TL;DR
OpenAI found China-linked ChatGPT accounts generating anti-data centre content. The campaign flopped. But the legitimate debate over power costs is real.
OpenAI said a cluster of ChatGPT accounts linked to China attempted to stir up local opposition to US data centres by posing as Americans and posting AI-generated content about rising electricity costs. The company nicknamed the campaign “Data Center Bandwagon” and said the accounts were likely tied to a private Chinese technology firm working for provincial-level government clients. The posts had limited reach.
The accounts used ChatGPT to create English-language social media posts and cartoon images depicting executives and robots carrying bags of money while “ordinary people” bear the costs of the AI industry. OpenAI also identified a second campaign, “Tech and Tariffs,” creating content criticising Trump’s tariffs and the US push for global tech dominance.
“I want to be really clear here: This was not a case of an influence operation creating a debate,” said Ben Nimmo, OpenAI’s principal investigator on intelligence and investigations. “The debate existed already. This was an influence operation from China trying to interfere in it.”
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The debate is very real. In 2025, local opposition blocked or delayed dozens of US data centre projects representing more than $150 billion in potential investment, according to Data Center Watch. Senator Bernie Sanders has called for moratoriums on new facilities. Communities are pushing back against strained power grids, soaring electricity bills, and water supply pressure.
OpenAI said the campaign resembles earlier China-linked operations identified by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and Google’s Mandiant against companies trying to reduce dependence on China in the rare earths industry. The company warned these themes “are likely to remain attractive” for Chinese influence operations because they can be “inserted into legitimate public debates while nudging audiences toward distrust of US institutions.”
Several Republican members of Congress sent a letter to the Trump administration this month raising alarms about alleged “foreign influence campaigns working to slow American AI progress.” Some tech industry officials have also pushed this narrative. But independent researchers are more cautious. Darren Linvill, co-lead of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, told NPR his team has found little evidence of coordinated Chinese efforts. “We haven’t found much,” he said.
The timing is convenient for OpenAI. The company is pushing aggressively for data centre construction to meet surging demand for its products and has argued that AI infrastructure is a matter of national competitiveness with China. Framing domestic opposition as partly foreign-driven serves that agenda, even if the influence campaign OpenAI identified was small and ineffective.
The underlying tension is real regardless of who amplifies it. AI’s energy demands are growing faster than grids can handle. Communities that host data centres are absorbing costs that benefit tech companies headquartered elsewhere. Whether a handful of Chinese social media accounts tried to exploit that grievance does not change the grievance itself.
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