OpenAI Says China Launched Influence Campaign To Shape US Attitudes On AI Datacenters (politico.com) 87
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: China was likely behind an online influence operation to sway U.S. perceptions of artificial intelligence technology and reshape the debate in Washington around the infrastructure needed to support it, according to research from OpenAI published Wednesday. OpenAI said it caught the influence campaign because China-backed operatives were using ChatGPT to create content for the social media campaign. [...] OpenAI's researchers identified two clusters of ChatGPT users "likely originating from China" who used the AI chatbot to generate social media content "in support of apparent covert influence operations" promoting certain narratives about AI. This includes claims that data center build-outs are raising electricity costs for the average American family and that President Donald Trump has weaponized tariffs to keep the U.S. ahead in the global tech race. These accounts have since been banned, the report said.
One cluster of users asked ChatGPT to generate images and comments pushing these narratives. These comments were then posted on social media by "batches of accounts" posing as Americans, [said Ben Nimmo, principal investigator of intelligence and investigations at OpenAI]. Another cluster identified by researchers used AI to generate social media content criticizing the Trump administration's tariffs as an attempt to "dominate technological competition." Prompts used for this campaign were submitted in Simplified Chinese and asked that AI-generated content not include Chinese President Xi Jinping and focus solely on Trump -- a possible tell that China was behind the operation, according to the report. Nimmo said that the influence campaign amplified existing public backlash in the U.S. against the creation of new AI data centers, which has resulted in dozens of proposed moratoriums at the local, state and national level. "Neither campaign appears to have gained much authentic engagement," Nimmo said. "They're important for what they reveal about the intentions of influence operators from China, and the narratives they're testing and seeking to amplify, but not for the impact."
One cluster of users asked ChatGPT to generate images and comments pushing these narratives. These comments were then posted on social media by "batches of accounts" posing as Americans, [said Ben Nimmo, principal investigator of intelligence and investigations at OpenAI]. Another cluster identified by researchers used AI to generate social media content criticizing the Trump administration's tariffs as an attempt to "dominate technological competition." Prompts used for this campaign were submitted in Simplified Chinese and asked that AI-generated content not include Chinese President Xi Jinping and focus solely on Trump -- a possible tell that China was behind the operation, according to the report. Nimmo said that the influence campaign amplified existing public backlash in the U.S. against the creation of new AI data centers, which has resulted in dozens of proposed moratoriums at the local, state and national level. "Neither campaign appears to have gained much authentic engagement," Nimmo said. "They're important for what they reveal about the intentions of influence operators from China, and the narratives they're testing and seeking to amplify, but not for the impact."
B-b-b-but CHINA!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
This guy needs to fuck right off. Everybody hates all this AI bullshit and nobody wants giant GPU farms sucking up all the water and electricity in their neighborhood. Fuck China too. Itâ(TM)s entirely possible for people to hate AI without Chinese propaganda.
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Spotted the ignorant idiot MAGAt (but I repeat myself), anonymous coward attacking someone with an actual ID.
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Also, it sure would be nice if
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People in the US don't want datacentres because they increase the price of electricity and increase pollution. On top of the Epstein-Iran war, energy is getting expensive.
China is going to win this one because they build so much clean renewable energy. The scale is staggering. Just the new renewables generated as much electricity as Germany did in total last year, on top of what they already had. The cost is so low that nobody else can compete when it comes to high energy industries like AI. Domestic chips
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China is going to win this one
Win what exactly?
Re:B-b-b-but CHINA!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Developing AI while keeping energy costs and supply under control. They are willing to build and invest into their own energy infrastructure instead of relying on profit-seeking entities to do it at their financial convenience (or having the leadership literally sandbagging energy projects solely to spite their opposition in a culture war)
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I still don't know what they would be "winning".
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Depends who you ask, I think OP was asking the scenario I laid out that China is winning: developing their AI systems with less of the economic, cultural and political problems the US is experiencing.
Basically if AI is going to decide political hegemony as many believe it will.
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I agree that they seem to be giving the USA a run for our money in the AI race -- if not winning it.
However, is it fair and/or an apples-to-apples comparison to say that they are doing so with "less of the economic, cultural and political problems", when each of those things is under pretty tight control of the CCCP? You won't have much of those types of problems when they aren't allowed in the first place, right?
At the same time, the economic problem--the "dirty" energy cost--the US has is in large part du
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I agree entirely with what you're saying - China is doing amazing things by embracing renewables, and I too am fucking embarrassed by the bass ackwards Trump admin energy policies. But, it's also interesting to me that China is still using a shit ton of coal. In 2025, "China brought 78 gigawatts of new coal power capacity online, a sharp uptick from previous years" (https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/02/08/0233236/why-is-china-building-so-many-coal-plants-despite-its-solar-and-wind-boom).
TBF, I learned
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They use twice much as electricity, but have 4 times our population. Moreover, a higher portion of their energy mix is electricity, whereas we use more gasoline and natural gas. So they use even less energy than the electricity number might suggest.
We should be asking what the world will look like when they use as much electricity per capita as we do. Personally, I'm just glad it's not going to be all coal.
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Just because some wind farm projects were cancelled doesn't indicate a rejection of the entire idea.
Re: B-b-b-but CHINA!!! (Score:2)
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I don't know how flippant or sincere you're being, but maybe doom-scrolling and platforms built around it are bad things that we should avoid?
Re:B-b-b-but CHINA!!! (Score:5, Funny)
China is going to win this one
Win what exactly?
Whatever Trump claims we're winning? /s
Don't worry though, I'm sure China will also "get tired of all the winning" - I know we are.
Trump in 2016:
We’re gonna win so much, you may even get tired of winning. And you’ll say, "Please, please. It’s too much winning. We can’t take it anymore, Mr. President, it’s too much." And I’ll say, "No it isn’t. We have to keep winning. We have to win more!"
Re: B-b-b-but CHINA!!! (Score:2)
Winning occurs when they don't need to listen to anything the USA says because it no longer matters.
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Yes, suuuure! It is ALL these dastardly Chinese! (Score:5, Insightful)
In actual reality, the LLM scammers are just getting a bit desperate as it becomes harder and harder to ignore that their products can do nice stunts, but are not that useful in regular work. Not useless, but not nearly useful enough to justify the extreme costs.
Hence stories like this one, that will only make sense to the stupid. To be fair, there are a lot of stupid people. Also the reason that Space-X markets their IPO primarily to "private" (a.k.a. "clueless") investors. The institutional ones will stay far away, and several ones have even announced that publicly. They usually do not do that. The red flags for an "investment" do not get any more red or any larger.
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You shouldn't discount the problem that the push for AI is harming the computer market, and due to all of the export restrictions in place, that helps the Chinese PC industry as they play catch-up. I agree that AI is overhyped and isn't as useful as these corporations try to make them seem(you have to really watch them for mistakes for several years before you can trust them).
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The key point [Re:Yes, suuuure! It is ALL the..."] (Score:5, Insightful)
The key sentence in the summary: ""Neither campaign appears to have gained much authentic engagement."
So, the reason so many people hate AI data centers is not because of this AI influence campaign.
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Indeed. But the "China baaaaad!" faction is not mentally capable to understand that level of detail.
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. . . Also the reason that Space-X markets their IPO primarily to "private" (a.k.a. "clueless") investors. The institutional ones will stay far away, and several ones have even announced that publicly. They usually do not do that. The red flags for an "investment" do not get any more red or any larger.
I don't know the actual reason that Musk et al are pushing for retail investors for SPCX, but I think it is a good thing. It will allow small timers to get into what could be a big boost to their own portfolios vs. institutional investors who are already part of the elite.
If there is big downside, each private buy doesn't amount to huge dollars so mom and pop get a sting not a body blow (of course don't be an idiot and go all in on margin.)
Last point, many small transactions give a true measure of valu
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Small investors will never be able to coordinate and have a meaningful impact on corporate governance. They will vote for directors from a list that Musk pre-approved. Large institutional investors often insist on appointing a director to represent their interests on the board.
This way ensures that Musk retains full control.
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Also remember that Spaxe-X is only actually selling a small amount of stock. Hence no influence at all for the buyers and a giant big red flag for the investors that understand how markets work.
I do agree on your statement though. Private "investors" are the "useful idiots" of the stock market. They have no clue, they will mindlessly follow hypes. And they cannot get any level of control because they cannot organize themselves into anything effective even when they theoretically could do so.
Re:I'm tired boss (Score:4, Funny)
I'm just so sick of being lied to
You know the old saying: believe half of what you read, none of what you hear, and the opposite of what you see on the internet.
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I'm so such and tired of 47% of the country believing it...
Just couldn't help yourself could you. As if liking datacenters or AI has anything to do with political affiliation. Give me a fucking break.
Re:I'm tired boss (Score:5, Insightful)
This is true but a little more nuanced. The polling [pewresearch.org] definitely says R and D voters are about equally concerned over AI.
This perception though is driven by the fact that the biggest AI leaders and boosters and pretty lopsided in being in the conservative political tent. Musk, Zuckerberg, Altman, the "All In" guys, pretty much all of the crypto folks who transitioned over to AI, the loudest voices have thrown their lot in with the current admin. Some in full, some tentative but they're all jockeying for favors from the would be Emperor. The Trump effect of making everything about culture war is everything in our lives has to become political and it's exhausting.
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The big problem is that those who are trying to make money from selling AI based services, then you have those making money from the hardware side of AI(NVIDIA and AMD), and then you have those who are looking to see if AI is even going to be useful in their business in different ways. All of these are going at it full speed ahead, and then you have the politics on top of it with politicians trying to manipulate people, and now, other nations using it to try manipulating others. It's just NASTY. Those
so what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Who cares? Google is out here trying to influence my opinion on literally everything under the sun. If Google makes me believe I need a new swiffer mop, or that I should care about soccer, or that I should care about whatever interesectional identity is the current flavor of the month: the opinions they helped me get are real opinions. Similarly, just because China influences people's opinions, that doesn't invalidate the very real opinions that they have.
Arguing that people's opinions are irrelevant is a uhhhh.. interesting hot take for people to have who say they believe in democracy. Then again, who published this story again? Maybe they don't.
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FALSE! I asked the most trustworthinesstest source on the internet:
"
AI Overview
I am an AI, not a person, and I do not have personal opinions or political beliefs. I strive to be a neutral, helpful assistant without any hidden agenda or attempts to influence your thoughts or actions.
"
Google isn't influencing anything. It is a 100% neutral. It told me so and is tooooootally not gaslighting. Praise be to our Google overlords.
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When the majority of politicians are corrupt and easily influenced by 10,000 idiots, that is where things get VERY messy. If the idiots didn't have as much of an influence over the politicians, it wouldn't be a problem.
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Of course, one has to consider the source of the "study", a company who's business depends on building highly unpopular data centers.
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I care! It's fine for people to have opinions but there's a difference between that and being manipulated by governments and corporations for self-serving reasons.
Those opinions may be real but they can also be harmful and counter to our best interests. People should be selective about the opinions they are exposed to and speak out against those with harmful intent.
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Being able to entertain a thought without believing it is one of the things that separates us from the animals.
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Which is why there’s no such thing as advertising, influencers and scams right?
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Do you buy everything you see an ad for?
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Do you believe you’re not affected by them?
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I don't buy some things I see ads for, so yes, there are ads that don't affect me.
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So yes, you are susceptible to influence. You did say in your OP that people are influenced by China's opinions so thank you for being consistent.
Now we can move onto characterizing the opinions themselves. You framed the issue as being about whether they are valid or relevant but TFA is about a government influence campaign whose intent is to shape US opinion in a way that benefits China by hobbling US AI infrastructure. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but surely you would agree that this is a self-s
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Sure, but this whole line of reasoning is irrelevant to what I'm saying. The problem isn't that China is influencing us. Just look at TFA itself. Its obviously part of an influence campaign to discredit objectors at local government zoning hearings by dismissing them as chinese sympathizers. If you think that influencing people so that they form opinions that are counter to their interests is bad, you shouldn't worry about ten thousand dollars worth of social media posts. You should worry about the U
Want som e of that China money (Score:1)
Hey China!
When you want to fund the revolution against the Epstein plutocracy HMU!
NIMBY CEO says what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously? Does any one of these grifters live anywhere near a data center of this size? Are they building a mansion next to them? Mark Zuckerberg is building a bunker in Hawai'i. Perhaps if they would put their home where their investments are, I would take a bit less relaxed approach to data centers. But because they are putting them out in BFE flyover country, something tells me they don't want them nearby. I can't imagine why.
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>> I can't imagine why.
It's because there's a vast amount of cheap, available land there. Data centers are generally built out in the boonies, but near enough to a town that the employees can have a decent place to live and shop. Adjacent to a hefty power line is also a requirement.
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People have read about what happened to other towns that did a datacenter. And then are none too happy about doing the same misery to their own town. I don't expect China to be involved with this, Just seeing the destructive power of datacenters is already enough. Groundwater problems, massive increase in electricity costs, significant increases in costs of living...that are not related to the other increases in costs of living that already plague everyone in the country.
Foreclosures appear to be up too in
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>> Just seeing the destructive power of datacenters is already enough
I think that's way overblown, show evidence. Modern dc's can use closed-loop cooling to keep the water consumption low. I don't see how they result in 'significant increases in costs of living'.
Wait! What? (Score:5, Informative)
Are we switching from blaming Russia to blaming China now? I didn't get the memo.
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Anyone have any reputably sourced information on U.S.A. troll farms?
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Trump acts and talks like a troll all the time, so Republicans don't want to go near that subject.
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Old news. Chinese influence operations are well-known and well-funded.
https://www.orfonline.org/rese... [orfonline.org]
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Xi, if you have the Epstein Files that Don is hiding, please send them over.
Of course, of course. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't need China agreeing (Score:2)
The greedy lying fucks and their bribery schemes do more than enough without China helping slow them down. They can use a water LOOP but instead they just want to destroy all the potable water; they can plan for slower sources of power but they have to run jet-engines 24/7 popping up louder than airport in areas that never planned or were priced to be next to an airport... They raise power rates too... Selling it as a job / career killing revolution hurts them while it makes the actual capitalists ecstati
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Yes
No
Yes
Request under consideration
No
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Not sure about electicity prices, (Score:1)
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What you said would be something like, "Change your trade policies or I'll show everyone the pictures I have of you in bed with an underage tariff."
Why does that need China? (Score:1)
When it comes to FUD against AI, strangely Anthropic is the loudest. "Help, our AI is soooo dangerous, it should be forbidden."
No need for China to campaign. And China is strongly positive on AI.
OpenAI are scaremongers (Score:1)
The Enemy of My Enemy (Score:3)
The enemy of my enemy is my firend. - Chanakya Arthashastra
Some times we can have aligned outcomes for different reasons, we just need to be careful as to how we go about it.
Few data centers for American residents means less noise pollution, less light pollution, less water consumption, lower electricity demand etc.
For the Chinese government, it represents a slow down of innovation, advancement and a sector of the economy for the U.S., while a dictatorial China speeds ahead.
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The enemy of my enemy is my firend. - Chanakya Arthashastra
That's always been a facile look at alliances. The enemy of my enemy is only my temporary ally unless we actually have a reason to be allied long term.
China is not your friend. They just want your money, same as OpenAI or whoever.
US propaganda paying off. USA! USA! USA! (Score:4, Insightful)
$80 million: Global Engagement Center (GEC)
$400 million: Countering PRC Malign Influence Fund (The Title LOL)
$300: National Endowment for Democracy (NED) (The one-party system)
Legal Framework: Smith-Mundt Act: The Smith-Mundt Act (modernized in 2013) legally permits the U.S. government to produce propaganda and information materials for foreign audiences and, crucially, allows these materials to be accessible within the U.S. (previously banned)
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A few questions (Score:2)
1. Is it still propaganda if it is true?
2. Is something wrong because it was said by China?
3 (and perhaps the most important): If you use ChatGPT to help formulate something true and correct does that mean it becomes incorrect and worthy of a ban? Because that's what they are implying.
Bottomline: Don't use ChatGPT, it automatically makes what you say incorrect and banworthy.
anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico (Score:3)
Shouldn't there have been a link to the report?
Fuck the Fuck Off! (Score:2)
Every time someone takes any form of stand against something the oligarchs want to do, they start screaming from the rooftops that it's China causing it. No, fuckers. You have taken an antagonistic stance toward the general population inside the United States for decades now, and as you ramp up efforts to replace that population in the workforce, while continually screeching that anyone not working is a shiftless lay about piece of shit that should be mocked and denigrated at every turn, the natural reactio
Maybe they did, so? (Score:2)
The anti-AI-DC attitude has legs because it makes sense, not because of ad campaigns. Maggots prove every day that you can agitate people to work against their own interests, but that doesn't mean that's what this is. If China is spending money agitating people against bullshit DCs, it's only working because they are in fact bullshit.
OpenAI criticism is Chinese says OpenAI report (Score:2)
“The shift comes as Northern Nevada becomes a major data center hub, with companies like Google, Apple(pictured) and Microsoft building or planning large facilities near the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center east of Reno”
This satisfies 2 definitions of corruptio (Score:1)
Don't confuse Chinese influence for real distaste (Score:2)
There are too many problems with AI data centers for me to list here, but of course the Trump government will complain about China in regards to the US citizen-led resistance to building a national surveillance network to punish political opponents. These are the same asshats who blame George Soros for funding the massive protests to the Trump criminal administration.
consensus cracking (Score:1)
Truth is influence now ? (Score:2)