Before You Grab the Pitchfork, Find Out Who Handed It to You – A Data Center Post

There are legitimate reasons to be concerned about the rapid construction of data centers across Georgia. These facilities consume enormous amounts of electricity while some consume substantial amounts of water. They can require new transmission lines, substations, roads, and other infrastructure. Depending on the cooling equipment, the location, and the distance from surrounding homes, poorly designed facilities can also create exterior noise problems, although that is far from universal. They often arrive with promises of economic development that sound impressive when measured in billions of dollars, but less impressive when the discussion turns to the relatively small number of permanent jobs created after construction is complete.

Local residents are entitled to ask who pays for the infrastructure, whether existing customers will see their utility bills increase, what happens during a drought, how much tax revenue will actually be collected after incentives are applied, and whether the project is compatible with the surrounding community. Developers should answer those questions directly rather than treating every skeptical resident as an obstacle standing between them and their next quarterly earnings report.

None of that is controversial, or at least it should not be.

What should concern us is the speed with which reasonable questions are being converted into an automatic answer of no. Not “show us the details.” Not “make the developer pay the full cost.” Not “protect the neighboring property owners.” Not even “this particular location does not work.”

Just no.

No data centers here. No data centers there. No data centers anywhere.

Before joining that movement, especially before Republicans begin repeating the talking points supplied by it, there is another question worth asking. Who benefits if the United States stops building the infrastructure necessary to lead the next generation of technological development?

It turns out that some of the people helping Americans pick up their pitchforks have interests that extend considerably beyond protecting the family farm down the road.

The Georgia Fight Is Real

Georgia has become one of the most attractive data-center markets in the country because we have available land, a growing supply of electricity, existing fiber infrastructure, access to a major metropolitan workforce, and state tax policies designed to attract large technology investments. That combination has produced a wave of proposed projects, along with an increasingly organized backlash.

The concerns vary by location. In Coweta County, opposition to the massive Project Sail proposal has focused on its size, its potential use of electricity and water, the length of construction, and whether the rural community should be transformed into an industrial technology hub. In DeKalb County, residents have raised questions about environmental effects, development patterns, electric rates, and the concentration of industrial projects in communities that believe they have historically carried more than their share of metro Atlanta’s burdens. Athens-Clarke County adopted a temporary moratorium while officials considered how such projects should be regulated. Cobb County has seen organized resistance to proposed facilities in and around Marietta.

Those debates should occur an local elected officials should listen. Georgia should develop a coherent statewide policy that ensures the companies creating extraordinary new demands on the power grid pay the costs associated with those demands. Communities should not be forced to subsidize infrastructure that primarily benefits some of the wealthiest corporations on Earth.

The mistake comes when legitimate concerns are used to convince us that stopping the development altogether is somehow the safer choice.

It is not.

Like it or not, artificial intelligence will be developed somewhere, by someone. The cloud services used by businesses, hospitals, manufacturers, banks, universities, and governments will be hosted somewhere. The computing power behind future medical breakthroughs, military systems, cybersecurity tools, financial networks, logistics platforms, and advanced manufacturing will exist somewhere. You are reading this post which is hosted somewhere.

The question is whether America will build it, regulate it, and lead it, or whether we will spend the next decade holding protest signs while China builds the capacity we refused to permit.

A Familiar Pattern

Propaganda rarely succeeds by inventing a concern nobody has. The better approach is to identify a legitimate concern, amplify it, strip away the nuance, and point it toward a conclusion that serves someone else’s purpose.

You do not have to convince a homeowner that a giant industrial building beside his property is good, you just have to convince him that every data center is bad.

You do not have to convince a Georgia Power customer that additional generation and transmission capacity will be free. You simply have to convince her that stopping the project will stop the demand, even though the digital services creating that demand are not going away.

You do not have to persuade a conservative voter to embrace Marxism. You only have to hand him a sign with a message he already finds appealing, stand beside him at the rally, and leave the broader political ideology for another day.

That last part is not hypothetical.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), a Marxist-Leninist organization that advocates replacing the capitalist system, has participated in data-center opposition around the country, including in Georgia. The Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI), an organization that has its own obvious interest in protecting energy-intensive computing, documented PSL involvement in 21 campaigns across 14 states. The report attributes $23.6 billion in delayed, rejected, or threatened projects to campaigns in which PSL participated, although it does not establish that PSL alone produced those outcomes. In some locations, the organization appears to have taken a major role. In others, it joined opposition that already existed.

Of course, none of this means the people showing up at county commission meetings are secret Marxists. Most of them are probably exactly what they appear to be: neighbors who don’t want a data center next door. Coalitions form around issues all the time. The point isn’t that every opponent of a data center shares the politics of the organizers. The point is that most people never stop to ask who the organizers are or what broader agenda they may be pursuing.

In Athens, PSL celebrated the county’s data-center moratorium and promoted continued opposition. In metro Atlanta, PSL activists have participated in organizing against projects in DeKalb County. In Cobb County, PSL Atlanta and the Cobb chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America jointly promoted opposition to data-center development in Marietta. PSL’s own social-media materials describe the cooperation.

I suspect many anti-datacenter protesters would be horrified to discover that the person helping them make signs believes the government should seize the means of production. Again, politics creates strange coalitions, and people with different motives can arrive at the same position.

Still, when conservatives find themselves marching in the same direction as the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the Democratic Socialists of America, it would be wise to look at the map before assuming everyone is headed to the same destination.

The Singham Network

That brings us to Neville Roy Singham, a name that should be much more familiar than it is.

Singham is an American-born technology entrepreneur who founded Thoughtworks, a software consulting company, and became extraordinarily wealthy when the business was sold in 2017. He now lives in Shanghai and has devoted a significant portion of his fortune to financing a global network of organizations promoting Marxist politics, opposition to American power, and narratives that frequently align with the interests of the Chinese Communist Party.

Singham does not hide his political ideology and his history includes involvement in radical socialist politics dating back decades. The organizations connected to his funding regularly describe capitalism and American foreign policy as forces to be defeated rather than merely reformed.

The more complicated question is whether Singham is simply a wealthy Marxist who happens to live in China and independently promotes positions favorable to Beijing, or whether his network operates with some level of assistance, coordination, or direction from the Chinese government.

That question has not been conclusively answered in public. It is, however, not a question that appeared out of thin air.

Investigative reporting has traced hundreds of millions of dollars through an opaque collection of nonprofit organizations, donor-advised funds, shell entities, and foundations associated with Singham and people who previously worked with him. The recipients include The People’s Forum, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, BreakThrough News, CodePink, and organizations operating in several other countries. Those groups frequently share personnel, promote one another’s material, appear at the same events, and repeat similar arguments about the United States, China, capitalism, war, policing, and industrial policy.

Congressional investigators say some of these organizations have received more than $20 million from Singham-linked sources and have demanded records concerning the origin and use of the money. In July, the House Ways and Means Committee issued subpoenas to The People’s Forum, BreakThrough News, and Tricontinental after saying the organizations failed to provide documents voluntarily. Those organizations dispute the committee’s characterization and argue the investigation threatens constitutionally protected political activity.

A subpoena is not proof of guilt, and a congressional press release should not be confused with a judicial finding. Congress is investigating whether the network has abused nonprofit laws, obscured foreign involvement, or operated as a propaganda arm for a foreign government. Those are allegations being investigated, not settled facts.

The underlying relationships, however, are real.

The People’s Forum operates as a political education and organizing center. Tricontinental produces ideological research and publications. BreakThrough News supplies professionally produced media. CodePink organizes protests and advocacy campaigns, particularly concerning American foreign policy and China. The ANSWER Coalition has years of experience putting people into the streets. Senior figures associated with several of these organizations also have close relationships with PSL.

The result is a system that does not require one person in Shanghai to call a local organizer in Georgia and give instructions. A network with common funding, shared personnel, coordinated media, ideological agreement, and compatible strategic objectives can operate effectively without issuing a memo titled “Today’s Orders From Beijing.”

That is how modern influence works. It is less likely to resemble a spy handing over an envelope in a parking garage and more likely to resemble a collection of nonprofits, media outlets, organizers, academics, and activists repeatedly steering public anger in the same direction.

The Singham – Data Center Connection

The connection between the Singham network and data-center opposition is not that every local protest receives a check with Neville Singham’s name written on it. I want to be clear that no evidence currently available establishes that, at least not yet.

The connection runs through the activist and media infrastructure surrounding PSL.

BreakThrough News has leadership ties to PSL, with at least three key figures having simultaneous roles in both organizations. The People’s Forum has employed or been led by prominent figures associated with PSL politics. The ANSWER Coalition was founded by figures connected to PSL. Singham-linked organizations provide money, media production, office space, events, political education, and an intellectual framework that supports the same broader movement.

The Bitcoin Policy Institute describes this as a ground game in which PSL chapters translate a national ideological agenda into local organizing. That description is plausible and supported by evidence of PSL’s direct participation in specific campaigns.

BPI should also be viewed with its own motives in mind. It supports Bitcoin, abundant energy production, computing infrastructure, and American technological leadership. It has a strong interest in discrediting movements that could restrict energy-intensive facilities. So its documentation should be reviewed on the merits, but it is not an uninterested referee descending from the mountaintop with stone tablets.

This is where everyone needs to remain intellectually honest.

The evidence supports saying that PSL is involved in anti-data-center campaigns, that PSL is connected through personnel and institutions to organizations funded by Singham, that Singham has built an international Marxist network, and that much of that network’s messaging favors the geopolitical position of China.

The evidence does not yet support saying that Beijing ordered PSL to stop a particular data center in Athens, DeKalb, or Cobb County.

That may be what investigators ultimately find. It may also be that Singham’s ideology, PSL’s objectives, and China’s strategic interests simply point in the same direction, but either possibility deserves scrutiny.

Why China Would Want Us To Stop Building

The strategic interest is not difficult to understand.

Data centers are the factories of the information economy. They supply the computational power needed to train and operate advanced artificial-intelligence systems, process enormous datasets, run cloud services, defend networks, model scientific problems, and automate increasingly complex work.

The nation that leads in computing capacity will possess an enormous advantage in military planning, intelligence analysis, cyber operations, robotics, biotechnology, energy research, manufacturing, finance, and practically every other field that will shape economic and national power during the coming decades.

China knows this. The United States knows it. Every serious competitor knows it.

China is not responding to the AI race by encouraging its citizens to halt construction until every environmental and social concern has achieved unanimous resolution. It is expanding generation, building infrastructure, investing in domestic semiconductor production, and attempting to close the technological gap with the United States.

At the same time, Chinese state media and PRC-linked influence operations have promoted stories emphasizing American anxiety over data centers, electric demand, environmental damage, corporate power, and community resistance. OpenAI reported in June that it disrupted PRC-linked accounts using its systems to generate content about American data-center construction, electricity prices, tariffs, and the technological competition between the United States and China. The operators attempted to make some of that material appear as though it came from ordinary Americans.

And that, my friends, demonstrates intent.

PRC-linked actors recognized the data-center debate as a useful vulnerability and attempted to exploit it. They didn’t need to create the underlying concerns, they only needed to make them louder, angrier, and more politically disruptive.

If you were advising a foreign government that wanted to slow American AI development, you could try to sabotage construction sites, steal technology, or impose export restrictions. But those options would invite retaliation and generate sympathy for the United States.

The more elegant approach would be to persuade Americans to stop the projects themselves.

Let county commissions reject them.

Let state legislatures impose moratoriums.

Let ratepayers and environmentalists fight with technology companies.

Let Republicans accuse Big Tech of attempting to replace humanity while socialists accuse the same companies of environmental racism and capitalist exploitation. Two sides arriving at the same place for different reasons, all while our foreign adversaries laugh themselves into the lead on emerging technology.

Sometimes foreign propaganda only needs to make Americans agree with one another long enough to weaken themselves.

Enter Amy Kremer

Just as the socialist left is being organized through one set of institutions, a parallel effort has emerged on the populist right.

Humans First presented itself initially as a nonpartisan grassroots movement challenging Big Tech, artificial intelligence, and the construction of hyperscale data centers. Its chair is Amy Kremer, Georgia’s Republican National Committeewoman, and one of the most experienced populist organizers in American conservative politics.

Kremer helped build the Tea Party movement, chaired Tea Party Express, co-founded Women for Trump and Women for America First, and played a major role in organizing the January 6, 2021 rally at the Ellipse. She did not plan or participate in the violence at the Capitol, but she was deeply involved in the movement promoting the unsupported claim that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen. She continues to make that claim.

Kremer’s superpower is taking an issue that feels distant or technical and turning it into a populist cause. She knows how to build mailing lists, organize rallies, attract media attention, pressure elected officials, and frame complicated policy fights as ordinary citizens versus corrupt elites.

That makes her exceptionally valuable to an organization trying to translate abstract concerns about artificial intelligence into a movement conservatives will join.

Humans First was not formed by a group of Georgia homeowners who discovered a data center proposed next door. According to a former leader of the organization, it was incubated by the Center for AI Safety, a San Francisco-based organization devoted to warning about potentially catastrophic risks from advanced artificial intelligence. Think Skynet and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Washington Post reported that CAIS provided a seed-funding loan and that a CAIS co-founder appeared as Humans First’s chief executive on California incorporation documents. In other words, it was not founded by Amy Kremer.

And while the organization originally attempted a bipartisan structure, with organizers appealing separately to conservative and progressive constituencies, it later split, and Kremer became the leader of the explicitly conservative operation. Humans First unironically describes her appointment as part of an effort to build an “America First AI policy.”

This is where conservatives should slow down long enough to understand what they are being asked to join.

Humans First is not part of the Singham network, and I found no evidence that Kremer is working with China, PSL, DSA, or any foreign government. It would be irresponsible to suggest otherwise.

But these organizations are converging on the same objective for different reasons.

On the left, Marxist organizations argue that data centers represent corporate exploitation, environmental injustice, and the misuse of public resources.

On the right, Humans First argues that data centers empower unaccountable technology elites, threaten jobs, endanger children, and accelerate the development of machines that could eventually replace or destroy humanity.

Foreign actors emphasize America’s inability to provide enough electricity, protect the environment, or control its own technology.

All three roads lead toward slowing construction.

Amy Kremer did not create Humans First; she joined an organization that had already been incubated by the Center for AI Safety and seeded with funding from the AI-safety movement before becoming its public face on the conservative side of the debate.

Few people in Republican politics have more experience turning an issue into a grassroots movement. Kremer helped build the Tea Party movement, chaired Tea Party Express, co-founded Women for Trump and Women for America First, and has spent years organizing activists, rallies, and political campaigns. She also played a prominent role in promoting the claim that the 2020 election was stolen, a claim that has never been substantiated despite years of litigation, recounts, audits, and investigations.

Those experiences made her a natural fit for Humans First. The organization already had funding, a mission, and a strategy. Kremer brought something different: credibility with conservative activists and the ability to build a movement around an issue that had previously been confined largely to academics, technology executives, and AI policy advocates.

A San Francisco AI-safety organization warning about theoretical catastrophic risk does not naturally fill Republican county meetings. But Amy Kremer can.

I want to be clear that this does not mean Kremer is insincere. People recruited to promote a cause frequently believe in it, and her distrust of Big Tech predates Humans First. It does mean Republicans should stop treating every campaign described as grassroots as though it spontaneously emerged from the red Georgia clay. Humans First is more San Francisco than Blackshear.

Sometimes the “grassroots” arrive in a professionally designed package, complete with communications consultants, national organizers, seed financing, talking points, a website, and a scheduled day of action.

Humans First organized more than 100 anti-data-center demonstrations across the country on July 18. Kremer says the organization does not support a national or statewide moratorium and instead wants communities to control whether projects are approved. That position is more restrained than the outright bans promoted by some groups on the left, but still, the campaign unquestionably contributes to a national climate in which data centers are increasingly presented as something communities should fear rather than infrastructure they should regulate responsibly.

A person does not have to agree with a foreign adversary to advance that adversary’s interests. He does not have to receive foreign money. He does not have to attend a secret meeting. He may genuinely believe every word he says.

A socialist organizer who wants to dismantle capitalism can be useful to Beijing by slowing American technological development while a conservative activist who believes artificial intelligence represents a civilizational threat can be useful for the same reason.

A local resident who does not want industrial development near her home can be useful without ever hearing the name Neville Singham or reading a word of Chinese state media. While that may not invalidate anyone’s concerns, it does mean we should understand the broader consequences of the position we are taking.

The fact that someone else benefits from your argument does not automatically make your argument wrong. China benefits when Americans criticize wasteful defense spending, but that does not mean every Pentagon contract is wise. Russia benefits when Americans criticize foreign wars, but that does not mean every military intervention is justified.

The proper response is not to stop asking questions, but to ask more of them.

Are we objecting to this project because the location, terms, or infrastructure plan is bad, or because we have been convinced that every data center is inherently dangerous? Would our concerns be resolved if the developer paid the full infrastructure cost, used closed-loop cooling, met enforceable noise standards, protected neighboring properties, and provided complete transparency? Are we seeking responsible development, or have we joined a movement whose actual objective is to prevent development?

Who wrote the materials we are sharing? Who organized the event? Who paid the organizers? Who benefits if the data center project fails?

The answers may confirm that the opposition is entirely local and justified. They may also reveal that the neighbor holding the pitchfork is standing in a formation assembled by people with a very different agenda.

The Investigation Is Necessary

Chairmen Brett Guthrie, John Joyce, and Bob Latta of the House Energy and Commerce Committee have asked federal agencies to investigate whether foreign adversaries are attempting to obstruct American data-center construction and AI development. Their request cites concerns about propaganda, nonprofit funding, coordinated activism, and the strategic consequences of allowing America’s computing capacity to fall behind China’s.

I support that investigation.

If foreign actors are attempting to shape public opinion on America’s AI infrastructure, Congress has an obligation to expose it. If they’re not, the investigation should establish that as well. Either outcome strengthens public confidence and gives voters better information than they have today.

I support it because the infrastructure underlying artificial intelligence, cloud computing, cybersecurity, and advanced research is now a national-security asset. If a foreign adversary is attempting to manipulate American public opinion to delay or prevent that infrastructure, Congress has an obligation to find out.

Investigators should follow the money flowing through the Singham network and determine whether any of it originates with, is reimbursed by, or is directed in coordination with the Chinese government. They should obtain communications showing how campaigns are selected and messages are developed. They should examine whether foreign state media or inauthentic accounts are amplifying specific local controversies. They should determine whether organizations enjoying tax-exempt status are concealing foreign political activity.

Those questions do not accuse anyone of illegal activity. They are the ordinary transparency questions that should be asked of an organization seeking to mobilize Americans around an issue with enormous economic and national-security implications.

The investigation should not begin with a predetermined conclusion. It should establish facts.

If China is not directing or financing this activity, say so. If Singham is merely an American Marxist spending his own money to advance his own ideology, the public should know that too.

But if American nonprofits, political organizations, and supposedly grassroots campaigns are functioning as parts of a foreign influence operation designed to weaken our technological capacity, that would represent a direct threat to the country.

We do not protect democracy by refusing to investigate because the subject is politically inconvenient.

Build It Right, But Build It

None of this means Georgia should throw open the gates and approve every data-center proposal that comes along. Quite the opposite.

Developers should pay the cost of the infrastructure their projects require instead of shifting those costs onto residential ratepayers. Local governments should insist on meaningful standards for water use, emergency power generation, setbacks, noise mitigation, traffic, and environmental impacts. Tax incentives should not be used as corporate giveaways. Property owners deserve to know what’s being proposed before a project negotiated under a code name suddenly appears on a zoning agenda, and communities deserve an honest opportunity to weigh the costs and benefits before decisions are made.

That’s just good government.

Once those questions have been answered, Georgia shouldn’t apologize for competing to build the infrastructure that will define the next generation of economic growth. Imagine where America would be if every railroad, every interstate highway, every airport, every power plant, every semiconductor fab, or every telecommunications network was simply too controversial to build. First we argued about where they belonged, who paid for them, and how they should operate. Then we built them anyway because we understood that prosperity doesn’t come from standing still.

China is investing aggressively in the computing infrastructure that will power artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, biotechnology, military systems, and scientific research. We can certainly debate where data centers belong and under what conditions they should be approved, but pretending we can preserve America’s technological leadership while refusing to build the infrastructure that makes it possible is wishful thinking.

Some people opposing data centers are motivated by legitimate local concerns. Others see the issue as another front in a broader campaign against capitalism or American technological leadership. Foreign adversaries see an opportunity to amplify those divisions because every delayed project and every abandoned investment narrows the gap between America’s capabilities and their own.

Those are not the same motivations, even if they occasionally produce the same slogan.

So ask hard questions. Demand better agreements. Hold developers accountable. Protect taxpayers, property owners, and the communities that have to live with these projects long after the ribbon cutting is over.

Just make sure you’re solving a Georgia problem, not advancing someone else’s geopolitical strategy. Before you pick up the pitchfork, take a good look at who handed it to you. You just might see a smiling commie.