Meet Guido Reichstadter, the Marine Veteran Who Scaled D.C. Bridge to Protest Iran War & AI

We go now to Washington, D.C., where a former Marine reservist and father of two spent five nights on top of the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge to protest the war on Iran and artificial intelligence. Guido Reichstadter scaled the 168-foot arch of the bridge on May 1st. He continued to post to social media while he was on top of the bridge. In a social media post Tuesday evening, he said he’d run out of water and would head down, adding he expected to be going to jail for a while.

In an earlier post, he wrote, quote, “One man on a bridge is relatively powerless, but the collective withdrawal of our obedience and support is capable of bringing a swift end to the regime and its wars. This nonviolent collective action is our greatest power and it is the exercise of this power that those who rule fear more than any weapon. For the sake of the world, its children, and our future, let us build this power with each other, together,” he wrote.

This is not the first time Guido has climbed the Frederick Douglass Bridge in protest. In 2022, he spent 24 hours on the bridge to protest the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. He’s also a co-founder of Stop AI, a grassroots movement to disrupt artificial intelligence technology.

After he ended his protest on the bridge, Guido was arrested and charged with unlawful entry, failure to obey an officer, and several other charges.

Well, Guido Reichstadter joins us now in Washington, D.C.

GUIDO REICHSTADTER: Good morning. Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here.

Yeah, I think, like, most simply, what I did was follow the call of my heart. I couldn’t stay silent in the face of, you know, these ongoing acts of mass murder by the U.S. government in my name, and I felt like I had a — that I have a duty to the truth, which is that we have the power to end these wars today. We the people, whose — in whose name these murders are being committed, we’ve got the power and the responsibility to nonviolently withdraw our support, our cooperation, from the system, from the regime, which is prosecuting these acts of murder in our name. And if we do that, we can end them. And that’s actually — you know, that’s our right. It’s our power. And it’s — I feel that it’s our responsibility.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you, Guido, explain why you came to D.C., planning to attend a talk by Senator Bernie Sanders on the dangers of AI, of artificial intelligence, and yet, this protest, though — you had scaled the Frederick Douglass Bridge before — was about the U.S. war on Iran?

GUIDO REICHSTADTER: Sure. Yeah, I’ve been — I’ve been worried about AI for a long time, since about 25 years, when I first heard about the possibility of building artificial general intelligence, or AI systems with, you know, the full range of, essentially, cognitive capabilities of a human brain. It just seemed like it was — you know, 25 years ago, everyone thought that might be hundreds of years in the future. And since ChatGPT was rolled out in late 2022 and, you know, broadly, the deep learning revolution, the whole field has really updated quickly and shortened their timelines for when that might be possible.

And, you know, the world’s leading, most cited living scientists, engineers in the field, academics all recognize that the development of that technology poses the risk of catastrophic harm, even including loss of control of advanced systems and potentially human extinction. So, I moved to San Francisco in 2024 to begin social mobilization on that. That’s actually what brought me to D.C. on Friday — or, on last Wednesday.

AMY GOODMAN: Was that a part of your protest? Was it both issues, both AI and the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran?

GUIDO REICHSTADTER: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. There’s — so, I put it out in the first post that I put on social media when I got on the bridge, that was — identified those — there are really three. One is ending the war, removing the Trump regime from power, and an urgent warning to our society about the potential imminent arrival of a kind of point of no return, beyond which we’ll be consigned to these catastrophic effects from AI.

And, you know, I care about the society in which I live. I’ve got two children, and I care about the world. And I feel that I have that responsibility to warn the people that I care about about a danger that is recognized by, you know, the people who are closest to the development of this technology. And it’s coming on fast, and this is, you know, a lot faster than maybe is recognized. And it’s great that Senator Sanders held that discussion between academics in China and the United States about the need for global treaty coordinating to stop the development of really dangerous systems, but we need to treat it like an emergency. And that means more than talks, and it means action.

GUIDO REICHSTADTER: Sure. You know, that’s what led me — that’s part of what led me to join the Marines right out of high school. And it’s also — you know, when I was confronted in university with the reality of American intervention, the history of American intervention and power, imperialism in the world, it’s what made it also possible, I think, or easier for me to reject that and say, “No, this isn’t right,” which is what I did in 2003, when — you know, in the run-up to the Iraq War. Well, in fact, I refused to deploy to the Iraq War and resigned, you know, essentially refused to deploy, said, “I’m not going to — I’m not going to train. I’m not going to — I’m not going to go fight this war. And you can either let me go, or you can send me to jail, but you can’t force me to do what’s wrong.”

And that’s what I went up on the bridge to do, as well, to say, you know, to the people of my country, it’s like, what’s being done is wrong, and we have — we have to stand up against it and not accept it. And, you know, if we do that, in mass, collectively, we have the power to stop it.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you face right now, Guido, in terms of charges? And do you feel that your protest was a success?

GUIDO REICHSTADTER: Oh, yeah, absolutely. So, I have currently one federal charge, unlawful entry, and a D.C. charge of failure to obey. And I’m also facing charges in San Francisco for nonviolently blocking the doors of OpenAI, one of the leading frontier AI companies.

You know, for me, the important thing was doing what’s right, doing what I felt I had to do. And I was able — you know, even just trying to do it is the success, right? You know, thank God I was able to make it to the top and to, you know, go through that action. But doing what’s right is the success. Choosing to do what’s right and accepting the consequences is the — that’s the pivotal — the pivotal thing. That’s the pivotal decision that everyone has to make. And if we can make that, that’s what’s — that’s what’s successful. But, broadly, I think, it has — it has motivated, inspired people, even around the world. I’ve gotten messages from hundreds of folks.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Guido, I asked you about AI and about the war in Iran. Do you connect the two? The whole question of the use of AI, looking at Michael Klare’s comments, “Artificial intelligence played a major role in selecting targets for attack during Operation Epic Fury, the U.S. air and missile campaign against Iran that began Feb. 28.” Your final comment, in these last 30 seconds?

GUIDO REICHSTADTER: Yeah, absolutely. You know, it was not only used as a weapon of war, it is being developed as a weapon of war, but also as a tool for the advancing fascist movement to surveil and control the society, which makes war possible and makes resistance more difficult. And we should expect that as AI systems grow in capability in the future, if this is not stopped, it will destroy democracy, and it will probably destroy the world. We’ve got a responsibility to stop it. If we care about the people we love and the society we live in and our children and their future, we’ve got to make sacrifices and do what’s necessary, even if it’s uncomfortable.

AMY GOODMAN: Guido Reichstadter, I want to thank you for being with us, co-founder of Stop AI, father of two. He scaled the Frederick Douglass Bridge in Washington, D.C., last week to protest the war on Iran and AI, remained on the bridge for four days and five nights, a former Marine reservist.

Coming up, the prominent biotech entrepreneur Rami Elghandour. He had been selected by Rutgers University to address this year’s graduating class of engineering students, but then the school canceled his speech, they said, over his social media posts on Israel and Palestine. Stay with us.