Blanche urged to investigate alleged foreign influence in fight against data centers

FIRST ON FOX: Lawmakers are calling on acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to investigate alleged foreign influence in the nationwide campaign to block construction of data centers.

A letter penned by Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Texas, and signed by multiple GOP lawmakers claims foreign-linked organizations and advocacy networks are trying to block the centers to give Chinq a leg up in the artificial intelligence (AI) race.

“We believe that the Chinese and also the Russians are colluding and working to make sure that the United States of America is not the leader when it comes to AI policy and development,” Gooden told Fox News Digital in an interview. “They are so sophisticated with respect to disinformation and manipulating our processes here in the United States against us.”

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“We know historically, that they have funded [nongovernmental organizations] and nonprofits that don’t disclose donations,” Gooden added. “And then, they use these foreign funds against us and against our policy in a way that benefits them.”

As AI demand accelerates, data centers have become essential to providing the computing power, electricity and infrastructure needed to process information and store massive amounts of data. However, proposed facilities often have faced opposition from critics who say they drive up utility costs and threaten the environment.

This past January, a self-described “organizer” for the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), Jack Tensley, testified before the Frederick County Planning Commission in Maryland against the construction of a data center in Virginia.

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“My really big fear here is the security risk. We have infrastructure attacks and failures, cyberattacks that happen — I want to know if this puts a target on the back of Frederick County,” Tensley said. “I see a lot of risk here.”

Tensley did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

In a social media post from Party for Socialism and Liberation Boston, the organization openly opposed data centers, saying the control of AI and data centers is in the hands of billionaires.

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“Workers are rising up across the country in a growing movement against the tech billionaires – from fights against data centers in hundreds of cities, to labor organizing at the world’s biggest tech corporations,” the post read.

Neville Roy Singham, a 72-year-old American who sold his tech company for $785 million in 2017 and now lives in Shanghai, is known to fund pro-Chinese Communist Party groups that operate in the U.S. He has funneled $278 million into the broad network of nonprofits since 2017, according to a Fox News Digital investigation.

Singham now faces a grand jury investigation over his financial activity in the Southern District of New York, a probe that Blanche authorized. Fox News Digital has reached out to Singham, who has not been charged with any crime to date, repeatedly for several months but has not received any responses.

The letter to Blanche cited reports from both the Bitcoin Policy Institute and OpenAI, both of which outlined the alleged role of foreign influence on campaigns against data center production.

OpenAI said that “two clusters of ChatGPT accounts likely originating from China” were “banned after they used our models in support of apparent covert influence operations that promoted narratives in an attempt to manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and wider tech policies.”

The Bitcoin Policy Institute found that PSL has organized anti-data center campaigns in at least 14 states, opposing roughly $23.6 billion in AI investments.

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“Recent reports have also identified involvement of China-based tycoon Neville Roy Singham and his network of Marxist, communist, and socialist nonprofit organizations in influencing American AI discourse,” the letter to Blanche read. “A BPI report from last month also uncovered specific instances of a nationwide influence campaign to undermine the American AI supply chain being led by the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), an unincorporated political party that acts as ‘the political arm of the Singham network’ with ties to socialist governments like Cuba and Venezuela.”

Fox News Digital asked the Justice Department if it was planning to respond to lawmakers or open an investigation but did not receive a response.