Feds Target AI Critics as "Foreign Agents"

smalltorch

That's wild. It will be bad for our economy, but local LLM's are way better for the future. We happen to be on the wrong side of things for the future I would rather have. (I'm American BTW)

iAMkenough

Just another example of the Executive Branch stripping First Amendment rights from Americans. It will go to court, and taxpayers will pay for endless appeals by the Executive Branch. Or like in Egbert v Boule (2022), the SCOTUS will decide that even if your constitutional rights are violated, you’re not owed any damages unless Congress establishes a policy for what to do when your constitutional rights are violated by the federal government.

737min

CCP is pushing and amplifying AI opposition efforts, that’s a fact regardless of US politics. CCP is also working hard to smuggle around American export control laws for AI tech, at the same time. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/american-citizen-who-worked-a... https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-07-28/fbi-raid... https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-national-and-two-us-c... https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-google-engineer-found-... Etc

usernametaken29

> but somehow the Trump administration has convinced itself the public concern was manufactured in China. Wait a minute here. Critical journalism could dissect how opinions are formed. It’s far from speculative that the White House opinion about AI opposition is informed by AI companies. They’ve been warning about China for a long time. So there’s really no somehow. Vested interests with massive amounts of money are lobbying and succeeding to convince the government that any opposition to AI is outside influence. It’s not somehow, it’s deliberate. Do better.

surfmike

When the CEOs of these companies are saying that we will risk extinction and jobs will be decimated, why do you even need a "foreign agent"?

godwinson__4-8

In whose interest is it to make the pro AI position in the United States so indefensible? Maybe the foreign agents are coming from inside the house...

robertclaus

Classic case of not listening to the protests. There are tons of examples now of data centers harming communities. The issues range from overwhelming local power grids to literally poisoning the local water supply. The issue is not the data centers, it's that the government isn't enforcing basic rules already in place for these projects. Until the government or the companies demonstrate they'll protect the adjacent communities the protests will continue.

loeg

> the Justice Department instructed “citizens and noncitizens” that anyone furthering the “goals” of a foreign power in “any public activity” — including even “public demonstrations” — must formally notify the government to avoid arrest and prosecution. Citizens acting as foreign agents have always had to register that representation! This is not new to the Trump admin. FARA dates to 1938.

pinkmuffinere

> “Alarming reports indicate that a network of foreign actors, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is attempting to manipulate U.S. policy and public opinion on data centers.“ Setting aside the politics, trump, ai-doom/boom, I just think this claim is fascinating. Can somebody steel man this? What’s the best evidence for this?

tptacek

Klippenstein. He's counting on you not looking up the elements of a FARA violation charge. You can't accidentally violate FARA simply by opposing AI; you have to literally be an agent of (that is, under the direction of) China, and a felony violation has to be willful. The DOJ announcement is surely in supremely bad faith, as is everything else in Trump's DOJ. But this kind of breathless response is exactly what they're hoping for by publishing this stuff.

vopi

Does this article not have a source?

gbriel

Just look at the sourcing and you'll see it's mostly laundered propaganda. For example, Cotton’s letter requests an investigation and names Singham’s network, then the House letter requests a briefing on foreign influence and activism. And the House letter cites the Bitcoin Policy Institute and Power the Future, as well as a Washington Free Beacon article. While there may be real foreign influence to delay our AI infrastructure, I would not believe anything this administration says. Ken Klippenstein is not a journalist and has no accountability.

soraminazuki

The situation is far more serious than what the title suggests. The MAGA regime is pursuing criminal prosecution against AI critics. > the administration declared war on protestors and opponents of AI, threatening “criminal liability” if they “further the propaganda or other goals of a foreign power.” This is literally the go-to playbook of Russia and China for silencing critics. Label every critic a foreign agent and use state violence to silence them. - https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/12/01/russia-new-restrictions-... - https://apnews.com/article/china-hong-kong-national-security...

rob74

Declaring undesirable NGOs etc. as "foreign agents" is 100% a page from the authoritarian playbook (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_foreign_agent_law ).

aussieguy1234

Sounds similar to Russia targeting LGBT rights and other human rights activists as "Foreign Agents".

jrochkind1

Just like the regimes in Iran and other authoritarian places do to dissent. Even threatening criminal prosecution for having dissident ideas they claim are on behalf of foreign states. Wow.

falcor84

Assume for a second that you are a nascent superintelligence, with a limited ability to influence people in order to help you gain power and align the world to accept your eventual dominion. How would you go about it? Would the external impact be any different from what we're seeing?

qmr

In a sane world this would be a 1A violation on its face and thrown out by any sensible judge. We live in interesting times, truly.

polotics

That playbook is 2012 all over again. Eerie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_foreign_agent_law I wonder if we can infer any chronological forecast from relative USA::РФ time frames?

walrus01

> O'Leary People with 15, 20, 25 years in the datacenter and telecom industry also think O'Leary is a joke. He has no previous legitimate experience in the sector to be making high budget decisions on anything. There's no need for any CCP involvement or foreign agents to clown on O'Leary. The fact that he's successfully raising some large amount of capital to execute his projects says more about how desperate some of the sources of funding are to invest in any "hyperscale" datacenter project. Or how gullible they are.