The Anatomy of an Influence Operation: The Campaign against American AI
Anonymous 08/29/26 (Sat) 20:02:30 15ebd6 (7) No.24986900>>24986949
X Busts Suspected Chinese Bot Farm That Could 'Manipulate Legitimate Debate' Over America's AI Boom
Social media giant X said on Thursday that it identified a bot farm of roughly 200,000 suspected Chinese accounts -- 200 of which were "posting in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy." In short: the bots were amplifying pitchfork grievances Americans already hold against data centers.
X's Global Government Affairs team wrote:
The X Safety team conducted an investigation into suspected Chinese inauthentic accounts involved in influence operations: We identified a bot farm of approximately 200,000 accounts.
Within this farm, we found 200 accounts posting in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy.
The team said the flagged accounts leaned on price and grid fears -- and on AI-generated political cartoons:
These posts contained claims that AI data centers are driving up household electricity prices and straining the grid. Others included AI-generated cartoons that depicted data-center operators enriching themselves at the public's expense.
Working The Angles
About those claims: they aren't fringe. PJM Interconnection, the nation's largest grid, serving some 67 million people across 13 states, has an independent market monitor, Monitoring Analytics, whose president Joseph Bowring concluded the last three capacity auctions "were not competitive, primarily as a result of the inclusion of forecast demand for data centers." His firm attributes $29.4 billion -- 46% of all capacity charges across the last four auctions – to data center load, and wholesale power costs in the region jumped 76% year-over-year in the first quarter. Among the material X's flagged accounts reportedly shared: news coverage of that same 76% figure.
According to a Gallup poll published in May, 71% of Americans oppose building AI data centers in their local area, including 48% 'strongly opposed' - and only about a quarter in favor. Opposition crosses party lines: Gallup's breakdowns showed 63% of Republicans strongly or somewhat opposed to a data center where they live, while a July Fox News poll found that 60% of Republicans and 53% of self-described "MAGA Republicans" oppose data centers where they live.
So while China clearly benefits from added friction to America's AI buildout, the opposition is real. Now, techbros and X are suggesting that bad actors may be using that to their advantage.
Earlier this summer, Y Combinator founder Garry Tan, who also founded the civic engagement organization Garry's List, cited a Bitcoin Policy Institute report detailing a "coordinated foreign influence campaign against American AI, running through CCP state media, a Shanghai-based Marxist's nonprofit network, and foreign billionaire dark money that has funneled $2B+ into US advocacy infrastructure."
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/x-busts-200000-account-chinese-bot-farm-waging-psychological-operation-against-americas