Posted on 08/28/2026 4:48:40 PM PDT by lasereye
Grass roots opposition to data centers has spread rapidly. Why? In part, at least, because it is funded by the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese view artificial intelligence as the great arms race of our time, and they are determined to surpass the United States in what may prove to be the most important battleground of the 21st century. Given the technological expertise the Chinese have attained and the human capital in their population, that goal may well be achievable.
For many years, the USSR subsidized the environmental movement in the U.S. Why? To suppress American production of oil and gas, one of the Russians’ key strategic objectives. That support of American environmentalists worked.
Now the Chinese are following the same playbook, campaigning against American development of data centers, in order to give themselves a leg up in the AI race. This is what X has found:
The X Safety team conducted an investigation into suspected Chinese inauthentic accounts involved in influence operations:
We identified a bot farm of approximately 200,000 accounts. Within this farm, we found 200 accounts posting in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate… pic.twitter.com/Mj0SqerdlH— Global Government Affairs (@GlobalAffairs) August 28, 2026
The anti-data center movement has gained a remarkable degree of traction in the grass roots, on the right as well as the left. No doubt there are several reasons for this, but Chinese Communist propaganda is surely one of them.
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I have had four conversations now about this topic with people I will call "Maybe Trolls". They said things that struck me as very doubtful or ridiculous. Maybe none of them were actually working with someone, but they said the kinds of things I would expect an actual troll to say. I remain suspicious of one in particular.
Maybe Troll #1: This was a pretty brief conversation. He stated that the primary purpose of the datacenters was for the government to spy on everyone - I think he means in real time - and that otherwise they are mainly used to help college students to write term papers. I assumed that he believed what he was saying, which would tell me he's not too bright. I ignored the first half of the claim. As to the second part I pointed out some amazing things that AI can do. I mentioned that AI already does a better job of diagnosing medical conditions than doctors. His astonishing reply was that he wants to look at the clinical data! Whoa! So this guy is in the medical research field! That was the end of that conversation.
Maybe Troll #2: This person claimed that electricity costs had shot up 50% in Indiana because of a datacenter. It is extremely hard to believe that one datacenter could cause electric rates to shoot up in an entire state.
I asked him what the datacenter was and what utility. It turned out that it wasn't a datacenter but a crypto mining facility. He gave me two different utilities, although the facility would only be hooked up to one utility. One Indiana utility has had a huge price increase in the last few years, but the crypto facility is not in their service area. The one where it's located has had a 3.7% increase over two years. The utility with the huge price increase isn't due to datacenters, according to AI.
I kept pointing out to him that his story about the crypto facility wasn't adding up. It was probably something someone told him. I probably should have just dropped it, but he ended up accusing me of "putting out hate" and told me to stop posting to him, which I did. He probably wasn't a troll.
The next two conversations both exhibited what I perceive as a troll tactic of making long posts where they say lots of different things and not responding when asked for specifics.
Maybe Troll #3: This individual kept making these long multi-paragraph replies. One thing he repeated twice was about datacenters "Burning vast amounts of natural gas in regional valleys". I asked what exactly that was referring to. Never got an answer.
He also alleged that datacenters had doubled the cost of natural gas in western Washington state (provided by the Puget Sound utility). I asked "Why do you attribute the increase since 2020 to datacenters?" He gave another multi-paragraph response that didn't really answer the question.
I asked how many datacenters went online in Washington since 2020. Because I wasn't taking his word for it that it was due to datacenters. His response:
At this point, I have no idea what point you are even trying to make.
Demanding a year-by-year building count is just a distraction tactic to avoid basic energy market mechanics.
Demanding hyper-specific trivia does not change how power markets operate.
I persisted in asking what exactly were the datacenters that went up in WA that are allegedly causing the huge increase.
If you genuinely want to know where data center capacity exploded in Washington during those exact years, look at Quincy in Grant County, along with Douglas and Chelan counties.
Those counties and the datacenters are all hooked up to hydroelectric power from other utilities, not Puget Sound. However, he claimed
When mega data center campuses consume vast blocks of cheap hydroelectricity in Eastern Washington and Oregon, that baseline capacity is removed from the regional pool.
This is all getting very difficult to pin down obviously, and also rather technical (which is what a troll would want). But like the good little nerd that I am, I asked AI about that.
No, baseline capacity was not removed from the regional power pool by Chelan or Douglas County PUDs. Instead, both public utility districts have proactively remained committed to regional electricity capacity pools, most notably through their active and critical participation in the Western Resource Adequacy Program
Maybe Troll #4: This person lives in Texas (or so she said). She wants no datacenters at all in rural areas.
She kept making the same general claims over and over with no specifics. She also had some extremely long replies, which is how I would expect a troll to behave.
One thing she kept saying was how the datacenters mess up cattle and other livestock. Another thing she kept saying was that I wouldn't understand since I don't live in a rural area.
Things like:
massive water and energy shortages, chemical contaminated, barren soil.
I can see why you are all for these centers, and unaware of the negative effects they have on those who do not live in cities-and who make a living raising livestock and food crops.
If you don’t live in a rural area, you don’t have a dog in this hunt-you don’t get what the issues really are. There are places for those data centers that do not endanger natural resources, food production or life-including human life.
I get that you believe data centers are a wonderful thing that will bring a bazillion permanent jobs-so every area in every state should allow to take over our arable, food producing land, use the water supply available in our aquifers as much as they like, use most of the energy so we have high bills and outages-and be happy about it-fine-so let them be built all over your state.
You don’t know about cattle-as well as poultry and other livestock-their breeding cycle and health are affected by too much light at night-or not enough daylight-and that the effects of constant low level noise is not a good thing,
I asked her What actual problems have been caused by data centers WHERE YOU LIVE?
She replied that they don't have any datacenters where she lives! I had assumed with her constant references to all these alleged problems that they had experienced these things in her area. So where have all those problems occurred? I say she has no idea.
But she did do some internet search and found a single location in Oregon where there's a lawsuit alleging that one datacenter was causing issues with the water. However, I found that the lawsuit was also blaming "the Port of Morrow, food processor Lamb Weston, and several large agricultural operations". The datacenter settled the case.
The port, Lamb Weston, Madison Ranches, Threemile Canyon Farms, Portland General Electric and Columbia River Processing asked Simon to dismiss the case. They argued the residents suing had not shown widespread damage directly linked to their actions.
That was totally lame imo. First the claim seems iffy and second the allegation is not something that is even specific to datacenters. She also came up with an air pollution lawsuit brought by some leftist environmental groups.
With respect to water the new datacenters recycle their water. That has been pointed out repeatedly.
The bottom line is, pretty much everything she said was making things up, which is troll-like.
Maybe nobody was an actual troll. They were doing a good imitation.
There are many places in the world to build data centers. They will be built. The attacks and criticism are worthless noise.
I begin work at a data center in the Texas panhandle next week. It is in a remote location, and will put all those newly built windmills to work (supplemented by natural gas when it isn’t windy).
I last worked at a data center in the middle of Phoenix, AZ. No one really noticed.
While the data centers themselves don’t directly employ so many people after construction, the clients who rent out sections in places like Phoenix hire people to maintain the equipment and network connectivity.
If it weren’t in a data center, it would be on company premises. Same difference, only less flexibility and efficiency in most cases.
Same kind of mindless sheep that brought you climate change and cut down Flock license plate readers.
Just keep in mind every transaction you make, every bill you pay, every mile you drive, every internet search, every webpage you visit,every time your cell phone pings off a tower can be stored in these data centers and sold to any company that pays the right amount of money.
My last job was designing data center infrastructure.
All the objections are overblown fear mongering sponsored mainly by the ChiComs.
L
Complete lunacy to race toward our end. AI will soon discover we get in the way.
Whoever said that is stupid.
Cryptomining facilities are, by default, “data centers.” They are directing their systems to mine crypto, but that is still a server farm that has a lot of graphics cards running.
As for electricity, if you drive up demand while not bringing supply, what does the most basic law of economics say will happen?
Man, the stupid in this post is amazing.
One of those things is not like the other.
Also, you don’t have to blame China for the blowback against data centers.
It’s easy enough to see that the Big Tech folks pushing hard for these data centers are the same ones who champion the replacement of labor by AI.
How did they think that people would react??
I agree. Every ounce of the CCP needs to be kicked out of the country and the land they have obtained repossessed!
They can start with Oregon and all the forest land they obtained from Oregon Islamocommie politicians that usurped the state through fraudulent mail in elections.
Kick them out of universities too!
Commie Snowflake libs are rooting for the “media” and the DemonRAT Party of Death.
The only Chinese propaganda I’ve seen on AI datacenters is right here on Free Republic.
It’s not ubiquitous.
But smearing people with the Chinese taint IS ubiquitous. It’s everywhere.
How many people own Iphones and are itching for the latest version...andare against “data centers?”
There is no problem with people opposing a data center. It doesn’t mean they are Chinese Svengali Luddites.
If data center(s) consume the last available MWh of base-load generation capacity, the price of power will go up for everybody. It’s the way it is.
If a data center instead were proposing to build a 1GW base-load power plant - say, coal or nuclear, or hydro, they would get pushback. Nobody says “you are a Luddite who hates electricity” though, but that is exactly what you are proposing to do when you decide to build a 1GW data center.
Why not argue that you should build data centers and base load generation in lockstep? Why do you think they don’t do that?
It’s all part of the bullshit story that says if you are opposed to a datacenter you are an anti American Chinese collaborator.
It’s very obviously a coordinated effort.
I have a response for people who make that blanket statement, but especially so when they tie it with opposition to the eruption od Flock cameras. FR has rules, however...
I think that they are over building data centers and a lot of them will be shut down because of it.
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