Lawmakers Accuse China of Fueling AI Data Center Race
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Right 50%
1 left · 0 center · 1 right
What happened
House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., and House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Chairman John Moolenaar, R-Mich., sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and IRS Chief Executive Officer Frank Bisignano asking whether overseas funds have been channeled through U.S. tax-exempt organizations to block construction of data centers used for artificial intelligence. The lawmakers focused on money from Neville Roy Singham to nonprofits including CodePink, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and the ANSWER Coalition, which have taken part in protests against data centers; a Fox News Digital investigation reported that Singham directed $285 million since 2017 to six U.S. nonprofits through two shell corporations and a Goldman Sachs donor-advised fund that the bank said it closed in 2024, and the nonprofits have denied being part of a foreign influence operation, while Singham has not responded to requests for comment. In June, OpenAI identified two clusters of ChatGPT accounts likely originating in China that were used in covert influence operations on U.S. AI and data-center debates, including a campaign dubbed “Data Center Bandwagon,” and said it found no evidence the operation achieved meaningful breakout beyond its own activity. A Bitcoin Policy Institute report identified 21 Party for Socialism and Liberation campaigns against data centers across 14 states that it said contributed to 10 moratoria, one permanent ban, and four rejected or scrapped projects representing nearly $23.68 billion in proposed investment. Separately, investor Peter Thiel said on Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner’s “MD Meets” podcast that while he was “inclined to believe” China could be fueling anti-AI content in the United States, the shift in American sentiment was “mainly what we’re doing to ourselves.”
Sourcing check · Fully on the record · 2 articles
2 of 2 articles cite a named source for the story. It was on the record from the first report.
What these terms mean and how they're counted
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- How it developed
- When the first report landed and whether it named anyone; when the first named source and the first document appeared. Here: First report Sep 23, 15:28 UTC by Fox News, naming its source.
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This is about who is cited, not whether the story is true. Each source below says what it names. How we count
Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Left-leaning coverage makes Peter Thiel's claim that America is hurting itself the whole story, and never reports that two House chairs asked Treasury and the IRS to investigate whether overseas money moved through U.S. nonprofits to block data centers. Business Insider stays with Thiel and does not name the protest groups or the funding trail. Right-leaning coverage builds the story around that letter and the Singham-funded organizations now fighting construction. On the funding probe, that coverage is simply more complete.
Right-leaning coverage has a House chair calling Americans' worries about power and water "legitimate concerns," then arguing foreign-backed groups exploit them. Left-leaning coverage never names those costs.
How many of the stalled projects would have died on those local power and water fights even without the funded network?
Bottom line
Fox News is covering House chairs asking the IRS to follow $285 million into nonprofits now fighting data centers; Business Insider never mentions that sum and instead puts Peter Thiel on air telling America to look at itself.
The receipts — 3 facts one side's coverage lacks
- House chairs Jason Smith and John Moolenaar asked Treasury and the IRS to investigate whether overseas money was funneled through U.S. charities to block data centers
- Neville Roy Singham funneled $285 million since 2017 to six U.S. nonprofits
- A Bitcoin Policy Institute report said Party for Socialism and Liberation campaigns contributed to 10 data-center moratoria and nearly $23.68 billion in proposed investment halted
The Left View
Business Insider frames the anti-AI turn as something the United States is largely doing to itself rather than a Chinese success. The article reports a growing set of tech executives, from Garry Tan to Kevin O’Leary, accusing data-center discourse of being a “psyop” blamed on China, then contrasts that with Thiel’s view—coming from someone the piece calls a fierce critic of China—that Chinese activity was not “the driving force” and that “it’s often somewhat too easy to simply blame it on China.” Thiel pointed to Pope Leo XIV’s May encyclical, which he called anti-AI, arguing Americans were more likely to heed the Pope than “any social media posts from China” and that this gave the Pope the “effect” of working for the CCP; he added, “I’m not saying he was an agent of the communists, but he was at least acting as a useful idiot for the CCP.”
The Right View
Fox News and the Republican chairs present the protests as an influence effort in which the Chinese Communist Party is “throwing gasoline on the fire.” Smith and Moolenaar wrote that “under no circumstances can we allow an adversary, and our most serious competitor in AI infrastructure, to weaponize our own tax code and harm an emerging American industry,” and asked whether Singham-linked groups have operated for the “private or political benefit of foreign-aligned interests” and whether donor-advised funds were used to “launder the origin of foreign-directed money into American advocacy.” Smith said “this is not just an organic movement” and that “the Chinese want to stall and slow down the advancement of AI in the United States because they want to win the AI war,” while granting that Americans have legitimate concerns about electricity costs and water use. Moolenaar called the groups “AstroTurf — very fake — being funded by entities that are working in partnership with the Chinese Communist Party,” and the letter argued the CCP “seeks to corrupt those debates” and “heighten divisions between Americans,” adding: “Our tax code should not be used as a shield for foreign money waging a disinformation war on American AI infrastructure.”
Our Take (balanced)
The right’s strongest argument is the paper trail: reported large-scale funding into groups leading anti-data-center campaigns, a think-tank count of moratoria and scrapped projects, and OpenAI’s identification of China-origin covert accounts aimed at the same debate—a combination that, if the alleged foreign alignment holds, would show adversaries using U.S. nonprofits and platforms around a strategic bottleneck. The left-leaning coverage’s strongest argument is causal rather than documentary: a prominent China critic concluding that Beijing is not “the driving force,” reinforced by OpenAI’s finding that the identified campaign did not achieve “meaningful breakout,” which undercuts claims that covert Chinese activity created the backlash rather than attempting to ride existing local grievances. The central unresolved tension is whether foreign funding and influence operations are materially deciding where data centers get built, or whether they are secondary amplifiers of a homegrown revolt over power, water, and cultural distrust of AI.
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