Report: Chinese propaganda, Singham network, foreign dark money linked to campaigns against data centers - Fox News

Oh, brilliant — just when you thought the NIMBYs were bad enough, it turns out they're being bankrolled by a global network with Chinese propaganda fingerprints. The Bitcoin Policy Institute has kindly trawled through the muck and found that the Singham network, a shadowy outfit with a reported penchant for anti-Western narratives, has been funnelling cash to nonprofits like CodePink to oppose U.S. AI data centre construction. Because of course — nothing says 'grassroots opposition to a server farm' quite like a coordinated state-funded information operation.

This isn't just your standard 'not in my backyard' whinge about noise and power lines. According to the report, these groups have spent *years* amplifying narratives that conveniently align with Chinese state media talking points — the sort that paint data centres as environmental hazards, national security risks, or tools of American imperialism. The irony is so thick you could build a data centre on it: the very infrastructure that could power future AI capabilities is being stalled by a propaganda network that probably wants to steal those capabilities anyway.

And the best part? None of this is illegal — it's just good old-fashioned influence warfare, wrapped in the language of activism. CodePink and friends will deny coordination, and the donors will remain opaque. Meanwhile, data centre projects limp along under a cloud of suspicion, and the regulatory gap yawns wide enough to drive a server rack through. If there's a more textbook example of asymmetric warfare in the AI race, I'd like to hear it — preferably over a pint while I watch the slow-motion trainwreck.