Over the past few years, members of a trans vegan cult called the Zizians have allegedly killed at least four people. On Inauguration Day, a shootout with the Border Patrol raised the group’s body count to six and plunged its members into a media circus. While right-wing publications insinuate a connection between the cult members’ transness and their violence, the group was formed not as a militant queer faction but as an offshoot of the tech-addled libertarian politics of Silicon Valley. The Zizians’ bizarre, apocalyptic belief system emerged from the same tech forums that influence oligarchs like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. But how did a group of very online trans vegans go from posting about artificial intelligence to an alleged killing spree?

The media outcry began on January 20 as Trump was being sworn into office. Initially, some news sites claimed that migrants had shot dead a Border Patrol agent—but coverage shifted once word got out that the alleged killers were not immigrants but trans women. Reactionary media like the New York Post responded predictably with trans-misogynistic agitprop. This coverage is insidious: Such propaganda fuels anti-trans bias just as President Donald Trump is signing executive orders to limit the rights of trans people across the United States.

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The Zizians are hardly leftists. They’re tech nerds who were radicalized on Discord message boards and Internet forums where users circulate fan fiction that doubles as propaganda. Many of the members are trans and have used various names and pronouns at different times, and I’ve done my best to maintain their autonomy in such cases. The Zizians’ justifications for their actions switch between anarchism, libertarianism, and veganism—but one essential part of their ideology remains constant: fear that AI could annihilate all of humanity. They are not alone in this belief—plenty of groups in Silicon Valley dread a future controlled by super-intelligent AI. But so far, only the Zizians have tried to build a secretive commune around those fears—or allegedly murdered anyone because of them. As one critic of the Zizians remarked, anything can be reasonable if “the stakes are literally all of sentient life.”

The group started when Ziz LaSota moved to the Bay Area in 2016 after graduating from the University of Alaska. She seems to have moonlighted for a few tech companies but she struggled to get hired at larger companies like Google. Eventually, she met many of her future comrades through Bay Area groups like the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), which focused on understanding artificial intelligence, and the Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR), which claims to teach people to think more logically. Both organizations were founded by Eliezer Yudkowsky, a researcher and writer who focuses on artificial intelligence and ethics. (He also wrote a 600,000-word piece of fan fiction titled Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality that reimagines Potter as a hyperrational, God-like superhero.) The Zizians spun off from Yudkowsky’s Rationalist group and then formed their own network of smaller, increasingly fanatical blogs.

Sometime in 2016, Ziz met Gwen Danielson, another trans woman, and the two started living together in a tugboat dubbed The Caleb in the Berkeley marina. The living conditions were dismal; they slept in cramped quarters and had little money to fund their expeditions. At first, Ziz hoped to form a much larger “Rationalist Fleet” in Richardson Bay, though this early venture failed. During this time, Ziz and Danielson began disagreeing with many mainstream Rationalist positions, often coming across as aggressive or belligerent to other members. Apparently their in-person attendance at MIRI and CFAR events became sporadic as they began to talk online with those more sympathetic to their fringe ideas about morality and technology. Ziz started encouraging her followers to confront the Rationalist community. She promoted veganism, frugal living, violent escalation when necessary, and exploring trauma through reenactments.

Of course, not all Rationalists hold these beliefs. While some Rationalists describe themselves as liberals, MIRI and CFAR were partially funded by Peter Thiel, the cofounder of PayPal known for his aversion to democracy. In general, both the Rationalists and the Zizians pride themselves on seeing through the haze of politics and seeking a deeper truth. (There is some overlap between the Rationalists and Effective Altruists who believe in optimizing their giving to do the most good in the world. Ziz certainly believed in such optimization—though her actions don’t seem altruistic to those on the outside.)

These ideologues gather on an online forum called LessWrong. As of 2023, there were reported to be about 500 users, though founder Yudkowsky has nearly 200,000 followers on X and the ideas generated in LessWrong percolate throughout Silicon Valley. Common discussion topics include transhumanism, existential threats to human life, and artificial general intelligence (AGI)—the idea that one day artificial intelligence could become self-improving and smarter than humans. In a world where AGI could fix all our problems, there’s a logic to devoting all one’s time to bringing about such a tech god and making sure it is benevolent rather than evil. Among the Rationalists, AGI is regarded with both optimism and fear.

Here we arrive at an “info hazard,” a Rationalist term that essentially translates to “trigger warning.” In 2010, a LessWrong user, Roko, described a concept that eventually became known as Roko’s basilisk. (A basilisk is a mythical reptilian creature; in Harry Potter, the fang of a basilisk plays a pivotal role in defeating Voldemort.) The idea was that intelligent AI may one day realize that not everyone worked to bring about its supreme reign and will torture those who did not advance the cause of superhuman computers. Yudkowsky denounced this idea for its upsetting content and apparent “stupidity,” and eventually banned any discussion of it across the LessWrong community. For many Rationalists, it remains a traumatizing thought experiment. How hard does one have to work to bring the AI god into being to escape endless torment? If you believe this stuff, it can be emotionally debilitating. (Elon Musk and Grimes first met over their shared interest in Roko’s basilisk.) Yudkowsky, CFAR, and MIRI want a “friendly” AI brought into existence. This is one of their primary aims.

But Ziz considered her subgroup the only true Rationalists, the ones intent on solving Roko’s basilisk and unlocking a utopian future. Ziz’s way of ensuring an ideal AI outcome seems muddled at best; she believed that violence can be excused in service of the greater good—but she was not, in her day to day, involved in coding any such program. More often, what the group was morally obligated to do to bring about a compassionate tech overlord were debated rather than performed. That is, until her group began taking action against its enemies. Theory and praxis were always cloudy on Zizian message boards, but like any good cult, they believed in salvation, and Ziz was their Messiah.

By 2019, CFAR and MIRI were exhausted by Ziz and Danielson. The pair were considered difficult personalities, and many Rationalists stopped engaging with them. Some even started to fear they might pose a threat.

Meanwhile, Ziz and Danielson recruited more trans people into their group, including Emma Borhanian and Somni. At some point before 2019, a group of about six began living in a trailer park together. (There seemed to be at least five or so others who communicated with Ziz primarily online; exact numbers are hard to pin down.) Sometimes the women walked around in gas masks, and neighbors began referring to them as “the cult.” They paid rent to their landlord Curtis Lind, who was initially friendly toward them, even going so far as to help one of the trans women buy her first bra.

While the group remained active on the LessWrong forum, they also spread out to Discord, where their more radical beliefs began to coagulate, and Ziz continued to write copiously on her blog Sinceriously. Her posts contain a strange mix of Star Wars lore, Steven Universe screenshots, and ideas about hemisphere theory. She believes that each hemisphere in people’s brains have their own moral compass and gender. For instance, one can be single-good, double-good, or nongood. (Ziz is, of course, double-good.) One side of the brain may be cis, and the other may be trans. Some Zizians gave each side of their brain different names.

In November 2019, CFAR banned Ziz and Danielson from its alumni reunion. Instead of backing down, the two gathered three others to protest the event. They donned Guy Fawkes masks and Sith robes and blocked the exit to the main road. Police arrested the group, though they were quickly released on bail. LessWrong members speculate that the police brutality the Zizians may have experienced further radicalized the group.

Miraculously, Ziz continued to attract recruits through her blog, where she espoused her ideas about strict veganism—the only way to be ethical and altruistic, she argued, is to vehemently oppose the death of all living creatures, including animals. She also began to rant online about people choosing “suicide by Ziz” and “airlocking” people—not-so-subtle code words for murder.

For a while, the group remained relatively quiet, until Jamie Zajko, another trans woman, claimed on her Tumblr that Ziz threatened to kill her unless she murdered another LessWrong member named Alice Monday. Multiple Zizians accused Monday of being an abuser, though it’s hard to parse out these claims. The Zizians argue that anyone who opposes them is either transmisogynistic or abusive. Ziz also asserted that MIRI and CFAR were a pedophilic cult. (There is no credible evidence of such a claim.) In response, MIRI and CFAR made a warning post about Ziz, which appears to contain the first use of the term “Zizian.”

There are many contradictions in the Zizian belief system. Despite her veganism, Ziz often advocates violence through jumbled metaphor: “If the state has been seized by vampires such that we are afraid to warn each other about vampires, the state has betrayed an obligation to us and is illegitimate. If a vampire escalated to physical violence by hijacking the state in that way, there would be no moral obligation not to perform self defense.”

Ziz is also unapologetic about using fear to advance her beliefs. She wrote on her blog, “I’m proud of the number of people who have gone vegan because they are afraid of me.” Ziz also claims credit for the suicide of two Zizians—Maia Pasek and Shutterfly—who Ziz says killed themselves because of her ideas. After all, if the AI basilisk will torture nearly of all humanity, why go on?

In November 2022, the group entered into a dispute with their landlord, Curtis Lind. He claimed the group had refused to pay rent and had been threatening him for weeks. Somni stabbed Lind with a katana. In response, Lind shot Somni and Emma Borhanian. Lind and Somni survived, Borhanian died. A third Zizian, Suri Dao, was also present at the time of the attack. Apparently Ziz and Danielson were also seen by police at the scene but evaded arrest. Lye and surgical equipment were found in the trailers, suggesting the group planned to dismember Lind and dissolve his body.

A few months later, Jamie Zajko’s parents were found dead from gunshot wounds. Zajko had previously rung warning bells about Ziz in a cryptic Tumblr post, though it seems that by the time of the murders Zajko and Ziz had become friendly again. The police talked to Zajko at her residence in Vermont, and she was let go without being charged. Eventually, Zajko returned to her family home in Pennsylvania alongside another Zizian named Daniel Blank. The two stayed in separate hotel rooms. When the police went back to the hotel where Zajko was staying, they discovered Ziz hiding in Blank’s room. The police arrested Ziz for skipping town on the arrest warrants for her involvement with the earlier protest and Lind’s attempted murder.

To avoid appearing in court, Ziz had faked her own death and so had kept a low profile. Upon being arrested, Ziz refused to open her eyes or move, and the police carried her out against her will. The group once again raised bail for Ziz, and once again, she escaped.

Maximilian Snyder, another Zizian, raised much of the bail money with the help of a new member from Germany named Ophelia Bauckholt, who flew to the US around the same time the Zajko murders occurred.

Two years later—only a few weeks ago—the group resurfaced. On January 17, Snyder stabbed Lind to death outside his property—not long before the landlord was set to testify against the Zizians about their previous alleged attempt on his life.

Three days later, Ophelia Bauckholt and Milo Youngblut were driving around Coventry, Vermont, when a Border Patrol officer named David Maland performed a seemingly routine stop. The interaction ended in a shootout, and both Maland and Bauckholt were killed. Youngblut was arrested and remains in custody. Snyder, Somni, and Suri Dao are also currently awaiting trial for their involvement with the murder of Lind.

Coverage of the Zizians has skewed toward the salacious. Reporter Andy Ngo wrote an early piece about the Zizians for the New York Post, misgendering nearly every member and using the term “biological” repeatedly. Fueling anti-trans bias through such vicious propaganda is easy and dangerous.

Reporter Max Read’s Substack astutely delves into the attributes that make someone a good member of the LessWrong community; they should be curious, collaborative, and open to new ideas. All good qualities, Read writes, but “as a whole package what you have is a person convinced of their own inadequacy, eager for social connection and personal development, and endlessly persuadable by sophistry.”

Ziz capitalized on her following’s valid fears of anti-trans hate, though her claims that LessWrong is inherently transphobic seem dubious at best. Many LessWrong members have written in defense of transness as a category. Forum founder Yudkowsky does not seem to be a transphobe.

Ziz radicalized trans people who were often young, traumatized, and cut off from any IRL community. She argued that she could help free her followers from their trauma. While followers like Gwen Danielson claim that Ziz is not a cult leader, they certainly follow her like one. Ziz is their savior, leading them toward the all-knowing tech God. By forcing these young queer people to live in fear among squalid conditions, she continually ground them down. Where else could they have gone? Without visible pro-trans left-wing organizations, many turn to online communities as sources of support, leaving them vulnerable to potential radicalization.

One of the best explainers of the Zizians comes from the popular leftist podcast TrueAnon, hosted by Brace Belden and Liz Franczak. Over the phone, Belden told me that the Zizians seem incapable of distinguishing the characters they play from the real world. The world is not a role-playing game where you’re trying to create the conditions for a super-intelligent AI. “To you or me this is a short-story premise, but to these people, they’re making God,” Belden said. “It really seems to be a religious structure these people are working in rather than a political one. This seems to be a religion for the tech era.”

Zizians believe they are saving the world. They’re not a trans cult, not really—they’re a group of sad misfits who latched onto a communal myth that they were the only ones who could save the world from Roko’s basilisk. It’s a more appealing story than hopelessly watching the fizzling out of liberal democracy. Zizians see themselves at the center of a great battle, fueled by a self-aggrandizing narrative and too much anime. In such a warped account, their sense of what is true and false degrades, leaving behind an enduring belief in their own self-importance. “The way we consume media now really breaks down our ability to discern fact from fiction or reality from myth,” Belden said. “These people are really an acute version of what many people are going through on a day to day.”

This is a cruel mysticism. For the Zizians, AI offers a belief system: a reason to continue in an increasingly chaotic and punishing world. Such a religion offers salvation without any real-world commitment. This is retreat from the nightmare of our reality, but it’s also a frail fantasy that, once ruptured, can lead to violence and even death. When a shared belief system is ripped away, the comedown is brutal.

On February 16, Ziz, Jamie Zajko, and another Zizian were arrested in Maryland after being reported to authorities. (It seems the group was continually on the move. They were also reported to have had a base in North Carolina.) This time, Ziz is being held without bail. In the past, such events have not deflated her ego. She once wrote on her blog, “There are more people who would probably actually avenge me if I was killed or unjustly imprisoned than almost anyone in the modern era.”

While Ziz and her companions wait for artificial general intelligence, they may have brought forth a different tech god. There’s another mythological creature that’s perhaps a better analogy than the basilisk: the tulpa, a phantom creature created by shared fear and delusion, a beast that becomes real because we make it so. The Zizians created a tulpa who feasts on the weak and vulnerable. Ziz formed it out of the fears of a dystopian future that lurk behind so many tech-forum posts. But this tulpa won’t die easily. The tagline of Ziz’s now-defunct blog is “more patient than death.” The Zizians offer a seductive religion for the lost, and as our technology improves, fear and worship of artificial general intelligence will only increase. Unless something changes with our relationship to technology, the Zizians may be just the first in a new kind of tech cult.