A 20-year-old from Spring, Texas, named Daniel Alejandro Moreno-Gama has been charged with attempted murder after he was accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at the gate of Sam Altman’s San Francisco home on April 10. He then allegedly walked toward OpenAI’s Mission Bay headquarters and told employees he intended to burn the building down as well. He was reportedly carrying a manifesto – a “three-part series,” according to Fox News – that included a list of other AI executives and investors and their home addresses and documents discussing potential risks that AI poses to humanity, with a section titled: “Some more words on the matter of our impending extinction.”

The documents also allegedly stated that “if I am going to advocate for others to kill and commit crimes, then I must lead by example and show that I am fully sincere in my message.” Moreno-Gama’s public defender has suggested he was having an “acute mental health crisis” at the time of the alleged attack.

What we are watching is a pulse of anti-modernity running through a scattered series of violent incidents

What we are watching is a pulse of anti-modernity running through a scattered series of violent incidents

Two nights later, a separate pair aged 23 and 25 were arrested after shots were fired near Altman’s house. OpenAI says the second incident was unrelated to Altman, which may be true – or it may be what you say when your CEO has been attacked twice in one weekend. The FBI has since raided a home in Spring connected to Moreno-Gama.

Moreno-Gama used the handle “Butlerian Jihadist” on Discord and Instagram, a term from Frank Herbert’s Dune, which borrows it from Samuel Butler’s 1872 Erewhon, where machines are outlawed because a philosopher argues they will inevitably surpass their makers. He was an active member of PauseAI’s public server, the loose activist network calling for a global moratorium on frontier AI development.

He kept a Substack for several months, publishing half a dozen posts with titles such as “A eulogy for man,” in which he characterized AI executives as psychopaths gambling with readers’ futures and their children’s lives, and described the arrival of superintelligence as a race to the grave.

In December last year, he posted on Discord: “We are close to midnight, it’s time to actually act.” A moderator warned him. He recommended Nate Soares and Eliezer Yudkowsky’s If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies to his Instagram followers.

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