What's Actually Blocking America's AI Build-Out

Senator Tom Cotton put the official view plainly last week.

But we can’t allow any effort by foreign adversaries to extort these fears and undermine our technological development. — Tom Cotton

OpenAI's own assessment of the China-linked influence campaign Cotton was describing reached a different conclusion.

It is ironic that the two operations used American AI, rather than Chinese models, to generate their content about American AI. — OpenAI

The real constraint on America's AI build-out is domestic. 833 opposition groups across 49 states have blocked $130 billion in data center projects in the first quarter of 2026 alone. ^[1] Data Center Watch, which tracks the movement, has a term for what is happening.

The quarter reflected a structural shift rather than a cyclical spike: communities have internalized an opposition playbook, legislative sessions introduced formal regulatory uncertainty, and the number of active opposition groups more than doubled to 833 across 49 states. — Data Center Watch

The numbers behind that shift are concrete. Electricity bills near data centers have risen 267 percent, and PJM Interconnection, the grid operator for 13 states, identifies data center load as the primary cause of record-high capacity prices. ^[2] Opposition to facilities within three miles of homes has jumped from 28 percent to 41 percent; 53 percent of Americans now oppose AI data centers in their neighborhoods outright. ^[3] The political geography of the backlash makes the foreign-manipulation thesis hard to sustain. Maine passed the first statewide moratorium on large data centers in April. ^[4] New York followed, and in Texas, Governor Greg Abbott proposed water efficiency requirements and tax incentive repeals for data center operators. ^[5] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders called for a national moratorium from the left; Florida Republicans debated one in a gubernatorial race from the right. ^[1][5] It is a broad-based political response to real costs, spanning the entire ideological spectrum in a way no foreign influence operation could manufacture. The sabotage evidence itself dissolves under scrutiny. No investigation has surfaced evidence of foreign dark money flowing to any of the 833 opposition groups. ^[6][7] The "Data Center Bandwagon" campaign OpenAI identified — the one Cotton and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum point to — failed by OpenAI's own accounting. A second China-linked operation, "Tech and Tariffs," met the same fate. ^[6] Meanwhile, China's broad strategic resource export controls on rare earths, lithium batteries, and synthetic graphite are suspended through November 2026 under the Trump-Xi trade truce. ^[8] And the United States runs its own mirror-image influence operation. "Build American AI," a tech-linked nonprofit, pays social media influencers thousands of dollars per video to promote American AI and frame China's progress as a national security threat. ^[9] Both sides restrict each other's models and chips. Both build rival alliance networks: Pax Silica's 35 nations on one side, China's 30-nation AI initiatives on the other. ^[10][11] The conflict is a mutual siege, not a unilateral Chinese shift to sabotage. Which is what makes the political function of the sabotage frame worth examining. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum made the administration's theory explicit.

Maintaining America’s AI advantage is vital to American economic strength, diplomacy, national security and military power. — Tom Cotton

Energy Secretary Alfie Moon stated the administration's posture toward that opposition in blunter terms.

The challenges facing the electric system will not be solved overnight. — PJM Interconnection

The frame manufactures permission to override a threat it claims only to describe. By attributing genuine grassroots opposition to foreign manipulation, officials can reframe a domestic policy failure — the American public's refusal to bear the costs of AI infrastructure — as a national security crisis that demands exactly the kind of response Moon is promising. The constraint on America's AI build-out is not a Chinese influence campaign that failed to move public opinion. It is 833 groups of Americans who do not want to pay 267 percent more for electricity, and officials who would rather call that a national security crisis than a policy problem.