Is Foreign Money Fueling the War on American Data Centers? A Disputed Report Says Yes.
On May 18, 2026, a crypto-aligned Washington think tank published a report with a provocative claim: that the fast-growing American movement to block AI data centers is being quietly amplified — and partly funded — by foreign actors, including Chinese state media and a network of nonprofits tied to a Shanghai-based American expatriate.
The report — from the Bitcoin Policy Institute, authored by its head of research, Sam Lyman — is an advocacy document, not a neutral audit, and it says so itself: foreign propaganda is, in the author’s words, “just one factor.” But it landed in a charged moment. Data-center opposition has exploded across forty states, public support has cratered, and Senate Republicans and three House committees are now asking whether some of the loudest opposition groups should register as foreign agents.
The organizations named in the report reject it flatly. One called the allegations “false, misleading and an attempt by big crypto special interests to manipulate the public.” Independent China scholars say the opposition is overwhelmingly homegrown — about water bills, electricity rates, and farmland — and that foreign media are riding a wave they did not create. This is the dispute, laid out with both sides.
- $2B+allegedin foreign-tied charitable money the report says flowed toward U.S. anti-AI and climate advocacy — BPI report (contested)
- 188+groupslocal data-center opposition groups across 40 states — DataCenterWatch
- $18Bblockedin data-center projects halted, plus $46B delayed — DataCenterWatch
- 230+orgssigned the Dec. 8, 2025 letter demanding a national data-center moratorium — Food & Water Watch
On May 18, 2026, the Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI) — a crypto-aligned policy shop in Washington — published “Foreign Influence in the Campaign against American AI,” written by Sam Lyman, the institute’s head of research. The report is an advocacy analysis, not a neutral investigation, and it should be read as one: BPI’s mission is to advance the case for crypto and the energy-hungry data centers that power it. With that disclosure on the table, here is what the report alleges.
Lyman argues that the U.S. anti-data-center movement is being amplified and partly bankrolled through three “convergent vectors” of foreign influence. The framing is geopolitical: the report casts the fight over data centers as a front in the U.S.–China race for artificial-intelligence supremacy, in which slowing American buildout serves Beijing’s interest.
“The choice facing our country — and the world — is not between AI or no AI but between American AI or Chinese AI.”
Sam Lyman, Bitcoin Policy Institute · 'Foreign Influence in the Campaign against American AI'
- →Vector 1 — State media: Chinese state outlets (CGTN, China Daily, Global Times) and Russia's RT are alleged to run sustained anti-data-center messaging that mirrors and amplifies U.S. opposition talking points.
- →Vector 2 — The Singham network: a CCP-aligned U.S. 501(c)(3) network the report ties to Shanghai-based American expat Neville Roy Singham — roughly $278M (Fox cites $285M) said to have flowed into six U.S. nonprofits, including CodePink.
- →Vector 3 — Foreign-tied charities: $2B+ the report links to foreign-connected philanthropy — Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss and British billionaire Alan Parker's Oak Foundation — with $39M+ said to reach specifically anti-data-center organizing.
The report reached a national audience largely through a Washington Examiner op-edby Helen Raleigh on May 31, 2026, which summarized and endorsed BPI’s findings — the piece that put the story in front of a much broader readership. It is worth keeping the distinction clear: the Examiner item is opinion, and the underlying BPI document is advocacy. The funding figures below are the report’s claims, not established fact.
New report: the campaign against American AI data centers isn't purely homegrown. Chinese state media, a CCP-aligned nonprofit network, and foreign-tied charities are amplifying and funding the opposition. The real choice is American AI or Chinese AI.
Whatever its origins, the opposition the report describes is real and large. By the DataCenterWatch tally, there are now more than 188 local opposition groups across 40 states. Their organizing has, by that same count, helped block an estimated $18 billion in data-center projects and delay another $46 billion. Whether you call that grassroots democracy or foreign interference, it has bent real outcomes.
Public opinion moved with it. Polling cited in the coverage shows support for new data centers falling from 51% in March 2025 to 36% by December 2025, with 52% opposed. The drivers that residents themselves name are local and concrete: strain on water supplies, rising electricity rates, constant low-frequency noise, and the loss of farmland to server farms. None of those grievances require a foreign hand to explain.
- →188+ local opposition groups across 40 states (DataCenterWatch)
- →$18B in projects blocked; $46B more delayed (DataCenterWatch)
- →Support for data centers: 51% (Mar 2025) → 36% (Dec 2025); 52% now opposed
- →Top resident concerns: water use, electricity rates, noise, loss of farmland
- →54+ local moratoriums enacted at the city and county level
The report’s most explosive claims concern money, and this is where the “alleges” carries the most weight. According to the report, the central figure in the nonprofit vector is Neville Roy Singham, a Shanghai-based American software millionaire whose giving has drawn prior scrutiny over its alignment with Chinese government positions. The report alleges roughly $278 million— Fox News cites $285 million— moved through Singham-linked vehicles into six U.S. nonprofits, among them CodePink, the anti-war group co-founded by Jodie Evans, who is married to Singham.
The third vector points at foreign-tied philanthropy. The report alleges more than $2 billion in charitable money connected to Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss and British billionaire Alan Parker’s Oak Foundation has flowed into U.S. progressive advocacy, with at least $39 million reaching organizations the report classifies as anti-data-center. Critics of that framing note that most of this money funds climate and conservation work broadly, and that tracing a slice of it to a single issue requires interpretive choices the report makes in its own favor.
Our new report maps three convergent vectors of foreign influence in the campaign against American AI: state media amplification, a CCP-aligned nonprofit network, and foreign-tied charitable funding. Read the full analysis.
The legislative hook predates the BPI report. On December 8, 2025, a coalition of more than 230 organizations, organized by Food & Water Watch, sent a letter demanding a national moratorium on new data-center construction. Roughly 107 days later, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced the AI Data Center Moratorium Act (S.4214). More than 54 local moratoriums have been enacted around the country.
Sanders convened an April 29, 2026 panel on the issue that featured two China-affiliated academics, Zeng Yi and Xue Lan— a detail the report’s defenders point to as evidence of foreign reach, and that critics call guilt by association at an academic forum. On the other side of the Capitol, the House Ways & Means, Oversight, and Select Committee on the CCP are examining whether Singham-network nonprofits should be required to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
The dispute went from abstract to personal in Utah. Investor Kevin O’Leary— backing a large data-center venture, the Stratos Project — publicly accused local Utah women and the group Alliance for a Better Utah of being China-funded. The accusation drew an immediate, unambiguous denial from the organization, and turned a national funding debate into a fight over the reputations of named, local activists.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum (R)lent the framing federal weight, saying opposition sites are “getting bombarded with foreign-directed propaganda.” That an administration cabinet officer and a celebrity investor were both advancing the foreign-influence theory is part of why the report traveled so far, so fast — and part of why the people it named pushed back so hard.
The opposition to our Utah data-center project isn't all local. Some of these groups are getting Chinese money to fight American energy and American AI. Follow the funding.
We are leading the World in AI, BY FAR — and we have far more electricity than they will ever need, because we are building the facilities that produce it ourselves.
The organizations named in the report do not accept its premise, and several independent scholars say the core thesis gets cause and effect backwards. This is not a footnote to the story — it is half of it.
The Wyss Foundation rejected the allegations outright. In a statement reported by the Washington Post on May 29, 2026, it called the reports “false, misleading and an attempt by big crypto special interests to manipulate the public into accepting data centers.” CodePink and the Alliance for a Better Utahlikewise denied being foreign-funded instruments of any government’s agenda.
“These reports are false, misleading and an attempt by big crypto special interests to manipulate the public into accepting data centers.”
Wyss Foundation, in response to the allegations · via The Washington Post, May 29, 2026
The scholarly skeptics make a narrower but more damaging point about the mechanism. Samm Sacks, a leading analyst of Chinese tech policy, argues that Chinese state media “take advantage of narratives that are already underway” rather than seeding them — i.e., Beijing’s outlets latched onto an American grievance that already had a life of its own. Her broader warning is about the cost of overreach.
“When everything becomes a China national security issue, nothing becomes a China national security issue.”
Samm Sacks, China technology-policy scholar · via Semafor
Kyle Chanof the Brookings Institution makes the same case from the ground up: the data-center opposition is, in his read, homegrown — rooted in water, power bills, and land-use fights that would exist with or without any foreign broadcaster. And in perhaps the most important concession, the report’s own author acknowledges that foreign propaganda is “just one factor.” The honest version of the story is not “China invented this movement.” It is that a real, domestic backlash is being watched, and at the margins amplified, by adversaries who benefit from it — and that proving funding versus coincidence is genuinely hard.
A crypto-aligned think tank, the Bitcoin Policy Institute, alleges that the American movement against AI data centers is amplified and partly funded by foreign actors — Chinese and Russian state media, a Singham-tied nonprofit network, and foreign-connected charities the report links to $2 billion-plus in giving. The report is advocacy, its biggest dollar figures are contested, and three House committees are now probing whether some named nonprofits must register under FARA.
The other side is substantial. The Wyss Foundation calls the claims “false and misleading,” CodePink and Alliance for a Better Utah deny foreign control, and scholars Samm Sacks and Kyle Chan argue the opposition is homegrown — about water, power, and farmland — with foreign media riding a wave they did not start. Even the report’s author concedes foreign influence is “just one factor.” The documented part is a large, real, domestic backlash. The contested part is who, if anyone, is funding it from abroad.
