Four protesters stormed the stage at a pro-data center party in Washington, D.C. USA!" chants loud enough to drown them out.
The event, billed "Data After Dark: A pro-Data Center Party," was held at the Shaw rowhouse PubKey, described by Axios as D.C.'s "crypto-bro clubhouse." Organizers included Pirate Wires reporter Jonas Du, R Street Institute tech fellow Ed Tarnowski, and Young Voices CEO Casey Given. Sponsors included the Manhattan Institute, the Bitcoin Policy Institute, the '76 Crew, and several AI companies, per the Daily Caller News Foundation. Roughly 900 people attended, Yahoo News reported.
Video circulating on X shows one tattooed female protester taking the stage and yelling, "Thank you for using all of our water. You are killing the world," according to a second angle of the incident posted Sunday. The crowd responded with a deafening "USA! USA!" chant. She answered with a double middle finger — then waved as she was escorted off. A second protester, red-haired, briefly seized the stage to wag a finger and shout before being removed.
"Well, we know who doesn't believe in freedom, it's the kind of freaks who were just up here charging the stage," said Adam Thierer, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Thierer framed the broader data center debate bluntly: it is "a fight between those of us who believe in prosperity and permissionless innovation versus those who believe in poisonous, parasitic thinking."
Du told the Daily Caller News Foundation that after the toasts ended, a member of the protest group approached him near the stage and warned they would disrupt future events. He described the opposition as "slopulism" — populist rage over "the thing of the moment" that is easy to stir up, like low-effort AI content.
Not everyone in the room was a MAGA stalwart. Du said attendees included Trump administration staffers as well as staffers for Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California — a sign the pro-compute coalition crosses party lines, even as the politics around data centers tighten.
Former California congressional candidate Amy Kremer, now chair of Humans First, mocked the gathering: "D.C., which Kamala Harris won with more than 90% of the vote, is exactly where I'd expect a bunch of tech grifters to gather and celebrate forcing data centers on rural America."
That opposition already has teeth. On Wednesday, Frederick County, Virginia became the first locality in the Commonwealth to ban new data centers, with supervisors voting 6-1, according to the Winchester Gazette.
The invitation to Saturday's party captured the mood organizers were aiming for: "In light of the bipartisan psychosis over AI data centers, it's about time that the people who haven't lost their minds get together and celebrate the glory of American compute." The room delivered — DJ booth, dancefloor, a generative AI photo booth, and AI-themed cocktails, according to attendees posting on X.
The stakes stretch well beyond one D.C. bar. Trump has made AI and compute capacity a pillar of his second term, arguing that American dominance over China in artificial intelligence depends on building power-hungry data centers at speed. Every county-level ban, every staged protest, every bureaucratic delay puts that lead at risk while Beijing builds without asking permission.
Our Take
Look at what actually happened Saturday night. A few hundred Americans gathered to celebrate the machinery that keeps this country ahead of the Chinese Communist Party, and a handful of theatrical radicals decided to scream about water and flip off the room. The crowd didn't riot. It didn't cancel the party. It chanted "USA!" until the tantrum ran out of oxygen and walked itself off the stage. That is the whole story in one image.
And notice who lined up where. The people defending American compute included Trump administration staffers and staffers for a California Democrat. The people screaming at the microphone want you to believe a server farm is a crime against nature. One side is building. The other side is vandalizing a party and issuing threats to do it again.
The Frederick County ban is the warning shot, not the win. If local boards keep buckling to the loudest screamers, the data centers don't disappear — they go to Texas, Ohio, Indiana, anywhere that still believes in prosperity. The counties that say no get higher electric bills, fewer jobs, and zero say in the AI economy their kids will work in. Trump is right: those places will be backwards and poor, and they'll have voted for it.
So here's the question, patriots. When the next permit hearing lands in your county, will you be the one in the room saying "USA!" — or will you let five people with sharpies and middle fingers decide your town's future?
