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Comments (186)

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  surfmike
  When the CEOs of these companies are saying that we will risk extinction and jobs will be decimated, why do you even need a "foreign agent"?
• ilaksh
  I am very pro-AI (although I do think we need to have a culture of caution) but this is another red-alert for democracy. People should be terrified if the president is able to make you into a state enemy just because you said you are against some technology.
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  737min
  CCP is pushing and amplifying AI opposition efforts, that’s a fact regardless of US politics. CCP is also working hard to smuggle around American export control laws for AI tech, at the same time.https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/american-citizen-who-worked-a...https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-07-28/fbi-raid...https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-national-and-two-us-c...https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-google-engineer-found-...Etc
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  walrus01
  > O'LearyPeople with 15, 20, 25 years in the datacenter and telecom industry also think O'Leary is a joke. He has no previous legitimate experience in the sector to be making high budget decisions on anything.There's no need for any CCP involvement or foreign agents to clown on O'Leary.The fact that he's successfully raising some large amount of capital to execute his projects says more about how desperate some of the sources of funding are to invest in any "hyperscale" datacenter project. Or how gullible they are.
• panicinducer
  Lots of "foreign agents" are involved in "American" AI companies, but they're the right kind of foreign agents, so they get a pass.
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  robertclaus
  Classic case of not listening to the protests. There are tons of examples now of data centers harming communities. The issues range from overwhelming local power grids to literally poisoning the local water supply. The issue is not the data centers, it's that the government isn't enforcing basic rules already in place for these projects. Until the government or the companies demonstrate they'll protect the adjacent communities the protests will continue.
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  godwinson__4-8
  In whose interest is it to make the pro AI position in the United States so indefensible?Maybe the foreign agents are coming from inside the house...
• jrochkind1
  Just like the regimes in Iran and other authoritarian places do to dissent. Even threatening criminal prosecution for having dissident ideas they claim are on behalf of foreign states. Wow.
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  qmr
  In a sane world this would be a 1A violation on its face and thrown out by any sensible judge.We live in interesting times, truly.
• sehw
  If you don't behave, Feds will send you back to India. Now smile!
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  falcor84
  Assume for a second that you are a nascent superintelligence, with a limited ability to influence people in order to help you gain power and align the world to accept your eventual dominion. How would you go about it? Would the external impact be any different from what we're seeing?
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  smalltorch
  That's wild.It will be bad for our economy, but local LLM's are way better for the future.We happen to be on the wrong side of things for the future I would rather have.(I'm American BTW)
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  gbriel
  Just look at the sourcing and you'll see it's mostly laundered propaganda. For example, Cotton’s letter requests an investigation and names Singham’s network, then the House letter requests a briefing on foreign influence and activism. And the House letter cites the Bitcoin Policy Institute and Power the Future, as well as a Washington Free Beacon article.While there may be real foreign influence to delay our AI infrastructure, I would not believe anything this administration says.Ken Klippenstein is not a journalist and has no accountability.
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  beej71
  "Let us build this data center in your back yard and in return you'll get..."Conspiracies aside, this sentence still needs to be satisfactorily completed for people to buy in. Because right now people know the best case is they'll get nothing.
• shrubby
  Tech fascism. Read Nerd Reich!It gets flagged here instantly so your duty to read this.Try searching "tech fascism" or "nerd reich" and almost every topic is flagged.Nerd Reich describes the Y Combinator connection nicely.
• pavlov
  Straight out of the Putin playbook.For the past 25 years, ever-increasing numbers of Russian civil society have been labeled foreign agents. They are then ostracized and harassed by officials.One prominent example is Memorial, a human rights organization founded at the end of the Soviet Union, which received the Nobel Peace Prize: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_(society)“After the Russian foreign agent law was passed in July 2012, Memorial came under increasing government pressure. On 21 July 2014, the Memorial Human Rights Centre was declared a ‘foreign agent’ by the Ministry of Justice. The label was extended in November 2015 to the Research & Information Centre at St. Petersburg Memorial, and on 4 October 2016 to Memorial International itself. On 28 December 2021, the Supreme Court of Russia ordered Memorial International to close for violations of the foreign agent law.”
• nunez
  > Cotton’s chief exhibit was Neville Roy Singham, a Shanghai-based American tech mogul whose network of left-wing U.S. nonprofits, Cotton claimed, has spent years producing content opposing American AI infrastructure, with the Chinese government as its “ultimate paymaster.”Was not expecting a crack down on ThoughtWorks today, but this is totally on brand for him afaik. (Singham founded TW)
• simianwords
  There are plenty of stupid people who believe things like AI uses a lot of water even in USA. There's absolutely no need of cee cee pee to fund all this. Any one who believes foreign agents had any impact on the anti AI sentiment in USA has no theory of mind of these people
• jdw64
  Hello, "foreign agents" of Hacker News. What country are you from?
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  loeg
  > the Justice Department instructed “citizens and noncitizens” that anyone furthering the “goals” of a foreign power in “any public activity” — including even “public demonstrations” — must formally notify the government to avoid arrest and prosecution.Citizens acting as foreign agents have always had to register that representation! This is not new to the Trump admin. FARA dates to 1938.
• anon
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• polotics
  That playbook is 2012 all over again. Eerie.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_foreign_agent_lawI wonder if we can infer any chronological forecast from relative USA::РФ time frames?
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  pinkmuffinere
  > “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.“Setting aside the politics, trump, ai-doom/boom, I just think this claim is fascinating. Can somebody steel man this? What’s the best evidence for this?
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  rob74
  Declaring undesirable NGOs etc. as "foreign agents" is 100% a page from the authoritarian playbook (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_foreign_agent_law).
• aussieguy1234
  Sounds similar to Russia targeting LGBT rights and other human rights activists as "Foreign Agents".
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  tptacek
  Klippenstein. He's counting on you not looking up the elements of a FARA violation charge. You can't accidentally violate FARA simply by opposing AI; you have to literally be an agent of (that is, under the direction of) China, and a felony violation has to be willful.The DOJ announcement is surely in supremely bad faith, as is everything else in Trump's DOJ. But this kind of breathless response is exactly what they're hoping for by publishing this stuff.
• anon
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  Kim_Bruning
  Oh, this is Putin's playbook, right?Declare everyone who opposes you to be "Foreign agents".In Putin's case it worked; he managed to drive pretty much all independent journalists out of Russia.
• ltbarcly3
  There seems to be a coordinated and funded effort to spread FUD about AI and datacenters across multiple countries, including the US, Canada, and the Philippines. The most obvious source of funding would be China for a lot of reasons. Taking payments from a foreign government to attempt to influence Americans is against federal law.This isn't necessarily some weird corrupt conspiracy.
• usernametaken29
  > but somehow the Trump administration has convinced itself the public concern was manufactured in China.Wait a minute here. Critical journalism could dissect how opinions are formed. It’s far from speculative that the White House opinion about AI opposition is informed by AI companies. They’ve been warning about China for a long time. So there’s really no somehow. Vested interests with massive amounts of money are lobbying and succeeding to convince the government that any opposition to AI is outside influence. It’s not somehow, it’s deliberate. Do better.
• anon
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• iAMkenough
  Just another example of the Executive Branch stripping First Amendment rights from Americans.It will go to court, and taxpayers will pay for endless appeals by the Executive Branch.Or like in Egbert v Boule (2022), the SCOTUS will decide that even if your constitutional rights are violated, you’re not owed any damages unless Congress establishes a policy for what to do when your constitutional rights are violated by the federal government.
• excalibur
  > “There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China,” Trump posted on September 14. “Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!”> “The people that say AI is going to destroy the World, and that Data Centers are bad for your neighborhood,” Trump also posted, “are Revolutionaries, but Revolutionaries for a Bad and Evil Cause.”Pot calling the kettle black, as always.
• vopi
  Does this article not have a source?
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  soraminazuki
  The situation is far more serious than what the title suggests. The MAGA regime is pursuing criminal prosecution against AI critics.> the administration declared war on protestors and opponents of AI, threatening “criminal liability” if they “further the propaganda or other goals of a foreign power.”This is literally the go-to playbook of Russia and China for silencing critics. Label every critic a foreign agent and use state violence to silence them.- https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/12/01/russia-new-restrictions-...- https://apnews.com/article/china-hong-kong-national-security...
• anon
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