There has been a fair amount of political activity, pro and con, around the big new data centers, proposed to handle the increased AI traffic — and it all sprang up rather suddenly.

Last Thursday, X’s Global Government Affairs unit announced the results of an investigation that may shed a bit of light on the rapid emergence:

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.

Now, China’s involvement in trying to sway public opinion against the data centers doesn’t make the centers a good idea — or a bad one. It does mean that some of the people who are trying to influence us to oppose them have entirely different interests from our own.

At Fox News, Peter Pinedo recaps,

Earlier this summer, OpenAI announced that it had banned a “cluster of ChatGPT accounts that likely originated in China” that were being used to generate a “covert influence operation” primarily targeting U.S. audiences. OpenAI said the accounts generated short comments and images similarly claiming that data centers and AI were increasing electricity demand and causing higher costs.

The influence campaigns were discovered as debate rages over AI. Critics of AI development say the data centers required to power it harm the environment, drive up electricity costs and decrease neighborhood property values. Proponents, meanwhile, say AI data center development is critical to national security and boosts local economies by creating jobs.

“Chinese bot farm caught red-handed trying to influence” heated AI data center debate, April 28, 2026

Of course, critical questions loom: Can we have an internet-based society without data centers? And if we don’t have an internet-based society — but China does — what does that mean for the future?

The editors of The Spectator (US edition) warn,

if America is to continue to be the world leader in AI, it is vital Americans learn to live with data centers. Democracies do not have the advantage that Chinese industry has in being able to foist its plants on the population, regardless of the level of civic opposition.

To win public affection, the data-center industry is going to have to accept that it can’t simply plug its plants into the existing grid; it is, as the Trump administration insists, going to have to become a significant supplier of power, too. That will not guarantee the US eternal success in the tech sector. But it would move an important obstacle out of the way.

“Learn to stop worrying and love data centers,”

Everyone loves to hate the tech oligarchs

One really interesting feature of the opposition to data centers is that it pits the political left against the tech titans who have generously funded it. Joel Kotkin explains at the New York Post :

Much of the opposition to AI, data centers and the oligarchs themselves comes from the nonprofit world that the oligarchs themselves have supported. They have been particularly proficient in funding the climate change activists and organizations that Bryce labeled “the anti-industry industry.”

Once, the oligarchs tried bridging the contradiction by embracing the delusion that they could power data centers with “green energy,” which is clearly not practical or cost-effective. Now “the green chickens” have “come home to roost,” as bold statements of faith in “renewables” have been shattered, forcing AI to rely on demons like natural gas.

In the end, the oligarchs have only themselves to blame. The spectacle of vast wealth atop a vision of a mass population turned into agency-less serfs does not constitute a good public relations strategy.

“The ‘progressive’ movement rebels against” the tech oligarchs who funded it, August 31, 2026

He suggests that a firebomb thrown at Sam Altman’s mansion earlier this year could portend a radical change in alliances down the road.

A note from cybersecurity firm Cloudflare on bot accounts: “Broadly speaking, social media bots are automated programs used to engage in social media. These bots behave in an either partially or fully autonomous fashion, and are often designed to mimic human users.”

Do bots make any real difference?

A person or organization with millions of social media followers can be seen as important or influential. A primary use case of social media bots is to boost the apparent popularity of other accounts. These follower bots can be bought and sold on the black market, with more convincing bots fetching a higher price.

About 5–15% of accounts on X are estimated to be bots. Cloudflare notes, “That number likely applies to other social platforms as well.”

It makes a difference, doesn’t it, if we find out that the people who are trying to influence us don’t even exist, and those who launch them are not our friends?