Last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) claimed during an interview on Fox Business that opposition to data centers is a “Chinese psyop.” Johnson said, “I really believe that. It’s not a conspiracy theory. I think they’re pushing those ideas.”
For months, Republicans have been promoting the claim that pushback against data center construction is being manufactured by China. “I mean, a lot of people say it’s China,” President Trump said during an interview with Laura Ingraham. “A lot of people say that it’s a China PR thing.” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has said that “foreign psyops campaigns” are attempting to stop data center construction in the United States. “Any place that’s trying to build data centers is getting bombarded with foreign-directed propaganda to try to block these from being built,” Burgum said in May.
“[W]e are investigating whether China is behind a lot of this misinformation, false information against data centers,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) said. Multiple members of Congress have written letters expressing concerns about “foreign influence campaigns” targeting AI and data centers. In a June letter, Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) requested that “the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigate foreign influence efforts targeting the buildout of American AI infrastructure.”
But while there are some efforts to foment opposition to data centers — as rival nations regularly try to promote discord — there is no evidence that any of these efforts have meaningfully shaped public opinion in the United States.
Data centers are deeply unpopular in America. A Gallup survey conducted in March found that over 70% of Americans “oppose constructing data centers for artificial intelligence in their local area.”
The “Chinese psyop” claim was popularized by a 2026 report by the Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI), which several Republicans have cited to justify their argument. BPI, a think tank established in 2021, conducts research on Bitcoin and other monetary networks. In May, BPI released part one of a report entitled “Foreign Influence in the Campaign against American AI.” BPI released part two of the report in June.
The reports were written by BPI’s head of research, Sam Lyman. In September, Lyman testified about the reports before a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee in a hearing about foreign influence operations. “A war is raging between the world’s two superpowers for AI supremacy,” Lyman said during the hearing. “And China is pulling all the levers of state to win it, including foreign influence operations.”
Lyman previously worked as a senior advisor and chief speechwriter for Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. He also worked as a public policy director at Riot Platforms, a company that “develop[s], own[s], and operate[s] large-scale data centers,” according to its website. (Riot Platforms was also a 2026 sponsor of BPI’s annual summit. Several sponsors of the event are involved in the data center industry.)
Multiple letters from Republican members of Congress cite the BPI reports. But the reports do not provide any real evidence that opposition to data centers in America is being fabricated by China. Furthermore, Lyman admits in the BPI report that “much American opposition to data centers is indisputably authentic.”
The BPI report’s central claim is that “international actors are working through state media organizations, nonprofit networks, and dark money groups to shape US policy and public opinion on artificial intelligence.” But the report provides little evidence that these “three vectors of foreign influence” have actually made a significant impact on the data center debate.
Claim one: Chinese state media is driving opposition to U.S. data centers
The first “vector” the BPI report discusses is Chinese state media. According to the report, “Beijing’s English-language propaganda outlets… are now openly campaigning against US AI data centers under their own attribution.”
The report cites a handful of examples of content advocating against U.S. data centers, but it fails to establish that this material had sufficient reach to influence public opinion. A video by China’s state broadcaster cited by the report, for example, has only about 1,200 views.
“China has an extensive state media apparatus that they use for a range of propaganda and influence operations, but we don’t see a particular focus on this [data center] issue from Chinese state media,” Darren Linvill, a Clemson University professor and Media Forensics Hub co-director, told PolitiFact.
The BPI report also claims that Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) invited “[t]wo officials tied to the Chinese government… onto a US Senate platform to advise the United States on slowing its own AI buildout.” The report is referencing an event hosted by Sanders at which two Chinese professors, Yi Zeng and Xue Lan, were invited to speak. The event was an after-hours public panel, and it also featured American and Canadian professors. Zeng and Xue have been featured in Chinese state media, but they are also world-renowned AI experts who both appear in Time magazine lists of most influential people in AI.
Additionally, a network of Chinese-linked accounts on X making anti-data center posts was found to have little to no engagement and no breakout beyond the network itself.
Claim two: U.S. expat in China is pushing local data center bans
The second “vector of influence” the report details is a network of nonprofits connected to Neville Roy Singham, a socialist U.S. expat who lives in Shanghai and was previously a consultant to the Chinese tech company Huawei.
The report cites a handful of examples in which nonprofits connected to Singham posted about slowing down data center development. But it provides no evidence that these posts were influential.
The report also claims that Singham has influenced data center discourse by propping up the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), which has been involved in a number of local campaigns against data centers. The report describes Singham as “one of the largest private funders of left-wing political organizing” and calls PSL the “political arm of the Singham network.” But the report acknowledges that PSL does not disclose its donors, so it is unknown whether Singham is even a funder.
Even if the party is connected to Singham, its influence on the U.S. data center debate has been relatively small. Across the country, more than 500 jurisdictions have banned or restricted new data centers. The BPI report shows that PSL has been involved in organizing in 11 — just 2% — of the jurisdictions that passed new restrictions.
Despite the lack of support for the report’s claims about PSL, House Republicans have still run with the idea that PSL is a powerful force behind data center opposition, claiming the party consists of “nefarious international actors.”
Claim three: Foreign billionaires are bankrolling anti-data center action
The BPI report’s third primary claim is that opposition to data centers is also being bankrolled by foreign billionaires. The claim is centered around Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss and British billionaire Alan Parker. The only evidence the report provides that Wyss and Parker have supported data center opposition is that their foundations made grants to a few nonprofit organizations that signed onto an open letter demanding a moratorium on new data centers in the U.S.
The Wyss Foundation has said it did not provide grants to oppose data centers.
Once again it's the, "Don't believe your own lying eyes, ears, brown water coming out of your faucets or your bloated utility bills...." because I said so.
Kevin O'Leary tried to make the same claim about a data center in Utah he's backing. They say great minds think alike, but clearly, not-so-great minds think alike as well.