Data centers have been around for 25 years, but they didn't become bad until about a year ago.
Posted on 09/02/2026 6:26:09 PM PDT by Mr. Mojo
Roughly 200 accounts from a suspected Chinese bot farm have quietly tried to influence Americans to oppose AI data centers on social media, X said Thursday night.
Why it matters: The U.S. and China are racing to build the world's most advanced AI systems — and it appears Chinese propaganda has infiltrated American circles with the hope of slowing the U.S. down.
Driving the news: The X Safety team probed suspected Chinese accounts involved in influence operations and identified 200,000 accounts, including 200 accounts "posting in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy," the team said in a tweet.
The posts included content on how AI strains the electricity grid and increases utility prices and "cartoons that depicted data-center operators enriching themselves at the public's expense."
It's unclear what, if any, action X will take to suspend or delete accounts from the bot farm.
X, owned by Elon Musk, whose billions rely on data centers to boost his AI enterprises, did not respond to Axios' request for comment.
State of play: Congressional Republicans have been digging into influence campaigns from foreign adversaries designed to stall American AI development.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee sent a letter in June asking the FBI and White House advisers to brief lawmakers on alleged propaganda campaigns by foreign adversaries, specifically China, Russia and Iran, aimed at hindering U.S. AI development and data center expansion.
The letter cited several reports, including one estimating that opposition campaigns have delayed or obstructed roughly $45.8 billion in data center projects in Virginia alone.
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Raise your hand if you didn’t know this.
L
I don’t care who’s hyping the anti data centers push. I don’t want them in my neck of the woods.
Everyone knows it, and the CCP’s useful idiots don’t care.
The real opposition to data centers has to do with their incredible need for huge amounts of electricity and water, and the huge increase in the prices of those for those residents who live near them. The opposition would be much less vocal if these centers were self supporting and funded by their income from their data users money, and if in fact they subsidized some of the cost of nearby residents utility costs. Also, the imminent domain seizure of private land for their power lines to pass through is a big private property rights issue.
Fairly certain my concerns about these things predate the Chinese Propaganda. I understand concerns about power generation, how usage may affect pricing, or a concerns over water usage. There’s also the issue of plans to build them against the wishes of the affected communities. I believe it was Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer who recently said “We’re used to people saying ‘F no’, but we do it anyway”.
Find communities that will welcome them, or consider leasing government land and sticking them there. Do we have shutters military bases? Maybe on one of those.
China and Russia are the largest purveyors of rage propaganda, and most of their efforts have been directed toward the USA.
For the data centers in Northern Virginia that are looking to run power lines from some nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania through private property in Maryland to their proposed building sight in Northern Virginia makes little sense, since their is a nuclear power plant at Lake Anna in the vicinity of where they want to be which could be the source for them to get their needed power from, and also perhaps the water they require, from Lake Anna as well? Why isn’t that being considered in this case? My guess is that some influential people who have homes around Lake Anna have the ear of some politicians, or are themselves residents around Lake Anna?
We had a local paper that included a totally honest comment about half way down the piece: said Florida had over 200 data centers and in all these years they had not received one complaint.
The CCP's most clever move was hacking the utilities and raising people's utility bills and convincing them to blame the voracious appetite of data centers for the demand growth and price increases.
Pure genius.
Do these 200 data centers have the same requirements for power, and cooling that the AI data centers are supposed to have? As I understand centers for normal Internet are one thing, the AI data centers are another.
Like I said. People knowingly repeat Chicom propaganda.
I’m just saying China’s has had their tentacle in our county for a long time - my guess is ‘with the help’ of the MSM... Who knows, maybe Climate Change, Global Warming and Peak Oil were all theirs too.
> Find communities that will welcome them… <
And welcome them by a vote of the residents, and not by a vote of corrupt local officials.
True dat.
.
I have not seen or heard from one single chinaman and I don’t like data centers. The oligarch class and their ham fisted ways don’t need any help to hate what they are doing.
They creep into a community, pay off who needs to be paid, get them to sign confidentiality agreements, roll over any opposition and one day you wake up and they are building right next door and using all the resources they want.
They don’t need chicom help to be hated.
The tech giants are livid that there is grass roots pushback against the unchecked construction of data centers, so they’ve started their own propaganda war insinuating that anyone against them is a chicom sympathizer.
Don't look now, but the 'Chicom propaganda' is coming from the U.S. Energy Information Administration:
On average, residential electricity costs across the U.S. have risen by 42% in the last five years, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Data centers aren’t the sole reason, but they’ve been a major driver in some places where costs have risen the most.
Between March 2021 and March 2026, average residential retail electricity prices rose 94% in Washington, D.C., 74% in Maryland, 73% in Maine, and 58% in New York, according to the federal energy data.
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