A state-owned newspaper in China recently published a satellite image of a data center in Gainesville, Virginia, writing in English that the development of artificial intelligence posed a threat to Americans’ physical and financial well-being.
A comic strip made to look as if it had been published by a Maryland news outlet — created with OpenAI’s ChatGPT by people in China, the tech company said — circulated on social platform X this year, blaming data centers for soaring electricity bills. It showed a tycoon smoking a cigar and clutching bags of cash.
A video shared on X by a known covert Russian influence operation questioned the viability of a data center that an American company, Firebird, is constructing in Armenia, the small Caucasus nation that has been a focus of Kremlin pressure. “The country’s electrical grid instability may render it useless,” the video’s narrator says.
All are examples of a push by foreign adversaries to seize on what polls have shown is deep ambivalence — verging at times on hostility — about the spread of the data centers needed to power AI in the United States and elsewhere.
China, Russia and, to a lesser extent, Iran have sought to use state media outlets to turn the controversy over data centers in the United States into “a domestic fracture point,” according to a new analysis by Alethea, a threat intelligence company, which identified scores of articles and posts on social media this year.
These campaigns, whose impact on public opinion remains to be seen, have raised alarms in Washington, where AI is seen as a top issue heading into this year’s midterm elections.
The foreign efforts appear intended to stoke the debate over data centers that has united political figures across the political spectrum — from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), a progressive, to Steve Bannon, the erstwhile adviser to President Donald Trump.
“Foreign actors aren’t manufacturing American debates over the future of AI, they are exploiting them,” said Jessica Brandt, a former official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence who tracked foreign influence efforts during the Biden administration.
The goal, she added, is to “deepen our divisions in order to dent our appeal and weaken us from within.”
Republicans and business lobbying groups have seized on the role of China, in particular, claiming that the country’s Communist Party wants to undercut U.S. leadership in a field that the Chinese, too, hope to dominate. They argue that China’s propaganda is an effort to slow down America’s development.
“We can’t allow any effort by foreign adversaries to extort these fears and undermine our technological development,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) wrote to the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, referring to genuine public concerns.
The Trump administration, which after taking office dismantled many of the government teams that tracked foreign influence operations, has begun to recognize the political threat of the rising sentiment against AI.
A Gallup poll in May found that 71% of Americans were somewhat or strongly opposed to having a data center built near them, almost 20 percentage points higher than those who opposed construction of a nearby nuclear power plant. Many have broad concerns about the effects of AI on jobs and the climate, while people who live near data centers complain that they are eyesores and emit annoying sounds. Some cities and counties have enacted temporary or permanent moratoriums on new construction.
In a recent interview on Fox Business, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum suggested that the outside influence campaigns had succeeded in building opposition to data centers. “I think some of this propaganda is being effective,” he said.
The foreign campaigns follow a familiar playbook that dates back at least a decade. They often try to leverage official news organizations and social media to fuel domestic discord around hot-button issues like guns, race and vaccines, or even natural disasters like the wildfires in and around Los Angeles last year.
Between January and June, state media in China, Russia and Iran mentioned data centers roughly 700 times, according to Alethea’s analysis. That was an average of nearly four times a day, though it remained a fraction of overall published content about AI development.
The outlets have featured articles and posts aimed at an American audience, as well as content highlighting criticism of data centers by prominent Americans, including Tucker Carlson, a conservative commentator. In Iran, state media has also highlighted links between American AI companies and Israel and criticized the race to develop the technology as reckless.
Covert Russian information operations, previously identified by government officials and researchers, have recently begun to focus on data centers as a wedge issue on social media, but so far their Chinese counterparts have not done so in the same way, according to Alethea.
OpenAI did disclose last month that a small number of operatives working in China used the company’s ChatGPT platform to generate covert social media campaigns on X, including the comic strip.
Other posts by the operatives promoted claims that data centers were spiking electricity costs and criticized Trump’s tariffs as a blunt tool used to win the technology race.
OpenAI, though, found “little to no authentic engagement” with the campaigns, and the accounts at issue were ultimately removed from X. OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment about Chinese or other foreign efforts.
(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, accusing them of copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems. They have denied those claims.)
Lobbyists have also weighed in to insinuate that U.S. opposition has been fomented with support from abroad.
Power the Future, an energy industry group, argued recently that domestic opposition to data centers was manufactured by environmental groups financed in part by foreign donors such as Hansjörg Wyss, a Swiss philanthropist and conservationist whose foundation is well known for supporting environmental issues.
In a statement, the Wyss Foundation said it did not provide grants to oppose data centers. “These reports are false, misleading and an attempt by special interests to manipulate the public into accepting data centers,” the statement said.
A pair of reports by the Bitcoin Policy Institute, a cryptocurrency advocacy group in Washington, detailed what the group’s researchers called an “extensive, multiyear influence campaign” by China to sway the AI race.
As evidence, the reports cited an invitation by Sanders for two Chinese-government-linked academics to attend a conference on Capitol Hill in April. They also criticized political donations to liberal organizations from Neville Roy Singham, an American tech entrepreneur who is based in Shanghai and has long been a subject of criticism for supporting Chinese propaganda campaigns.
“There is an organic opposition to data centers,” said the author of the reports, Sam Lyman. “What we are calling for is simply transparency, though, because we’ve been able to document an inorganic element that runs parallel to this specific opposition movement.”
Sanders and Singham did not respond to a request for comment.
The Chinese government, through its embassy in Washington, disputed accusations that it was trying to stoke protests in the United States — something it has accused the United States of doing inside China.
“The allegations are completely unfounded and constitute smears and defamation,” a spokesperson, Liu Chang, said in response to questions, noting that the United States and China needed “to work together to promote the development and improve the governance of AI to make sure it will better contribute to social progress.”
Not all of the anti-AI content online has an overtly political purpose. Other actors appear to be exploiting the issue simply to build engagement.
Alethea tracked a network of inauthentic accounts on Facebook that has been posting images appearing to highlight Americans’ opposition to data centers. They include images generated by artificial intelligence showing, for example, a field of crops carved into a massive obscene hand gesture, each tailored to users in different American states. “This is what Oklahoma thinks of data centers,” one says.
The network has digital traces linking it geographically to Bangladesh, Alethea found. It includes dozens of groups or accounts on Facebook and Instagram that feature names like “Life in Texas” or “I Love Minnesota.” Amid a steady stream of AI “slop” are posts opposing data centers.
McKenzie Sadeghi, a principal analyst at Alethea, called the posts “rural rage bait.”
“Data centers are likely the ideal topic for engagement-maximizing operators,” she said. “It is locally salient in all 50 states, fresh, and it maps onto preexisting anti-China, anti-tax, ‘selling America’ grievance.”
