Congress Follows the Money Behind Anti-Data Center Push — and It Leads to CCP-Linked Groups

Two House Republican committee chairmen are asking Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and IRS CEO Frank Bisignano to investigate whether a network of tax-exempt organizations tied to Chinese interests has been helping bankroll opposition to American data centers.

In a Sept. 22 letter to Bessent and Bisignano, Ways and Means Chairman Republican Jason Smith (MO-08) and Chairman of the House Select Committee on China, Republican John Moolenaar (MI-02), are targeting CCP-linked nonprofits they say have been bankrolling campaigns to kill U.S. data-center construction.

The letter asks Bessent and Bisignano whether 501(c)(3) groups willingly served foreign-aligned political and economic interests and whether donor-advised funds or intermediary groups concealed the source of foreign-directed money. 

Their warning: “Under no circumstances can we allow an adversary ... to weaponize our own tax code and harm an emerging American industry.”

There is already a foreign-influence trail. OpenAI said in June that it banned two clusters of ChatGPT accounts likely originating in China after they were used to support apparent covert influence operations around American AI policy. One cluster, “Data Center Bandwagon,” produced content attacking U.S. data centers and claiming they were raising household electricity prices.

OpenAI's case study says the accounts prompted ChatGPT in Simplified Chinese, used VPNs to access the platform, and posed as Americans from different backgrounds. The company said the operators were likely part of a private Chinese technology company's social-media team doing work for provincial-level government clients. 

X found another operation in August: a bot farm of roughly 200,000 suspected Chinese inauthentic accounts. About 200 were posting claims that U.S. data centers were raising household electricity prices or straining the power grid.

A later RedState report detailed how Steamfitters UA Local 602 warned politicians that opposing data-center construction could cost them the union's support.

Congress is now following the money. The letter cites a Bitcoin Policy Institute report tying the Party for Socialism and Liberation to 21 campaigns in 14 states. According to the report as cited by the chairmen, those efforts contributed to 10 moratoria, one permanent ban, and four projects being rejected or abandoned, affecting nearly $24 billion in proposed investment.

The letter says a network tied to Shanghai-based billionaire Neville Roy Singham moved $278 million into American advocacy groups through shell companies and an anonymous donor-advised fund.

Eugene Puryear co-founded both BreakThrough News and the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Ben Becker is BreakThrough News' editor-in-chief and also sits on the PSL central committee.

Smith called the network anything but grassroots. “This is not an organic grassroots movement. It’s a machine with Shanghai Singham at the helm.”

Moolenaar said violations should cost the groups their tax-exempt status and could lead to prosecution. The People's Forum, BreakThrough News and Tricontinental had already refused committee document requests. Subpoenas followed in July.

Still, OpenAI said the China-linked operation exploited existing fights over energy prices and the local effects of data-center construction, but it did not label ordinary opposition foreign-directed. 

Now Bessent and the IRS have been asked to find out whether America's tax-exempt system helped pay for it.

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