US law enforcement warns of ‘anti-technology extremism’ as hatred of artificial intelligence grows

in the wake of to Attacks On CEOs, nationwide protest a movement Target data centers and increase Fears About AI job replacement, federal intelligence agencies and local law enforcement are circulating reports with a new domestic target in mind: anti-technology extremists.

More than 1,000 pages of unpublished reports from the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and the fusion centers, obtained by WIRED, show a national shift taking place in monitoring this new and alarmingly broad category of people and activities considered an emerging threat.

This new effort follows the efforts of President Donald Trump National Security Presidential Memorandum No. 7which directs the Department of Justice to target anyone with “anti-American,” “anti-Christian,” and “anti-capitalist” beliefs. Earlier this month, the Trump administration’s counterterrorism czar, Sebastian Gorka, issued a public statement Counter-terrorism strategy Claiming that left-wing extremists are one of the top three counterterrorism priorities facing the United States.

Taken together, these Trump administration directives directed domestic watchdogs to monitor and criminalize speech and assembly that challenges the White House’s ideology. The new focus on anti-tech extremism adds an unheralded category to already broad rankings under a presidency that has invested heavy political and material capital in Amnesty International and The spread of data centers.

Among the documents And on the slide obtained by WIRED is a report from the New York Office of Intelligence and Counterterrorism warning of widespread disruption in response to the adoption of artificial intelligence. Of particular note is the new term for what the office claims is an emerging extremist threat.

“The chaotic atmosphere that could result from the emergence of artificial intelligence technology in the next five years could fuel widespread protests that turn into civil unrest and violent extremist anti-technology activities, especially in large urban areas such as New York City,” the report stated. The term “violent anti-tech extremism” does not appear in any publicly available DHS or FBI domestic extremism reports or guides, and represents a new collection of a broad range of ideologies under a single extremist category.

In the same Intelligence Bureau assessment, analysts also describe a new threat that has emerged in the wake of the attack Arrest and trial Judge Lauta, An extreme rationalist who allegedly led a small cult-like groupThree of its members, linked to an obsessive ideology focused on the existential danger posed by artificial intelligence, have been charged with murder.

While Ziziya’s ideology is inherently extreme, a less extreme version of the same fears surrounding the catastrophic potential of AI is a common concern among AI experts, machine learning engineers, and even frontier AI companies. However, the Intelligence Bureau warns that “paranoid views regarding artificial intelligence” may proliferate in the wake of the Zidians’ trial, thanks to their “attempt to inculcate a belief that the divine incarnation of artificial intelligence is imminent,” and the belief that “humans must make best use of their time at present to devote themselves to ensuring its compliance with human morality, or face existential consequences for their failure to do so.”

The NYPD’s intelligence assessment comes on the heels of the department’s cooperation with the FBI last year a screen Signal chat of an activist group coordinating volunteers to monitor public hearings in New York’s immigration courts. According to the documents he obtained The GuardianThe FBI monitored the activists as part of a broader investigation into “violent anarchist extremist actors,” one of the threat categories listed in the new counterterrorism strategy.

Established in the wake of September 11, 80 fusion centers now dot the country and serve as intermediaries between federal intelligence agencies and state and local law enforcement. In addition to concerns about sectors of the American people Disturbed by the rapid spread of artificial intelligenceThese centers also collect and disseminate “intelligence” about alleged threats to data centers.

For example, the Western Pennsylvania Fusion Center claimed that “hostile actors, including state-sponsored entities, criminal groups, and extremists, such as domestic violent extremists or environmental extremists, may target U.S. data centers” and that “these actors could also exploit the strategic importance of data centers to the U.S. economy, using them for activities such as cryptocurrency mining or leveraging third-party entities, such as front companies, to access U.S. data and infrastructure.”