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Concerns about artificial intelligence spelling doom for the human race are being linked to a “cult-like” philanthropy movement known as “effective altruism” supported by billionaire Democratic megadonor and Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, according to a policy analyst.
In response to former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon’s resignation announcement on X, Parker Thayer, an investigative researcher at Capital Research Center in Washington D.C., went viral as he raised questions about whether the resignation was part of a broader network that aims to influence lawmakers and AI policy.
“I resigned from Anthropic today,” Coxon’s post read. “I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”
Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook Inc., speaks at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Monday, Sept. 12, 2011. (Noah Berger/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Thayer quoted the post in a response that received interaction online with top lawmakers in Congress, including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt.
“This post looks like the start of a VERY sophisticated and well-funded PR operation to get support for Democrats to regulate AI into oblivion,” Thayer posted. “The post is punchy, quotable, it almost seems professionally written. The first three accounts to quote tweet it all do so within 15 minutes of the initial posting.”
Thayer echoed claims made by White House AI advisor David Sacks that AI fears are overblown and potentially based on political motives.
“I think this is becoming a panic,” Sacks told CBS News correspondent Jo Ling Kent. “We’re in an election season, and there is an incentive for political actors to try and amplify the fear. And I think this is a moment to really calm down a little bit and look at the issue rationally.”
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Coxon told Fox News’ Bret Baier last week that we are “on the doorstep of tremendous discoveries,” but we’re running in too quickly. He emphasized the need for moderation.
President Donald Trump has said that any governor or local government official should want to welcome the construction of AI data centers. Meanwhile, there are growing voices, including from within the GOP, protesting the current data center development landscape. (Kent NISHIMURA / AFP via Getty Images; Sarah Rice/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Baier asked Coxon if the issue could be figured out.
“I think definitely. I think if we actually try instead of submitting to the inevitability of a doomed race or a hubristic gamble, then we can solve it,” he said. “The problem is not unsolvable.”
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Coxon said he was acting alone when deciding to voice his concerns about the direction of AI, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Fox News Digital sat down with Thayer to ask about his theories concerning the coordination behind Coxon’s “sophisticated” resignation, which was in turn met with a slew of national television interviews and immediate notoriety. Almost overnight, Coxon’s post became a major point of policy debate spanning across political parties and politicians, including President Donald Trump and socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Thayer did not offer a theory for which individuals or groups might have coordinated with Coxon, who has denied such claims. But Thayer said the “AI doomerism movement” is associated with “effective altruism,” a philosophy he described as “cult-like.”
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According to the Centre for Effective Altruism, the movement is defined as a “project that aims to find the best ways to help others and put them into practice.”
But Thayer noted that while the philanthropic movement may sound high-minded, Silicon Valley elites and members who donate and support “effective altruism” may have much more direct political goals in mind.
Thayer did not have evidence that any individuals or groups connected to the effective altruism movement provided public relations or other support for Coxon’s post about his resignation.
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Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna have been leading financial backers of organizations associated with the “effective altruism” movement.
The couple founded Coefficient Giving, formerly known as Open Philanthropy, and remain its “main funders,” according to the organization. Tuna serves as its president.
Coefficient Giving says its artificial intelligence work has expanded rapidly, with $168 million committed to AI safety, security and field-building in 2024 and $351 million in 2025 — a combined $519 million. The organization says it is on track to commit more than $1 billion to AI policy advocacy in 2026.
Cari leads the couple’s charitable foundation and is going about trying to figure out how to give that money away to maximize its impact. She’s taking a very scientific approach and has tons of spreadsheets and has interviewed more than 300 people ranging from Bill Gates to Brookings scholars and doctors in Burma. (Photo by Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
In a 2021 grant application description, the organization cited that it seeks “to fund programs and events in a variety of areas of interest to Coefficient Giving — including effective altruism, global catastrophic risks, biosecurity, AI for epistemics, forecasting, and other areas.”
Moskovitz, who Forbes estimates has a net worth of roughly $10 billion, contributed more than $50 million to support the Biden-Harris campaign from 2020 to 2024, including $46.89 million to the Future Forward PAC which served as the main fundraising vessel for the failed presidential campaign.
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On Monday, the Department of War Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering posted to X: “Americanism, not effective altruism. The United States will continue to be AI DOMINANT!”
As for the reasoning behind “effective altruism’s” commitment to the artificial intelligence policy space, Thayer said the fear-mongering technique is comparable to the climate change narrative that has been traditionally peddled by the Democratic Party.
“They basically just say kind of in the same vein as climate change activists like Al Gore used to, they kind of just make bombastic doomsday projections without citing really a whole lot of easily discernible evidence and just expect us to trust their expertise,” Thayer explained.
“First, they got you scared of the data centers based on a bunch of sketchy arguments about water pollution supposedly, and supposedly raising your electric prices, which don’t seem to actually be true,” he added. “And now they’re getting you scared of the actual AI that the data centers are being used to launch.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman talks to reporters following a meeting with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., at the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., on June 3, 2026. (Anadolu via Getty Images)
Thayer said that if AI critics were truly afraid of a potential doomsday scenario, they would be advocating for the extinction of artificial intelligence altogether. Instead, he says that it is a tactic to increase the government’s power over the industry while also acting in their own interest so “that they’re the only ones who are allowed to build it.”
In an opinion piece published in Medium in 2024, Moskovitz noted that he was concerned about the potential risks AI poses, saying that a potential doomsday “situation may develop extremely quickly.”
“Contrary to the popular narrative about effective altruists working in AI, my interest in mitigating the potential risks isn’t rooted in specific predictions about the far future, but rather simple concern about the next few decades, when I and the people I care about are still alive to care about what happens,” he wrote.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA, said a meeting at the White House to discuss AI policy could happen before the end of this week or the next. Trump also weighed in on the AI outlook in a post to Truth Social on Monday.
“The people that say AI is going to destroy the World, and that Data Centers are bad for your neighborhood, are the same people that said, just a short time ago, that the World would be extinguished by “Climate Change.” That HOAX never worked out for them, and now they’re on to the next one.”
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Fox News Digital reached out to Moskovitz, Coefficient Giving and Coxon for comment.