It’s a good bet that a suburban Cincinnati man named Cody Morelock probably never heard of “Ned Ludd,” the mythical English weaver of the early 1800s who became the avatar of a movement to save society from the destructive force of a new technology.
But Morelock was absolutely channeling the spirit of history’s Luddites, who smashed up the newfangled machines of the nascent Industrial Revolution, when he was allegedly captured on video toppling a Flock automatic license plate reader near his home and obliterating the high-tech device and the solar panel powering it.
Morelock was arrested after the June incident, and then prosecutors in Clermont County, Ohio took what looked like an open-and-shut case — with surveillance tapes, credit card receipts, and other hard evidence connecting the 35-year-old man to the alleged crime — before a grand jury of his peers.
But Morelock’s peers apparently didn’t see a crime in the wanton destruction of a Flock camera spying on their community. The grand jury refused to indict him — another victory for the 21st-century Luddites who’ve turned U.S. politics upside down with their rage against the machines.
Public anger over the dystopia of omnipresent cameras tracking their every movement has caused more than 50 municipalities from coast to coast to cancel or reject contracts between local law enforcement and Georgia-based Flock Safety, the leading firm.
But that’s just the tip of a political iceberg: What’s becoming a mass movement against Big Tech’s intrusiveness in our everyday lives has also seen activists in scores of communities beat back proposed data centers that power artificial intelligence, or AI. Suddenly, politicians in both parties are tripping over each other to oppose the advanced technology they were backing just months earlier.
This weekend, I watched an online ad from a former Democratic state representative in Massachusetts running for the Bay State’s open congressional seat. The ad channels voter anger over Flock cameras, citing two local cases of police using them to stalk unsuspecting citizens. She slams an opponent for raising money from Big Tech sources.
With a wicked Boston accent, Jamie Belsito says, “Flock cameras feed our movements into a massive searchable network that we know can be tapped into by ICE, and now — in our own backyards — we see how that power can be abused.”
The uprising against Flock and government mass surveillance is merging with the already explosive movement against new data centers, which now sees a whopping 75% of Americans opposed to building one in their hometown — a kind of unity that in today’s bitterly divided nation you wouldn’t even see for cuddly puppies or ice cream sundaes.
Here in Pennsylvania, which has become an epicenter of proposed data centers, a recent analysis by Spotlight PA found at least 20 state legislative races in November in which these facilities have become a pivotal issue.
A governor’s race that started with both candidates seen as data center advocates now has the GOP’s Stacy Garrity calling for a moratorium as Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro — who in 2025 posed in front of earth movers to hail AI complexes as the Keystone State’s bright economic future — issued stringent new regulations while calling data centers “secretive … predators” and “bullies.”
Did I mention that Shapiro is seriously considering running for president in 2028? Did I need to?
Even right-wing and zealously pro-business red-state Republican governors like Texas’ Greg Abbott and Florida’s Ron DeSantis have turned sharply against data centers this year.
It seems like the only U.S. politician with anything nice to say about these energy-sucking, polluting behemoths is Donald Trump, who told reporters last week, “If I were the mayor of a town or the governor of a state, and I had a chance to get a big plant in, an AI plant or a data center, I would absolutely want it because the jobs are enormous and the money paid, the taxes paid, are just enormous.”
You don’t need Kalshi to bet that dozens of Democrats will feature Trump’s toxic words in their fall campaign ads.
In the 21st century, the most exciting moments are the ones the TV pundits — who have more in common with their political drinking buddies or the cartoon villains of Silicon Valley than heartland voters — never saw coming. That list includes the progressive upheavals of 2011’s Occupy Wall Street, arguably a reaction not just to the Great Recession but Barack Obama’s tepid response, or 2017’s #MeToo movement after a man with multiple sexual misconduct allegations was elected president.
But then Trump’s two terms, including his popular vote plurality in 2024, were also arguably the result of public fury at elites, even if a big chunk of that anger was against the ones calling out racism or sexism or homophobia. It’s worth noting, of course, that the progressive revolts, especially 2020’s Black Lives Matter marches, sparked intense backlash, yet Trump’s MAGA movement now seems in full meltdown.
In one sense, the ability of billionaires and their endless money and their reactionary political allies to put down 21st-century unrest feels like a callback to the Luddites, whose revolution against the new machines changing the landscape of northern England in the early 19th century was also crushed, often violently, by the powers that be.
But Fred Hampton famously said, “You can jail a revolutionary, but you can’t jail the revolution,” and the radical spirit of the Luddites continued to fuel pro-worker and pro-human rights movements for two centuries. On the whole, the Industrial Revolution won, but in 2026, revulsion over the way Silicon Valley — and especially AI — is changing our daily lives so quickly feels as if things could turn out differently.
This moment was captured in a recent cartoon that roughly depicted George Jetson — whose world of flying cars was the future my generation of boomers was promised in the 1960s — doing the drudge work of vacuuming while Rosie the robot paints at an easel. Robots were supposed to free us to create beautiful music or write the great American novel in our leisure time, not do those things, as well.
To live in America in 2026 is to experience the constant anxiety of being watched by the government or big corporations — whether that’s on our phone or on the streets — and wondering when people stopped reading books, or whether that song was by a real person, or whether that video you just watched of the president (or from the president) is even real.
This weekend came news of an actual event in China called the World Humanoid Robot Games in which one of the robots shattered Usain Bolt’s world record for the 100-meter dash. Who wants this? … other than a handful of billionaires who are also rapidly building their own remote high-tech cities to save themselves from the looming torches and pitchforks.
They are going to need them. It was one thing when the Luddites trashed automated textile looms, when the meaning of work was up for grabs. That same threat is also posed by AI, which is starting to drag down the job market, but when robots take over track and field or pop music, people see that our fundamental humanity is under attack. That realization seems to have really kicked in this summer, and the future of our revolution is both exhilarating and somewhat scary.
Acts of vandalism — like the Ohio attack on the Flock camera — or worse are becoming somewhat more commonplace. Acts of violence — like the gunshots fired into the home of an Indianapolis city council member who supported data centers — are reprehensible and not helpful to the larger cause. In the present moment, there is rising hope that AI can be reined in the right way: at the ballot box.
When it comes to this issue, the ground beneath our feet may continue to keep shifting between now and Election Day. An article in Sunday’s New York Times described how the politics of data centers has scrambled a midterm election that was supposed to hinge on high gas prices and the growing threats to democracy. The piece noted that in Wisconsin and Florida — as well as Pennsylvania — the gubernatorial candidates from both major parties are now attacking the high-tech facilities.
Yet, it’s hard to jibe the politicians’ embrace of populism with news that the AI industry and its related political action committees will spend as much as $200 million on the November elections. What will happen in 2027 and beyond if, and likely when, the American body politic doesn’t have the strength to slow down these sprinting robots? Will Morelock’s alleged destruction of one Flock camera seem like child’s play?
The story of America in the 21st century has been a tale of widespread consensus that a grossly unequal and unfair nation is on the wrong track, yet bitter disagreement over whom to blame. Until now. The fight that no one saw coming — pitting everyday folks against billionaires and their robots, who can already outrun us — is about much more than an election for U.S. Congress. Today’s Luddites may be our best hope.
