Claims that China and overseas propaganda drive Americans to rise up against data centers are based on scant evidence.

Utahns took to the streets of Salt Lake City last week to oppose the construction of a 40,000-acre data center backed by billionaire “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary in the largely undeveloped northwest corner of the state.

His fiery response was quickly echoed by the Trump administration but triggered worries in tech and conservative policy circles that Silicon Valley’s struggles to sell skeptical Americans on the benefits of the artificial intelligence boom could soon become even more difficult.

O’Leary claimed in a video posted Monday that “nefarious accounts out of the country” linked to the Chinese Communist Party were driving the backlash to his project, by flooding Utah with false claims in a foreign-backed influence campaign aimed at stopping America’s AI buildout.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum echoed those claims on Fox Business on Tuesday. “Any place that’s trying to build data centers is getting bombarded with foreign-directed propaganda to try to block these from being built,” he said. “This is just another attack on the U.S. and our ability to be competitive.” Energy and tech-related think tanks have recently made similar claims.

Neither Burgum nor O’Leary, who is Canadian, shared conclusive evidence backing their claims of malign foreign influence.

The allegations drew criticism from allies of the AI industry and Trump administration, including tech insiders, China hawks, White House-aligned conservatives and Trump voters protesting data center projects in their communities. The detractors said that the claims of foreign influence reflect an industry and political establishment seemingly in denial about the root of public anger against data center projects.

Overwhelming majorities of Americans oppose construction of the facilities in their communities, a Gallup survey found earlier this year. Most Americans think AI will have negative effects on society and reduce the number of jobs available for humans, multiple surveys have found.

“This is like gaslighting 101,” Kyle Schmidt, a three-time Trump voter who organized neighbors to fight a Google data center outside Tulsa, said of the suggestion by O’Leary and the Trump administration that campaigns like his are part of a foreign plot. “They are saying, ‘Trust me. It is not what you think. It is what I am telling you.’”

“I would love to sit down with Mr. Wonderful and ask him: Do you want one of these in your backyard?” said Schmidt, using O’Leary’s nickname for himself.

Schmidt said his community is funding its lawsuit against Google’s project almost entirely with small donations raised from door knocking and a barbecue in a local parking lot. The only big donor is the Oklahoma Farm Bureau, Schmidt said, which kicked in $15,000.

Ryan Fedasiuk, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, wrote in a post on X that “CCP-led anti-data center propaganda is a real problem and I’m glad people are raising it.” But he added that the warnings of foreign influence could backfire, potentially making it even harder for industry and government to advance U.S. AI ambitions.

“We also have to get real that China isn’t the reason AI buildouts are unpopular in the United States ... Telling the hundreds of millions of Americans who are today anti-AI ‘Your opinions were paid for by the CCP’ is not a winning political message,” Fedasiuk wrote.

President Donald Trump has closely allied himself with the AI industry and its building spree, encouraging data center construction and speeding up the process of obtaining permits for the facilities. In January he responded to protests against data centers and said his administration would pressure tech companies to ensure they did not push up electric bills.

O’Leary did not respond to requests for comment. The Interior Department did not respond to detailed questions about Burgum’s claims that foreign operators and radical climate groups were fomenting backlash to data center projects.

In recent weeks, several think tanks and advocacy groups aligned with the tech industry and Trump administration have issued reports that allege pushback on data center expansion in the United States is not what it seems.

“The opposition to U.S. data center construction is not a spontaneous grassroots movement,” a report from the American Energy Institute, a nonprofit that promotes fossil fuels, said. “It is a coordinated campaign financed in substantial part by foreign donors, operating through a network of national advocacy organizations and their local chapters.”

The Bitcoin Policy Institute, a think tank that advocates for cryptocurrency, and the Trump-aligned nonprofit Power the Future, which advocates for domestic energy production, issued reports with similar findings.

The reports generally did not present direct evidence that foreign conspiracies are driving public sentiment on data centers. Instead they pointed to grants to U.S. environmental groups from donors — generally with progressive interests — that are based overseas or have international connections. The U.S. groups that received those grants typically spend a fraction of their resources on issues related to data centers.

O’Leary claimed in his video that there was a foreign-financed anti-data center slush fund of “millions, hundreds of millions of dollars” linked to the opposition in Utah. His firm pointed to a website that highlighted tax filings for groups involved in the fight that show the amount of foreign-linked philanthropic funding they receive that could potentially fuel anti-data center efforts is a tiny fraction of that — in the tens of thousands of dollars.

A $460,000 donation identified by that website as going to the Put Utah First PAC in 2022 is not listed in filings as specifically connected with data centers. It went to the unsuccessful Senate campaign of Evan McMullin, who ran as an independent that year.

Groups called out by the website and reports alleging foreign interference told The Washington Post they were flummoxed by the allegations and that tax filings and other public documents cited by their accusers don’t support the claims.

“The Wyss Foundation does not provide funding to block or oppose data centers,” said a spokesperson for the philanthropic foundation, which was criticized in the Bitcoin Policy Institute report for funding U.S.-based advocacy groups. “These reports are false, misleading and an attempt by big crypto special interests to manipulate the public into accepting data centers.”

Code Pink, a group that campaigns against war, said claims in the same report that it is a mouthpiece of the Chinese government because it receives funding from U.S. expatriate Neville Roy Singham, a former consultant to Chinese telecoms firm Huawei now living in Shanghai, are “false and defamatory.”

Spokeswoman Melissa Garriga said she was confused about why Code Pink was singled out, as data center advocacy is not a main focus of the organization, although it did post a video about the Utah project online.

“It does not take much for people to look into the public records and realize these accusations of millions of dollars flowing into our organization from the Chinese Communist Party are laughable,” said Elizabeth Hutchings, communications manager at the advocacy group Alliance for a Better Utah, one of O’Leary’s central targets.

The author of the Bitcoin Policy Institute report, Sam Lyman, a former senior adviser to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, said it revealed “a clear demonstrated foreign influence campaign against American AI. ... We think there should be a deeper investigation into how exactly these nonprofits are coordinating with each other.”

Most of the foreign resources involved are steered toward coordinated social media campaigns, he said, pointing to videos on TikTok, instagram and YouTube, including from Code Pink. But Lyman acknowledged that foreign propaganda is just one factor driving data center opposition. “Americans do have serious concerns that need to be heard,” he said.

Even the fiercest opponents of the AI buildout accept that bots and foreign government-orchestrated social media messaging are likely to be joining online discussions about data centers, as can be expected for every divisive U.S. political issue.

But it is highly unlikely that such activity could drive the widespread pushback on data centers across the U.S., said Tamara Kneese, a senior researcher at the Partnership on AI, a tech industry-backed nonprofit focused on the responsible use of AI.

“It is pretty hard to make the argument this is driven by foreign influence when you are dealing with people in sometimes very small communities showing up at town hall meetings angry about things directly affecting them,” Kneese said.

Justin Pearson, a Democrat in Tennessee’s House of Representatives said that instead of trying to discredit American voters, tech leaders should try meeting with them. He helped lead local opposition to data centers built by Elon Musk’s xAI outside Memphis that created local pollution by burning natural gas on-site.

“You are trying to delegitimize people who you’ve never met in communities you’ve never visited, so that you can continue to exploit the lives of people that you don’t give a damn about,” said Pearson, who is running for a seat in the U.S. House this year.

“If you think they’re lying, go there, meet them, turn on the water, and drink it yourself. If this is so necessary a technology, put it in your neighborhood.”

Musk’s xAI has said installing its own power infrastructure helps prevent price hikes for local rate payers. The company did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Some in the tech industry are discouraged by the focus on foreign conspiracies, seeing it as evidence that companies and the administration are failing to engage honestly with communities that have legitimate concerns.

“The data center industry has not handled this backlash well,” said Daniel Golding, former director of global data center infrastructure at Google.

“No one has tried to explain to people why these data centers are a good idea ... Everyone wants to think these companies are uber competent. We are not,” said Golding.

“The real story here is that public engagement is an area Big Tech is not really good at,” Golding said.

Nii Osae, CEO of Mindbeam AI, a start-up that develops software used at data centers, said the highly visible rush to cash in on the AI infrastructure building boom did the industry no favors.

“We need to show what the AI ecosystem is doing to make this more people friendly and not necessarily Wall Street friendly,” he said.