China, Russia and Others Seek To Inflame Debate Over AI Data Centers (nytimes.com) 63
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: A state-owned newspaper in China recently published a satellite image of a data center in Gainesville, Va., writing in English that the development of artificial intelligence posed a threat to Americans' physical and financial well-being. A comic strip made to look as if it had been published by a Maryland news outlet -- created with OpenAI's ChatGPT by people in China, the tech company said -- circulated on X this year, blaming data centers for soaring electricity bills. It showed a tycoon smoking a cigar and clutching bags of cash. A video shared on X by a known covert Russian influence operation questioned the viability of a data center that an American company, Firebird, is constructing in Armenia, the small Caucasus nation that has been a focus of Kremlin pressure. "The country's electrical grid instability may render it useless," the video's narrator says.
All are examples of a push by foreign adversaries to seize on what polls have shown is deep ambivalence -- verging at times on hostility -- about the spread of the data centers needed to power A.I. in the United States and elsewhere. China, Russia and, to a lesser extent, Iran have sought to use state media outlets to turn the controversy over data centers in the United States into "a domestic fracture point," according to a new analysis by Alethea, a threat intelligence company, which identified scores of articles and posts on social media this year. These campaigns, whose impact on public opinion remains to be seen, have raised alarms in Washington, where A.I. is seen as a top issue heading into this year's midterm elections.
All are examples of a push by foreign adversaries to seize on what polls have shown is deep ambivalence -- verging at times on hostility -- about the spread of the data centers needed to power A.I. in the United States and elsewhere. China, Russia and, to a lesser extent, Iran have sought to use state media outlets to turn the controversy over data centers in the United States into "a domestic fracture point," according to a new analysis by Alethea, a threat intelligence company, which identified scores of articles and posts on social media this year. These campaigns, whose impact on public opinion remains to be seen, have raised alarms in Washington, where A.I. is seen as a top issue heading into this year's midterm elections.
and? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Every nation does this, they mock the failures of their adversaries. We do it constantly relating to China and Russia. So what?
Re: (Score:1)
especially evidence on the same scale
This is exactly the point. Sure, everybody does propaganda. However, Trump telling everyone he's the greatest because he "aced" three dementia tests doesn't have exactly the same effect as troll centers of thousands of people and bots commenting all over the internet.
When X opened up the locations their accounts were based in we didn't suddenly discover millions of US based accounts pretending to be Chinese or Indian. We did find thousands of accounts from India and other China and Russia friendly, low law
Re:and? (Score:4, Insightful)
Astroturfing was invented in the US. To claim we don't do it is just silly. (But I would suspect that it might be more companies than the govt.)
Re: (Score:1)
Astroturfing was invented in the US. To claim we don't do it is just silly. (But I would suspect that it might be more companies than the govt.)
Nobody claimed the US doesn't do it. That's exactly the kind of distraction technique we are talking about - ignoring the point and attacking a strawman. What I claimed is that one of the few clear data points we have show that the scale of political manipulation in support of Russian, Chinese and Iranian viewpoints is massively bigger than currently ongoing US manipulation. Admittedly that's on Xitter and might not show the full picture of more local / physical manipulation, however for the online manipula
Re: (Score:1)
Sir, are you mad?
US is attempting to manipulate Chinese/Russian/Iranian politics/government/companies and everything else going on in those countries, about 100 times more than the other side. Has done this for decades.
For Russia everything from Star Wars program, to collapse of Soviet Union, to backing Yeltsin after, to demonizing Putin and supporting various opposition movements, US AID, literally instigating Ukrainian revolution which lead to war with Russia, to even now having 20+ packets of sanctions.
Re: (Score:2)
I think you're making his and the AC's point.
1. All of those things were out in the open or completely dis-analogous or as you said, you have to go back 8 decades (Why bring up Ajax from the 50's and not installing the Shah?). Also Tibetan resistance in the 50's which is prior to Nixon's visit and normalizing of relations? Again, this is 8 decades old and during the cold war, can we keep examples to at least post USSR-1991-breakup?
Do you have examples of state-sponsored hacking and election misinformation,
Re: (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://www.theguardian.com/us... [theguardian.com]
Even the modern supermarket was a tool in American anti-Soviet propaganda:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:1)
The problem is the low education standards in the US. They clearly have them to keep their own population better under control, but they also make attacks like this much, much easier.
Re:and? (Score:5, Insightful)
Every nation does this, they mock the failures of their adversaries. We do it constantly relating to China and Russia. So what?
I think you're misreading the intent. This isn't random mockery by individuals, shared with their friends for fun, this is a focused disinformation campaign being targeted through western communication channels. China is concerned about what it might mean geopolitically if AI turns out to be as significant as it might, and the US wins the AI race. This is an effort to slow AI development. A small and opportunistic one, probably not part of the core strategy, but a cheap, easy one that might have some beneficial effect.
Re:and? (Score:5, Insightful)
Given how much screaming I've seen by the AI & DC boosters, how certain are we that this isn't a false flag operation created by those boosters to say, "See, all that outrage against AI / DCs is caused by Chinese / Russian propaganda and America is falling for it!"?
I think the part that bothers me the most is that seems just as plausible as China / Russia actually creating propaganda to do the same...
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Astroturfing is, but definition, and organized activity pretending to not be an organized activity. I've absolutely no reason to believe that various US organizations don't engage in it.
Re: (Score:2)
Astroturfing is, but definition, and organized activity pretending to not be an organized activity. I've absolutely no reason to believe that various US organizations don't engage in it.
Sure, but that requires positing that this isn't actually Chinese activity at all, but US entities pretending to be Chinese entities pretending to be US people. That's possible, but it seems like it would require some evidence.
Re: (Score:2)
No. Saying that the US and various US entities do it does not imply that China and Russia aren't also doing it, and perhaps at greater volume. (Though that last needs at least a bit of evidence.)
OTOH, it's quite plausible that the tactics are more effective in the US than in more tightly controlled environments.
Much like 1960s/70s disinformation over nuclear (Score:2)
this is a focused disinformation campaign being targeted through western communication channels
Much like the 1960s/70s Soviet disinformation campaign regarding nuclear energy. Even some Greenpeace founders now admit that Nuclear should have been part of the CO2 reduction movement, that their opposition was counterproductive. The German Green Party even admits they were successfully infiltrated and influenced by the Soviets working through the East German Stasi.
Social media has made such efforts easier and more effective. For example, TikTok disproportionately promoting CCP aligned content.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you, now?
Re: (Score:2)
Every nation does this, they mock the failures of their adversaries. We do it constantly relating to China and Russia. So what?
Some countries are thinner skinned than others and are more likely to engage in snowflakery. I'm sure the Founding Fathers are spinning in their graves.
It's propaganda-ception. (Score:3)
What's worse? The propaganda, or the propaganda about the propaganda? It's propaganda-ception. "Oh, all the bad news about datacenters is totally generated by China. Because they want us to fall behind. Don't believe it."
Do propagandists propagandize each other? Are we dying, or we were only led to believe we were dying by propaganda fighting other propaganda? Do we even exist? Or are we just propaganda machines all the way down?
Re: (Score:1)
So are you saying that these articles were actually domestically generated, but designed to seem like they were both foreign-generated and disguised to look domestically generated, so people would refuse to let foreign state actors trick them into protesting data centers, and instead embrace the data centers along with the higher electricity prices and other side effects?
Or maybe they actually were foreign generated, but designed to seem domestically generated to seem foreign generated to seem domestically
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is the people that fall for this crap. Too many voters with no brains.
Re: (Score:2)
Democracy's downfall is that the largest voting demographics are the least educated, least critical-thinking, and most responsive to charisma and lies.
America works around this by rejecting "pure democracy" and ostensibly operating as a constitutional republic, while actually operating as an oligarchy. It means the people who make all the really important decisions are un-elected and loyal only to themselves, but also (most of the time, at least) in one of the upper echelons of the intelligence/education p
Disinformation damages everybody. (Score:2)
I'm not a great believer in a massive rush for AI data centres. They will be overbuilt and building early increases the damage. However, there are clearly better ares for them - for example Scotland and there are clearly worse ares for them - for example the US has such a disfunctional power system that it is having to increase coal power in order to build this up.
Having this outside interference means that data centres will be built in a panic in the US, where long term it's impossible to provide cheap pow
Re: Disinformation damages everybody. (Score:2)
The energy problem isn't a long term problem. Smaller, on-site nuclear is coming. [interestin...eering.com]
And, though it may annoy many readers here, Trump is part of this push. I'm sure that after decades of demanding more modern nuclear reactors that suddenly Slashdot will recoil in horror and demand we burn whale oil or some such.
Re: (Score:3)
Good: Nuclear reactors, hey even I can admit that if the policy is working
Bad: Illegal tariffs, illegal forever war in Iran, scuttling his own signature trade deal, "100 deals in 100 days", responsible for 27% of total US debt, stagnating economy, billions in insider trading, illegal bribery schemes via crypto, backdoor dealing to his own family and friends, try to push coal just as hard as nuclear, if not harder, using taxpayer money to cancel renewable energy projects, pardoning 70+ criminal fraudsters wh
Re: (Score:2)
More like Gay Of Hormuz am I right? Up top!
Re: (Score:2)
Smaller, on-site nuclear is coming.
It has been coming for decades. It will be coming decades from now. Nuclear power is very expensive and unable to compete with more reliable and stable alternatives like battery backed wind power. Plant efficiency improves with scale, reducing this problem, and so gigawatt level power plants up to 5GW are just inevitable. The exception will be military applications and possibly small special cases such as mid sized isolated islands or the Antarctic.
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody is benefitting from this.
Nobody is benefitting from irrationality. In fact, it does extreme damage. Yet we have tons of it.
Re: (Score:2)
Note that even if it is motivated by dubious ways, even if it is propaganda, that doesn't *necessarily* mean it is disinfirmation.
As they say, the best propaganda is true.
They're not wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Now the great irony is China doing this when they have their own horrifically worse massive surveillance state, but make no mistake: these Data Centers are for the AI surveillance state.
They're not using all that compute to make cat videos and write code. Our end uses can't even account for a fraction of the capacity they're building. These companies are lying to us about what it's all for.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A sense of proportion might help:
- Data centers use water yes, but people waste way more water than that pointlessly on their lawns. There's no mass movement against that, but it would be more helpful if there was. (yes, it's more nuanced and complex than this. DCs should be resourceful and not mess up groundwater)
- It's being used for surveillance-state AI, but that was happening anyways, and it makes the US a lot of money as an export. It's *ALSO* being used by nerds to vibe code flight sims, and business
Re: (Score:2)
The core issues include electricity, building resources and noise. The low frequency so
Re: (Score:2)
Why wouldn't data center noises stop? They follow the same inverse square law. Are you sure the videos aren't ragebait?
Re: (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
I mean, you can hear how bad it is if you just look for local news clips of people complaining. I have a high school friend who is a logistics manager involve in plant construction and he's been contracted by his company to several of these data centers. He said the water stuff is overblown, but the noise, energy and general pollution are not; not to mention the scale and speed of the build-outs.
and just look at the
Re: (Score:3)
They're lying to their investors, and quite possibly, to themselves. I don't think they have some massive surveillance plans baked in to these datacenter build outs. To me, that implies they've thought that far ahead, and I honestly don't think they have. Instead, they seem to be in the "Field of Dreams" mode... "If we build it, they will come!"
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, it's probably wrong. Especially if its coming from wumao and/or Russian troll farms.
Re: (Score:3)
You certainly aren't wrong. The imposition of authoritarian measures in Western countries, like Chat Control in the EU and age verification in the UK is very much to do with the need of AI companies to be able to identify who are real people and which "people" are actually other AIs so that the latter don't poison their training data.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Most modern data centers look and behave more like a power plant or large industrial facility. When they are installed at appropriate locations with reasonable setbacks from neighbors, and basic sound attenuation strategies they can be fine. When they use outside air cooling with no silencers then it can be quite miserable at scale. Older data centers simply didn't have the density to be as big of a nuisance.
I compare it to an industrial feedlot. It shapes the city for miles outside its perimeter. Most
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Now the great irony is China doing this when they have their own horrifically worse massive surveillance state, but make no mistake: these Data Centers are for the AI surveillance state.
That makes no sense. Why would China care about getting the US population to resist the deployment of domestic surveillance?
No, what China is concerned about is that AI may provide a significant economic and geopolitical advantages to the US. That may or may not actually happen, but it could represent an enormous change in the balance of power. China is trying to enlist the aid of the American population in slowing AI development in the US because it wants time to catch up.
Or maybe you're right, in w
Re: (Score:2)
Now the great irony is China doing this when they have their own horrifically worse massive surveillance state, but make no mistake: these Data Centers are for the AI surveillance state.
That makes no sense. Why would China care about getting the US population to resist the deployment of domestic surveillance?
It can make sense. If China's government believes that surveillance stabilizes government then they have an incentive to prevent surveillance in USA so that USA's government can be more easily destabilized. Less surveillance will also allow easier insertion of China's spies into USA.
But I think that the big data center investment is primarily driven by hopes of investors that the AI is going to have huge enough (non-surveillance) commercial impact to justify the investments. The surveillance part of it is
Re: (Score:2)
But I think that the big data center investment is primarily driven by hopes of investors that the AI is going to have huge enough (non-surveillance) commercial impact to justify the investments. The surveillance part of it is negligible. But AI will be used for surveillance as well of course.
This is my read as well. Surveillance has nothing to with what's driving it, though surveillance will almost certainly take advantage of it.
we like troll farms now? (Score:2)
Sure seems like people around here were hopping made about foreign disinformation campaigns a few years ago. How interesting.
But (Score:3)
Are they wrong?
Framing (Score:3)
It doesn't matter if it's bad - if China and Russia agree it's bad you have to be for it.
You can never agree with China because they have a totalitarian AI Surveillance Police State there so you must support a totalitarian AI Surveillance Police State here.
If you are against techo-feudalism you must be one of them Putin Lovers.
- The New York Times / Langley, apparently.
Pouring gasoline on an oil-refinery fire? (Score:4, Insightful)
Russia, China and Iran trying to inflame the AI data-center debate is like pouring 5 gallons of gasoline on an oil-refinery fire: technically you did make it worse but by such a small amount nobody's going to notice.
Voice of America? (Score:3, Insightful)
Haha (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You've got that dead right.
And they think they "need" to inflame us against hyperscale data center - which Erin Brockovitch notes are overwhelmingly being built in drought-ridden areas?
A game of Monopoly? (Score:2)
It showed a tycoon smoking a cigar and clutching bags of cash.
Yeah, that sounds about right. Put a frown instead of a smile on the Monopoly game character and you have a pretty good metaphor for Trump's America. Actually, it would also be valid for prior decades - but Trump perfected that brand of decadence.
... examples of a push by foreign adversaries to seize on what polls have shown is deep ambivalence -- verging at times on hostility -- about the spread of the data centers needed to power A.I. in the United States and elsewhere...
Adversaries to whom? The corporate / government sector, or the citizens getting fucked over? A country is not a homogeneous entity whose constituent parts all have the same needs and desires - hence class and tribalism and political parties. I'm sure the people org
China, maybe (Score:3)
But Russia and Iran? They have no meaningful A.I. offerings to compete with. China does, but their tactic would be to promote the market for A.I. And then undermine US sunk costs with their lower priced services. And come to market with cheaper DRAM aimed at consumers.
It's mainly plain old FUD. Just stir up some griping about "those damned Communists". Neither Russia or Iran being a member.
Misdirection (Score:2)
Data centers will eat a lot of resources that we may not have enough of to go around as it is
before building a new one creating a new variable in the overall equation.
I don't need China / Russia / whomever to tell me that putting extremely data / water hungry
data centers into areas who barely have a stable electrical grid or water supply is a bad idea.
Those in favor of putting them in everywhere ( resource availability be damned ) will simply try
to convince the idiots in charge ( politicians ) that it's som
Elon too (probably) (Score:2)
His wet dream would be the torch and pitchfork folks going after terrestrial datacenters after he deploys his untouchable space DC's. Mwahahaha!