The Loudoun County Iced Tea, an homage to Virginia’s “data center alley,” was peach-forward and watery, with a flat finish. The “SMR-tini,” a play on the abbreviation for small nuclear reactors, was a very good espresso martini, The Washington Sun can confirm. And the “Closed Loop Spritz” — made with prosecco, elderflower and soda — sold out before these reporters could conduct any research.
One bartender declined a tip and offered assurance they were more than well compensated for the event.
On Saturday, PubKey, the cryptocurrency-themed bar in downtown D.C., hosted hundreds — a thousand RSVP’d to the Partiful invite — for a celebration of data centers.
It was a party planned on the defensive, counterprogramming what the invite described as a “bipartisan psychosis” over data centers. Three men who work in libertarian and conservative spaces organized it: Jonas Du, a writer for Pirate Wires, a media company founded by conservative commentator and Peter Thiel protegé Mike Solana; Ed Tarnowski, a resident fellow at the R Street Institute; and Casey Given, the CEO of Young Voices, which supports “thought leaders for liberty in the digital age.”
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At a time when fears around AI are mounting — polls show three-quarters of Americans oppose local data centers and people across the country are organizing to stop them from being built — hundreds were lining up in the rain hoping to get into a party where people were clinking glasses to the very infrastructure that communities are fighting tooth and nail.
Partygoers included engineers, the executives of small AI-driven companies and nonprofits, the owner of a bitcoin mining operation, federal workers, trade group representatives, the parliamentarian of Rhode Island’s Republican Party and more than a few people who had heard about the party online and were drawn there out of pure curiosity. And journalists — lots of journalists.
“I feel the least autistic I’ve ever felt in this setting,” a teacher named Olivia said, looking around. She tagged along with a friend, she said.
The party planners said the idea was to gather all the right minds in one place to engineer a way past the greatest friction facing data center development: politics.
“So much of this conversation felt constrained to very specific corners of Twitter,” Du said. “At the end of the day, if you want to make policy progress, you have to put the right people to advance the goals in one room together — and what better way to do it than a grand old party?”
But for the most part, the event seemed more geared toward mocking the data center backlash than addressing it on its merits.
There was a strong vein of snark. A DJ cycled through high-energy pop music behind a “come and take it” poster. Signage included a “Visit Loudon County, VA” display, and a “Virginia is for Servers” poster, designed to resemble the state’s trademarked “Virginia is for Lovers” tourism tag line. A white paper from the Open Source AI Foundation describing a pro-data center national ballot initiative program was splayed out next to the downstairs bar.
In many ways it was quintessentially D.C. — a nerd prom after hours that was equal parts politically heightened and distinctly removed from politics.
“The party is like a D.C. party. You talk to people from, like, think tanks,” said Noah Swank, who works at a think tank.
Many attendees wore suits, and some wore them with sneakers. Other outfits included knit sweaters with American flags and the word “reindustrialize,” bitcoin pins, and one person with a hat that resembled a Lite-Brite.
Another indication of a “D.C. party”? The ratio of men to women.
“Like, four or five to one,” Swank said. “Not ideal.”
In a whiskey lounge adjacent to the dance floor, sponsored by the Bitcoin Policy Institute, a quiet chess game unfolded in one corner, while men drunkenly explained policy ideas to one another, raising their voices over the thump of heavy bass. In the basement there was a VIP room with a three-part jazz band.
At the party were some of the nation’s leading tech voices — among them policy wonks entrusted with proposing potential guardrails for the quickly developing technology that is AI.
There were industry speakers, who focused on beating China, conquering “fear of the unknown,” and the potential for AI to transform the world for the better. “Freedom” and “liberty” were frequent refrains. Jasmine Sun, a contributor to The Atlantic, also made a toast in support of building more data centers, chalking the backlash up to misinformation.
“It was really interesting to see how many people — proud Americans, farmers, union workers — didn’t understand what was being done,” she said, describing a road trip she took to chronicle the data center backlash (a project that landed her interviews with Nate Silver and Ezra Klein). “I just thought ‘We have so much more work to do to help people understand.’”
But it was unclear if the crowd was interested in facing its detractors.
Every few minutes, a protester in cocktail attire hopped onto the stage, raising objections about environmental impacts and the dangers of AI development. They were drowned out by the crowd’s chants of “USA, USA.”
One attendee near the front called a protester a “bitch” and told her to “go on a diet.” One by one, the protesters were escorted off the stage by other attendees, and, eventually, security guards.
“You know who doesn’t believe in freedom, is the freaks who were just up here charging the stage,” Adam Thierer with the R Street Institute shouted into the microphone after one such interruption. “Let’s show people what this fight is all about about data centers. It’s a fight about the freedom of the future of America to develop.”
Another person in attendance, who requested anonymity because of their work for an AI safety nonprofit, described the backlash as “slopulist bullshit.”
“There are real issues of like, cybersecurity and distillation, and bad actors using AI for bioterrorism, or regular terrorism, for that matter, and those are all real, right? Those are real threats,” they said. “But the idea that if we stop data centers, and that’s going to change, is ridiculous. It doesn’t make sense.”
It’s unclear whether an industry-sponsored echo chamber like “Data After Dark” can move the needle backward at this point. Many Democrats are riding the anti-data center wave, and Republicans are distancing themselves from the issue, while President Donald Trump maintains a staunch pro-data center stance. Trump has used the power of the executive branch to pave a smoother path for their development. But their overwhelming unpopularity continues to scramble political ties ahead of the midterms.
Grace and Livi Plihal, who came to the event intent on heckling partiers, said a lack of information wasn’t the problem.
“We’ve been really kind of in despair over seeing how [AI is] maybe going to put us out of our jobs,” said Grace. Her sister Livi, an artist, is looking to find work but discouraged by the use of generative AI to create art for businesses that may otherwise have hired a human.
Grace, a therapist, said she worried her clients were talking to ChatGPT in between sessions and getting “horrible, unfactual answers.”
The Plihals said they also worried about noise and environmental damage from AI infrastructure and the potential for higher power bills, two concerns central to the local backlash against projects.
Those worries were familiar territory for some attendees.
“I’m a pro-AI advocate, one of the biggest named [organizations] in town. My mom hates data centers. I love her. Bless her heart,” Nathan Leamer, executive director of the advocacy organization Build American AI, said.
Leamer compared data centers to highways: a development that could fundamentally reshape the country, in his eyes, for the better. (His mom, he said, doesn’t care about the highway near her home – despite the noise.)
Channing Pear, who founded Anvil Labs, which helps manufacturers and industrial companies roll out AI systems, offered a different comparison.
“Until everybody has an Iron Man suit, and can 3D print their food from a microwave by pressing a button, and teleport and go to space, then we haven’t solved enough problems,” Pear said. “Just imagine how much technology we need to build in order to get to that point.”
Clarification: The story was updated to clarify that Nathan Leamer was discussing the prominence of his organization.
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