X's safety team said late Thursday that roughly 200 accounts tied to a suspected Chinese bot farm quietly tried to shape American opinion against new AI data centers.
What X reported
According to the platform, its investigation identified about 200,000 accounts in total, including roughly 200 accounts "posting in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy." The flagged posts discussed claims that AI strains the electrical grid and raises utility bills, and included cartoons portraying data center operators enriching themselves at the public's expense.
X did not specify whether it will suspend or delete the accounts; the company, owned by Elon Musk, did not respond to Axios' request for comment.
Why this matters
The United States and China are competing to develop the world's most advanced AI systems, and the reported activity suggests foreign propaganda could be used to slow U.S. infrastructure expansion by amplifying domestic opposition.
Republican members of Congress have been probing foreign influence campaigns aimed at stalling American AI development. The House Energy and Commerce Committee sent a letter in June requesting briefings from the FBI and White House advisers on alleged propaganda campaigns by foreign adversaries, specifically naming China, Russia and Iran.
The committee's letter cited reports estimating that opposition campaigns have delayed or obstructed roughly $45.8 billion in data center projects in Virginia alone.
Real local opposition as well
Regardless of any foreign role, organic opposition to data centers is significant. An early August University of Pennsylvania survey found 61% of Americans oppose building new data centers in their area — a 12 percentage point increase from a February–March UPenn survey.
A YouGov survey released Tuesday found only 24% of Americans say building new data centers is very or somewhat good for the country, while 47% say it is bad. By party, about 60% of Democrats, 48% of independents and 33% of Republicans said new data centers are bad for the country. MAGA-aligned Republicans were more likely to view data centers positively, with 45% saying they are good.
Online posts notwithstanding, there are also real videos showing people turning up at local council meetings to oppose data center projects, indicating that the resistance is not purely synthetic.
Previous incidents
OpenAI reported in June that it disrupted two China-linked covert networks that used ChatGPT to generate fake content aimed at influencing U.S. debates on AI energy consumption and technology tariffs. Those campaigns did not gain wide traction but signaled foreign actors' attempts to exploit American economic anxieties.
Implications
Opposition to data centers has become a financial concern for the AI buildout: several Wall Street banks recently listed political opposition as a risk to the AI sector. The AI expansion depends on growing data center capacity because these facilities provide the computing power large AI companies need to scale.
In sum, X's findings highlight a twofold challenge: genuine local resistance to data center projects exists, and foreign-linked influence operations may seek to amplify that resistance to slow U.S. AI infrastructure development.
