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The Zizians are an informal group of rationalists allegedly involved in six violent deaths in the United States, three in 2022 and three in 2025. Federal prosecutors say the Zizians are associated with persons of interest in the murders of four people: David Maland in Vermont (a U.S. Border Patrol agent), Curtis Lind in California (a landlord), and Richard and Rita Zajko in Pennsylvania (the parents of one of the group members). In addition, Ophelia Bauckholt (a Germany citizen) and Emma Borhanian, both associates of the Zizians, were killed during altercations with Maland and Lind.
The term Zizians is derived from the name of Ziz LaSota, who is sometimes characterized as their leader. Zizians do not use this name or consider themselves to have a clearly identified leader, or even to be members of a group. The Zizians advocate a distinctive ideology including anarchism, veganism, and the notion that the hemispheres of the brain can have distinct genders and conflicting interests. The Zizians have been widely described as a cult.
Zizians have unique psychological theories, such as "debucketing", aimed at liberating people from societal constraints to pursue their moral ideals, and the notion that the hemispheres of the brain can have distinct genders and conflicting interests. They claim to practice unihemispheric sleep (UHS), a form of sleep deprivation intended to "jailbreak" the mind, which they believe can enhance their commitment to their cause. In 2018, a member committed suicide, which an anonymous rationalist alleged was caused by that member attempting UHS. LaSota later wrote a blog post claiming the member did not perform the practice correctly. In a discussion with CFAR co-founder Anna Salamon, LaSota argued in favor of UHS, pointing to the suicide as proof of its effectiveness. Zizians' adherence to "heroic responsibility" and fixation on apocalyptic scenarios, such as Roko’s basilisk, drives extreme actions to uphold their moral framework, which they believe mainstream rationalists lack.
The group has been called a cult or cult-like by publications such as The Independent, the Associated Press, SFGate, and Reason. The Boston Globe and The New York Times have compared the Zizians to the Manson Family. Similarly, Anna Salamon, the director of the Center for Applied Rationality, compared the Zizian belief system to that of a doomsday cult.
Some of the Zizians are transgender or reject binary gender. LaSota's writings include claims that transgender women are cognitively uniquely suited for artificial intelligence safety research..
On November 15, 2022, Lind, then 80, was, according to his own account, attacked by a group of people after being called in to fix a water leak. He said he was struck in the head, stabbed repeatedly (leaving "about 50" puncture wounds), and cut severely on the back of his neck ("like somebody was trying to cut my head off"). He was left impaled by a samurai sword, and his right eye was punctured three times, blinding him in that eye. After he regained consciousness, he shot two of those involved in the altercation, killing 31-year-old Emma Borhanian and wounding the other. Both had been arrested alongside LaSota at a 2019 protest against an event organized by the Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR), and Borhanian had reported LaSota's 2022 alleged drowning. Two of Lind's alleged attackers were charged with Borhanian's murder under the theory that their actions precipitated Lind's self-defense, under California's felony murder rule. Their trial has been scheduled for 12 October 2025. LaSota was contacted by police during the investigation but was not charged.
On January 17, 2025, three days before the shootout with U.S. Border Patrol officers on the east coast, Lind was stabbed to death and had his throat slit outside his gated property in Vallejo. Lind had been expected to be an important witness in the trial of the alleged attackers for the Borhanian felony murder charge, and stopping him from testifying was alleged as the motive for his killing. Prosecutors charged a 22-year-old data scientist with Lind's murder. The accused dictated to reporters a statement addressed to the well-known rationalist thought leader Eliezer Yudkowsky, saying that he was a follower of Yudkowsky but is not anymore. Yudkowsky refused to read the statement and said, "Audience should not be a reward for crime."
A hotel employee in Lyndonville, Vermont, reportedly contacted law enforcement about the duo after seeing one of them carrying "an apparent firearm in an exposed carry holster". Both wore "all-black, tactical style clothing with protective equipment". After the report, Homeland Security agents contacted the duo, who refused to speak with them extensively. They said they were in Vermont only to purchase real estate. The duo checked out of the Lyndonville hotel and were seen five days later in Newport, Vermont, with one of them carrying a handgun. The next day, hours before the shootout, the two were seen at a Walmart, with Bauckholt buying aluminum foil.
After the shooting, authorities found ammunition, a helmet, night-vision , a tactical belt with a holster, a pair of , a magazine loaded with cartridges, and shooting-range targets in their car. were also found, wrapped in aluminum foil, apparently to Faraday cage. Their handguns were reportedly bought by an associate in Mount Tabor, Vermont.
Maland, 44, was a United States Air Force veteran. According to his family, he had been planning to marry his partner. Maland was an active security officer at the Pentagon during the 9/11 attacks before handling security at Joint Base Anacostia–Bolling. He had worked for the last 15 years for the Department of Homeland Security as a border patrol agent and as a Police dog. Maland was the first Border Patrol agent killed by gunfire in the line of duty since 2014.
A person was charged in connection to Maland's death and pleaded not guilty.
LaSota, who was 34 years old as of 2025, earned a bachelor's degree in computer engineering in 2013 from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She had an internship at NASA and pursued a master's degree at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign from 2013 to 2014 but did not graduate. LaSota moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in hopes of becoming involved with the effective altruism (EA) and rationality movements. Disaffected by high cost of housing, she and a group of fellow EA adherents sought to form a seasteading intentional community. Initially living on sailboats in the Berkeley Marina, they eventually bought an old tugboat and sailed it from Alaska to Pillar Point Harbor in San Mateo.
During her involvement with the rationality community, LaSota became disillusioned with the leadership of community institutions such as the Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR) and the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI). LaSota and her associates claimed CFAR and MIRI discriminated against trans women, used donor money to pay off a former staffer who had accused MIRI leaders of statutory rape and a coverup, and ignored the welfare of animals in the pursuit of human-friendly artificial intelligence. CFAR co-founder Anna Salamon attempted to prevent LaSota from attending the fellowship due to strange beliefs and behavior at previous events, but was overruled by a committee. These included LaSota's theories that human consciousness can be split between the brain's two hemispheres, which may hold different values, genders, and may be "good", "evil", or both. After more CFAR staff members raised concerns, LaSota was no longer invited to the group's events.
In 2019, LaSota, Borhanian, and two associates staged a protest against a CFAR event at a retreat in Occidental, California. Because a 911 call led police to mistakenly believe the protesters were armed and because a group of children was also at the retreat for a separate event, the protest drew a forceful police response. After the four protesters were arrested, a SWAT team was deployed to evacuate the retreat because police mistakenly believed a fifth protester had a hatchet; that person was later discovered to be a maintenance worker. Fallout from the protest and the police response led to a rift between the Zizians and the rationalist community establishment: the Zizians accused CFAR employees of swatting them by falsely reporting to police that they were armed, while a member of the rationalist community published an anonymous callout coining the appellation "Zizians" and branding them as a cult. The Zizians filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Sonoma County in which they alleged that they were wrongfully arrested, denied medication while detained, subjected to excessive force, and mocked for being transgender. The lawsuit was dismissed.
LaSota faked her own death in a supposed boating accident in August 2022, but turned up in January 2023 in a Philadelphia hotel room where police were carrying out a search for a weapon suspected to have been used in the murder of the Zajkos. LaSota was identified as the subject of an outstanding warrant in California and arrested for disorderly conduct and interfering with a police investigation. After her bail was reduced to $10,000, unsecured, LaSota was released pending trial. She appeared in court in Pennsylvania in August 2023, but subsequently failed to appear in December 2023. After media coverage of LaSota and associates related to David Maland's death, LaSota was recognized by the owner of a rural property in Frostburg, Maryland, where she was attempting to camp. The owner called the police, who arrested LaSota on February 16, 2025, for trespassing, obstructing an officer, and transporting firearms. She is being held in custody without bail; she requested a pretrial release, which a local judge denied.
Bauckholt was raised in Freiburg im Breisgau and attended the Goethe-Gymnasium there, where she was a gifted mathematics. In 2014 and in 2015, she won gold and bronze medals for the German team at the International Olympiad in Informatics. She graduated from the University of Waterloo in 2019 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics.
Bauckholt expressed interest in the rationalist community after attending a CFAR event in 2019, and reportedly cut off contact with friends in the fall of 2023. On January 20, 2025, Bauckholt was killed in a shootout in Coventry, Vermont, after being stopped by border patrol agent David Maland, who was also killed. The Freiburg public prosecutor's office is investigating the circumstances surrounding Bauckholt's death, as is done whenever a German citizen dies abroad.
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