I know actual people who are deeply opposed to AI (well, the current AI tech anyway), for what seem to them to be good moral reasons.

I find the attitude a bit weird and very left-wing purity-spiral stuff, but it is a real attitude that real people have.

it is woke mind virus propagated via 5g towers and vaccines

My neighbors take issue with people getting the wrong roof on their house. Not surprised people being against a data center nearby.

My electricity bill is 50% higher than this same month 1 year ago. My friends and neighbors in my city have said that they also have greatly increased electricity bills. Whether or not that increase is due to a specific data center, it's extremely easy to blame it on the increased electricity usage of data centers, no foreign propaganda required.

> I'm convinced the anti data center movement is foreign propaganda

Exactly! No rational person could oppose supergeniuses like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Marc Andreessen, etc., so if people do, the logical conclusion is that they've been manipulated by a psyop.

Science is my superpower!

I have no doubt there's foreign bot armies amplifying these things, but foreign bot armies understand they're most effective when the amplify real sentiments.

And the anti-data center stuff is a very, very real sentiment.

I don't see why I shouldn't be against them. It doesn't benefit me in any way, it just increases my electricity costs. Nor am I sure there is even a market for the majority of proposed data center builds, if this exponential growth/need for computing power doesn't hold we will be flushing money down the toilet, and largely on the public's dime since most of it is funded by loans and debt. Even if LLMs achieve all that is promised and more, that just means more people out of work sooner and the already powerful and wealthy gain more power and wealth than anybody else.

Why...? Or is this just a sarcastic way of saying you disagree with the movement?

I suspect they just got a wake-up call. In one night they lost a friendly congress by a LARGE margin, many local elections including Texas AG and Gov just walked out of their lives. Voters all over the country made their feelings on this issue clear enough that it would be difficult to pin this response on a party rather than the people as a whole.

All of this was preceded by the first economic shocks of the bubble bursting, and now it's truly underway. By this time next week it's entirely possible there will be fewer SV "Leaders" in a position to do more than wonder when exactly it all went so wrong.

Hint: It was the beginning.