Trump Accuses China of Fueling Protests Against US AI Data Centers

Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that China "couldn't be happier" about the growing wave of protests in the US against the construction of artificial intelligence data centers. The US president warned Republicans against backing local construction bans just ahead of the midterm congressional elections, and his remarks coincided with a wave of reports about possible Chinese influence on the debate over AI infrastructure.

China couldn't be happier about this movement against data centers - Donald Trump, President of the United States

In the same post, Trump wrote that the only reason American communities would not want data centers is a desire to "remain backwards and poor." He added that communities open to investment would gain lower taxes and jobs, and he compared opposition to the construction to "killing the goose that lays the golden eggs," warning that residents themselves would bear the consequences.

Senator Johnson's theory

A few days earlier, Senator Ron Johnson said during a Breitbart News Fight Club Roundtable panel that he believes China is funding opposition to AI data centers in the US. Johnson admitted he has no concrete evidence, but argued that alarmist reports about data centers' water consumption are "greatly exaggerated," and that the exaggeration stems from Chinese propaganda aimed at American AI infrastructure.

I have a feeling that China is funding opposition to AI data centers - Ron Johnson, US Senator

Independent researchers cited by US media are more cautious about these claims. So far no evidence has been found of a coordinated, systemic Chinese campaign behind the protest movement, which largely stems from local, grassroots concerns among residents about electricity and water bills.

What OpenAI found

OpenAI published a report describing the banning of two ChatGPT account clusters linked to China. The first, called "Data Center Bandwagon," operated from late 2025 to early 2026. Its operators wrote prompts to ChatGPT in simplified Chinese, connected via VPN, and posed on the platform X as ordinary Americans of various backgrounds, publishing comics and comments suggesting that data centers were driving up ordinary citizens' electricity bills.

The second cluster, "Tech and Tariffs," generated comics attacking Trump's tariffs, featuring his likeness but never showing Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and was linked to a network of fake X accounts spreading false claims. OpenAI stressed, however, that both campaigns generated virtually zero authentic audience engagement - their real impact on public debate turned out to be negligible.

The scale of US protests

The movement against data centers, however, also has purely domestic, grassroots roots in the US. On July 18, 2026, the group HumansFirst, co-founded by former Tea Party leader Amy Kremer, organized the first coordinated, nationwide action in at least 125 locations across 42 states, with Texas leading with sixteen demonstrations.

Residents complain about rising electricity bills, excessive water consumption, the round-the-clock noise of server farms, and non-disclosure agreements that hide details of planned investments from communities. A June Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that only one-third of Americans accept the current pace of data center construction, and just 14 percent would accept such a facility owned by Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, or xAI in their own neighborhood.

Political divisions

The issue also divides the American political scene regardless of the Democrat-Republican split. New York Governor Kathy Hochul introduced a one-year ban on new data center construction, while Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has publicly voiced concerns about neglecting local communities in favor of AI infrastructure investment. Kremer of HumansFirst predicts that data centers will become one of the key issues in the 2026 congressional elections, and later in the 2028 presidential campaign.

The industry group Data Center Coalition responds that companies want to be responsible neighbors to the communities where they build infrastructure, pointing to the jobs and tax revenue generated by the investments.

Significance for the race with China

For the Trump administration, the dispute over data centers carries strategic weight. Republicans argue that delaying investment in American computing infrastructure through local bans and protests could hand China an advantage in the race to develop artificial intelligence, a race the US still leads mainly thanks to greater computing power, while Chinese models are closing the gap in efficiency. The dispute over AI data centers shows how the issue intertwines domestic politics, geopolitical rivalry with China, and information security, with real allegations of foreign influence on one side, and equally real, local resident complaints about electricity and water bills on the other.