People wait for President Donald Trump to arrive at an event at the General Motors Proving Ground on July 27, 2026, in Milford, Michigan. A wave of online opposition to AI data centers may not be entirely organic. X's Safety team revealed Thursday night that it identified around 200 accounts, tied to a suspected Chinese bot farm, that appear to be trying to sway American public opinion against data center construction. According to a statement from the platform's Safety team, investigators looked into a broader pool of 200,000 suspected Chinese accounts involved in influence operations. Within that group, 200 accounts stood out for posting content in a way that could manipulate legitimate debate around American AI and energy policy, the team said in a post on X. The posts reportedly focused on how AI development strains the electricity grid and drives up utility costs for everyday Americans. Some accounts even shared cartoons portraying data center operators as profiting off the public at everyone else's expense. It's still unclear whether X plans to suspend or remove the accounts involved. X, which is owned by Elon Musk, whose own business empire depends heavily on data centers to power his AI ventures. The discovery comes as the United States and China continue racing to build the most advanced AI systems in the world. If confirmed, this would suggest Chinese propaganda efforts have found their way into American online spaces, with the apparent goal of slowing down U.S. AI progress. That letter referenced multiple reports, including one estimate suggesting opposition campaigns have delayed or blocked roughly $45.8 billion worth of data center projects in Virginia alone. Despite these concerns, opposition to data centers has continued growing on both sides of the political aisle, with Democrats and Republicans increasingly supporting local moratoriums and taking a not-in-my-backyard approach to these massive infrastructure projects. "The 'All In' chattering class 'Chinese psyop' thing is worrying and frustrating," Prosser reportedly said, arguing that this framing is essentially the new talking point Big Tech wants to use to shift the conversation around data centers. He pointed out that when politically opposed figures like Texas Governor Greg Abbott and New York Governor Kathy Hochul find common ground on an issue, it's unlikely to be the result of a coordinated foreign psyop or a shared delusion. Prosser also suggested that much of the opposition comes down to people simply being disconnected from the communities affected. "It's about touching grass and actually being somewhere," he said. "If you're a venture capitalist in Atherton or Menlo Park opining about how somebody in Ohio should feel, and you've never been to Ohio, that's a problem." Those findings line up with a YouGov survey released Tuesday, which found that only 24% of Americans believe new data center construction is very or somewhat good for the country, while 47% view it as bad. Sagar is a journalist with an interest primarily in geopolitics and American domestic politics. Before joining Times Now, he wrote for Republic and Sw... View More