Trump Suggests China Is Stirring US Data Center Backlash: What We Know - Newsweek
President Donald Trump has suggested that China may be helping fuel the growing American backlash against data centers.
Asked by Fox News host Laura Ingraham why Americans do not want data centers near their homes, Trump replied: “A lot of people say it’s China” and “a lot of people say that it’s a China PR thing.”
Trump did not point to any specific evidence during the exchange. He also warned that communities could lose investment and jobs if they reject data centers, calling them “the oil of the next 50 years.”
The claim comes after both X, formerly Twitter, and OpenAI disclosed China-linked online influence activity targeting the U.S. debate over data centers. But the available evidence draws an important distinction: researchers have found attempts to amplify existing American concerns, while there is considerably less evidence that China created, controls or is principally responsible for the nationwide backlash.
Trump's comments come ahead of a planned visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is expected to travel to the United States later this month.
Newsweek has contacted the White House for comment via email outside of regular working hours.
On August 28, X's Global Government Affairs account said its safety team had investigated “suspected Chinese inauthentic accounts” and uncovered a bot farm containing approximately 200,000 accounts. X said 200 accounts within that much larger network were posting in a way that could manipulate the U.S. debate about AI and energy policy—not that all 200,000 were focused on data centers.
According to X, those accounts pushed claims that AI data centers were increasing household electricity prices and straining the power grid, while some circulated AI-generated cartoons portraying data center companies as profiting at consumers' expense. X said it suspends accounts that violate its authenticity rules.
That finding followed an investigation published by OpenAI in June. OpenAI said it banned a cluster of ChatGPT accounts that likely originated in China and were being used in a covert influence operation it named “Data Center Bandwagon.”
The operators generated English language posts and images while posing as Americans, with content focused heavily on electricity demand and household costs associated with AI infrastructure.
OpenAI assessed that the operators were likely associated with a private Chinese technology company working for provincial-level government clients.
The company's threat report said the operation was attempting to “exploit and amplify existing public concerns” and that it found “no evidence of meaningful breakout beyond its own activity.”
In other words, the evidence showed an attempted influence operation, not evidence that it had successfully generated America's growing anti-data center movement.
Republicans in Congress have also been investigating possible foreign involvement. House Energy and Commerce Committee leaders asked the FBI and presidential science advisers in June to investigate what they called evidence of foreign influence campaigns intended to slow U.S. data center development.
On September 10, House Science Committee Republicans asked the National Science Foundation and four progressive environmental and political groups for information about possible foreign funding and influence.
Those funding allegations, however, should not automatically be treated as evidence of Chinese control. One April report from the American Energy Institute calculated more than $39 million in foreign funding went to 12 organizations involved in data center opposition, but its executive summary specifically identified billionaire donors based in countries including Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Denmark.
House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith has separately alleged that money from Chinese Communist Party-aligned sources has reached nonprofits protesting data centers. Congressional committees are now examining foreign funding and potential influence.
While there is evidence of some attempted interference by foreign actors in the data center backlash, this doesn't automatically mean that American concerns are wholly directly influenced by such interventions, and that they don't have their own reservations about the prolific rise of AI and data centers.
OpenAI's own investigation characterized the Chinese operation as attaching itself to an already existing controversy, while social media intelligence company Graphika told WIRED that most of the opposition it had observed was homegrown. Graphika Vice President of Intelligence Tyler Williams told the publication this month that there remained “very little evidence of significant foreign intervention.”
Research into the X accounts has also raised questions about how influential they actually were. Clemson University researcher Darren Linvill found that at least 59 accounts he examined had received zero engagement, while an obscure hashtag associated with the campaign produced only 90 posts in his dataset.
Linvill said the evidence indicated a Chinese attempt to influence Americans, but not a successful effort capable of explaining the scale of the current backlash.
Polling indicates that skepticism about data centers is widespread.
A Gallup survey conducted in March found 71 percent of Americans opposed building an AI data center in their local area, including 48 percent who strongly opposed one. Among opponents, respondents cited water and energy consumption, pollution including noise, effects on local quality of life, land use and fears of higher utility bills.
Those concerns are playing out publicly in communities across the country, and have also begun carrying electoral consequences.
Utah Senate President Stuart Adams lost his Republican primary in June, with political observers pointing to anger over his role in advancing the huge Stratos data center project; two Box Elder County commissioners who approved the project also lost their primaries.
Contact Newsweek editor on this story: Edward Pearcey.
