Energy group asks Congress to investigate potentially foreign-backed campaigns against AI data centers | Latest Tech News
Power the Future, a pro-energy advocacy group, is asking Congress to take a nearer look at opposition to data centers springing up across the nation.
In a letter to Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) the group requested lawmakers to open formal investigations into tens of millions of {dollars} in funding they consider is incentivizing nonprofits and local teams to take up an environmental stance against data centers.
In their view, it’s a motion that’s attempting to look more grassroots than it really is.
“We request that your committees open a formal investigation into a coordinated, billionaire-funded, and potentially foreign-backed political campaign designed to block the construction of data center and AI infrastructure across the United States, which sits among the most important economic and national-security buildouts of President Trump’s second term,” the letter reads.
The letter highlights fears that American legal guidelines surrounding nonprofits, which protect donors from public disclosures, may very well be enabling rich ideologues to make donations that are tough to monitor.
The group pointed to environmentally-minded nonprofits just like the Sierra Club, Food and Water Watch, Earthjustice, Goods Jobs First, Piedmont Environmental Council, the Southern Environmental Law Center, MediaJustice and the Athena Coalition that have acquired — and spent tens of millions — opposing their enlargement.
An indication opposing plans for an artificial intelligence data middle in New Carlisle, Ind. seen on March 23, 2026. REUTERS
New Venture Fund, the Sierra Club Foundation and the Sixteen Thirty Fund collectively acquired over $13 million from pro-environmental donors, according to grant reporting.
It’s unclear if those donations had been made for the specific intent of opposing data middle constructions.
Even so, across the board, the teams affirm that data centers are costing more assets than they are value at the expense of local communities’ environmental well-being.
Demonstrators from the group Tigers Against Pollution holding a “die-in” to protest the xAI data middle in Memphis on May 1, 2026. ZUMAPRESS.com
Power the Future disagrees.
Beyond producing tax income for communities and creating employment alternatives, Power the Future argued that the data centers allow the US to keep aggressive with international powers.
“Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has called opposition to that buildout a ‘surrender’ to China,” Power the Future wrote in its data middle report.
A protest against an AI data middle in Imperial, Calif. Facebook/NIKBY, Imperial
“The compute infrastructure that trains AI models, processes intelligence data and powers the next generation of American economic and military advantage has to be built somewhere.”
Although the group’s founder, Daniel Turner, believes that half of the opposition might effectively come from reliable local issues about undesirable development in rural areas, he’s skeptical of the money being pumped into the image.
“There is certainly a lot for communities to discuss around data centers. But is it a paid operation by radical green groups who see banning data centers as the new banning the gas stove or banning the leaf blower?” Turner said in a assertion to Fox News Digital.
Power the Future has discovered 188 local opposition teams across 24 states that oppose data middle enlargement, according to its research.
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