https://removepaywalls.com/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/business/china-russia-ai-data-centers.html

A Gallup poll in May found that 71 percent of Americans were somewhat or strongly opposed to having a data center built near them, almost 20 percentage points higher than those who opposed construction of a nearby nuclear power plant. Many have broad concerns about the effects of A.I. on jobs and the climate, while people who live near data centers complain they are eyesores and emit annoying sounds. Some cities and counties have enacted temporary or permanent moratoriums on new construction.

China, Russia and, to a lesser extent, Iran have sought to use state media outlets to turn the controversy over data centers in the United States into “a domestic fracture point,” according to a new analysis by Alethea, a threat intelligence company, which identified scores of articles and posts on social media this year.

These campaigns, whose impact on public opinion remains to be seen, have raised alarms in Washington, where A.I. is seen as a top issue heading into this year’s midterm elections.

OpenAI, though, found “little to no authentic engagement” with the campaigns, and the accounts at issue were ultimately removed from X. OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment about Chinese or other foreign efforts.

The foreign efforts appear intended to stoke the debate over data centers that has united political figures across the political spectrum — from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a progressive, to Stephen K. Bannon, the erstwhile adviser to President Trump.

The foreign campaigns follow a familiar playbook that dates back at least a decade. They often try to leverage official news organizations and social media to fuel domestic discord around hot-button issues like guns, race and vaccines, or even natural disasters like the wildfires in and around Los Angeles last year.

Between January and June, state media in China, Russia and Iran mentioned data centers roughly 700 times, according to Alethea’s analysis. That was an average of nearly four times a day, though it remained a small fraction of overall published content about A.I. development.

The outlets have featured articles and posts aimed at an American audience, as well as content highlighting criticism of data centers by prominent Americans, like Tucker Carlson, the conservative commentator. In Iran, state media has also highlighted links between American A.I. companies and Israel and criticized the race to develop the technology as reckless.

A state-owned newspaper in China recently published a satellite image of a data center in Gainesville, Va., writing in English that the development of artificial intelligence posed a threat to Americans’ physical and financial well-being.

A comic strip made to look as if it had been published by a Maryland news outlet — created with OpenAI’s ChatGPT by people in China, the tech company said — circulated on X this year, blaming data centers for soaring electricity bills. It showed a tycoon smoking a cigar and clutching bags of cash.

A video shared on X by a known covert Russian influence operation questioned the viability of a data center that an American company, Firebird, is constructing in Armenia, the small Caucasus nation that has been a focus of Kremlin pressure. “The country’s electrical grid instability may render it useless,” the video’s narrator says.

Alethea tracked a network of inauthentic accounts on Facebook that has been posting images appearing to highlight Americans’ opposition to data centers. They include images generated by artificial intelligence showing, for example, a field of crops carved into a massive obscene hand gesture, each tailored to users in different American states. “This is what Oklahoma thinks of data centers,” one says.

McKenzie Sadeghi, a principal analyst at Alethea, called the posts “rural rage bait.”

“Data centers are likely the ideal topic for engagement-maximizing operators,” she said. “It is locally salient in all 50 states, fresh, and it maps onto pre-existing anti-China, anti-tax, ‘selling America’ grievance.”