In the heart of Atlanta, a man with a mission sprints toward a delivery robot, his curiosity piqued by the machine’s name. This man is Joe Allen, a former rigger turned anti-tech prophet, who has risen to national prominence as a vocal critic of artificial intelligence. His journey has led him to the forefront of a growing movement against data centers, a battle that is uniting unlikely allies across the political spectrum.
Allen’s story begins in the music industry, where he toured internationally as a rigger for acts like the Black Eyed Peas and Calvin Harris. But when the industry collapsed during Covid, he turned his attention to writing about the evils of technology. His unique background and ability to speak the language of both the tech world and the masses have made him a formidable force in the anti-AI movement.
The Birth of a Movement
The movement against data centers has its roots in classic NIMBYism, but the pace of the outrage that’s built up around the country is shocking. A recent Gallup poll showed that 70 percent of Americans would somewhat oppose or strongly oppose data center construction in their area. This opposition has led to attacks on pro-data-center council members, tech CEOs, and countless cities and counties passing their own bans or moratoriums.
The backlash against data centers is not just about environmental and civic worries. It’s also about concerns over job loss and the impact of AI on human creativity. Research shows that very few people opposed to data centers actually live near them, and most of those who are against data centers are also skeptical of AI. This growing evidence suggests that the populist right may have a better understanding of Americans’ attitudes to tech and the built environment.
Joe Allen: The Anti-Tech Prophet
Joe Allen, with his startlingly blue eyes and shit-eating grin, has an origin story that’s catnip to journalists. After touring internationally for years as a rigger, he watched the music industry collapse during Covid. He’d been writing about the evils of technology for far-right and far-left outlets, and he was living in a van in 2026 when Steve Bannon’s producer called to invite him on War Room. Bannon offered him a job as a tech correspondent shortly afterward.
Allen’s lectures follow a familiar pattern: jarringly right-wing talking points smashed together with hallucinogenic nightmare descriptions of our future. A lot of it can sound completely insane, until you remember: Oh, right. Elon Musk does own a brain-chip implantation company. Sam Altman has blogged about how humans will ‘be the biological bootloader for digital intelligence and then fade into an evolutionary tree branch.’
The Unlikely Allies
The movement against data centers is bringing together the most disparate neighbors in all regions of the country. There’s a dream here, evident even in the pages of The New York Times, which in early May ran a headline that called data centers ‘the most bipartisan issue since beer.’ The movement seems to envision a middle ground between rejecting technology wholesale and rolling over and giving Big Tech everything it wants.
But even if this middle ground does exist, it’s going to be a journey to reach it—one that our political system might not be prepared for. In the weeks after I return from Georgia, it feels like the mainstream right fully takes over the data center conversation. People like Tucker Carlson and Matt Walsh make viral videos questioning the construction of specific projects. Politics comes for Humans First too, as the organization splits along partisan lines.
In the end, the movement against AI and data centers is about more than just technology. It’s about the future of humanity, the primacy of human creativity, and the right to control our own destiny. As Joe Allen says, ‘In a machine age, humans first.’
