A protester crashed a large pro-data center gathering in Washington, D.C., flashing obscene gestures at attendees and shouting about the industry’s water use while President Donald Trump pushes to accelerate America’s artificial intelligence and data center buildout.
“Thank you for using all of our water!” and “You’re killing the world,” the protester shouted as she interrupted the party, directing middle fingers at the crowd while chanting against data centers.
The event, called “Data After Dark,” was hosted by three self-described data center “fanboys” and drew more than 600 people to show support for data center infrastructure.
Party co-host and Young Voices CEO Casey Givens told Fox News Digital that one protester initially approached him asking to give a toast in support of data centers. After he refused, she jumped onstage and tried to grab the microphone from co-host Jonas Du. Security removed her from the event, and the crowd responded by chanting “USA, USA, USA.”
Data centers power artificial intelligence by housing thousands of high-performance computers that store, process and analyze data, allowing AI systems to be trained and to operate.
“I organized the party along with my co-hosts because the three of us were dismayed by how one side was dominating the data center conversation with hysteria instead of reason,” Givens said. “We wanted to push back by throwing a celebration of technology and benefits of data centers — locally in terms of tax revenue and economic development, and nationally in terms of innovation and the fight against China.”
The party featured themed cocktails, including one called the “Loudoun County Iced Tea,” a nod to the Northern Virginia county that, according to its own website, handles more than 70% of global internet traffic across roughly 250 data centers.
Trump has pushed for a rapid buildout of data centers as part of his broader AI agenda, arguing the U.S. must stay ahead of China in the global AI race and that resistance to these projects hands Beijing an advantage.
“If you want to go through poverty, crime and squalor, I would say don’t approve of data centers,” Trump said from the Oval Office on Sept. 4.
Trump touted American AI supremacy over China in an address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, invoking his term for the technology, “superintelligence.”
“Every major new technology brings challenges, and superintelligence is no exception,” Trump said. “Whoever wins superintelligence wins. That’s the group that wins. And we’re leading now over China by a lot and everyone else. And we’re going to keep it that way.”
