opposition are constitutionally protected activities. The concern raised by the leaked documents is that intelligence centers list some of those lawful actions as possible precursors to violence, which can place peaceful participants in security databases.

What Does NSPM-7 Actually Change?

National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, signed September 25, 2025, directs federal task forces to prioritize political violence linked to beliefs such as anti-capitalism and anti-Americanism. Legal analysts note it creates no new crimes and no formal terrorism designation; its effect is to steer existing investigative powers toward protected political belief.

Who Are the Zizians?

The Zizians are an informal group of rationalists with extreme views on AI, veganism, and gender, linked by authorities to six deaths in multiple states. Their alleged leader, Jack “Ziz” LaSota, faces criminal charges, and the group is the real violent case authorities cite when defending the broader monitoring effort.

Why Are Electricity Bills Part of This Story?

Data centers are the main driver of surging power demand. Households in data-center-heavy regions have seen bills spike, with one Virginia resident’s monthly charge reaching $281, and 78 percent of Americans told a 2025 survey they fear data centers will raise their bills. That cost anger fuels the local opposition now being monitored.