A fight is underway for the economic future of the United States, and some of our own politicians are siding with global competitors over domestic interests.
Artificial intelligence — and the data center infrastructure that powers it — represents the defining economic opportunity of this generation. JPMorgan recently reported that in the first half of 2025, “AI-related capital expenditures” contributed 1.1% to GDP growth, more than consumer spending contributed to overall expansion.
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The nation that builds the most robust AI infrastructure will anchor the industries, jobs, and wealth creation of the next half-century. That nation should be the U.S. The question is whether policymakers and those who seek to influence them will allow that future to take shape.
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A damning new report from the American Energy Institute should be required reading for every member of Congress, state legislator, and local official. The report exposes more than $39 million in foreign funding flowing from European billionaires and foundations based in Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Denmark into a coordinated network of activist groups whose mission is to block American data center construction.
These are not isolated or organic local protests. Rather, they are part of a manufactured opposition campaign bankrolled from abroad, with the full objective of exporting America’s AI future elsewhere.
Let that sink in. Foreign interests, watching the U.S. on the cusp of further technological leadership, are spending tens of millions of dollars to make sure we stumble. And some elected officials, wittingly or not, are amplifying their message by calling for moratoriums, imposing regulatory obstacles, and lending political cover to a so-called grassroots movement that is anything but.
Before a politician calls for a pause on data center construction, they should ask a simple question: Who benefits? Not American workers who would build and operate these facilities. Not American communities that would attract investment and significant tax revenue. Not the American economy that would anchor the next wave of industrial growth.
The beneficiaries of delay are America’s competitors — that is, nations eager to capture the economic activity and strategic capability that American hesitation leaves on the table.
A deeper problem lurks. Some organizations long understood as champions of free markets and limited government have found themselves aligned with this foreign-backed pressure campaign. They have dressed up their opposition in the language of property rights, local control, or energy concerns — principled-sounding arguments that conveniently serve the same end as foreign money flowing through organizations like the Sierra Club.
Free-market advocates should be deeply suspicious of any organization that, however inadvertently, advances the interests of foreign actors seeking to suppress American economic growth and development.
The data center debate is not merely environmental. It is civilizational. Either the U.S. builds the infrastructure necessary to lead in artificial intelligence, or it cedes that ground. There is no neutral position. Delays do not stop development — they redirect it. Every moratorium passed, every lawsuit filed at the behest of a foreign-funded activist network, and every zoning fight seeded by organizations channeling overseas money moves investment and capability one step further from the U.S.
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Policymakers owe their constituents clarity about who is shaping the opposition they are choosing to validate. Americans for Public Trust has been clear: Foreign nationals and governments are exploiting disclosure loopholes to inject their priorities into domestic debates. That is a transparency problem, an accountability problem, and, ultimately, a sovereignty problem.
The U.S. has earned its position at the forefront of AI. Preserving that position will require the political courage to say no to well-funded foreign interference. America’s economic future is not for sale to the highest foreign bidder, and our elected officials — and those who claim to support free markets — should act accordingly.
Bartlett Cleland is a senior research fellow with the Institute for Policy Innovation
