NEW YORK CITY — Federal and New York City law enforcement agencies are circulating intelligence reports that identify "anti-technology extremists" as an emerging domestic threat, warning that artificial intelligence adoption could fuel civil unrest and violent activity in urban centers. A New York Intelligence and Counterterrorism Bureau report cautions that AI-related anxieties may lead to large-scale protests that "could devolve into civil unrest and 'anti-tech violent extremist activity,' especially in large urban areas such as New York City."

More than 1,000 pages of unpublished reports from the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and fusion centers—regional intelligence hubs established after 9/11—were obtained by WIRED, revealing extensive monitoring of activist groups and public gatherings. The Northern Virginia Regional Intelligence Center circulated a March report documenting surveillance of constitutionally protected events, including "Tesla Takedown" protests and a "Break Up With Tech Rager" organized by Eject Elbit. That same report listed behaviors such as photography, observation, and expressed grievances as indicators for Suspicious Activity Reporting.

The intelligence effort includes warnings about potential attacks on critical infrastructure. A Western Pennsylvania fusion center claimed that "adversarial actors, including state-sponsored entities, criminal groups, and extremists, such as homegrown violent extremists or environmental extremists, may target U.S. data centers." The Northern Virginia Regional Intelligence Center separately warned that anti-government, anti-authority violent extremists influenced by conspiracy theories have engaged in pre-operational planning against data centers.

Law enforcement’s focus draws partly on unverified allegations tied to Ziz Laota, described as an extreme rationalist whose small group is linked to a murder case involving fears of AI’s existential risk. The New York Intelligence and Counterterrorism Bureau warned that "paranoid views regarding AI" could spread after the group’s trial, citing their belief in an imminent "godlike incarnation of AI" that must be aligned with human morality.

Spencer Reynolds, senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, stated: "These intelligence reports are part of a long tradition of agencies identifying protest or even simply having strong opinions as precursors to violence." He added: "Suspicious activity reports are incredibly unreliable, often about vague or innocent behavior, issued under permissive standards. These reports, often received in large volumes, allow officers to inject their own biases and see what they want to see in the facts." Reynolds also criticized SITE Intelligence, a private firm that in January 2025 circulated bulletins to fusion centers alleging violent rhetoric in a "neo-Luddite" Discord server, calling its predictive social media monitoring "an incredibly difficult if not impossible job, consistently mining social media written by anonymous posters, full of in-jokes, slang, different languages, vagueness, and so on, to deliver credible information that can predict threats."

The FBI wrote in a statement: "The FBI investigates individuals who commit or intend to commit violence and criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security." The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment. Though some reports reference Trump-era policies like National Security Presidential Memo 7 and Sebastian Gorka’s counterterrorism priorities, current intelligence documents do not formally adopt those frameworks.