Natasha Tiku

fourth school, I think, that this has happened to recently, it's really motivated a lot of pundits to opine on this populist backlash against data centers.

But I think we've seen in other schools too, like when Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, was booed at University of Arizona, they were also not protesting data centers or not taking kind of a broad anti-AI stance.

They were actually

The student body or members of the student body had been trying to protest Schmidt because he had been accused of sexual harassment.

And they said, you know, they didn't want him there as a speaker.

The war in Gaza and also, you know, and also ISIS overreach in in the U.S.

I mean, I was asking I spoke to one of the organizers, Amanda Campos, who was a joint major in environmental environmental science and public policy.

And, you know, is going into that world.

And she was saying because I was asking, like, what's the mood on Stanford campus?

I mean, in the time that I've been covering tech, the the attitude towards defense work has really changed.

You know, there's much more of a general acceptance to it.

And she was saying, like the organizers, what they talk about is how, you know, like rather than blame individuals, they talk about like in, you know, kind of institutional financial incentives.

Stanford is pushing people towards like working in Palantir.

working at these companies and, you know, they would like like an alternate pipeline so that, you know, kids aren't being funneled into into this kind of work.

I mean, it's hundreds of students.

Right.

And the Stanford student body is is much bigger than that.

But obviously doing it in the kind of belly of the beast caused a stir.

Well, I mean, I think that they...

I think the students very much feel like they will be on the right side of history for protesting the war in Gaza and also government overreach with ICE.