From a fear of dying to AI 'martyr': Meet the 20-year-old Texan accused of plotting against Sam Altman

Almost one year to the day before he traveled to California in what authorities said was a bid to kill OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Daniel Moreno-Gama handed in an assignment for a college English class.

"My most important belief can be described in one of my favorite proverbs: 'A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in,'" read the assignment for Lone Star College in Montgomery, Texas, which was posted to a Substack account using his name in February. It's a quote that would appear again in the bio of an Instagram account linked to Moreno-Gama.

He did not mention artificial intelligence, Altman, or OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, though those were frequent topics of his writings over the 22 months leading up to the 20-year-old's Friday arrest.

Since June 2024, posts from Instagram, Discord, and Substack accounts linked to Moreno-Gama paint a picture of a young man increasingly focused on AI and the "existential threat" it poses. He's part of a growing movement of discontent with and violence against Big Tech and Corporate America.

By earlier this year, posts linked to him became even more fatalistic, exploring the idea of martyrdom. One post reads: "It is my personal belief that there is no truer form of love than that of the Martyr."

Last week, authorities say, Moreno-Gama tossed a lit Molotov cocktail at Altman's San Francisco home and threatened an attack on OpenAI's nearby headquarters.

Public defender Diamond Ward said on Tuesday that Moreno-Gama has a "history of autism and mental health illness," and that her client's actions "appear to have been driven by an acute mental health crisis."

The court-appointed attorney called the federal and state charges against Moreno-Gama — which include state-level attempted murder — "unfair and unjust" and accused prosecutors of exploiting "the mental illness of a vulnerable young man by turning a vandalism case into an attempted murder, life exposure case to gain support of a billionaire."

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said in response, "It wouldn't matter if this was a billionaire or a CEO or any average San Franciscan."

The Substack bearing Moreno-Gama's name suggests he was deeply religious in his youth, inspired by his father, who started two Spanish-speaking ministries.

His family was "extremely devout in protestantism," and he had a "debilitating fear of death," reads the post about his April 2025 school assignment. He shed those religious beliefs as he got older, which, he said, led to a new sense of purpose.

"I came to a realization that simply because a god had not given us some divine purpose does not mean that we are purposeless, it only means it is up to us to create our own," the post said.

He went to public school before starting classes at Lone Star College, about a 15-minute drive from the 1,500 square-foot, three-bedroom home he shared with his mom on a cul-de-sac in the Houston suburbs, social media posts and public records show.

Moreno-Gama was one week into his college tenure when he first posted in the PauseAI Discord channel.

"I am very passionate about this issue and am willing to learn and help whatever means necessary," he wrote on June 11, 2024, under the alias Butlerian Jihadist, a reference to a war between humans and artificial intelligence in the Dune science fiction series.

PauseAI, an AI safety advocacy group, condemned the attack on Altman in a statement. PauseAI said he was banned from its public Discord site following news of his arrest. His posts have since been deleted.

Over the next year and a half, he posted 34 times on the forum, PauseAI said. On Discord, he described himself as a "community college student with no tech background" who enjoyed writing and asked if he could help with recruitment or activism, according to copies of the Discord posts confirmed by Business Insider. In one early post, he shared a draft of a letter he planned to send to Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw, saying a "small cartel of individuals has successfully pulled the wool over the eyes of our government and the public." The letter asked the representative to "look further into this issue."

An Instagram account linked to his Substack and followed by several relatives, features photos of empty European streets and church facades — as well as news segments, charts, and reports about the threat of AI. The account contains a clip from a "60 Minutes" interview with "the Godfather of AI" Geoffrey Hinton about the importance of AI safety, shared an article headlined "AI might let you die to save itself," and recommended a book titled "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies."

Toward the end of last year and into 2026, his writings appeared increasingly urgent.

"We owe it to everyone who came before us, and to ourselves, and everyone we know and love, and everyone who might exist someday, to be stronger than that and at least die fighting if it comes to that," he wrote on Discord on November 6.

A few weeks later, he wrote that the "someday" was approaching.

"We are close to midnight it's time to actually act," he posted.

In response, a moderator warned Moreno-Gama: "Advocating violence in any form is grounds for a ban."

Moreno-Gama did not return to Lone Star for the new semester in January, the school confirmed. He was working part time at a pizzeria, his lawyer said.

The Substack linked to him also posted increasingly detailed missives about martyrdom and tech CEOs like Altman.

"These people are almost nothing like you. They are most likely sociopathic/psychopathic and, in the case of Altman, consistently reported to be a pathological liar," said a January Substack post titled "AI Existential Risk."

He called for the US to halt all data center construction and strike a deal with China to end the AI race.

"Giving up is unacceptable, not trying is a death sentence," the January post said.

On Friday, he was caught on surveillance footage standing in front of Altman's $27 million San Francisco mansion overlooking the Bay in the tony Russian Hill neighborhood. Just after 3:30 am, authorities say he threw a Molotov cocktail at the six-bedroom home, setting fire to the top of the driveway gate.

Moreno-Gama ran off, and about an hour and a half later, he arrived at OpenAI's headquarters, where he struck the building's glass doors with a chair and threatened to "burn it down and kill anyone inside," according to a federal affidavit that included the surveillance images.

A three-part "anti-AI" note that San Francisco cops recovered from Moreno-Gama "identified views opposed to Artificial Intelligence (AI)" and included a target list with the names and addresses of other AI CEOs, board members, and investors, the affidavit said. The people on the list have been alerted, an FBI official said, though they have not been named publicly.

The alleged attacks by Moreno are not the first time fears over AI have turned physical.

OpenAI locked down its San Francisco office in 2025 after receiving what it believed at the time to be a threat from an individual who had previously been associated with an AI protest group.

A recent poll of 5,458 Americans by Bentley University found that 78% of respondents didn't trust companies to use AI responsibly.

Altman addressed the attack and fears over AI on his blog the day it occurred.

"A lot of the criticism of our industry comes from sincere concern about the incredibly high stakes of this technology," he wrote. "While we have that debate, we should de-escalate the rhetoric and tactics and try to have fewer explosions in fewer homes, figuratively and literally."

Since the attack, several Instagram users have commented their support on posts linked to Moreno-Gama, echoing some of the same sympathetic reactions that emerged in the case of accused UnitedHealthcare CEO killer Luigi Mangione.

"You are a good person," one comment read. "You are in league with Luigi now."

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