Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) sent a letter Wednesday to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche urging the Justice Department to investigate a covert influence operation tied to the Chinese Communist Party that has targeted America’s artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Cotton’s letter, calls on federal investigators to examine whether foreign actors have been shaping U.S. public opinion and government policy against data centers and AI development as Washington and Beijing compete for global dominance in the technology.
“Recent reports show that Communist China is attempting to influence our policy and public opinion on data centers,” Cotton said. “The reason is obvious: they want to kneecap our processing power to win the AI race.” He added, “Americans should decide their own future free of communist propaganda. I’m encouraging the Department of Justice to investigate.”
The letter follows a report published last week by the Bitcoin Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, alleging that Chinese state media and a network of nonprofits funded by American tech investor Neville Roy Singham have coordinated years-long campaigns to block U.S. data center construction and AI infrastructure projects.
Singham, a self-described Marxist who sold his company, Thoughtworks, in 2017 for an undisclosed sum, now lives in Shanghai.
Cotton said the groups may be operating as unregistered foreign agents, potentially in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Groups from Singham’s network have also staged demonstrations against major U.S. defense and technology contractors, including Palantir Technologies, Lockheed Martin, and Google, the report said. Singham’s wife, Jodie Evans, is co-founder of CodePink. The pair have drawn increasing scrutiny from Congress and federal investigators over their funding activities.
