OpenAI's June 2026 threat report identified two organized influence campaigns that used ChatGPT to generate content aimed at American communities fighting AI infrastructure. They gave them names. "Data Center Bandwagon" seeded social media posts and political cartoons claiming data centers drove up electricity prices. "Tech and Tariffs" pushed similar content about U.S.-China trade competition.
The operators worked carefully. They prompted ChatGPT in simplified Chinese, requested outputs in both English and Chinese, and routed their traffic through VPNs to hide their origins. The content — flyers, talking points, localized community posts — was built to look like it came from concerned neighbors, not from a Chinese tech company holding contracts with regional Chinese governments.
Ben Nimmo, principal investigator on OpenAI's intelligence and investigations team, described what made this operation distinct: "This was not a case of an influence operation creating a debate. The debate existed already. This was an influence operation from China trying to interfere in it."
The debate was real. A Gallup poll shows 71% of Americans already oppose new data center construction in their communities. China didn't manufacture that opposition. They found it, amplified it, and fed it back into American community groups — while Beijing built its own AI capacity at a pace we can barely track.
The AI content is only half the story. The other half has a name and an address.
Neville Roy Singham is a Connecticut-born tech entrepreneur who sold his company, relocated to Shanghai, and became one of the largest private funders of left-wing organizing in the United States. He is currently under federal grand jury investigation in New York. According to analysis by the Bitcoin Policy Institute, his network funneled $285 million through a Goldman Sachs philanthropy fund into leftist nonprofits, media organizations, and activist groups — including the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which ran anti-data center campaigns on his network's funding.
The documented results span twelve states: Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, Arizona, California, Colorado, and Utah. Four data center projects dropped. Ten local governments imposed construction moratoria. One data center permanently banned. The Bitcoin Policy Institute estimates $23.6 billion in data center investment has been delayed or blocked.
Twenty-three point six billion dollars. Call it what it is: infrastructure sabotage.
Meanwhile, the people providing intellectual cover for slowing Western AI development aren't hiding. Xue Lan, a Tsinghua University professor who chairs China's national AI governance expert committee and serves as a counselor to the Chinese State Council, advocates publicly for international AI safety frameworks — the kind that would constrain Western development while Beijing races ahead unconstrained. Zeng Yi, dean of the Beijing Institute of AI Safety and Governance, pushes the same line. The formula is simple: rules for us, runway for themselves.
Congress has noticed. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton formally asked the Justice Department to investigate foreign influence targeting American AI infrastructure. "Americans certainly have valid concerns about potential rising energy costs and strains on natural resources related to data centers," Cotton said — making clear that a foreign adversary exploiting those concerns is a separate matter entirely. House Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie led House Republicans in June 2026 to make the same request of the Trump administration. Two committees, two chambers, same conclusion: someone is interfering, and the fingerprints point to Beijing.
Retired Lt. Col. Quán Chāngpǔ, a former Chinese military officer who managed overseas operations for the CCP before defecting to the West in the early 1990s, was more direct: "Targeting the heart of the system and creating a contentious atmosphere in the U.S. benefits them. PLA fingerprints are everywhere."
In April 2026, Senator Bernie Sanders hosted a Capitol Hill event railing against AI expansion — pushing the same talking points the Chinese influence operation was seeding into American communities. Nobody is accusing Sanders of taking direction from Beijing. But when a sitting U.S. senator and a Chinese military intelligence operation are working from the same script, the overlap is worth more than a shrug.
China spent decades stealing our technology. They've since found something more efficient: getting us to stop building it ourselves.