As small towns across the United States reckon with power-hungry data centers springing up, the Chinese Communist Party is muddying the waters and sowing division.
By tapping into the tensions around water usage, power demands, and environmental costs, the regime is trying to widen the wedge using an old playbook: influence peddling and propaganda.
There’s no discounting the groundswell of anger in American towns about data centers in their neighborhoods. Local resistance has blocked or delayed at least 75 data center projects, worth some $130 billion, in the first quarter of 2026, according to Data Center Watch.
But while analysts caution against categorically dismissing all opposition against data centers as Beijing’s work, they say the potential risk of the regime meddling behind the scenes is nonetheless serious—and growing….