More than a dozen local TV stations recently aired a video report titled “Far-left network behind ‘No Kings’ protests targeting AI data centers, Flock cams.” The segment depicted opponents of Flock not as a diverse group of citizens worried about mass surveillance, but as radical leftists spreading propaganda for China and wealthy billionaires. The opposite is true. The organisations defending Flock and casting their critics as cynical, paid influencers have a specific agenda, deep pockets, and connections to some of the most powerful people in the world.
Many vocal defenders of Flock are using a strategy the company itself tried after news outlets reported abuse of its automated license plate reader systems. They suggest anyone opposing the technology must be part of a coordinated group that hates the police and wants the United States to fail. Some defenders, a mix of employees from billionaire-funded think tanks and people with direct financial stakes in Flock, have claimed those opposing the system are being quietly funded by billionaires or shadowy groups.
Last year, Flock CEO Garrett Langley told Forbes that DeFlock, an open-source map of ALPR cameras, was a “terroristic organization” closer to ANTIFA than anything else. In December, emails obtained via a public records request showed Langley told the police chief of Staunton, Virginia, that Flock and its partners were under a coordinated attack from activist groups wanting to defund the police and weaken public safety. Langley recently apologised for these remarks. Yet parts of the conservative media, several well-funded think tanks, the former head of the National Security Agency, and Flock’s investors are trying to run this playbook again.
Last week, a lobbying group called Consumer Action for a Strong Economy published a report titled “The Compute War At Home.” The report features a cover with obvious AI-generated imagery. The AI writing detector Pangram flagged nearly everything except the end citations as likely written by AI. The foreword was written by Rob Joyce, the former head of the NSA. The report suggests opposition to Flock and data centers is driven by “China-linked activists networks.” It claims this opposition is partly driven by groups it says have received funding from Neville Roy Singham, an American tech billionaire who now lives in China and has become a George Soros-like figure in conservative media.
Opposition to Flock, the report says, is the result of “socialist organizers” partially driven by the People’s Republic of China. It claims the Chinese government found an issue on the right could agree with as a “wedge issue” to discredit America’s AI expansion. As evidence, it points to an article by Breakthrough News, an organisation that has gotten money from Singham, about Flock last year. That article was not particularly popular on social media, was one in a sea of thousands of articles about Flock, and has not been cited in any meaningful way. It also notes that members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a leftist political party funded by Singham, have posted about Flock and held information sessions. It is true these groups received funding from Singham and posted about Flock, but there is nothing to suggest their posts are particularly influential in a sea of millions of social media posts and thousands of deeply reported articles.
The report attempts to suggest far left socialist organisers have manipulated conservatives into opposing Flock. It says conservatives now make up the bulk of online opposition: “81 percent of politically classifiable fused Flock-data center posts came from right-wing/conservative or libertarian accounts,” even though opposing Flock originated with far-left interests. This mechanism, where the left supposedly incepted the right, is “strategically important.” An argument introduced through left-wing channels was able to travel through a much larger conservative audience once packaged around privacy and distrust of government technology.
“A conservative does not need to share PSL’s socialism, CODEPINK’s worldview or Beijing’s strategic interests to advance an outcome all three can welcome. He only needs to accept the surveillance-state frame and repeat it,” the report adds.
CASE, the group that published this study, does not make the vast majority of its funding sources public. Previous IRS records show it has taken money from big pharmaceutical and telecom industries. The think tank’s interests are primarily around deregulation by promoting consumer interests through the advancement of free-market principles.
The anti Donald Trump “No Kings” protests are not actually mentioned in the CASE report. The study still served as the basis for two major pieces of conservative media. The first was a report in Fox News called “No Kings protest network behind fight against AI data centers and Flock cameras.” It read: “Organizations from the Singham network—including the Party for Socialism and Liberation, CodePink, the People’s Forum, ANSWER Coalition and affiliated groups—appeared repeatedly across [the No Kings] movement, working with nonprofits more aligned with the Democratic Party, including Indivisible, a nonprofit network funded in part by billionaire Democratic megadonor George Soros.” The organisations deny any wrongdoing as agents of alleged foreign influence and say they are addressing legitimate community grievances.
More insidiously, the CASE report was picked up by The National New Desk, a Sinclair Broadcast Group-owned news production team that runs on dozens of local news stations nationwide. The Sinclair-produced package is called “Report: Far-left network behind ‘No Kings’ protests targeting AI data centers, Flock cams.” Neither piece of coverage indicates how “No Kings” is involved, but both seem to imply some of the groups that showed up at the No Kings protests have also posted about Flock. The package ran in at least 40 different local news markets, including Birmingham, Alabama; Mobile, Alabama; Little Rock, Arkansas; Bakersfield, California; Chico, California; Fresno, California; Washington, D.C.; West Palm Beach, Florida; Boise, Idaho; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; and South Bend, Indiana.
What it means
For people making things, the situation is simple. A company selling surveillance cameras is using its financial backing to label critics as enemies of the state. It is hiring media outlets to run stories that claim ordinary citizens are being manipulated by foreign powers. This approach shifts the focus from whether the cameras work or how they are used to whether the people asking questions are trustworthy. It creates a barrier where factual reporting about data collection is treated as a political attack rather than a public interest story.
