There’s something rotten in the state of grassroots conservatism, and it smells suspiciously like San Francisco.
A group calling itself Humans First has been making noise across the country, claiming to represent everyday conservatives worried about the explosion of AI data centers. They’ve organized protests, rallied concerned citizens, and wrapped themselves in the language of traditional values and local control. The pitch sounds reasonable enough at first. Who doesn’t want to protect their community from runaway development?
But here’s the problem. When you pull back the curtain on this supposedly conservative movement, you find something else entirely. The incorporation papers tell a different story than the public messaging. Humans First didn’t emerge from church basements or county Republican meetings. It came from the Center for AI Safety, a San Francisco nonprofit that provided both the initial staffing and the startup capital through a loan. Let that sink in for a moment.
The public face is Amy Kremer, a legitimate right-wing activist with Tea Party credentials. She’s the person you see in the press releases and at the microphones. But the local organizers planning those July protests? Many of them have backgrounds firmly planted in left-of-center politics. Some worked with Green Party figures. Others had ties to Democratic-aligned activist networks. This isn’t speculation or guilt by association. It’s documented fact.
You know what this really is? It’s astroturfing dressed up in red, white, and blue. And it’s targeting one of President Trump’s major economic priorities, the acceleration of data center construction that America needs to win the AI race against China.
Bernie Sanders and AOC have already introduced legislation calling for a nationwide moratorium on new data centers. They’re citing environmental concerns and potential job displacement, the usual progressive talking points about how innovation and growth are actually dangerous. The economic implications are staggering, but the evidence supporting their claims about rising energy costs directly tied to data centers remains conspicuously thin.
Here’s where it gets interesting. The progressive left has figured out something important about modern politics. Sometimes the most effective opposition doesn’t come from your own side. It comes from creating the appearance of dissent within the other camp. Why fight Trump’s data center push as Democrats when you can manufacture a conservative rebellion against it?
This matters because conservatives have real principles about local control and community input. We believe in subsidiarity, in keeping decisions close to the people affected by them. That’s genuine. But those principles can be weaponized by bad actors who don’t share them, who simply want to slow American competitiveness and economic growth.
The irony is thick enough to cut with a knife. The same people who mock conservatives for worrying about foreign influence in American politics are apparently fine with wealthy foreign interests potentially bankrolling anti-data center campaigns across the country. Top energy groups have raised exactly this concern, and the silence from the usual watchdogs is deafening.
Free market capitalism requires infrastructure. It requires energy. It requires the willingness to build things and take risks and compete on the global stage. China isn’t holding moratoriums on their AI infrastructure. They’re not letting environmental activists slow their technological advancement. They’re building, and they’re building fast.
We can have legitimate debates about energy policy and community impact. Those conversations matter. But they need to happen honestly, with people stating their actual positions instead of playing dress-up. If progressives want to oppose data centers, they should do it under their own banner, with their own arguments, and let voters judge accordingly.
The Tea Party movement that Kremer helped lead years ago was authentic grassroots energy. It emerged from real frustration with government overreach and fiscal irresponsibility. People organized because they believed something, not because someone in San Francisco wrote them a check and handed them talking points.
That’s the difference between genuine political movements and manufactured opposition. One builds from the ground up, messy and imperfect but real. The other gets assembled in conference rooms by people who think they’re clever enough to fool everyone. They’re not.
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