MACLEOD: China doesn't have to beat North America in AI — it just has to stop us from building data centres

We are living through an industrial revolution that will profoundly and rapidly change the way we work, produce, relate to each other, and even defend ourselves. The US and China are clearly in a serious competition to develop and maintain superiority in this AI race. But something odd is happening around North America’s proposed data centres.Almost every major project now attracts the same warnings. Electricity bills will rise. Water supplies will be depleted. Local taxpayers will carry the cost while technology companies collect the profits. The arguments appear in petitions, council meetings, news stories, and a flood of social media posts.Some concerns are entirely reasonable. A multibillion-dollar technology company should pay for the electricity generation, transmission lines, and other infrastructure it requires. Communities also deserve honest answers before a project is approved.Still, there is a larger question that is too important to ignore: Who gains when North America delays the infrastructure needed to compete in artificial intelligence?The answer is clear. China gains.Data centres are becoming the industrial plants of the AI economy. They provide the enormous computing power needed to develop and operate advanced artificial intelligence. Those systems will influence military intelligence, cybersecurity, manufacturing, medicine, energy, transportation, and almost every other serious industry..The US government now treats data centres as part of the country’s national-security infrastructure. A recent security directive describes chips, servers, storage, cloud services, and data centres as part of the AI technology stack needed for American security and economic leadership. The International Energy Agency says the United States accounted for 45% of worldwide data-centre electricity consumption in 2024, compared with 25% for China.China is working hard to close that gap. It is coordinating electricity generation with new computing centres, expanding its national power grid, and building large computing clusters. Chinese government media openly boasts that the country has enough power to support its AI ambitions while the United States struggles with grid connections, permits, and local resistance. A Chinese official put it plainly: America is anxious about power shortages while China is not.China therefore has an obvious strategic interest in slowing American data-centre construction. We now know that Chinese-linked operators are trying to do exactly that.In June, OpenAI disclosed that it had closed two clusters of ChatGPT accounts likely operating from China. One operation was specifically aimed at the American data centre debate. The accounts generated social media comments and images claiming that AI data centres were increasing electricity prices for ordinary families.OpenAI called it the “Data Centre Bandwagon” campaign. Its apparent purpose was to exploit existing public concerns, give them greater emotional force, and spread them through accounts that appeared to represent ordinary people. Reuters reported that some users were connected to a Chinese technology company that had worked with government agencies.OpenAI did not find evidence that those particular accounts achieved wide circulation. That has led some commentators to dismiss the operation as a failure. That misses the point.Foreign influence is rarely one enormous campaign that suddenly changes millions of minds. It usually works by entering an argument already underway and repeatedly pushing the most divisive version of it..A misleading graphic appears on Facebook. An anonymous account repeats it on X. A local activist shares it without knowing where it came from. Reporters then cover the resulting public concern, and politicians respond to what appears to be a growing grassroots movement.The original source soon disappears. The message remains.China does not need to invent public opposition. It only needs to strengthen it, sharpen it, and help it travel. Every delayed permit, council rejection, or government moratorium buys China more time. This is happening right here in Alberta. There are also questions about organized opposition on the ground. A BPI investigation documented the involvement of the Party for Socialism and Liberation in 21 data centre campaigns across 14 states. According to the report, campaigns involving the organization contributed to ten moratoriums, one permanent ban, and four rejected or abandoned projects, affecting roughly $23.6 billion USD in proposed investment.The report found extensive personnel links between that organization and groups financed through a network associated with Neville Roy Singham, an American technology millionaire who lives in Shanghai. Singham has funded organizations accused by congressional investigators of promoting narratives favourable to the Chinese Communist Party.The public evidence does not establish that Beijing directly paid for those 21 campaigns. The Bitcoin Policy Institute is also a pro-technology advocacy group, not an intelligence agency. Its findings should be tested rather than blindly accepted..But the funding questions are serious enough that the House Ways and Means Committee has issued formal subpoenas to BreakThrough News, Tricontinental, and The People’s Forum. The committee says hundreds of millions of dollars connected to Singham passed through shell companies and donor-advised funds before reaching American nonprofits. Those claims remain under investigation, but the organizations’ refusal to provide requested records has hardly settled the matter.Chinese state media is pushing the same message. In recent months, China Daily has blamed America’s AI boom for rising electricity bills and reported extensively on growing resistance to American data centres. At the same time, Chinese media celebrates China’s ability to build computing centres quickly and supply them with abundant electricity.This is not proof that every critical article is part of a covert operation. But it does show a remarkably convenient message: American data centres are dangerous and unaffordable, while China’s are efficient, necessary, and evidence of national strength.China also has the machinery to spread that message. Google identifies DRAGONBRIDGE, also known as Spamouflage Dragon, as the most prolific influence network its Threat Analysis Group tracks. The PRC-linked network produces huge volumes of online material, impersonates local users, and attempts to insert Chinese interests into Western political debates.Kevin O’Leary has warned that China is helping to organize opposition to American data centres. His broader concern is justified, but he weakened his argument by accusing specific Utah opponents without producing convincing proof. The Washington Post found that neither O’Leary nor American officials initially provided conclusive evidence against the local organizations he named.That distinction must be maintained. A resident asking who will pay for a new transmission line is not automatically a Chinese agent. Treating every critic as a foreign operative would be dishonest and politically foolish.It would be equally foolish to pretend that China is merely watching from the sidelines..Some analysts argue that American opposition remains overwhelmingly domestic. WIRED reported that researchers had not detected a large foreign operation controlling the national conversation. That is probably correct. China did not create the anger, and it does not control every organization involved. Control, however, is not required for influence.OpenAI has caught China-linked operators creating anti-data-centre propaganda. Chinese state media is promoting the same arguments. Organizations connected to a Shanghai-based financial network are active in local campaigns. Congress is investigating the money, while Google has documented China’s ability to impersonate Western citizens and exploit domestic disputes.We may not yet be able to measure how many of us in North America have been persuaded by Chinese messaging. But we can see that the messaging is entering the debate, reinforcing existing fears and making public opposition appear broader and more urgent.That is influence. It is already shaping the conversation and placing additional pressure on politicians who control permits, zoning, and infrastructure approvals.China has recognized an American, Canadian, and Albertan vulnerability. Democracies can argue themselves into paralysis, particularly when foreign actors quietly make every disagreement louder, angrier, and more suspicious.While China builds power plants, transmission corridors, and computing clusters, North America is being encouraged to fear the very infrastructure it needs to remain competitive.Beijing does not have to defeat America’s technology companies in the laboratory. It does not have to destroy a single data centre. It only has to persuade enough Americans not to build them.

MACLEOD: China doesn't have to beat North America in AI — it just has to stop us from building data centres

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