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Did a Chinese bot army spark the data center backlash? Some in Washington say so

Some in Washington blame Chinese bots, but almost no one saw their posts. Americans fear higher power bills, and they have killed billions in projects

Finn Gomez / Getty Images

Residents packed Memphis City Hall last week to ask the City Council to pause new data center construction, and KeShaun Pearson, who runs Memphis Community Against Pollution, was among them. They left without a decision. Council Vice Chairman Chase Carlisle asked to push the votes back, saying the council wanted to keep working on the document, according to the Memphis Flyer. By a 7-5 vote, council members put off the moratorium on new data centers and other data center rules until Oct. 20. The meeting ended before public comment, and Kevin Starr, who had come to speak for Memphis young people about data centers, never got his turn. "It was ridiculous, the situation we were put in," Pearson said. "It was ridiculous that public comment was not upheld for our community's voice to be adequately listened to by the city council."

In Washington, some of the country's most powerful people have offered a different explanation for crowds like the one in Memphis: China. On Sept. 10, Fox News host Laura Ingraham asked President Donald Trump why people don't want data centers near their homes, and he said on Fox News that a lot of people call it a public relations push by China. In June, Rep. Brett Guthrie, the Kentucky Republican who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and two of the committee's subcommittee chairmen wrote to FBI Director Kash Patel and the White House's science advisors asking for evidence of foreign campaigns to block American data centers. "Americans deserve to know who is bankrolling the disinformation campaign that seeks to block critical infrastructure investments," Guthrie said. In late August, X $TWTR said it had found about 200 accounts in a suspected Chinese bot farm posting in a way that "could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy."

But the bot accounts behind that explanation reached almost no one. The fight against data centers is being won in rooms like the........

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