China Didn’t Make Americans Hate Data Centers
China Didn’t Make Americans Hate Data Centers
中国并没有让美国人讨厌数据中心
Right-wing officials and data center investors are increasingly claiming that data center protests are being funded and influenced by the Chinese government. OpenAI added to the discourse on Wednesday when it released a report describing a cluster of accounts originating in China that, the company said, had been spreading anti-data-center messages on social media. 右翼官员和数据中心投资者越来越多地声称，针对数据中心的抗议活动是由中国政府资助和影响的。OpenAI 周三发布了一份报告，描述了一批源自中国的账户，称这些账户一直在社交媒体上散布反数据中心的信息，从而为这一论调推波助澜。
Experts who spoke to WIRED, however, are skeptical of the funding claims. They also say that it’s likely that any foreign interference is simply adding on to existing tensions over data centers and AI in the US. 然而，接受《连线》（WIRED）采访的专家对这些关于资金来源的说法持怀疑态度。他们还表示，任何所谓的外国干预很可能只是加剧了美国国内围绕数据中心和人工智能已有的紧张局势。
Local opposition to data centers in the US has skyrocketed in recent months. A poll released last week from climate outlet Heatmap shows that more than half of Americans support a moratorium on data center development. Separate polling released in early June from UK-based policy research agency Public First shows that support for data centers in the US was the lowest of 15 countries surveyed. 近几个月来，美国当地对数据中心的反对声浪急剧高涨。气候媒体 Heatmap 上周发布的一项民意调查显示，超过半数的美国人支持暂停数据中心开发。英国政策研究机构 Public First 在 6 月初发布的另一项民调显示，在受访的 15 个国家中，美国对数据中心的支持率是最低的。
The meme that Beijing is funding data center opposition has picked up steam in Washington, DC, in recent weeks. On Wednesday, Republican senator Tom Cotton sent a letter to acting attorney general Todd Blanche asking for an investigation into foreign influence “led by the Chinese Communist Party” to manipulate public opinion. He’s not the only one: Republican leaders on the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent a separate letter to the White House and the FBI last week expressing concerns about foreign campaigns targeting data center development. Meanwhile, interior secretary Doug Burgum told Fox Business last month that places trying to build data centers are “getting bombarded” with foreign propaganda. 近几周，“北京正在资助数据中心反对活动”这一说法在华盛顿特区甚嚣尘上。周三，共和党参议员汤姆·科顿（Tom Cotton）致信代理司法部长托德·布兰奇（Todd Blanche），要求调查“由中国共产党领导”的外国势力如何操纵舆论。他并非个例：众议院能源和商业委员会的共和党领导人上周也致信白宫和联邦调查局（FBI），表达了对针对数据中心开发的外国宣传活动的担忧。与此同时，内政部长道格·伯格姆（Doug Burgum）上个月告诉福克斯商业频道，那些试图建设数据中心的地方正受到外国宣传的“狂轰滥炸”。
Data center developers have also been quick to deploy these ideas. Canadian investor Kevin O’Leary, who’s developing a massive and controversial data center in Utah, used a graphic from a recent report by the Bitcoin Policy Institute, a cryptocurrency advocacy organization, in a May video claiming that foreign influence was fueling opposition to his project. 数据中心开发商也迅速利用了这些观点。加拿大投资者凯文·奥利里（Kevin O’Leary）正在犹他州开发一个规模巨大且备受争议的数据中心，他在 5 月份的一段视频中引用了加密货币倡导组织“比特币政策研究所”（Bitcoin Policy Institute）近期报告中的一张图表，声称外国势力正在助长针对他项目的反对声音。
Graphika, a social media analytics company, has been tracking data center opposition across several social platforms, including Facebook, Bluesky, and TikTok for the past year. 社交媒体分析公司 Graphika 在过去一年中一直在追踪 Facebook、Bluesky 和 TikTok 等多个社交平台上针对数据中心的反对声音。
Dina Sadek, an analyst at Graphika, says in a statement that the company has “not yet seen evidence of organized or scaled influence operations or campaigns that can be traced back to a foreign actor,” with two notable exceptions. One is a “cross-platform network of accounts” using AI-generated avatars that comment on a wide variety of social issues, and that “sporadically” mention US tech companies. The other exception, Sadek says, is some Facebook pages producing anti-data-center images generated with AI. Those pages, Sadek says, often have administrators based in Bangladesh, and may only exist “for monetization purposes.” Graphika 的分析师迪娜·萨德克（Dina Sadek）在一份声明中表示，该公司“尚未看到有证据表明存在可追溯到外国行为体的有组织或大规模的影响力行动或运动”，但有两个值得注意的例外。一个是使用人工智能生成的头像在各种社会问题上发表评论，并“零星”提及美国科技公司的“跨平台账户网络”。萨德克说，另一个例外是一些制作人工智能生成反数据中心图片的 Facebook 页面。萨德克表示，这些页面的管理员通常位于孟加拉国，其存在可能仅仅是“为了盈利”。
“Our ongoing research indicates that domestic US actors are leading the online anti-data-center conversation,” Sadek says. “我们持续的研究表明，美国国内的行为体才是线上反数据中心舆论的主导者，”萨德克说。
OpenAI’s report includes ChatGPT-generated anti-data-center images that the company says were used as a campaign “to amplify existing public concerns about energy prices and local impacts of data center development.” But the company notes that it “found no evidence of meaningful breakout” of the anti-data-center messaging from the accounts it flagged. OpenAI 的报告中包含了由 ChatGPT 生成的反数据中心图片，该公司称这些图片被用于一场运动，“旨在放大公众对能源价格和数据中心开发对当地影响的现有担忧”。但该公司指出，它“没有发现”其标记的账户所发布的反数据中心信息有“任何显著的爆发迹象”。
The Bitcoin Policy Institute report O’Leary cited is one of the key sources of right-wing claims about Chinese influence. The report, which House Republicans also referenced in their letter, alleges that a tangle of nonprofit funding connects popular anti-data-center efforts to foreign funders, including the Chinese Communist Party. 奥利里引用的那份“比特币政策研究所”报告是右翼关于中国影响力主张的主要来源之一。众议院共和党人在信中也引用了这份报告，该报告声称，一系列复杂的非营利组织资金将民间的反数据中心行动与包括中国共产党在内的外国资助者联系了起来。
The report also says Chinese state media is “openly campaigning against US AI data centers.” As evidence it cites stories and videos about the anti-data-center trend and rising energy costs, both topics that American and other international outlets have published countless stories on. 报告还称，中国官方媒体正在“公开反对美国的人工智能数据中心”。作为证据，它引用了关于反数据中心趋势和能源成本上升的报道和视频，而这两个话题美国和其他国际媒体都已经发布过无数篇报道。
Sam Lyman, the head of research at the Bitcoin Policy Institute and the author of the report, said that he first started looking into the issue following a public AI safety conversation in April between Senator Bernie Sanders and four experts, including two from China, about the need for international cooperation. “比特币政策研究所”研究主管、该报告的作者萨姆·莱曼（Sam Lyman）表示，他是在 4 月份参议员伯尼·桑德斯（Bernie Sanders）与四位专家（其中包括两名中国专家）就国际合作必要性进行了一场关于人工智能安全的公开对话后，才开始调查这一问题的。
“It was such an obvious psyop,” he says of the event. “那显然是一场心理战，”他在谈到那次活动时说。
However, experts on China and AI who spoke to WIRED were skeptical of the report’s claims that Beijing is directly and intentionally involved in the US data center discourse. Kyle Chan, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, points out that high-level discussions between US and Chinese officials and experts have happened at other points in the recent past around similarly pressing global issues, like climate change. (Xue Lan, one of the speakers at the Sanders event singled out by the report, is a nonresident fellow at Brookings.) 然而，接受《连线》采访的中国和人工智能专家对该报告声称北京直接且蓄意参与美国数据中心舆论的说法表示怀疑。布鲁金斯学会研究员凯尔·陈（Kyle Chan）指出，在最近的过去，美中官员和专家曾就气候变化等同样紧迫的全球问题进行过高层讨论。（报告中点名提到的桑德斯活动发言人之一薛澜，是布鲁金斯学会的非常驻研究员。）
“If you’re looking for prominent people from China who can speak about [AI], they are going to be the very people who would be in contact with and providing advice to the Chinese government—especially in academia, where there’s a lot of back and forth between academic experts and advising the government on policymaking,” Chan says. “The framing of it can certainly sound ominous, but almost by definition, you would want people who matter in the Chinese AI debate to be there.” “如果你在寻找中国能够谈论[人工智能]的杰出人士，他们恰恰就是那些会与中国政府接触并提供建议的人——特别是在学术界，学术专家与政府决策咨询之间有很多互动，”陈说。“这种表述听起来确实令人不安，但从定义上讲，你肯定希望中国人工智能辩论中的关键人物出现在那里。”
Graham Webster, a research scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, says that the report calls out actions and signs that don’t match other documented cases of known Chinese influence campaigns, especially when it comes to coverage in state media like China Daily, an English-language newspaper. 斯坦福大学国际安全与合作中心研究学者格雷厄姆·韦伯斯特（Graham Webster）表示，该报告所指出的行动和迹象，与已知的其他中国影响力行动案例并不相符，特别是在《中国日报》等英文官方媒体的报道方面。
“You see US media covering these types of data center discourses,” he says. “It’s totally normal for the English-language Chinese media to pick up storylines that are in the US media. It’s just how wire services work.” “你会看到美国媒体也在报道这类数据中心的话题，”他说。“中国英文媒体采用美国媒体报道的故事线是非常正常的。这就是通讯社的工作方式。”
Both Chan and Webster stressed that there have been instances in the past of… 陈和韦伯斯特都强调，过去确实存在过……