The sudden, seemingly unanimous hostility toward AI and data centers in the U.S. smells fishy because it is fishy. The Bitcoin Policy Institute’s research did serious work tracing Chinese state-media messaging and a China-aligned advocacy network involved in the campaign against American AI infrastructure. To my eye, that points to a CCP-backed propaganda effort amplifying the backlash. The question I was discussing with a friend this week is: why would China want Americans to hate AI?
Chinese model companies are already competing hard on price while U.S. frontier labs face enormous infrastructure bills. If OpenAI and Anthropic eventually need government support, public opinion becomes a constraint. It is much harder to bail out an AI company after voters have spent years hearing that its products will take their jobs and its data centers will raise their power bills.
My theory is that this is the strategic objective. China can compete on models and cost. What it cannot easily match is America’s ability to mobilize public money behind an industry Washington decides is essential. Make an AI bailout politically toxic, and you take that weapon off the table. If I were trying to beat the U.S. frontier labs, I would want exactly this political environment.