The West’s rivals hobbled western industry and are now targeting data centers

The West’s rivals hobbled western industry and are now targeting data centers. By John Hinderaker at Powerline.

For many years the Soviet Union, and then Russia, financed the environmental movement in the United States. Their purpose was to suppress American production of oil and gas, and they succeeded to a considerable degree, to their own great benefit.

Today, we are in the midst of another kind of race with Communist China — the race to develop superior systems of artificial intelligence. The Chinese Communist Party knows that if it wins this race, it will contribute greatly to its dreams of world domination, while if it loses, China, with its rapidly shrinking population, could be on the way to the garbage dump of history. So the stakes are enormous.

To develop superior forms of artificial intelligence, massive quantities of computing power are required. This mostly takes the form of data centers. So America’s tech titans are trying to develop data centers (referred to by some as “intelligence factories”) across the U.S. Yet wherever they go, opposition arises, seemingly from the grass roots. Bad arguments are made against data centers — they will raise electricity rates, they consume vast quantities of water, they make noise — misinformation is spread, and opposition is organized. In many cases, such local opposition has been successful.

Observers have wondered where this opposition — seemingly grass roots, but also remarkably well-organized, consistent, and well-funded — comes from.

Kevin O’Leary put a data science team on the question, and came up with startling conclusions: the opposition to data centers comes largely from the Communist Chinese Party, laundered through liberal American NGOs:

 

 

From a new report:

Power The Future’s new report “Manufactured Outrage: How National Environmental Activists Are Spending Millions to Elect Democrats, Block Data Centers, and Undermine President Trump’s Pro-Growth Agenda” exposes a coordinated, billionaire-funded and potentially foreign-backed campaign to obstruct data center and Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure development across the United States. …

The report finds the anti-data-center movement is not grassroots, but a coordinated national campaign fueled by massive political spending and activist organizations aligned with partisan goals. Among the findings: …

  • The report exposes a coordinated campaign led by national eco-left groups such as the Sierra Club, Food & Water Watch, Earthjustice, and the Southern Environmental Law Center, backed by dark money networks to stop data center projects across the country.
  • More than $150 million was spent by these same environmental groups to elect Democrats in 2024, before pivoting to target data center development nationwide.
  • The Arabella/Sunflower network disbursed approximately $1 billion in grants in 2023, funding advocacy campaigns while shielding donor identities. …
  • More than 300 anti-data-center bills were filed across 30+ states in just six weeks, demonstrating a level of coordination far beyond local opposition.

Interference by a foreign power:

In 2016, the Democratic Party generated hysteria over supposed (but almost entirely fictitious) interference by a foreign power in our election.

What is going on now appears to be real, not fabricated, and it likely will impact our country’s future far more than a single presidential election. The influence of the Chinese Communist Party on local, supposedly grass roots activism needs to be investigated and, as appropriate, exposed.

Never stand between a leftist and a source of funding.