Pro-Data Centre Party in Washington Interrupted by Protesters Shouting 'Thank You for Using Our Water'

A pro-data centre party in Washington, D.C., was interrupted by protesters on Saturday, 26 September, with one demonstrator shouting 'Thank you for using all of our water!' as attendees responded with chants of 'USA!'

The event, called 'Data After Dark: A Pro-Data Center Party', was held at PubKey as opposition to the expansion of data centres continues to grow across the US.

For context, the party was organised as an unabashed celebration of data centres and American computing.

An event listing from Young Voices, one of the organisations associated with the event, records Data After Dark as taking place on 26 September. Axios reported before the party that about 900 people had been approved to attend, while later reporting said around 1,000 people had RSVP'd through Partiful.

Pro-Data Centre Party Promised AI Cocktails and Portraits

The event was hardly designed as a conventional policy conference.

Guests were promised themed drinks including the Loudoun County Iced Tea, the SMR-tini and the Closed Loop Spritz, while a photo booth turned attendees into AI-generated portraits.

The choice of names was deliberate.

Loudoun County is at the heart of Northern Virginia's data-centre expansion, while SMR refers to small modular reactors, another technology frequently discussed in conversations about meeting the enormous electricity demand associated with new computing infrastructure.

Jonas Du, a co-organiser and writer at Pirate Wires, told Axios that the gathering was intended to celebrate American AI and computing. He acknowledged that data-centre construction could create economic and physical downsides for communities, but argued that those problems could be addressed.

'Nobody here wants to see communities harmed economically or physically because of data center construction, but we all want to support economic growth at the end of the day,' Du said.

The guest list reportedly included technology and media workers, congressional staffers and people associated with the Trump administration. Sponsors included the Manhattan Institute, Bitcoin Policy Institute, '76 Crew and several AI companies, according to Axios.

That made the location significant. Washington sits next to Northern Virginia, one of the country's major data-centre hubs, where questions over electricity demand, infrastructure and the local costs of rapid expansion have become increasingly contentious.

Protesters Interrupt Data Centre Party

The confrontation came during the party on Saturday night.

Footage shared by HuffPost editor Philip Lewis showed protesters interrupting the gathering. One woman shouted towards the crowd before raising both middle fingers. Lewis reported that she shouted, 'Thank you for using all of our water!'

Other footage showed protesters being escorted away as people at the event shouted 'USA! USA!'. Mediaite reported that another protester subsequently entered the stage area and was also escorted away.

A separate report from Yahoo News said one protester also shouted 'you're killing the world' while partygoers responded with the patriotic chant. The report described the event as taking place amid growing opposition to data-centre construction and concerns about its demands for electricity, water and land.

The protesters' reference to water reflects one of the increasingly prominent criticisms surrounding the expansion of data-centre infrastructure. But the footage itself does not establish how much water was being used by any particular company, facility or person connected with the party.

Du said the party was partly a response to what he described as 'bipartisan psychosis over data centers'. He told Axios that he believed the technology's potential outweighed the concerns surrounding it and said similar events could eventually be organised in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.