Activist remains perched atop DC bridge protesting Iran war, AI development: 'The spirit moves me'

An ongoing blockade at the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge in Washington, D.C., continues as an activist protesting the Iran war and artificial intelligence (AI) sits atop the Beltway thoroughfare.

Guido Reichstadter, 45, a former jeweler and math and physics student, climbed the 168 feet up the bridge Friday night and plans on staying "until the war is ended," he told Fox News Digital.

Reichstadter previously climbed the same bridge in 2022, that time protesting the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. This time he is protesting both the Iran war and the development of AI.

"The situation with AI from my perspective, which I think is the shared perspective of many of the experts, it really couldn't be more dire," he told Fox News Digital in a video interview while perched atop the bridge.

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Though his protest coincided with a wave of D.C. "May Day" protests the day before, Reichstadter did not claim to be a part of that movement.

"With these things, I kind of work as the spirit moves me," he told Fox News Digital, getting slightly emotional. "From the very first day of the bombing of Iran, I knew I was going to do something."

When asked what he would like to see happen with the Iran war, Reichstadter replied "I would like to see Congress grow a spine and do its job. To assert its constitutional authority over the declaration of war and they're manifestly not doing that."

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When asked if he would still be protesting if Congress did approve it through a War Powers Resolution Act, Reichstadter said, "it absolutely depends on the particulars."

Reichstadter did concede that a nuclear Iran would be a threat to the world, though added that he didn't believe the U.S. or any other country should have nuclear weapons either.

When asked if he saw a distinction between a country like Iran developing a nuclear weapon or a more stable country having one, Reichstadter said he didn't really see a big difference between Iran having nuclear weapons and other countries.

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"I haven't seen anything that makes me believe that the Iranian regime is particularly different in terms of its willingness to destroy the world. This is not to excuse anything that the Iranian regime does. I'm not making excuses, or under any illusions that it is not an autocratic regime which has committed atrocities on its own people, but the path to a safe future does not involve nuclear weapons held by any state," he said.

Iran has been a U.S. State Department-designated state sponsor of terrorism since 1984. In recent years it has financially backed Hezbollah, Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza, and other terrorist and militant groups in Iraq, Syria and Bahrain, according to the State Department.

The greater threat to Reichstadter, however, was neither a nuclear-armed Iran nor an ongoing war. His greatest fear was the endpoint of AI advancement.

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"What happens when China or Russia or other nuclear states fear that the United States is on the cusp of developing a technology which will render their nuclear arsenals obsolete? They'll be incentivized to stop it by any means necessary," he argued.

"The goal of the frontier AI companies is not to build chatbots. It's not to help you do your homework or make cute cat videos or something. The core mission of all of these companies is to create AI systems which vastly outperform human cognitive capabilities in every respect," he said.

Reichstadter has previously been arrested on charges related to AI protests in California. He was twice for protesting OpenAI’s San Francisco campus, including an event where he locked the company's doors shut, he told Fox News Digital. He was arrested again for violating a judge’s order not to return to the campus in 2025.

The issue for him, he said, is an existential one.

"That's why I quit my job, that's why I quit my career, my comfortable lifestyle, to try to get something moving. Because I've got two kids," he told Fox News Digital. "I've lived a full life. I've been married, I've been in love, I've had a career. I don't know if they're gonna have that. And that's the most important thing in the world to me, is their future and the future of the whole human race," he concluded.

Fox News Digital contacted D.C. MPD for comment but did not immediately receive a response.