X Takes Down 200,000 Suspected Chinese Accounts in Influence-Operation Crackdown
China attempted to influence data center debate. Meanwhile, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman says his agency successfully blocked a Chinese hacking attempt.
Back in June, I reported that the House Energy and Commerce Committee asserted there is evidence that “strongly suggests” China and other foreign adversaries are fueling campaigns opposing data centers to undermine the US in the artificial intelligence race.
As communities weigh the pros and cons of having a data center constructed in their neighborhoods, it turns out that China was busy turning a legitimate American policy debate into an influence operation. X reports it removed a suspected network of roughly 200,000 inauthentic Chinese accounts, including about 200 that amplified coordinated anti-AI and anti-data-center messaging aimed at US audiences.
The social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, has uncovered a massive suspected Chinese bot farm conducting “influence operations” online in the United States, including pushing an anti-artificial intelligence and anti-data center narrative.
This comes as a national debate rages over the costs and benefits of continuing to develop artificial intelligence at breakneck speed and the massive data centers required to power it. The debate also has immense political implications, dividing parties internally as many members of the GOP break with President Donald Trump on AI and data centers.
As this national conversation unfolds, X’s Global Government Affairs account said the platform’s safety team identified a bot farm of approximately 200,000 inauthentic Chinese accounts “involved in influence operations.”
The X team said that within the bot farm, 200 accounts were found posting “in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy.”
China helps foment a lot of the controversies and panics here, and it's something we need to crack down on, hard. One risk though is that legitimate concerns will get dismissed as "helping China."
"China is secretly fueling America's data center rage" https://t.co/o3fItVr6s7
— Phineas Fahrquar (@irishspy) August 28, 2026
The administration clearly sees China’s hand in this “debate”. Lee Zeldin, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), warned against banning data centers, a move which could cripple the US in the current artificial intelligence race with China.
“There’s been a push from some states where they’re talking about a statewide moratorium and what I’ve found is that most of this country wants to make sure the United States wins this race to be the AI capital of the world, that we do not relinquish this to China,” Zeldin said during a Sunday appearance on John Catsimatidis’s radio show “The Cats Roundtable” on 77 WABC.
“At the same time, they have important questions about how data centers get built,” he added.
“We have to make sure that these projects are a net provider onto the grid, not a net taker. And we have to make sure that they are making important reuse 100 percent recyclable water … or better if they don’t need water at all. They need to be responsible users of water,” Zeldin said.
“But what we can’t do is just say, well, let’s not have any data centers built all across the entire country and let’s just let China win,” he added.
X JUST FLAGGED A 200,000-ACCOUNT CHINESE BOT FARM — THE DATA-CENTER PUSH WAS 200 ACCOUNTS, NOT THE WHOLE FARM
X’s Global Government Affairs team said Friday that Safety found a suspected Chinese inauthentic farm of about 200,000 accounts.
Inside that farm, X isolated 200… pic.twitter.com/zU6Q01rdwJ
— Data Insights | News & History (@Sonos12345678) August 28, 2026
As a reminder, this isn’t the only policy “debate” that China has attempted to manipulate for its benefit. As I noted earlier this year, a US Senate hearing examined allegations that CCP-linked interests and affiliated nonprofit networks have helped support climate-focused litigation and activism aimed at constraining US energy production.
Meanwhile, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman says his agency successfully blocked a Chinese hacking attempt.
The news comes as China delays its own lunar program and the U.S. presses forward with plans to land astronauts on the moon by 2028.
Isaacman credited the Department of Justice and the broader U.S. cybersecurity network for defending NASA’s systems. He said the hacking attempt dated back to 2019 and never got past a “very benign layer” of NASA’s network.
“If we’re doing our job right, executing on President Trump’s national space policy, we will be successful beating them in this second space race,” Isaacman said.
Recently, China postponed a robotic lunar mission that had been set to launch last weekend. Isaacman said China is planning a base at the same location NASA has targeted, the moon’s south pole, near sources of water and ice.
“You can’t give up the ultimate high ground of space”: NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman says the race between the U.S. and China to return to the moon is not one they’re willing to give up.
Isaacman shares about the potential benefits of a lunar economy: “You never hit the… pic.twitter.com/kOoCRmlaIq
— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) August 27, 2026
China is not merely competing with the United States in AI, cybersecurity, and space… it is also attempting to shape the American debate so we handicap ourselves.
It is good to see the Trump administration taking this threat seriously, from defending NASA systems against Chinese intrusion attempts to warning against policies that would surrender the AI race by default.
It is nice to have an administration and social media platform that refuses to allow Beijing to dictate America’s technological future.
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Comments
Data centers have been built for a long time, where do people think THE CLOUD stores data? Do they actually think its just sitting in the air somewhere?
Nobody said a word against data centers until companies started looking to build them in red states.
Most people have no idea what the “cloud” is. It’s just this magical place where their data can be stored to that they can access it anywhere, from any device.
And I would argue that it is not so much that data centers began to appear in red states that started the pushback, but the dawning realization that we are turning into Europe with the camera surveillance state, and that all this data on us needed to be kept.
“The Cloud”. translates as “someone else’s computer”.
Ever see kamala harris and her explanation? Pretty sure her voters do believe it’s floating in those white fluffy clouds above their heads.
I’m not Chinese, but I still think the data centers ultimately serve a nefarious purpose.
If the tech bros don’t want people to react in a paranoid fashion, then they need to quit being coy about the topic, and they need to quit being creepy and giving creepy answers when interviewed. I trust them about as far as I can throw them.
They need to stop with the left leaning responses also.
I might be a chinese bot to X, X switched me from email and password to user name and password.
And once I enter that information in, it just stalls out and the screen never changes.
So I dumped X. It does get a bit tiresome seeing all the lunatic far leftwing fringe idiots getting so much space with their lies and whining.
They just did the opposite to me then suspended my account for ‘inauthentic behavior” now requiring an appeal if I want my account back. Me, that posts in support of deportation and against abortion, with my phone and email listed in my account info, a Chinese bot.
You’re absolutely right, 4fun. It has been getting way worse from the lunatic far left. Almost as bad as in 2020 and 2024 run up to the elections. The break from that place will do me good.
I wish we had “unaffiliated” western groups hacking russia china NK and Iran but apparently we don’t. It would be nice if even our governments were causing problems by hacking and spreading rumors but apparently we don’t. The only case I’ve ever heard of was the hacking of Iranian centrifuges that set them back 2 years or so. Of course Israel was involved with that too.
I looked at the comments on Marsha Blackburn’s X feed. I’m convinced it’s 80% bots and 15% paid operatives.
Makes you wonder how much either China or the USSR was behind our anti-nuclear-power mania,
I very much doubt Russia has much to do with much these days. More likely the ching-a-lings, because unlike Russia they still have some money and, more importantly, they have plenty of politicians in their back pockets.
On the internet, noone can tell you’re a dog. BUT, If it’s a smart dog who’s always right, why wouldn’t I listen to them?