For creators, developers, and artists building with AI tools, the noise surrounding data centre opposition is creating a distracting backdrop to real technical and regulatory hurdles. While investors and politicians point fingers at Beijing, the reality on the ground is more complex. The narrative that Chinese state actors are orchestrating the backlash against AI infrastructure is gaining traction in Washington, yet experts remain doubtful that foreign funding is the primary driver of local resistance.
The rise of domestic pushback
Resistance to data centres in the US has surged recently. A poll from climate outlet Heatmap indicates that over half of Americans now back a moratorium on new data centre development. Furthermore, research from the UK-based policy agency Public First, released in early June, found that support for these facilities in the US was the lowest among 15 countries surveyed.
This sentiment has become a focal point for political manoeuvring. Senator Tom Cotton wrote to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Wednesday, requesting an investigation into foreign influence campaigns allegedly led by the Chinese Communist Party to manipulate public opinion. Republican leaders on the House Energy and Commerce Committee followed suit last week, sending a separate letter to the White House and the FBI expressing alarm over foreign campaigns targeting data centre development.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum recently told Fox Business that communities attempting to build data centres are facing a barrage of foreign propaganda. Meanwhile, data centre developers have eagerly adopted these accusations. Kevin O’Leary, the Canadian investor developing a massive and controversial facility in Utah, used a graphic from the Bitcoin Policy Institute in a May video to claim that foreign influence was fuelling opposition to his project.
What the data actually shows
Graphika, a social media analytics firm, has been monitoring data centre opposition across platforms including Facebook, Bluesky, and TikTok for the past year. Dina Sadek, an analyst at Graphika, stated that the company has “not yet seen evidence of organised or scaled influence operations or campaigns that can be traced back to a foreign actor,” with two notable exceptions.
The first exception involves a “cross-platform network of accounts” utilising AI-generated avatars to comment on various social issues, which “sporadically” mention US tech companies. The second involves certain Facebook pages producing anti-data centre images generated with AI; Sadek notes these pages often have administrators based in Bangladesh and may exist solely “for monetisation purposes.”
“Our ongoing research indicates that domestic US actors are leading the online anti-data centre conversation,” Sadek says.
OpenAI’s recent report highlighted ChatGPT-generated anti-data centre images used in a campaign “to amplify existing public concerns about energy prices and local impacts of data centre development.” However, the company noted it “found no evidence of meaningful breakout” of this messaging from the flagged accounts.
The Bitcoin Policy Institute report, cited by O’Leary and referenced by House Republicans, alleges a tangled web of nonprofit funding connects popular anti-data centre efforts to foreign funders, including the Chinese Communist Party. The report also claims Chinese state media is “openly campaigning against US AI data centres,” citing stories about the anti-data centre trend and rising energy costs—topics that American and international outlets have covered extensively.
Expert analysis on foreign interference
Sam Lyman, head of research at the Bitcoin Policy Institute, began investigating the issue following a public AI safety conversation hosted in April between Senator Bernie Sanders and four experts, including two from China. “It was such an obvious psyop,” he says of the event.
However, experts on China and AI remain sceptical of the claim that Beijing is directly and intentionally involved in the US data centre discourse. Kyle Chan, a fellow at the Brookings Institute, points out that high-level discussions between US and Chinese officials have occurred previously around pressing global issues like climate change. Xue Lan, one of the speakers at the Sanders event singled out by the report, is a nonresident fellow at Brookings.
“If you’re looking for prominent people from China who can speak about [AI], they are going to be the very people who would be in contact with and providing advice to the Chinese government—especially in academia, where there’s a lot of back and forth between academic experts and advising the government on policymaking,” Chan says. “The framing of it can certainly sound ominous, but almost by definition, you would want people who matter in the Chinese AI debate to be there.”
Graham Webster, a research scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, argues that the report cites actions and signs that do not match other documented cases of known Chinese influence campaigns, particularly regarding coverage in state media like China Daily.
“You see US media covering these types of data centre discourses,” he says. “It’s totally normal for the English language Chinese media to pick up storylines that are in the US media. It’s just how wire services work.”
Both Chan and Webster stressed that there have been past instances of Chinese actors intentionally amplifying organic social issues causing unrest in the US, such as protests around the genocide in Gaza. Similarly, Lyman of the Bitcoin Policy Institute acknowledges that local communities “have legitimate questions and concerns” about AI and data centre development.
Even if much of the opposition in the US began organically, there is a strong chance that foreign actors could intervene sooner rather than later.
“The targeting of OpenAI and US data centre buildouts is significant not because the operation appears to have shifted public opinion, but because it shows PRC-origin influence operators testing narratives against AI infrastructure,” the OpenAI report notes.
Chan says the OpenAI report is “part of a broader pattern of Chinese state media and connected actors amplifying legitimate social grievances in the US to make the US look bad.” He adds, “I’d be cautious in estimating the impact of these efforts before seeing more evidence, but it is something worth tracking.”
Key takeaways
- Current polling indicates that over half of Americans support a moratorium on data centre development, with US support ranking lowest among 15 surveyed nations.
- Graphika has found no evidence of organised foreign influence operations behind the anti-data centre narrative, suggesting domestic US actors are leading the conversation.
- While some accounts use AI-generated content and may be monetisation-driven, experts warn that foreign actors are likely testing narratives against AI infrastructure regardless of current impact.
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