Elon Musk’s social media company, X, identified hundreds of suspected Chinese accounts amplifying arguments against artificial intelligence data centers, X Global Government Affairs announced on Thursday.
The operation included around 200,000 inauthentic accounts, with 200 focused on swaying AI infrastructure debates with warnings of rising energy rates and images of corporations destroying communities.
“We take seriously any attempts to undermine the integrity of the global town square and suspend accounts that violate our Authenticity policy,” X Global Government stated in a post published to the platform.
Some commentators took the finding as confirmation that propaganda from China is influencing public opinion on data centers, which have quickly become one of the most politically volatile issues across the United States.
Utah became a prime example of data centers’ electoral power in June, when voter outcry surrounding a proposed data center in Box Elder County contributed to the downfall of Utah Senate President Stuart Adams.
Despite the initial full-throated support of Utah leadership, like Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, the “Stratos Project” quickly became defined by concerns over water use, energy consumption and opaque processes.
By the time Adams was ousted, just 26% of voters strongly or somewhat supported the data center he had sped to approval, while 60% strongly or somewhat opposed it, a Deseret News/Hinckley Institute poll found.
Data center opposition is not isolated to states with high-profile developments. Just 24% of Americans say new data center construction is good for the country; 47% say it’s bad, according to the latest Economist/YouGov Poll.
Is China involved in anti-data center campaign?
Some data center proponents, including Kevin O’Leary, the Canadian investor behind the Stratos Project, have pinned the blame for public backlash on China, saying it is in China’s interest to stall American AI development.
Evidence shows China is waging an online, anti-data center campaign, said former Rep. Chris Stewart, who founded Public First Action, a nonprofit promoting AI safeguards, after serving on the House Intelligence Committee.
“It’s not just 200; it’s probably 200,000,” Stewart told the Deseret News. “China made the decision that they could win this race if they could convince the American people to oppose data centers, which is the compute power we need.”
China is trying to manipulate the U.S. debate over AI because “they want us to lose,” Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Dave McCormick said in a post on Friday. “They want America divided, afraid to build, and dependent.”
OpenAI announced in June it had banned a group of accounts, likely originating in China, that were being used to target U.S. audiences in a “covert influence operation” claiming that data centers make life more expensive.
Data centers do consume enormous amounts of energy. The largest proposed data centers for training AI models would take up to 10 gigawatts of electricity — more than double the peak energy demand of all of Utah.
However, other states are considering following Utah’s example of requiring large data centers to produce their own energy on site — which could actually lead to cheaper energy rates for residents as the supply goes up.
The U.S. and China are at the forefront of what American leaders have called an “AI arms race,” with the winner able to set the terms for the next technological revolution, making AI a top national security concern.
The concerns are real
While the stakes are high, policymakers and executives shouldn’t dismiss public hesitancy as simply the result of Chinese misinformation, said Taylor Barkley, director of federal government affairs at Abundance Institute.
“I don’t think that this release should in any way undermine the real concerns Americans have about data center buildout,” Barkley told the Deseret News. “It’s overstating the fact to say that the social media debate is driven by the Chinese Communist Party.”
As Americans learned during the many other technological transformations of the past two centuries, “change is hard,” Barkley said. Data centers can be noisy, and construction can be disruptive, Barkley acknowledged.
Many concerns, including around water usage, are outdated, or inaccurate, as the Deseret News previously reported. However, several states, like New York and Pennsylvania, have restricted data center construction.
What data center advocates need to do better is explain the benefits of the technology, Barkley said, noting the potential for AI to make everything from health care innovation, to small business creation, vastly easier.
While the U.S. is seen as the global leader on AI software, the computer hardware it relies on has been slow to catch up, Barkley said. The technology will improve as more servers are dedicated to training AI programs.
What developers and lawmakers should not do is discount the worries of voters as the product of Chinese influence, according to Stewart. O’Leary tried this, and has since been sued by the nonprofits he alleged were Chinese-funded.
“You can’t stand before a community and just say, ‘Hey, you guys have all been duped by China and nothing you’re concerned about is real,’” Stewart said. “That’s not going to work. And some of their concerns are real.”