How Beijing Is Trying to Stall American AI

Artificial intelligence will shape the future of economic growth, military strength, and global technological leadership. The nation that builds the largest and most advanced AI ecosystem will help establish the standards governing everything from medicine and manufacturing to national defense. The Chinese Communist Party understands these stakes. Beijing has placed artificial intelligence and computing infrastructure at the center of its 15th Five-Year Plan and is pouring state resources into its own AI industry. At the same time, China-linked actors are attempting to turn Americans against the infrastructure their country needs to compete. 

Open AI recently uncovered an operation referred to as “Data Center Bandwagon” that showed how China-linked actors attempted to interfere in America’s debate over AI infrastructure. Operators based in China used virtual private networks, created false identities, and posed as American workers, students, mothers, and investors. They produced social-media posts and images claiming that data centers were overwhelming the power grid and forcing families to pay higher electricity bills. 

Concerns about electricity prices, water consumption, and local development are legitimate and deserve honest discussion. The operators attempted to exploit these existing concerns while concealing their identities and motivations. The campaign itself attracted little genuine engagement, but it demonstrated that China-linked actors were testing narratives that could weaken public support for American AI infrastructure. 

In June, three Republican leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Chairman Brett Guthrie and subcommittee chairmen John Joyce and Bob Latta, sent a letter to  FBI Director Kash Patel and the co-chairmen of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology requesting a federal investigation into possible foreign efforts to obstruct American data-center construction. 

The lawmakers pointed to three alleged channels of influence: foreign state media, organizations connected to Shanghai-based activist Neville Roy Singham, and foreign money routed through American nonprofit networks. Reports cited in the letter alleged that these networks sought to shape American public opinion and policy against data centers. Some organizations reportedly used environmental lawsuits and other delaying tactics associated with earlier anti-fracking campaigns. Others sought to reduce the profits utilities could earn, potentially discouraging investment in new power plants, transmission lines, and grid improvements.  The letter also cited an estimate that approximately $45.8 billion in Virginia data-center projects had been disrupted while many of the donors financing the opposition groups remained shielded from public disclosure.

Allowing China-linked influence campaigns to disrupt America’s AI infrastructure while Beijing treats AI development as a national priority would carry serious geopolitical consequences. If China builds the world’s dominant AI ecosystem while American data centers, power generation, and grid improvements are delayed, Beijing could gain greater influence over global technology standards, supply chains, military capabilities, and the digital systems used by developing nations. The United States must identify and expose covert foreign interference while continuing to expand the infrastructure required to compete. America cannot afford to surrender its technological leadership to a Chinese Communist Party determined to make artificial intelligence an instrument of economic power, surveillance, and geopolitical control.