China is fueling America's data center rage

blowsand

Unsurprising. I’m convinced many of the highly energetic opposition movements is foreign-born. Particularly those that are relatively spontaneous and nonsensically partisan.

toomuchtodo

On X, allegedly. Extraordinary claims by social media networks owned by habitual liars requires extraordinary evidence. Certainly sounds like someone heavily invested in AI is attempting to craft a narrative. Show us the data and the proof. > 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. —— > The X Safety team conducted an investigation into suspected Chinese inauthentic accounts involved in influence operations: > We identified a bot farm of approximately 200,000 accounts. Within this farm, we found 200 accounts posting in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy. > These posts contained claims that AI data centers are driving up household electricity prices and straining the grid. Others included AI-generated cartoons that depicted data-center operators enriching themselves at the public's expense. > We remain committed to maintaining an open and authentic platform where people debate topics of public interest. We take seriously any attempts to undermine the integrity of the global town square and suspend accounts that violate our Authenticity policy. —- Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says China isn't behind the anti-data-center debate - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49492188 - August 2026 Politicians Who Once Championed Data Centers Are Now Bashing Them - https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/politicians-who-once-cha... - August 20th, 2026

techblueberry

I mean foreign actors are probably trying to exacerbate every online fight, but two things can be true at once.

evil-olive

> X said Thursday night. this is a news story reported as unambiguous fact, but only based on claims from a single source. and that single source has a pretty strong motivation for why they might lie or exaggerate the claims - X runs AI data centers and is facing criticism over them. it's in their interest to be able to portray that opposition as astroturfed by foreign interests.

perilunar

It will be ironic if China-fuelled opposition to data centres in the US is what makes orbital data-centres economically viable. A bit of an own-goal.