In town halls and city council meetings across the nation, hatred of data centers continues to be one of the few issues where Americans of all stripes can find common ground. Even previously data center-friendly politicians have had to pull hasty reversals on the topic as the midterm elections creep closer, and it’s become harder and harder to deny that constituents detest the things.
Of course, there is no such thing as a universally held position. Wherever you find a plurality of people saying “Wow, that movie was great,” there will always be some sad creature lurking in the shadows ready to explain why it sucks and how everyone who enjoyed it is just another dumb slug. Even as Americans come forward in record numbers to demand their elected representatives stop green-lighting perpetually buzzing, polluting, and power grid-straining data centers into their communities, a group of contrarian nerds has emerged to claim that data centers rock.
Such was the theme of last night’s Data After Dark: A Pro-Data Center Party held at what Axios calls the “crypto-bro clubhouse” Pubkey in Washington DC.
“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 innovation,” read the Partiful page for the event. The condescending invitation to fellow “techno-optimists” sits below a remixed “come and take it” flag—a mainstay of the modern libertarian movement—that’s replaced the original cannon with a row of servers that resemble a shipping container.
Plenty of press were in attendance, documenting guests using a photobooth that would print out pics with AI slop filters already applied and grabbing cocktails named after Loudon County, Virginia, which local officials bill the “data center capital of the world.”
Less important than the expected protesters crashing (only to be met with chants of “USA! USA!”) or the talking points on “necessary infrastructure,” is who’s actually behind this sordid soirée. The answer will likely not shock you.
From its announcement a month ago and in the lead-up to last night, the party has been reported as the brainchild of its “tech journalist” host, Jonas Du. Somehow lost in the Du-focused coverage of the party are the many conservative media, think tank, and AI companies working behind the scenes to bolster Du’s rapid ascent and fund the pro-data center party itself.
Though still in his early twenties, Du has already made quite a name for himself in the reactionary press ecosystem. His journalism career took off in 2024, while he was still a student at Columbia, when he began offering stories critical of pro-Palestinian protesters on campus in The National Review and Bari Weiss’ The Free Press. He’s also written some blogs in Pirate Wires, a tech-focused newsletter established by Mike Solana, the chief marketing officer of Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. Despite only a few stories under his belt, the powers that be clearly see Du’s potential utility, awarding him accolades like the Foundation for Defence of Democracies National Security Fellowship and the Media Acceleration fellowship from The Fund for American Studies.
These doors were opened for Du thanks to his connection to the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Young Voices, which featured the Pubkey affair on its own events page and is listed on the party’s flyer alongside Pirate Wires as one of the three orgs presenting the event. The third presenter was The Compute Optimist, a pro-Big Tech Substack launched two weeks ago by Ed Tarnowski, a tech policy and advocacy director for the free-market think tank, R Street. Like Du, Tarnowski is also listed as one of the many youthful conservative voices available for booking through Young Voices.
Young Voices positions itself as a “nonprofit talent agency for classical liberal writers, creators, and commentators ages 18-35,” a much-needed reminder that historically and elsewhere around the world, “liberal” means “conservative.” What it does in practice is scout, incubate, and create media placements for talent through its connections within the right-wing media landscape in ways that benefit its capitalist funders.
Its CEO, Casey Given—seen here warning Fox News of the looming “scary time for the city” if Zohran Mamdani were to win the mayor race—previously worked for conservative think tanks Students for Liberty and Americans for Prosperity Foundation. Young Voices spun off of Students For Liberty as its own nonprofit with Given at the helm in 2016. Young Voices also partners with and has received funding from The Koch Institute and the Ayn Rand-inspired Atlas Network—a dark money “junktank” also funded by the Kochs, and behind many Trump policies.
The Young Voices board of directors consists of an exec from The Fund for American Studies, the managing director of an AI-reliant fintech company, an AI-focused venture capitalist, and Jared Meyer, a senior adviser at Trump ally Joe Lonsdale’s Cicero Institute, and who worked as an economic advisor at the Department of Labor during Trump’s first administration. There’s also a guy from a big, automated metal crafting plant there.
Days before the party, Du told Axios that people online who’d been making fun of his event were not “intellectually serious.” Those are some big words coming from an astroturfed position of prominence, right before an event for a wildly unpopular opinion that would not exist without the help of billionaires. But as Du and his cohort in and around the Young Voices echo chamber will eventually learn, the vulgar masses are not rolling over on this issue.
