Around 200 accounts linked to a suspected Chinese bot farm have attempted to influence Americans’ views on and energy policy, social media platform X said, according to an Axios report.
X’s Safety team investigated suspected Chinese accounts involved in influence operations and identified around 200,000 accounts, including about 200 that it said were posting in a manner that could manipulate legitimate debate around and energy policy.
The posts included claims about AI data centres putting pressure on the electricity grid and increasing utility prices. Some posts also featured cartoons portraying data-centre operators as profiting at the expense of the public, according to the report.
It remains unclear whether X will suspend or remove accounts associated with the suspected bot farm.
Why would China target US data centres?
The alleged influence operation comes as the US and compete to develop advanced AI systems. Data centres are critical to the AI industry because they provide the computing infrastructure needed to train and operate large AI models.
Efforts to slow the expansion of US data centres could therefore affect the broader AI buildout.
The issue has also attracted attention in the US Congress. The House Energy and Commerce Committee in June asked the FBI and White House advisers to brief lawmakers on alleged influence campaigns by foreign adversaries, including China, Russia and Iran, aimed at hindering US AI development and data-centre expansion.
The committee’s letter cited a report estimating that opposition campaigns had delayed or obstructed about $45.8 billion in data-centre projects in Virginia alone.
But US opposition to data centres is also growing
The alleged Chinese influence campaign does not mean opposition to data centres is entirely driven by foreign actors.
Americans are increasingly raising concerns over the impact of large data centres on electricity demand, utility costs and local infrastructure. According to an early August University of Pennsylvania survey cited by Axios, 61% of Americans oppose building new data centres in their area, up 12 percentage points from an earlier survey.
A YouGov survey released this week found that only 24% of Americans considered building new data centres very or somewhat good for the country, while 47% viewed it negatively.
The growing backlash has also become a concern for the AI industry. Several Wall Street banks have cited political opposition to data centres as a risk to the wider AI sector.
Previous China-linked AI influence campaigns
The latest development follows a June report from OpenAI, which said it had disrupted two China-linked covert networks that used ChatGPT to generate content aimed at influencing US debates over AI energy consumption and technology tariffs.
Those campaigns failed to gain significant traction, but OpenAI said they indicated an effort by foreign actors to exploit economic concerns in the US.
At the same time, critics argue that the growing opposition to data centres cannot simply be dismissed as foreign manipulation. Silicon Valley communications consultant Jim Prosser told Axios that resistance is increasingly visible among Americans directly affected by the infrastructure projects.
