At 4 a.m. on April 10, a 20-year-old from Texas walked up the driveway of Sam Altman's Russian Hill home in San Francisco, lit a Molotov cocktail, and threw it at the metal gate. A small fire caught at the top. He ran off on foot.

Forty-eight hours later, a Honda sedan pulled up outside the same address. A passenger extended a hand out the window and fired a round toward the Lombard Street side of the property. The car sped away.

Two attacks. Two groups. Same target. Less than two days apart.

Who and what

The first attacker: Daniel Moreno-Gama, 20, who traveled from Texas specifically to kill the OpenAI CEO. When police arrested him, they recovered "incendiary devices, a jug of kerosene, a blue lighter, and a document." The document was a manifesto detailing his anti-AI beliefs — and it listed the names of other AI executives. Hours before the gate attack, building security at OpenAI's headquarters had stopped him after he said he was there "to burn it down and kill anyone inside."

He's now facing two counts of attempted murder and attempted arson in California state court, plus federal charges for possession of an unregistered firearm and destruction of property by means of explosives. The federal charges alone carry up to 30 years.

The second attack came early April 12. San Francisco police arrested Amanda Tom, 25, and Muhamad Tarik Hussein, 23, on the 2000 block of Taylor Street. Three firearms were seized in a subsequent search. Both were booked for negligent discharge.

The backdrop nobody wants to talk about

This isn't happening in a vacuum. Over 52,000 tech workers were laid off in the first three months of 2026 — a 24% jump over March 2025. Meta is cutting another 10% of staff in May. Oracle just fired 30,000 people to fund an $8–10 billion AI data center buildout. Maine became the first state to ban AI data centers outright on April 13. CNBC's April 15 polling showed public opinion on AI at its lowest point since ChatGPT launched.

Fortune compared the mood to the Industrial Revolution. That comparison is wrong in one important way. The Industrial Revolution unfolded across 80 years. This is 36 months. People can't retrain that fast. They can't relocate that fast. They can't find new work that fast. The machine is moving at AI speed. The humans are not.

My Opinion

I'll say the uncomfortable part out loud: I have been expecting this. Not wishing for it. Not rooting for it. But bracing for it.

When you fire 700 people on a Tuesday and hand six executives $921 million in "retention" stock on Monday, the math catches up. When the CEO of the biggest AI company spends three years telling the world your job is going to be automated, and in the same breath says "we don't really know how to align this model to human values," people notice. When the industry's answer to 52,000 layoffs is a celebratory press release about ChatGPT hitting $100 million in ad revenue, people notice. And eventually, statistically, one of the people who noticed builds a Molotov cocktail.

Here is what actually bugs me. The public response from the Big Seven AI labs to the Altman attacks has been almost complete silence. No joint statement on worker displacement. No new fund for retraining. No pause on the "replace entire departments by Q4" marketing that VCs have been repeating at every conference since January. The attack itself was obviously, inexcusably wrong — nobody throwing firebombs is making anything better. But the grievance underneath the attack is shared by millions of Americans who will never touch a lighter. Pretending otherwise is how you get a copycat.

Moreno-Gama's manifesto had a list. More than one name. That is not a detail you brush past. If the industry wants the violence to stop — and they should want that, desperately, starting today — the answer is not thicker gates and more security guards. It is acting like AI products have human costs. Not a blog post titled "Our Commitment to Responsible AI." Actual money for displaced workers. Slower "humans-are-obsolete" pitch decks. An honest timeline. A real one.

Or don't. The next attacker isn't going to be stopped by a metal gate.

Author: Yahor Kamarou (Mark) / www.humai.blog / 19 Apr 2026