From Carbon Capture to Data Centers, the Outrage Is Being Manufactured
The campaign against American data centers just got caught receiving help from an unexpected source: China.
Axios reported that roughly 200 accounts tied to a suspected Chinese bot farm were posting content designed to manipulate the American debate over artificial intelligence and energy policy. The accounts pushed familiar claims about strained power grids, higher utility bills, and greedy corporations profiting at the public’s expense.
The goal appears straightforward. If Americans can be convinced to block the data centers needed to power artificial intelligence, China gains ground in the global technology race.
Louisiana has seen this playbook before.
For years, national environmental organizations and billionaire-funded foundations have poured money into Louisiana groups fighting carbon capture, pipelines, refineries, and other energy projects. The faces at the microphone may be local, but much of the money, strategy, legal support, and messaging comes from somewhere else.
Our previous reporting found that Louisiana-based anti-energy organizations received tens of millions of dollars from outside interests connected to Michael Bloomberg, Jeff Bezos, Rockefeller foundations, the Arabella dark-money network, and other national organizations committed to phasing out fossil fuels.
The new revelations about data centers should make Louisianans even more skeptical of sudden waves of supposedly grassroots outrage.
That does not mean every resident who raises a question about a data center, carbon-capture project, or power plant is part of a foreign influence campaign. Legitimate concerns deserve legitimate answers. But the public also deserves to know who is financing, organizing, and amplifying the opposition.
A congressional investigation has already raised concerns about foreign propaganda, billionaire-funded activism, and nonprofit networks working to slow American AI development. The House Energy and Commerce Committee warned that these campaigns use state media, dark-money organizations, litigation, and coordinated political pressure to obstruct major infrastructure projects. The committee cited an estimated $45.8 billion in disrupted data-center projects in Virginia alone.
Whether the project involves storing carbon underground or building the computing infrastructure of the future, the formula remains remarkably similar: outside money, local faces, manufactured outrage, and economic consequences paid by American communities.
Louisiana should listen to its citizens. It should not allow foreign adversaries, national activists, or billionaire-funded organizations to impersonate them.