A top official at the Department of War says foreign adversaries are running psychological operations inside the United States to turn the American people against artificial intelligence and the data centers that power it.
Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering Emil Michael delivered the warning in an interview with Fox News Digital at the White House, calling the growing anti-AI, anti-data center movement a target of foreign propaganda. "It is natural from a propaganda standpoint that your adversary, who doesn't want you to be developing super intelligence ahead of them, is going to try to psyop your population into believing that," Michael told Fox News Digital. "And to some degree, it's worked. And I think that's why you see the president push back and say, 'no, this is a good thing.'"
Michael described data centers as the "electricity that fuels the superintelligence revolution" — the physical backbone of any American claim to AI leadership. Continued construction, he argued, is essential to keeping the United States ahead in that race.
The comments land as data center production has become a live campaign issue ahead of the midterm elections, with lawmakers splitting along near-partisan lines over whether development should continue. Protests have broken out in communities across the country against data centers and AI expansion, and some lawmakers have raised questions about the role foreign money and influence play in those demonstrations.
CRUZ: SAME PLAYBOOK AS ANTI-FRACKING
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital last month the pattern is familiar. "It's the same reason we saw Middle Eastern countries paying for anti-fracking movements," Cruz said. "Because if they can convince America, 'Don't develop your oil and gas, just buy it from us,' well, that's great for them and terrible for us."
Cruz extended that logic to AI infrastructure directly: "The same is true on data centers. If they can convince Americans, 'You don't want data centers here, you want to just rely on the Chinese for AI,' that's great for China, and it's terrible for America."
Michael echoed Cruz's concerns about foreign influence but did not specifically name China as the culprit. Hegseth's Pentagon, however, is already deep in the AI buildout: Zetik reported that 1.7 million Defense Department users now employ AI tools, up from roughly 70,000 under Hegseth's tenure as secretary.
THE 'CHINESE PSYOP' CLAIM AND ITS CRITICS
Republicans have pushed the foreign-influence angle for months. President Trump, speaking with Laura Ingraham, said, "A lot of people say it's China. A lot of people say that it's a China PR thing." Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in May that "any place that's trying to build data centers is getting bombarded with foreign-directed propaganda to try to block these from being built."
The claim was popularized by a 2026 report from the Bitcoin Policy Institute, a think tank founded in 2021 that researches Bitcoin and monetary networks. Part one of "Foreign Influence in the Campaign against American AI" landed in May, with part two following in June. The report's central argument is that "international actors are working through state media organizations, nonprofit networks, and dark money groups to shape US policy and public opinion on artificial intelligence."
Popular Information, which reviewed the report, found it offers little evidence those efforts have meaningfully moved American opinion. It cites a Chinese state broadcaster video with roughly 1,200 views as an example of the material in question. The outlet also reported that the report's author, Lyman, previously served as a senior advisor and chief speechwriter for Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and worked as a public policy director at Riot Platforms, a large-scale data center developer — and that Riot Platforms sponsored BPI's 2026 annual summit, alongside other data center industry sponsors. The New York Ledger separately reported that lawmakers have raised questions about funding from American-born tech tycoon Neville Roy Singham into nonprofits now opposing data center development.
So the record is mixed and still contested: a sitting war official and a U.S. senator say foreign influence is real and operational; a critical review says the public impact is unproven. What is not disputed is that the fight over data centers has become one of the sharpest domestic battles of the 2026 cycle — and that both parties now treat it as a national security question, not just a zoning one.
Our Take
Here's what the skeptics in legacy media keep missing: nobody is claiming Beijing needs a million-view video to win. A psyop doesn't have to top the charts. It has to seed a talking point, hand it to local activists and friendly nonprofits, and let earnest Americans carry it the rest of the way. That's the anti-fracking playbook Cruz described, and it worked well enough the first time.
Ask yourself a simple question. If China wins the AI race, who builds the chips, who writes the models, who sets the rules for the next fifty years of computing — and whose values get baked into all of it? The people showing up at county commission meetings to kill data centers may believe they're fighting for their neighborhoods. Some of them surely are. But the money and the messaging behind the loudest campaigns deserve a hard look, and the outlets sneering at this story are the same ones that spent years insisting foreign election interference was the graveyard of democracy.
Trump and Cruz are right to call it out. Data centers are this century's oil derricks — the thing you either drill or buy from someone who will. Tell your representatives where you stand before the midterms, because the folks funding the other side already have.
