Tech Industry Claims China Is Funding Opposition to US Data Centers — With Little Proof

Here's a story that sounds like a Cold War thriller — but the receipts are suspiciously missing.

A growing chorus of tech millionaires and Trump administration officials are claiming that China is secretly bankrolling grassroots opposition to American data centers. The problem? They're making the accusation loudly, with very little proof to show for it.

Let's back up. Data centers — the massive warehouses full of servers that power AI, cloud storage, and basically the internet as you know it — are being proposed all over the country. They're enormous, power-hungry, and not always welcome by the communities where they're being built. Local residents have raised concerns about land use, water consumption, and electricity demand. Totally normal stuff that happens when giant infrastructure projects show up in your backyard.

But instead of engaging those concerns head-on, some of the biggest names in tech are pointing fingers at China. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told a crowd at an event called 'Harnessing American Power' that the opposition is 'not organic and local' — claiming it's driven by 'foreign-sourced dark money.' He offered no documentation.

The most specific accuser is Kevin O'Leary — yes, 'Mr. Wonderful' from Shark Tank — who is backing a massive $100 billion data center project in Utah called Stratos, which was originally planned to span about 40,000 acres. After local opposition started building, O'Leary claimed he found evidence of Chinese involvement by tracing social media IP addresses and reviewing IRS tax filings. He publicly named two Utah-based organizations — Alliance for a Better Utah and Elevate Strategies — accusing them of working on behalf of Beijing. Both groups denied it.

The Bitcoin Policy Institute — a nonprofit focused primarily on advocating for the crypto industry — piled on with a report claiming that Chinese state media, foreign billionaires, and alleged Chinese-backed American leftists were all working in concert to stop data center development. Independent researchers looked at the same landscape and found little evidence that any coordinated campaign existed, let alone that it was having real impact.

So why does this matter to you personally? A few reasons. First, data centers are infrastructure — they affect where AI development happens, how fast, and at what cost to local communities. If legitimate local pushback gets labeled 'Chinese sabotage,' it becomes a lot harder for regular people to raise real concerns about land, water, or power in their towns. Second, this framing is gaining traction in Washington. A House committee chair has already written to the FBI asking for a briefing on Chinese influence in the data center debate — and the people being asked are themselves wealthy tech investors tied to the projects in question. That's a feedback loop worth watching.

The bottom line: there may well be foreign influence operations targeting U.S. AI infrastructure — that wouldn't be surprising. But right now, the loudest voices making that claim also happen to be the ones with the most to gain from fast-tracking these projects past local opposition. The evidence hasn't caught up to the accusations.