Why Data Center Enthusiasts Can’t Seem to Escape the China Scare Factor

Introducing the inaugural edition of Power Play! From now until the midterms, senior writer Molly Taft will be sharing insights every Sunday on the political season’s most pressing topic: data centers. We encourage reader feedback, and will address questions from the comments section in upcoming editions.

Don’t miss WIRED’s first livestream on data centers this Thursday, September 10, featuring Molly, senior politics correspondent Hugo Lowell, and senior business writer Max Zeff! You can submit your questions here.

This summer has been challenging for data center proponents. Polling indicates a steep decline; as many as 75 percent of Americans now oppose building a data center in their vicinity, up from 42 percent last year. Politicians previously in support, such as Texas governor Greg Abbott and Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, are now shifting their stances as the midterms approach, eager to show voters they are taking a strong position against the unpopular infrastructure.

While some Republicans are retreating from the issue despite President Donald Trump’s unwavering backing of data center development, others are aligning with notable tech figures to reinforce an old narrative: that China is behind this unrest.

In late August, X revealed it had uncovered 200 accounts tied to China allegedly disseminating anti-data center sentiments on the platform, sparking a wave of sensational headlines and tweets. (“China is secretly fueling America’s data center rage,” proclaimed Axios in its article on X’s findings, which data-center advocates and right-leaning figures spread further using X itself.) Even the president commented, saying, “China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement,” in a Truth Social post supporting data centers (“let Data Reign!”), made shortly after the X report.

The notion that Americans oppose data centers due to some elusive foreign propaganda—not due to environmental concerns, an oligarch-friendly political setup, or a broader resistance to AI—serves as a convenient excuse for the industry’s supporters and their allies. This narrative has been gaining traction for several months. This spring, various reports from conservative think tanks were cited by lawmakers and commentators alike to blame the Chinese Communist Party for allegedly nurturing anti-data center sentiments among the American populace. In June, OpenAI banned a group of users it found to be linked to the Chinese government, claiming they were “testing narratives against AI infrastructure.”

However, assertions that American resentment toward data centers stems from Chinese influence are supported by rather flimsy evidence. The leading report circulating in DC that claims foreign manipulation, as China experts informed me earlier this year, relies heavily on implications with scant hard evidence. In its June report, OpenAI recognized that the accounts it identified were merely tapping into existing discontent regarding data centers. It’s plausible that X’s recent crackdown relates to the accounts flagged by OpenAI: they utilized similar hashtags and images, with several linking to the same obscure local news piece. Ultimately, X discovered 200,000 accounts within the same bot network; those 200 anti-data center accounts were merely a small part of a larger picture.

Are blue-check tech figures and Republicans insisting on the China narrative because they possess insights that the public lacks? Graphika, a social media analytics firm that has been monitoring data center sentiments online, informed me in June that the majority of the opposition they observed was domestic. This remains true: there’s still minimal evidence of notable foreign involvement, Tyler Williams, vice president of intelligence at Graphika, conveyed to me this week.