What if China were entirely to blame for the data centres?

For the past year now, hostility has been growing in the United States towards data centres for artificial intelligence – the enormous facilities required for the operation (and development) of this technology. According to a Gallup poll, 70 per cent of Americans do not want a data centre near their home. And this appears to be a cross-party, almost bipartisan stance in a country where even the one person everyone could agree on – Dolly Parton – has passed away. Right, left, liberals and the MAGA camp. Almost everyone agrees on one thing: we don’t want data centres round here. The reasons vary from case to case – ranging from environmental and ethical concerns to fears about the impact on energy bills – but the end result is the same. Even the Republican Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, has changed his stance: last November he celebrated the tech investments coming into his state, which had become the hub of investment in the sector, whilst in recent weeks he has come out quite openly in favour of a ‘no’ vote.

They also call it a ‘vibe shift’ – the sudden change in mood that has swept through an industry – the AI sector – which is already grappling with increasingly widespread fears of a financial bubble, caused by the huge investments that have been flowing into this technology for years. And it is precisely this shift that lies at the heart of a strange conspiracy theory spreading through the US tech sector: the idea that behind the opposition to data centres there is not a spontaneous (or ‘grassroots’, as they say) movement, but an external force pulling the strings. In short, the grand conspiracy. The number one suspect is China, which is alleged to have organised a ‘psy-op’, i.e. a ‘psychological operation’ – a term dating back to the Cold War that refers to a strategy of manipulating public opinion, reportedly targeting social media platforms in particular (with the Chinese app TikTok at the centre of the paranoia). The plan was simple: to slow down the development of AI in the United States – a country currently at the forefront of the sector – by spreading falsehoods and sowing discord regarding the infrastructure on which it is based.

Garry Tan, head of the start-up accelerator Y Combinator, has endorsed this theory, having recently spoken of the malign influence of Chinese state media, aided by “a network of Marxist-leaning non-profit organisations based in Shanghai, and opaque funding from foreign billionaires”. Trae Stephens, co-founder of Anduril Industries (a defence contractor), used even more direct language, claiming that Americans had been “poisoned” by the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda. Joe Lonsdale, one of the founders of Palantir, also expressed similar views. The idea that China – or another foreign power – is seeking to influence public opinion in the United States is obviously not entirely unfounded, but what is striking is the conviction with which a section of Silicon Valley has chosen to dismiss the mounting protests against the data centres as a conspiracy. The subtext is clear: it cannot be true that people, of their own free will, do not want these immense facilities near their homes and are not enthusiastic about AI.

There are also those who have expressed a less extreme view. Chamath Palihapitiya, a long-standing technology investor, wrote on X that AI companies have simply "failed miserably" in communicating with the public, taking refuge in "technical and arcane language", consisting of acronyms and gloomy predictions straight out of a dystopian novel. All this whilst the development of AI requires significant sacrifices (for example, the construction of noisy, energy-guzzling data centres), not to mention the effects of AI on the labour market. For this reason, Palihapitiya added, data centres have become ‘the symbolic representation’ of how an elite group of people – to whom most people have no access – are profiting from this technology. Despite everything, the Beijing theory is gaining ground, perhaps because it is too convenient and simple not to tempt some figures in the sector. The alternative, after all, would be to face reality: a technology which, according to surveys, instils fear and suspicion in the population (especially among the younger generation), and on whose promise of infinite growth a significant part of the American economy – and beyond – now relies. The data centres’ public relations campaign has so far failed, but perhaps a miracle was needed.