There's a growing impulse in American politics to blame the free market — and the technologies it produces — for every bout of economic indigestion, as if a shadowy cabal of innovators is deliberately dismantling the middle-class way of life.
That impulse is no longer abstract. It has become physical.
People are now attacking data centers.
On the "All-In Podcast," investor David Friedberg offered what may be the clearest explanation yet for why these massive, anonymous buildings have suddenly become targets. The data center, he argued, is the modern "temple of the wealthy" — a concrete symbol of elite progress in an age when many Americans feel they have little to show for the economic growth of the last 20 years.
In other words, people don't hate the building. They hate what they think it represents.
And Friedberg is right. This is precisely how modern economic populism works.
To understand what's happening, it helps to draw a distinction between two kinds of populism: moral populism and economic populism.
Moral populism has a long American pedigree. William F. Buckley Jr. famously quipped that he "would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University." The point wasn't anti-intellectualism for its own sake. It was a statement about character: The average citizen, shaped by church, family and community, often has a more grounded moral compass than the credentialed elite.
There is truth in that. Elites are frequently tempted to believe they are emancipated from the moral restraints that govern everyone else.
But economic populism is something different — and, in many ways, the inverse.
Economic populism assumes that the economy should be centrally controlled by "the people," usually through a strong government empowered to override markets, capital flows and private decision-making. It treats the dispersed intelligence of millions of individuals as less legitimate than the commands of a centralized authority.
This is the exact opposite of the basic insight of capitalism: that the diffusion of knowledge — the fact that millions of people know different things and make different bets — produces better outcomes than any one planner at the top. Markets are not perfect, but they are adaptive. They process information in ways no bureaucracy can.
Economic populism rejects that. Its logic is blunt: If the market produces something I don't like, then the market must be illegitimate.
So the target becomes not merely a policy but a symbol.
And today, that symbol is the data center.
Whenever the economy feels unstable — when wages stagnate, inflation rises or housing becomes unaffordable — the political reflex is to attack capitalism itself. Or, at minimum, to attack the people who appear to have benefited most from it.
This is where the oldest and most poisonous lie resurfaces: that rich people are rich because they stole from the poor.
In a free-market system, that is generally false. Wealth is usually created because someone provides goods and services people voluntarily purchase. In the aggregate, people get rich by giving consumers something they want at a price they are willing to pay.
The places where wealth is most often derived from direct theft are not capitalist democracies. They are authoritarian regimes: communist states, kleptocracies and tyrannies where power — not innovation — determines who eats and who starves.
But if you can convince enough people that America's economy is fundamentally "rigged," then the next step is obvious: Go after the means of production.
In 2026, that means going after the infrastructure of artificial intelligence.
The hostility to data centers is not confined to one faction.
There is a grievance-based economic Left that sees AI as a new tool of exploitation — a machine that will enrich Silicon Valley while hollowing out the working class.
But there is also a horseshoe-theory economic Right, increasingly animated by a kind of angry agrarianism, that resents AI infrastructure because it is large, industrial and ugly.
But plenty of things in modern life are large, industrial and ugly.
Walmart is large and industrial and ugly — and it has dramatically improved the standard of living for millions of Americans by driving down prices and expanding access to goods. Convenience is not aesthetic. It is economic power.
This coalition against AI is not merely misguided. It is becoming dangerous.
There have now been reports of attacks connected to prominent tech figures and facilities. Sam Altman's home was allegedly targeted, and a shot was reportedly fired. That is not political "disagreement." That is intimidation.
And it is not limited to consumer tech.
City Journal recently reported on activist campaigns targeting Palantir, a defense contractor whose tools support intelligence gathering, targeting capabilities, and the kind of advanced systems modern militaries increasingly rely on.
At some point, it becomes difficult to pretend this is simply cultural frustration. What is being attacked is not just "Silicon Valley." It is the technological spine of American power.
And America's enemies are watching with delight.
The fundamental delusion behind the anti-AI movement is that AI can be stopped.
It can't.
If the United States chooses to cripple its own AI industry, AI will not disappear. It will simply migrate elsewhere. And the nation most eager to seize that advantage is China.
If you think China will forgo artificial intelligence development out of ethical concern, you are fooling yourself. They will pursue it aggressively, ruthlessly and without the moral and legal restraints that exist in the West.
This is not an academic debate. It is a strategic race.
Yes, there are legitimate concerns about AI. Yes, there are real dangers — social, economic, even existential. But there is also a massive opportunity. And pretending we can opt out of the technological future is not a plan. It is surrender.
A China that dominates AI will dominate productivity. A China that dominates productivity will dominate the global economy. And a China that dominates the global economy will inevitably dominate military capacity.
That is not speculation. It is the logic of power.
Military superiority is downstream of industrial superiority. Industrial superiority is downstream of technological superiority. And technological superiority is increasingly downstream of AI.
If China outpaces the United States, they will not merely reshape their own region. They will export their systems — and with them, their influence. Other countries will become dependent on Chinese technology, Chinese platforms, Chinese infrastructure and ultimately Chinese permission.
That is the future economic populism is flirting with.
None of this means data centers should get a blank check.
There are reasonable debates to be had about electricity consumption, grid stress, zoning, land use and whether tech firms should bear the true cost of the energy they require. Those are legitimate questions. That is governance.
But there is a difference between ensuring fairness and trying to burn down the future.
If the political goal becomes stopping data centers because they symbolize capitalism, or because they offend a romantic vision of a preindustrial America, or because some activists believe prosperity itself is immoral, then we are no longer discussing regulation.
We are discussing self-destruction.
There is an ideological throughline connecting economic populism to political violence. It is the belief that you are a victim of society, and therefore normal moral rules do not apply.
At the individual level, it manifests as vandalism, arson or assassination attempts.
At the political level, it manifests as a demand for centralized power -- the insistence that "the people" must seize control, override markets and punish those who have succeeded.
But history has already run this experiment.
The result is stagnation, poverty and tyranny.
The United States is in a competition — economically, militarily and technologically — with hostile powers that would love to see it implode from within.
And the surest way to lose that competition is to start attacking the very engines of prosperity and strength.
When it comes to economics, you must win.
When it comes to military dominance, you must win.
And when it comes to technology, you must win.
Because if you choose to lose, someone else will gladly win for you.
Ben Shapiro is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of "The Ben Shapiro Show," and co-founder of Daily Wire+. He is a three-time New York Times bestselling author.