OpenAI Adds Fuel to Republican Drive to Label Anti-Data Center Movement a Chinese Psy-Op
OpenAI Adds Fuel to Republican Drive to Label Anti-Data Center Movement a Chinese Psy-Op
Publish Date: 2026-06-11 12:35:00
Source Domain: gizmodo.com
China is weaponizing ChatGPT to spread anti-AI propaganda aimed at Americans, according to OpenAI.
In a report published Wednesday, the company said it shut down a fleet of bogus ChatGPT accounts generating content for social media posts that depicted data centers as being responsible for American households’ rising energy costs. The creators of the accounts used VPNs (ChatGPT isn’t available in China) and appear to have been “conducting work for Chinese provincial-level government clients,” according to OpenAI.
The AI-powered disinformation campaign’s reach and impact were minimal, the report said. Still, it was a glimpse of a future in which foreign adversaries harness publicly available AI tools to exacerbate political divisions within the U.S. to gain a geopolitical edge. “The operation sought to exploit and amplify existing public concerns about energy prices and local impacts of data center development,” the report said, “but we found no evidence of meaningful breakout beyond its own activity.”
In addition to the accounts that were trying to fan the flames of anti-data center sentiments, another group of now-deactivated accounts was being used to generate social media posts portraying the Trump administration’s Tariff policies as stifling tech competition abroad.
A political boon
OpenAI’s evidence of government-backed Chinese hackers trying to oppose the American AI industry could be welcome news for many Republicans.
Earlier this month, GOP lawmakers began calling upon the Trump administration to investigate “foreign influence campaigns targeting artificial intelligence (AI) development in the U.S.,” according to an open letter addressed to David Sacks and Michael Kratsios, co-chairs of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and FBI Director Kash Patel.
The letter cited a report published last month by the Bitcoin Policy Institute, a think tank “dedicated to advancing sound…
