Foreign adversaries including China and Russia are launching influence campaigns to exploit public concerns over data centers, aiming to deepen domestic political divisions regarding artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Key Points

• Alethea, a threat intelligence firm, identified numerous social media posts and articles from foreign actors targeting U.S. data center expansion.
• Chinese state media published satellite imagery of a Gainesville, Virginia, data center to frame AI development as a threat to American well-being.
• OpenAI reported that Chinese actors used ChatGPT to create a comic strip on X blaming data centers for rising electricity costs.
• Russian influence operations circulated videos questioning the viability of a Firebird data center project currently under construction in Armenia.
• U.S. officials are monitoring these campaigns as artificial intelligence becomes a significant point of contention ahead of upcoming midterm elections.

Why it Matters

These foreign influence operations attempt to weaponize existing local anxieties about energy consumption and infrastructure to destabilize public discourse. By targeting the physical footprint of AI, adversaries hope to create domestic fracture points that could complicate national technology policy and electoral stability.