Sen. Tom Cotton urged the Justice Department to investigate a covert campaign linked to China designed to “kneecap” America’s rapidly expanding artificial intelligence infrastructure in a letter obtained exclusively by Fox News Digital.
In the letter to Acting Todd Blanche, the Arkansas Republican calls for federal investigators to examine whether foreign actors are attempting to shape U.S. public opinion and policy against data centers and AI development as Washington and Beijing compete for dominance in artificial intelligence.
“Recent reports show that Communist China is attempting to influence our policy and public opinion on data centers. The reason is obvious: they want to kneecap our processing power to win the AI race,” Cotton told Fox News Digital.
“Americans should decide their own future free of communist propaganda. I’m encouraging the Department of Justice to investigate,” Cotton said.
Cotton’s request follows the release of a last week from the Bitcoin Policy Institute, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., alleging that Chinese state media, foreign-funded advocacy groups and a network of organizations funded by American tech tycoon Neville Roy Singham have spent years building opposition to U.S. data center construction and AI infrastructure projects.
Singham, an avowed Marxist and the founder of a Chicago-based company, Thoughtworks, that he sold in 2017, now lives in Shanghai, and has become a growing focus of . In March, as members of the Singham network were journeying to Havana to support the Communist Party of Cuba, Earlier this year, Fox News Digital published a five-part series documenting how Singham has funneled $278 million into a series of nonprofits, including groups at the heart of the protests against AI, data centers and technology firms in the U.S.
As Fox News Digital has reported, 501(c)(3) nonprofits from the Singham network, including CodePink, the People’s Forum, Tricontinental and BreakThrough News, have participated and led campaigns opposing AI development, semiconductor export controls and large-scale data center projects. Singham, a self-avowed communist, started pumping the money into the groups after his 2017 marriage to Jodie Evans, the co-founder of CodePink.
For years, groups funded by Singham have worked closely with two self-described communist groups in the U.S. â the ANSWER Coalition and the Party for Socialism and Liberation â that have organized foot soldiers major U.S. technology, defense and logistics companies, such as Palantir Technologies, Lockheed-Martin and Google, to try to name-and-shame the firms for doing business with the U.S. government on issues from immigration to global geopolitics where China has major interests, including in Israel, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, South Korea and even Greenland.
on high electrical costs associated with operating a data center. One of the key themes of new protests is the rising electricity bills that consumers have been seeing in recent months. Earlier this year, Cotton introduced a bill, called the “DATA Act of 2026,” that would lift regulatory controls to allow manufacturers, data centers and other energy-intensive industries to build new electricity systems separate from the consumer electrical grid.
More widely, have launched inquiries into the nonprofits in the Singham network, while questioning whether the groups should be required to register as “foreign agents” under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, called FARA, which demands that entities or individuals working for the interests of foreign interests register with the U.S. Justice Department as foreign lobbyists.
“Alarming reports indicate that a network of foreign actors, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is attempting to manipulate U.S. policy and public opinion on data centers,” Cotton wrote in the letter.
Climate activists, anti-Israel protesters and other activist movements with v
