Foreign Influence in the Campaign against American AI, Part II: The Singham Ground Game | Bitcoin Policy Institute

Executive SummaryThis is a report about artificial intelligence and data centers and China-linked efforts to block the American buildout of both.Data centers are a flashpoint in US politics. Americans have genuine concerns about how data centers may affect their electricity prices or strain local water resources. These concerns are authentic and need to be heard. As such, it is necessary to be clear from the start: the purpose of this report is not to cast doubt on the earnestness or even the veracity of claims made by Americans who oppose data centers. Indeed, most of the mobilizing taking place across the country is, on its surface, normal civic life in America functioning as it was designed to. Concerned citizens are organizing and affecting the political process.But running parallel to this domestic, democratic movement is a foreign influence campaign that has worked to amplify public division and opposition to American AI infrastructure. At the center of this network is a Shanghai-based Marxist,1 one of the largest private funders of left-wing political organizing, and the subject of multiple congressional inquiries with documented ties to the Chinese Communist Party: Neville Roy Singham.Singham is not solely responsible for the recent domestic backlash to data centers, but his network has worked to amplify it.While Part I of our investigation, Foreign influence in the Campaign against American AI, traced the macro discourse and dollars shaping public policy and opinions on AI, Part II follows feet on the pavement: the rallies, petitions, packed council chambers, and town-by-town campaigns that have stalled the buildout of American AI infrastructure. At the heart of many of these campaigns is the Singham network.Deeply enmeshed in these local fights is the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a Marxist-Leninist group with documented foreign ties whose stated mission is to dismantle American capitalism2 and whose leadership is drawn directly from the executives of Singham's nonprofits. The same people who have managed Singham organizations like The People's Forum, the ANSWER Coalition, BreakThrough News, and the Justice and Education Fund sit on the PSL's central committee and at the top of its presidential ticket. Under their leadership, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (or PSL) has convened hundreds of activists to push for permanent bans on data center projects throughout the country.

To put the PSL’s impact in material terms, it has been a critical mobilizer in efforts that delayed, scaled back, or blocked approximately $23.6 billion in proposed AI-infrastructure investment, in roles ranging from lead organizer to one member of a broader coalition. This report tracks 21 separate PSL campaigns across 14 states that have contributed to 10 data center moratoria, 1 permanent data center ban, and 4 rejected or scrapped data center projects.Perhaps most concerning, the public cannot view the PSL’s fundraising apparatus or see who is financing this nationwide mobilization effort. Due to a gap in US election laws, the PSL’s finances are exempt from public reporting. So whether China or any other foreign actor is financing the PSL cannot be readily answered by the existing public record.This report documents the ground game of the Singham network city by city and explains why the nationwide campaign of a Singham-linked activist group to ban data centers deserves the attention of the American people, Congress, and the White House. Across 18 separate case studies, this report presents evidence from open-source media that allows readers to decide for themselves the significance of the PSL’s role in each of these campaigns, whether it was determinative or simply contributory. Our position is that the influence of the PSL’s role in each case study is important to understand. But far more important is grasping the threat of China putting its thumb on the scale of the AI discourse in any capacity.This report does not claim that opposition to data centers is wholly astroturfed. As previously stated, much American opposition to data centers is indisputably authentic. But two things can be true at once: 1) There is a foreign influence campaign against American AI; and 2) Americans have genuine concerns about data center buildout that need to be heard. Acknowledging the reality of the former does not refute the reality of the latter. There are both organic and inorganic strains in the debate surrounding data centers and American AI. The goal of this report is to ensure greater transparency in the debate by bringing concerns of repeated foreign influence to light so that policymakers can make better informed public policy decisions.The conclusion we draw is straightforward, and we hope, noncontroversial: Americans deserve full transparency into the Singham network and its connections to the CCP.

A group with documented foreign ties and undisclosed funding has embedded itself within a genuine opposition movement. A party that advances positions aligned with the Chinese government, amplifies its messaging, and seeks to abolish the US government3 through revolutionary means has distorted the discourse between public officials and American citizens on the topic of artificial intelligence and related infrastructure. The network’s methods and motivations in waging this campaign are worthy of investigation. This report shines a spotlight on both.IntroductionThe campaign against American AI was accelerated by: Chinese state outlets warning American audiences that data centers would raise their electricity bills; Singham-funded groups working to amplify this messaging; and a coalition of foreign-tied nonprofits championing the language that became the Sanders–Ocasio-Cortez moratorium bill.4 The first BPI report covered these three channels of foreign influence.This report follows the campaign to the ground. Behind the op-eds and the model legislation is a parallel effort that is louder, more local, and arguably more effective at stopping shovels from hitting dirt. When a county executive pauses a $5 billion tech park, when a city council meeting is filled with protesters from out of town, when a developer withdraws an application minutes before a vote – these outcomes seldom happen on their own. They are often the results of sophisticated activism, supported by a disciplined and well-resourced organization. Across the country, that organization is increasingly the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL).This report makes three claims.First, the PSL functions as the political arm of the Singham network. The same people who run Singham-funded nonprofits serve as PSL executive leadership.Second, the PSL has been an influential organizer in a national campaign against AI and data centers, including 21 fights across 14 states, that produced moratoria, zoning rejections, and cancelled projects worth billions. At times, the organization leads; at other times, it is one member of a coalition.Third, funding for PSL issue-campaigns is kept private, and federal campaign-finance law does not require public disclosure of who funds that issue advocacy. The public deserves to know who is paying for advocacy this consequential and whether or not the money it receives is foreign. Beyond the PSL’s ties to Singham, the PSL is explicitly internationalist in its orientation.

The party’s explicit goal is to advance the welfare of the global proletariat, not the American people as a whole. That internationalist orientation makes it an especially vulnerable target for foreign influence.The Singham Network's China TiesNeville Roy Singham is a US citizen who lives in Shanghai. In 2017, he sold the software consultancy Thoughtworks to the private-equity firm Apax Partners for a reported $785 million, and he previously worked as a consultant to the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei.5 He identifies as a Marxist, and Vijay Prashad, who directs the Singham-funded Tricontinental Institute, has publicly called him exactly that.6The New York Times investigated Singham's operation in August 2023 and found a network of nonprofits, spanning four continents, that produced content closely aligned with Chinese government positions on nearly every major geopolitical question. The reporters documented shared staff and office space and hundreds of instances of cross-posting among the groups. The Times reported that Singham works from a Shanghai office he shares with the Maku Group, a Chinese media firm that produces content for foreign audiences and describes its mission as telling "China's story well," the CCP's own phrase for its overseas propaganda work.7In Singham’s office, a visitor once captured a photo of a banner that read "Always Follow the Party" and a plate depicting Xi Jinping on a shelf. The month before the story ran, Singham attended a Chinese Communist Party workshop on promoting the party internationally.8 A review of tax filings later traced roughly $278 million from Singham-controlled entities into six US nonprofits between 2017 and 2023.9Singham's documented ties to the CCP are not a dormant question for American institutions. Since the first BPI report, federal scrutiny of the Singham network has intensified.On June 4, 2026, the leadership of the House Energy and Commerce Committee wrote to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and to the FBI requesting an investigation into foreign efforts to block the American data center buildout, citing BPI's findings directly.10 Six days later, Senator Tom Cotton asked the Department of Justice to investigate Singham by name, noting that no entity in his network has registered under the

Foreign Agents Registration Act.11 Those letters joined a standing line of inquiry: a House Ways and Means demand for documents from The People's Forum, BreakThrough News, and Tricontinental; a House Oversight referral to the Treasury Department; and a Senate Judiciary request that the DOJ rule on FARA registration for the network's affiliates.12In its investigation into the Singham network, Congress has focused most of its attention on the nonprofits. But it has paid far less to the political vehicle that carries their agenda into the streets, turning the message into mobilization. That vehicle is the Party for Socialism and Liberation.What Is the PSL?The PSL is a Marxist-Leninist organization that calls for abolishing "the corrupt, rotten and anti-people capitalist economy, state and governmental system" and replacing it with socialism. And it is explicit that the change will not come through elections: "Capitalism cannot be voted out of power—it will take a revolution."13 The program calls for the standing army and police to be "disbanded and replaced by the armed people."14 Its worldview is internationalist by design. The party describes the American working class as "but one section" of a global working class, locating its loyalty in a transnational movement rather than a nation.15By the available public measures, the party is growing at a rapid pace. Its presidential vote nearly doubled between 2020 and 2024, from 84,905 for Gloria La Riva to 167,772 for the De la Cruz–Garcia ticket, which appeared on the ballot in 19 states and was tallied in 36. That was the largest result for an explicitly socialist presidential ticket since 1936.16Its physical footprint is expanding too. The party now operates a national web of "Liberation Centers," storefront organizing hubs that it uses to run political education, train new members, and, in its own framing, “cultivate ‘revolutionary’ thought.” There are now at least 28 of these Liberation Centers in major and mid-major metropolitan areas across the country.17The party is internationalist in both word and practice.