China is way behind the US in the AI arms race, but has no qualms about playing dirty to try and gain an upper hand.
According to a new report, Chinese Communist Party-linked backers are helping push anti-AI sentiment which threatens to halt more than $20 billion in energy and infrastructure investment needed to power the AI data boom.
Even more alarmingly, Americans are helping them do it.
While Silicon Valley is focused on hiring the best engineers and talent, an equally important battle is already starting to be lost at suburban zoning hearings, county commission meetings and town-hall protests against building new data centers.
“A lot of people think that this is a choice between AI or no AI… it’s actually a choice between American AI or Chinese AI,” Sam Lyman, who authored the study by the Bitcoin Policy Institute, said. “Who controls AI will control the information layer of the global economy.”
In recent months, the issue has gotten alarming enough that members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee Brett Guthrie, John Joyce and Bob Latta are asking the White House and FBI to examine whether foreign adversaries are fueling anti-data-center activism.
The Bitcoin Policy Institute report warns America’s adversaries are doing everything in their power to limit us.
It claims the China-linked network of Marxist activist Neville Singham and the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) have inserted themselves into local fights across 14 states. Their efforts have helped stall or block at least $23.6 billion in proposed data center investment through funding rallies, petitions, door-knocking campaigns and packing public hearings.
Their efforts have resulted in 10 local moratoria, one permanent ban in Monterey Park, California, and four rejected or scrapped projects — including a $1 billion proposal by Google in Indiana and a $12 billion Blackstone-backed data center in Wisconsin, the report claims.
The report says the organizing push remains active in Cleveland, New Orleans, Milwaukee and Prichard, Alabama.
To be sure, there are legitimate concerns about data centers — they are without a doubt ugly and utilitarian. And it’s fair to express opposition to and push against one next to your home.
But that outrage has gotten a little extreme and while Lyman acknowledges the real frustration, he notes how it is being fueled by fake news and bad information.
“A lot of the talking points that get people riled up are patently false, especially about water usage,” he said, adding that some claims about data-center water consumption have been overstated “by about 1,000 times”
He also claims Singham, who is an American, born in Connecticut, and the Party for Socialism and Liberation — whose leadership overlaps with executives from Singham-funded nonprofits including The People’s Forum, BreakThrough News and the ANSWER Coalition — are relying on a well-worn playbook to exploit people’s fears and frustration.
“He has this same play for pretty much every wedge issue in America,” Lyman told me, referring to any divisive issue which can be used to drive a wedge between groups of people to divide them.
“Identify the wedge issue to latch on to it, and then he’ll stoke even greater division and anger using that wedge issue as fuel.”
In recent years groups, including those linked to Singham, have tried to fuel an anti-American tech narrative — attacking Big Tech, cheering China’s ability to evade US export controls and, more recently, turning AI data centers into the next villain in their war against American corporate power.
By mid-2025, PSL’s publication was tying data centers to higher electric bills and environmental damage. In 2026, it has been calling the nationwide fight over AI data centers “a struggle for who controls the future.”
While we know Singham has poured nearly $300 million into his socialist projects in the US. When it comes to funding for PSL, it’s difficult to trace where the money originates.
“The most disturbing revelation to me was the black box that is PSL’s funding,” Lyman said. If someone asks whether China, Cuba, Venezuela or any other foreign adversary funds the PSL, he added, “the public record can’t give us a clear answer.”
It doesn’t matter how much we innovate if the energy and the data centers necessary to scale are standing in the way.
It is an important reminder we can’t be naive — foreign adversaries are willing to do whatever it takes to prevent America from winning. We must do it anyway.
