They banged drums. They played extremely loud music. They let off foul-smelling smoke from a can. Thousands of people gathered on Wednesday in central London to protest against Trump’s presence in the UK, accusing the UK government of kowtowing to him by hosting him for a state visit for the second time.
Some of the placards read “Trump poisons democracy’s blood,” “Trump’s a wanker,” and “Tiny dicktator.” On one banner, surrounding a depiction of the US president as an infant wearing a diaper, were the words “Get the baby out of here”—a reference to the giant orange Trump Baby balloon that flew in the capital during Trump’s 2018 state visit, and which has been reportedly donated to the Museum of London.
Almost 23 miles away, behind the locked gates of Windsor Castle, Trump’s second state visit has been happening mostly in private. Even so, he has not been able to escape his critics. Four men were reportedly arrested in Windsor for allegedly projecting gigantic images of Trump, first lady Melania Trump, and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein on the side of the castle building on Tuesday. Authorities claim the men, from the protest organization Led By Donkeys, used a projector to beam the images from a nearby hotel.
Some protestors at the march held pro-Palastine placards, some pro-Ukraine. But many were attending for environmental reasons. Protesters WIRED spoke with were concerned and angry about the AI deal announced this week between the US and the UK, which will involve big tech companies Nvidia and Microsoft investing up to $45 billion into scaling up data centers, supercomputers, and AI R&D. Several protesters pointed out that the fine print of the deal—and how the tech companies involved will benefit from it—has not been made public.
At the heart of the AI deal is a British startup, data center builder Nscale, which will use this funding to build more data centers and—according to new investor Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang—generate more than $68 billion in revenue over six years. Critics of the UK’s AI plan claim that data centers already guzzle up too much power and water and are being erected across the UK despite local opposition. And in the wake of the deals with US giants being announced, protesters were also questioning claims that they will help the UK create sovereign AI or more jobs.
Photograph: Natasha Bernal
Nick Dearden, director of the campaign group Global Justice Now and a spokesperson for the Stop Trump Coalition, which organized the march, says that people are beginning to be really concerned about what AI means for them, how AI companies are going to be regulated and taxed, and what they are actually going to get out of them.
“We have not seen the text of the deal,” Dearden says. “We don’t know what we have given away. We know that some of the tech barons accompanying Trump want us to drop parts of our regulation, want us to drop the digital services tax, want us to make it easier for them to acquire and merge with each other to become even bigger monopolies, so we are worried about that.”
The AI deal has been presented to the British public “as if it were a great thing,” Dearden says, but he believes it hasn’t been interrogated at all. “When people see these things being built and they realize the scale of them, it’s going to be a real clash between the government and the public on this issue.”
The suggestion that major US companies’ investment will lead to a surge in British sovereign AI has also been criticized. “I don’t see there’s anything here that to me looks like that,” Dearden says. “Sure, the companies involved may not be doing every bit of the process, but as long as they essentially command and control what’s going on, ultimately, this is building their monopolies.”
Photograph: Natasha Bernal
Sarah, who only gave her first name, was representing a campaign group called Cut the Ties to Fossil Fuels, which is affiliated with the environmentalist group Extinction Rebellion. She says she has lost trust in the government. “We know we are talking massive scale [of emissions,] but we don’t really know what that looks like,” she explains. “Our government is just falling at the knees of whoever pays the most money … we can’t trust anything they do or say.
“It was so important to come here today because there is such a wide mix of groups. The guy [Trump] on every level should not be in power, he should not be allowed in front of any TV camera, let alone as president of the United States, and to have him here, on a state visit with the royal family—that I do generally believe care—this is just not on. It really is not on.”
Like other protesters, Sarah was quick to reference the far-right march in London last Saturday, which attracted over 100,000 people and exposed deepening divisions within UK society, as a reason to protest.
“To have this guy here and for our government and our royal family to welcome him is such a fucking grave error,” she says, describing Trump as the “epitome of hate and violence.” “We are angry. We are all really angry.”
Photograph: Natasha Bernal
Clive Teague, who was at the protest supporting Extinction Rebellion Waverley and Borders in Surrey, says that this AI deal is one of many things the government is getting wrong. “[Trump] is there [in Windsor] because we’re here. If we weren’t here, he’d be coming down the Mall. We are here to stop him.”
Teague says he isn’t against the use of AI, as long as it is done with new, clean energy sources, not existing power. “We can’t keep burning fossil fuels to keep feeding into these data centers, because it’ll swamp the requirements for the rest of the world.” This sentiment was echoed on the march by other environmental groups, like Greenpeace, which objects to huge data centers being approved without what it considers to be a proper assessment of the impacts on local water systems and the power grid.
“Greenpeace is not opposed to AI,” Greenpeace UK chief scientist Doug Parr said in a written statement to WIRED. “The multi-billion-pound tech giants building new data centers should be forced to take some responsibility for funding solutions, whether it’s cooling methods using much less water or running on new, clean renewable power. It’s time for the government to lay down some rules and take responsibility instead of just cheerleading for the AI sector.”
Rob Maitland, a cheerful older man with a ponytail who says he decided to march for the first time in his life, described the protest as “wonderful.” “I’ve been watching this whole situation very carefully since 2017 when Trump got in the first time,” he says. “And I said if Trump gets in again, I’m getting the first spaceship out of here because it’s going to be dreadful.
“But of course he got in for a second time, and ever since then I’ve been feeling that surely there should be something I can do,” he explains. “People have turned up en masse because one person is a voice in the wilderness but 10 million voices make it possible.”
“Sometimes you’ve just got to show your disgust,” Maitland’s wife, Jane, interjects. “What happens over there happens over here.”
Photograph: Natasha Bernal
Standing behind a “Dump Tesla” banner, Theodora Sutcliffe from Tesla Takedown UK says that the notion that the British people will get any return on the tech deal announced this week is “naive.” “We should be trying to develop our own AI industry. We’ve got some quite good self-driving car companies for example, we’ve got good computer labs, and we should be trying to home grow our own for all sorts of reasons, but not least because we can control it and regulate it ourselves,” she explains. Sutcliffe described the UK prime minister Keir Starmer as “a bit of a technocrat and a bit naive about technology; he’s probably thinking AI is going to fix things.”
Sutcliffe is among those at the protest who strongly believe there is a link between Trump’s politics, billionaire profiteering, and the rise of the far right.
When I ask her what her message to Trump would be, she pauses. “That’s a good one,” Sutcliffe says, thinking. “Stop being a fascist?”
