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Elon Musk is now calling for the dissolution of the European Union because it fined him $140 million for violating a law he once said was “exactly aligned” with his vision for (what was then called) Twitter.
And he’s doing it by lying about what the fine is actually for.
The EU hit X with a $140 million fine last week for violating the Digital Services Act (DSA). But (despite what you may have heard) this isn’t some censorship overreach by Brussels bureaucrats. The violations—which have been known for over a year—have nothing to do with content moderation. Zero. Anyone telling you otherwise is lying.
The fine is for three specific transparency failures: misleading users when Elon changed verification from actual verification to “pay $8 for a checkmark,” maintaining a broken ad repository, and refusing to share required data with researchers.
The European Union has announced a fine of $140 million against Elon Musk’s X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, for several failures to comply with rules governing large digital platforms. A European Commission spokesperson said the fine against X’s holding company was due to theplatform’s misleading use of a blue check markto identify verified users, a poorly functioning advertising repository, and a failure to provide effective data access for researchers.
Again, let’s repeat: it has nothing, whatsoever, to do with the way X handles content moderation or what speech it allows on its platform. As Daphne Keller explains:
Don’t let anyone — not even the United StatesSecretary of State— tell you that the European Commission’s€120 million enforcementagainst Elon Musk’s X under the Digital Service Act (DSA) is about censorship or about what speech users can post on the platform. That would, indeed, be interesting. But this fine is just the EU enforcing some normal, boring requirements of its law. Many of these requirements resemble existing US laws or proposals that have garnered bipartisan support.
There are three charges against X, which all stem from amulti-year investigationthat was launched in 2023. One is about verification — X’s blue checkmarks on user accounts — and two are about transparency. These charges have nothing to do with what content is on X, or what user speech the platform should or should not allow. There is plenty of EU political disapproval about those things, for sure. But the EU didn’t choose to pick a fight about them. Instead, it went after X for violating much more basic, straightforward provisions of the DSA. Those violations were flagrant enough that it would be weird if the EU hadn’t issued a fine.
Both Daphne and I have criticized attempts by EU officials to abuse the DSA in pursuit of censorship. I directly called it out when former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton clearly went way over the line last year, a move that quickly led to Breton losing his job. I’ve been highly critical of the DSA for years, so if this were actually an abuse of the law for censorship, I’d be first in line to call it out and side with Elon (I’ve done it in other circumstances as well).
But this is not that. This has nothing to do with “content moderation” or “censorship” in any way.
And yet, Elon Musk is running around pretending it is a free speech issue, and his once-again friends in the Trump administration are bolstering that false claim.
As Daphne pointed out, the EU could investigate certain aspects of X’s content moderation, and that could lead to serious questions about censorship and free speech. But they have not done so.
Honestly, this move is little different than the Trump FTC taking action against a Chinese company for violating COPPA. Which it has done. Did we see Chinese politicians lose their minds over that? Did we see the CEO of that company, Apitor Technology, call for dissolving the United States like Elon Musk is now calling for dissolving the EU? No. No, we did not.
But because the Elon Musks/JD Vances/Marco Rubios of the world can only think in terms of memes and culture wars, they know that if they just insist that this is about censorship, that the media will cover it that way, and the ignorant rabble on X will buy their version of the story.
All this is even more incredible because Elon Musk told the EU that he was entirely on board with the DSA while he was in the process of buying Twitter. Yes, the law he’s now claiming is censorship tyranny requiring the dissolution of an entire governmental body is the very same law he declared was “exactly aligned” with his vision for the platform.
At the time, we called out how the EU was clearly playing Musk, who seemed to have no clue what he was actually endorsing. It was obvious he hadn’t read or understood the DSA. But there he was, recording a video claiming perfect alignment with a regulatory framework he’s now treating as an existential threat to free speech.
So it’s pretty rich for him to whine about it now.
Of course, Musk isn’t just misrepresenting the fine. He’s responding with a series of escalating tantrums designed to feed his false censorship narrative. First, he called for abolishing the entire EU:
Then came the petty retaliation. First, he canceled the EU Commission’s X advertising account. X claimed it was because they “exploited” X’s ad platform by posting a link that appeared to be a video, but replies to that tweet suggested many, many people said that claimed “exploit” was not an exploit at all, but a tool that many others had used.
As the coiner of “The Streisand Effect,” I’d just like to point out that this is not what the Streisand Effect means at all.
Each move—calling to dissolve the EU, canceling ads, threatening individuals—is transparently designed to manufacture a free speech crisis where none exists. It’s performance art for an audience that won’t bother checking whether the fine is actually about censorship (it isn’t).
And he’ll likely keep escalating with the help of the Trump administration.
The DSA certainly has some issues, but this fine is not one of them. But that hasn’t stopped Elon Musk and his crew of political supporters from pretending that this is some huge attack on American free speech. It’s not. No more than the FTC’s fine against Apitor was an attack on China-based speech.
But, of course, most of the media will continue to pretend this is about free speech. They will frame it that way and for years into the future we’ll hear false stories—that the media and tons of other people will simply accept as true—that the EU fined X and Elon $140 million for not censoring people.
This is the template now. Violate fairly modest regulations, claim it’s censorship, get your political allies to amplify the lie, use it to de-legitimize any attempt at platform accountability for actively misleading users. It’s not about free speech. It never was. It’s about securing freedom from accountability while wielding the power of both private platforms and state resources to crush anyone who tries to impose it.
So yeah, anytime you hear someone claim the EU fined Musk for not censoring people, call it out. Because the truth matters, even when powerful people would prefer you didn’t notice they’re lying.
All out of original ideas and facing market growth saturation, we’ve noted repeatedly how streaming companies are increasingly looking like the stodgy old traditional cable TV giants they once disrupted. That means a lot of pointless mergers, endless price hikes, a steady erosion of quality, and the slow paring back of useful features (like going easy on password sharing).
The latest case in point: fresh on the heels of its latest price hike, Netflix is removing customers’ ability to cast streams to most home devices and smart televisions. The change came with absolutely no warning, removed a core feature, and Netflix refuses to tell anybody why it made the decision:
“The casting changes announced on Netflix’s support page do not explain why the feature has been removed. It follows a similar move in 2019 when Netflix removed AirPlay support, citing a desire to “ensure our standard of quality for viewing is being met.” We have reached out to Netflix for comment.”
After a week or two of pressure, Netflix will likely come out with some inane explanation about how they’re just “improving the customer experience,” despite the fact the justification makes no sense.
I suspect the real reason is Netflix is trying to make it more difficult for users to share their Netflix streaming services on their mobile phones while at other peoples’ homes, in the hopes of forcing your friends and relatives to sign up for Netflix. A choice that may or may not be supported by any actual real-world data.
This is the path of enshittification. It’s not good enough to offer a good product people like. The need for relentless quarterly growth means that inevitably companies find the easiest route is not to nurture useful and interesting new innovations, but to engage in a sort of cannibalization of the underlying brand. Endless price hikes; endless cut corners and feature erosion.
That’s likely going to accelerate with Netflix’s planned acquisition of Warner Brothers, which, if allowed by the Trump administration, means a massive new debt load the company will then cut even more corners to accommodate for. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Pay more, get less, then get scolded as entitled by industry executives who can no longer see the forest for the trees.
This is the digital version of finding “nudie mags” under your kid’s bed then trying to sue Playboy/Penthouse/… for the kid getting ahold of them (yes I know they’ve stopped publishing in print).
Beyond the leopards-face-eating angle of the story, it’s important to also note this prime example of “voter fraud” being perpetrated by a conservative Trump voter. The accusation-confession that undocumented immigrants are committing voter fraud for Democratic candidates continues to underwhelm upon review of available evidence.
For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from GHB on the child online safety issue:
These people assume that other people should be the child’s parents.
I don’t agree that the internet should be a friggen daycare for the young. They’re just advocating that everyone online should be the child’s parent.
AI, especially under the current LLM approach will never go full Skynet and eradicate humanity with killer robots.
No, it’s so, so very much dumber than that.
It’s going to kill a lot of people by sucking vast amounts resources and polluting the environment, and then even more by poisoning the legal, medical, educational, and social systems we rely on with bigoted (remember it’s trained on the internet) and misinformed slop. And that’s before people like Musk deliberately twist them to suit their own ends.
GenAI needs to be massively reigned in but not on the way, and not for the reasons StopAI insist. To paraphrase Milo Rossi, you don’t need something shadowy to get mad at, you can get mad at what’s actually there.
We talked yesterday about how newborn vaccinations for hepatitis B were on the agenda for this latest meeting at ACIP, the CDC’s immunization advisory panel. You likely know all this already, but RFK Jr. fired all ACIP panel members earlier this year, replacing them with hand-picked anti-vaxxer quack-jobs who are aligned with Kennedy’s anti-medicine, anti-science stances on vaccines. No matter the nonsense you hear out of Kennedy’s grumbly mouth, these are deeply unserious people that have been given an enormous responsibility that they are in no way qualified to have. ACIP recommendations are really important, with its guidance driving everything from what private insurers will or are mandated to cover, guiding medical professionals on how to advise their patients, and guiding the public on the types of immunization decisions they ought to be making.
ACIP just told all of those groups that whether or not newborns catch hep B and/or ultimately reach an untimely and painful death is a personal choice they should discuss with their doctors. Doctors that may now advise against vaccination within 24 hours of birth.
On Friday morning, the ACIP voted 8-3 to remove its previous recommendation that all children in the U.S. be vaccinated against hepatitis B starting at birth. In its place, the panel is endorsing “individual-based decision-making” for determining when most children should get their first hepatitis B shot. Many outside groups and experts have sharply criticized the ACIP’s about-face, noting that scant credible data was presented to justify such a dramatic reversal.
“If that recommendation goes forward, it will be without evidence and will ignore over 30 years of existing evidence and gambles with the safety of children,” James Campbell, vice chair of the Committee on Infectious Diseases at the American Academy of Pediatrics, told Gizmodo.
CDC staff and outside experts tried. They really did. They explained what this disease is, what is does, how infectious it is, and how the mass immunization program starting in the early 90s saved thousands of children from infection, from long term complications, and an ultimately early death for some. Here is one simple chart that CDC staff presented to ACIP earlier this year on the matter.
How in the actual hell do you look at that chart and decide vaccinations have to go? Like measles, this is another disease for which we were on the cusp of achieving elimination status. 90% of infections in children become chronic infections. Something like 25% of those infected as children will develop liver cancer or cirrhosis. The fatality rate for both is enormous, even as deaths during the acute phase of the disease are low. In other words, this is a disease that rips years of life away from those infected long after their initial symptoms disappear. Worse, most infections are asymptomatic during the acute infection stage, meaning many of the infected don’t even know it until they get cancer or cirrhosis.
And ACIP has decided we need more of this.
For children born to mothers who test negative for antibodies to hepatitis B, the ACIP is now pushing for an individualized approach, one where “parents should consult with health care providers and decide when or if their child will begin the HBV vaccine series.” And for families who choose not to start vaccination at birth, the ACIP recommended that vaccination not start any earlier than two months (the ACIP offered no clear rationale or evidence for this specific cut-off).
This is incredibly stupid. Even if the CDC adopts the recommendation, I am sure most doctors will still recommend vaccination at birth, since they can read the damned chart above as well or better than I can. But it won’t be all doctors. What insurance companies do as a result of this change is anyone’s guess. Some states are already stating that they’ll go against ACIP’s change and follow the old guidance.
But again, it won’t be all of them. I am confident that a non-zero number of children will get infected with hepatitis B and die an early death as a result of this. I’m confident that some newborns will suffer chronically from the disease as a result of this.
RFK Jr. is harming the health of American newborns. Full stop. Period, paragraph. Hey, Bill Cassidy: anytime you want to do something about this, feel free.
So Netflix has announced that it’s buying Warner Brothers Discovery (including HBO) for a whopping $82.7 billion. As we’ve well covered, it’s the latest in a long series of pointless Warner mergers stretching back to the 2001 AOL acquisition, which all resulted in oodles of chaos, price hikes, layoffs, and generally a steady erosion in product quality.
Netflix’s deal includes a $5.8 billion breakup fee and promises to maintain Warner Bros. current operations, “including theatrical releases.” The deal doesn’t include Warner Bros Discovery’s struggling linear networks business (CNN, TNT, HGTV and Discovery+) which Netflix wisely wanted nothing to do with. Those are scheduled to be spun out next year into their own sagging sub-company.
“Netflix also made its pitch to filmmakers and creatives, writing that “by uniting Netflix’s member experience and global reach with Warner Bros.’ renowned franchises and extensive library, the Company will create greater value for talent — offering more opportunities to work with beloved intellectual property, tell new stories and connect with a wider audience than ever before.”
But as we’ve seen the last three or four times Warner Brothers has been acquired, pre-merger promises mean absolutely nothing. The massive debt created by these acquisitions inevitably results in panicked cost cutting, which usually involves mass layoffs, (even bigger) price hikes, and a general cannibalization of brand and product quality. It happens over and over again.
Of the suitors that could have bought Warner Brothers Discovery (Comcast/NBC and Larry Ellison/CBS/Paramount), Netflix is probably the “best” option. They are (for now) the least up Trump’s ass of the three bidders; and generally may retain more of the core Warner Brothers Discovery infrastructure and staff due to fewer existing redundancies.
That’s not to say the deal will be good, necessarily. If we lived in a non-corrupt country with functioning regulators, the government likely wouldn’t allow any additional consolidation in mainstream corporate media, as the results to date have been nothing but harmful for labor, consumers, and markets. These companies’ journalism arms, if you haven’t noticed, like to downplay or ignore this fact in coverage.
Play a little game with me at home: if you’re reading a story about this deal, stop and notice if the journalist and outlet, at any point, mentions the fact that the decades’ worth of past variants of Warner deals were utterly disastrous for labor, consumers, creativity, and healthy markets. Because that’s kind of important context if your job is informing the public of the truth!
The bungled AT&T acquisition of Warner and DirecTV alone resulted in a massive layoff spree including 50,000 people. But when the consolidated corporate press covers the latest merger, that’s not mentioned. Why is that choice made editorially, do you wager?
The Trump administration couldn’t give any less of a shit about antitrust or consolidated corporate power; they just want leverage over Netflix and/or to make sure their friend Larry Ellison can acquire HBO and CNN. And they’re mad at Netflix because they put some gay people in shows about the military. The Ellisons may acquire the spun off TV assets, but they may also still want to leverage Trump to get much more.
So I would not be surprised that if in a few weeks or so you see Trump’s FCC lackey Brendan Carr launch some kind of fake inquiry into “irregularities in the bidding process,” where he talks a lot about Netflix’s consolidated power “not being in the public interest.” The goal will be twofold: to force ownership over to Ellison, or at least to (as we’ve seen with CBS mergers) force Netflix to kiss Donald’s ass.
If you recall, the first Trump administration sued to stop the AT&T Time Warner deal. That was heralded as a rare example of the administration actually caring about consolidated corporate power by the press; but it turned out it was mostly because Rupert Murdoch had his own acquisition offer for CNN rejected and wanted to scuttle the deal.
Keep your eyes peeled for regulatory shenanigans. Even if the Trump administration doesn’t abuse FCC and DOJ power to help Ellison, they’ll certainly abuse regulatory merger approval power to try and force Netflix to kiss their asses in new and problematic ways (see: CBS, Verizon). And Netflix, no stranger to throwing ethics under the bridge when convenient, will very likely be happy to oblige.
A cofounder of a Bay Area “Stop AI” activist group abandoned its commitment to nonviolence, assaulted another member, and made statements that left the group worried he might obtain a weapon to use against AI researchers. The threats prompted OpenAI to lock down its San Francisco offices a few weeks ago. In researching this movement, I came across statements that he made about how almost any actions he took were justifiable, since he believed OpenAI was going to “kill everyone and every living thing on earth.” Those are detailed below.
I think it’s worth exploring the radicalization process and the broader context of AI Doomerism. We need to confront the social dynamics that turn abstract fears of technology into real-world threats against the people building it.
OpenAI’s San Francisco Offices Lockdown
On November 21, 2025, Wired reported that OpenAI’s San Francisco offices went into lockdown after an internal alert about a “Stop AI” activist. The activist allegedly expressed interest in “causing physical harm to OpenAI employees” and may have tried to acquire weapons.
The article did not mention his name but hinted that, before his disappearance, he had stated he was “no longer part of Stop AI.”1 On November 22, 2025, the activist group’s Twitter account posted that it was Sam Kirchner, the cofounder of “Stop AI.”
According to Wired’s reporting
A high-ranking member of the global security team said [in OpenAI Slack] “At this time, there is no indication of active threat activity, the situation remains ongoing and we’re taking measured precautions as the assessment continues.” Employees were told to remove their badges when exiting the building and to avoid wearing clothing items with the OpenAI logo.
“Stop AI” provided more details on the events leading to OpenAI’s lockdown:
Earlier this week, one of our members, Sam Kirchner, betrayed our core values by assaulting another member who refused to give him access to funds. His volatile, erratic behavior and statements he made renouncing nonviolence caused the victim of his assault to fear that he might procure a weapon that he could use against employees of companies pursuing artificial superintelligence.
We prevented him from accessing the funds, informed the police about our concerns regarding the potential danger to AI developers, and expelled him from Stop AI. We disavow his actions in the strongest possible terms.
Later in the day of the assault, we met with Sam; he accepted responsibility and agreed to publicly acknowledge his actions. We were in contact with him as recently as the evening of Thursday Nov 20th. We did not believe he posed an immediate threat, or that he possessed a weapon or the means to acquire one.
However, on the morning of Friday Nov 21st, we found his residence in West Oakland unlocked and no sign of him. His current whereabouts and intentions are unknown to us; however, we are concerned Sam Kirchner may be a danger to himself or others. We are unaware of any specific threat that has been issued.
We have taken steps to notify security at the major US corporations developing artificial superintelligence. We are issuing this public statement to inform any other potentially affected parties.”
A “Stop AI” activist named Remmelt Ellen wrote that Sam Kirchner “left both his laptop and phone behind and the door unlocked.” “I hope he’s alive,” he added.
Early December, the SF Standardreported that the “cops [are] still searching for ‘volatile’ activist whose death threats shut down OpenAI office.” Per this coverage, the San Francisco police are warning that he could be armed and dangerous. “He threatened to go to several OpenAI offices in San Francisco to ‘murder people,’ according to callers who notified police that day.”
A Bench Warrant for Kirchner’s Arrest
When I searched for any information that had not been reported before, I found a revealing press release. It invited the press to a press conference on the morning of Kirchner’s disappearance:
“Stop AI Defendants Speak Out Prior to Their Trial for Blocking Doors of Open AI.”
When: November 21, 2025, 8:00 AM.
Where: Steps in front of the courthouse (San Francisco Superior Court).
Who: Stop AI defendants (Sam Kirchner, Wynd Kaufmyn, and Guido Reichstadter), their lawyers, and AI experts.
Sam Kirchner is quoted as saying, “We are acting on our legal and moral obligation to stop OpenAI from developing Artificial Superintelligence, which is equivalent to allowing the murder [of] people I love as well as everyone else on earth.”
Needless to say, things didn’t go as planned. That Friday morning, Sam Kirchner went missing, triggering the OpenAI lockdown.
Later, the SF Standard confirmed the trial angle of this story: “Kirchner was not present for a Nov. 21 court hearing, and a judge issued a bench warrant for his arrest.”
“Stop AI” – a Bay Area-Centered “Civil Resistance” Group
“Stop AI” calls itself a “non-violent civil resistance group” or a “non-violent activist organization.” The group’s focus is on stopping AI development, especially the race to AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) and “Superintelligence.” Their worldview is extremely doom-heavy, and their slogans include: “AI Will Kill Us All,” “Stop AI or We’re All Gonna Die,” and “Close OpenAI or We’re All Gonna Die!”
According to a “Why Stop AI is barricading OpenAI” post on the LessWrong forum from October 2024, the group is inspired by climate groups like Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, but focused on “AI extinction risk,” or in their words, “risk of extinction.” Sam Kirchner explained in an interview: “Our primary concern is extinction. It’s the primary emotional thing driving us: preventing our loved ones, and all of humanity, from dying.”
Unlike the rest of the “AI existential risk” ecosystem, which is often well-funded by effective altruism billionaires such as Dustin Moskovitz (Coefficient Giving, formerly Open Philanthropy) and Jaan Tallinn (Survival and Flourishing Fund), this specific group is not a formal nonprofit or funded NGO, but rather a loosely organized grassroots group of volunteer-run activism. They made their financial situation pretty clear when the “Stop AI” Twitter account replied to a question with: “We are fucking poor, you dumb bitch.”2
According to The Register, “STOP AI has four full-time members at the moment (in Oakland) and about 15 or so volunteers in the San Francisco Bay Area who help out part-time.”
Since its inception, “Stop AI” has had two central organizers: Guido Reichstadter and Sam Kirchner (the current fugitive). According to The Register and the Bay Area Current, Guido Reichstadter has worked as a jeweler for 20 years. He has an undergraduate degree in physics and math. Reichstadter’s prior actions include climate change and abortion-rights activism.
In June 2022, Reichstadter climbed the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge in Washington, D.C., to protest the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Per the news coverage, he said, “It’s time to stop the machine.” “Reichstadter hopes the stunt will inspire civil disobedience nationwide in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling.”
Reichstadter moved to the Bay Area from Florida around 2024 explicitly to organize civil disobedience against AGI development via “Stop AI.” Recently, he undertook a hunger strike outside Anthropic’s San Francisco office for 30 days.
Sam Kirchner worked as a DoorDash driver and, before that, as an electrical technician. He has a background in mechanical and electrical engineering. He moved to San Francisco from Seattle, cofounded “Stop AI,” and “stayed in a homeless shelter for four months.”
AI Doomerism’s Rhetoric
The group’s rationale included this claim (published on their account on August 29, 2025): “Humanity is walking off a cliff,” with AGI leading to “ASI covering the earth in datacenters.”
As 1a3orn pointed out, the original “Stop AI” website said we risked “recursive self-improvement” and doom from any AI models trained with more than 10^23 FLOPs. (The group dropped this prediction at some point) Later, in a (now deleted) “Stop AI Proposal,” the group asked to “Permanently ban ANNs (Artificial Neural Networks) on any computer above 10^25 FLOPS. Violations of the immediate 10^25 ANN FLOPS cap will be punishable by life in prison.”
To be clear, tens of current AI models were trained with over 10^25 FLOPs.
In a “For Humanity” podcast episode with Sam Kirchner, “Go to Jail to Stop AI” (episode #49, October 14, 2024), he said: “We don’t really care about our criminal records because if we’re going to be dead here pretty soon or if we hand over control which will ensure our future extinction here in a few years, your criminal record doesn’t matter.”
The podcast promoted this episode in a (now deleted) tweet, quoting Kirchner: “I’m willing to DIE for this.” “I want to find an aggressive prosecutor out there who wants to charge OpenAI executives with attempted murder of eight billion people. Yes. Literally, why not? Yeah, straight up. Straight up. What I want to do is get on the news.”
After Kirchner’s disappearance, the podcast host and founder of “GuardRailNow” and the “AI Risk Network,” John Sherman, deleted this episode from podcast platforms (Apple, Spotify) and YouTube. Prior to its removal, I downloaded the video (length 01:14:14).
Sherman also produced an emotional documentary with “Stop AI” titled “Near Midnight in Suicide City” (December 5, 2024, episode #55. See its trailer and promotion on the Effective Altruism Forum). It’s now removed from podcast platforms and YouTube, though I have a copy in my archive (length 1:29:51). It gathered 60k views before its removal.
The group’s radical rhetoric was out in the open. “If AGI developers were treated with reasonable precaution proportional to the danger they are cognizantly placing humanity in by their venal and reckless actions, many would have a bullet put through their head,” wrote Guido Reichstadter in September 2024.
The above screenshot appeared in a Techdirt piece, “2024: AI Panic Flooded the Zone Leading to a Backlash.” The warning signs were there:
Also, like in other doomsday cults, the stress of believing an apocalypse is imminent wears down the ability to cope with anything else. Some are getting radicalized to a dangerous level, playing with the idea of killing AI developers (if that’s what it takes to “save humanity” from extinction).
Both PauseAI and StopAI stated that they are non-violent movements that do not permit “even joking about violence.” That’s a necessary clarification for their various followers. There is, however, a need for stronger condemnation. The murder of the UHC CEO showed us that it only takes one brainwashed individual to cross the line.
In early December 2024, I expressed my concern on Twitter: “Is the StopAI movement creating the next Unabomber?” The screenshot of “Getting arrested is nothing if we’re all gonna die” was taken from Sam Kirchner.
Targeting OpenAI
The main target of their civil-disobedience-style actions was OpenAI. The group explained that their “actions against OpenAI were an attempt to slow OpenAI down in their attempted murder of everyone and every living thing on earth.” In a tweet promoting the October blockade, Guido Reichstadter claimed about OpenAI: “These people want to see you dead.”
“My co-organizers Sam and Guido are willing to put their body on the line by getting arrested repeatedly,” said Remmelt Ellen. “We are that serious about stopping AI development.”
The “Stop AI” event page on Luma list further protests in front of OpenAI: on January 10, 2025; April 18, 2025; May 23, 2025 (coverage); July 25, 2025; and October 24, 2025. On March 2, 2025, they had a protest against Waymo.
On February 22, 2025, three “Stop AI” protesters were arrested for trespassing after barricading the doors to the OpenAI offices and allegedly refusing to leave the company’s property. It was covered by a local TV station. Golden Gate Xpress documented the activists detained in the police van: Jacob Freeman, Derek Allen, and Guido Reichstadter. Officers pulled out bolt cutters and cut the lock and chains on the front doors. In a Bay Area Current article, “Why Bay Area Group Stop AI Thinks Artificial Intelligence Will Kill Us All,” Kirchner is quoted as saying, “The work of the scientists present” is “putting my family at risk.”
October 20, 2025 was the first day of the jury trial of Sam Kirchner, Guido Reichstadter, Derek Allen, and Wynd Kaufmyn.
On November 3, 2025, “Stop AI”’s public defender served OpenAI CEO Sam Altman with a subpoena at a speaking event at the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco. The group claimed responsibility for the onstage interruption, saying the goal was to prompt the jury to ask Altman “about the extinction threat that AI poses to humanity.”
Public Messages to Sam Kirchner
“Stop AI” stated it is “deeply committed to nonviolence“ and “We wish no harm on anyone, including the people developing artificial superintelligence.” In a separate tweet, “Stop AI” wrote to Sam: “Please let us know you’re okay. As far as we know, you haven’t yet crossed a line you can’t come back from.”
John Sherman, the “AI Risk Network” CEO, pleaded, “Sam, do not do anything violent. Please. You know this is not the way […] Please do not, for any reason, try to use violence to try to make the world safer from AI risk. It would fail miserably, with terrible consequences for the movement.”
Rhetoric’s Ramifications
Taken together, the “imminent doom” rhetoric fosters conditions in which vulnerable individuals could be dangerously radicalized, echoing the dynamics seen in past apocalyptic movements.
In “A Cofounder’s Disappearance—and the Warning Signs of Radicalization”, City Journal summarized: “We should stay alert to the warning signs of radicalization: a disaffected young person, consumed by abstract risks, convinced of his own righteousness, and embedded in a community that keeps ratcheting up the moral stakes.”
“The Rationality Trap – Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults?” described this exact radicalization process, noting how the more extreme figures (e.g., Eliezer Yudkowsky)3 set the stakes and tone: “Apocalyptic consequentialism, pushing the community to adopt AI Doomerism as the baseline, and perceived urgency as the lever. The world-ending stakes accelerated the ‘ends-justify-the-means’ reasoning.”
We already have a Doomers “murder cult” called the Zizians and their story is way more bizarre than anything you’ve read here. Like, awfully more extreme. And, hopefully, such things should remain rare.
What we should discuss is the dangers of such an extreme (and misleading) AI discourse. If human extinction from AI is just around the corner, based on the Doomers’ logic, all their suggestions are “extremely small sacrifices to make.” Unfortunately, the situation we’re in is: “Imagined dystopian fears have turned into real dystopian ‘solutions.’”
This is still an evolving situation. As of this writing, Kirchner’s whereabouts remain unknown.
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Dr. Nirit Weiss-Blatt, Ph.D. (@DrTechlash), is a communication researcher and author of “The TECHLASH and Tech Crisis Communication” book and the “AI Panic” newsletter.
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Endnotes
Don’t mix StopAI with other activist groups, such as PauseAI or ControlAI. Please see this brief guide on the Transformer Substack. ↩︎
This type of rhetoric wasn’t a one-off. Stop AI’s account also wrote, “Fuck CAIS and @DrTechlash” (CAIS is the Center for AI Safety, and @DrTechlash is, well, yours truly). Another target was Oliver Habryka, the CEO at Lightcone Infrastructure/LessWrong, whom they told, “Eat a pile of shit, you pro-extinction murderer.” ↩︎
Eliezer Yudkowsky, cofounder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), recently published a book titled “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All.” It had heavy promotion, but you can read here “Why The ‘Doom Bible’ Left Many Reviewers Unconvinced.” ↩︎
The Trump administration is so sure it can get away with anything that it’s willing to try anything. That misapprehension of the situation has resulted in at least 200 rulingsagainst the administration’s anti-immigrant efforts. Still, the regime persists with its attempts to brute force constitutional rights out of existence.
Like it or not, MAGA faithful, immigrants have rights. They have the rights natural born citizens have access to, which is certainly something the Trump administration doesn’t think is true, even though it is.
The administration got a big win from the Supreme Court in terms of violating Fourth Amendment rights. In a solo concurrence, Justice Kavanaugh made it clear the majority believed there is nothing wrong with rounding up people simply because they look a bit more brown than white on the outside.
Meanwhile, ICE pretends it’s still targeting criminals, even when all data says otherwise. It continues to claim it’s going after known criminals but its paperwork doesn’t match its public statements. If it was really going after criminals, it should be able to obtain arrest warrants. The fact that it rarely has anything more than administrative warrants (self-issued warrants without judicial backing) in its possession at any given time contradicts its assertions about its alleged “targeted” enforcement efforts.
The Trump administration continues to get railed on the regular by federal courts. The latest is no exception:
A federal judge in Denver on Tuesday ordered federal immigration officers to stop making arrests in Colorado without a warrant, unless the detainee posed a flight risk, the latest in a string of lower-court decisions rebuking President Trump’s immigration enforcement tactics.
[…]
In Colorado, Judge Jackson, an appointee of President Barack Obama, found that immigration agents had acted unlawfully by arresting and detaining immigrants — some for as long as 100 days — without showing the required probable cause that they posed a threat of fleeing.
This decision aligns itself with several others. Unfortunately, the body of judicial work ruling against Trump’s anti-immigration programs hasn’t really changed anything. Many rulings have been appealed. What has yet to be heard by the Supreme Court has often been given a pass by appellate judges.
And even if a court rules definitively against Trump, there’s no reason to believe this administration will act in accordance with the ruling. Emil Bove — the former DOJ lawyer who told prosecutors to tell the courts to fuck themselves if they opposed Trump — is now sitting on the Third Circuit. Other rulings delivered by federal courts have been immediately stayed by appellate courts who normally would have allowed things to play out at the lower level before undercutting their findings.
What’s happening here affects a lot of rights beyond the immediate recognition of Fourth Amendment incursion. These warrantless arrests are often followed by indefinite detentions that involve violations of Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
This government is plain nasty. It has zero interest in the rule of law. It wants to be the bully on the block at all times. If the system of checks and balances rears it head, the administration will either ignore the concerns raised or engage in unprecedented attacks on the judiciary itself. Pointing out the incompetency of Trump administration thugs is about as useless as criticizing the GPA of the person beating your skull to pulp with a baseball bat. The end result is the same. Any legitimate points raised mid-beating won’t do anything to reduce the CTE trauma. It’s best to assume bad faith from the beginning because this is the administration’s sole operating speed.
