Your electricity bill might actually be getting more expensive because of AI. That part of the argument is true. But what if the people yelling about it online aren’t actually Americans?
That’s the interesting part of a newly disclosed influence operation on X, where the platform says it uncovered roughly 200,000 suspected Chinese inauthentic accounts. About 200 of them were reportedly focused specifically on shaping American opinion about AI data centers, electricity costs, and the growing backlash against the country’s AI buildout.
The bots had a very American complaint
The accounts reportedly posted in English and presented themselves as concerned Americans. Their message was that AI data centers are driving up your electricity bill while giant corporations get richer.
To make the argument more shareable, the campaign reportedly used AI-generated cartoons showing data center operators as greedy corporations profiting while ordinary households picked up the tab. However, the accounts pushing some of that content apparently weren’t what they claimed to be.
According to X’s Safety team, the campaign operated from late 2025 into early 2026, and the accounts had relatively limited organic engagement. Still, the goal wasn’t necessarily to make one post go viral. Influence operations can work by repeatedly pushing a narrative until it starts looking like a widely held opinion.
The underlying issue is real
America really is going to need a lot more electricity for AI. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory projects that U.S. data centers could consume around 11.8% of the country’s electricity by 2030.
That is a massive chunk of the grid going toward buildings full of computers doing everything from training AI models to generating your increasingly unhinged image prompts. Some regions are already dealing with grid pressure, while certain utility customers have faced higher costs amid surging data center demand. So the bots didn’t need to invent an entirely fictional crisis. It was a matter of taking a legitimate concern and amplifying the anger around it.
OpenAI had already spotted the campaign
The X disclosure lines up with an earlier finding from OpenAI. In June, the company published a threat intelligence report identifying what it called a “Data Center Bandwagon” cluster.
OpenAI said the operation was linked to a private Chinese technology company that apparently used ChatGPT to generate English-language content while its operators posed as American users.
Why would China care about America’s data centers?
Because America’s AI ambitions aren’t happening in a vacuum. The U.S. is pouring money into data centers, chips, power infrastructure and AI companies in an attempt to maintain its lead over China. That makes electricity and the infrastructure required to generate and distribute it a strategic issue.
If Americans become increasingly angry about the cost of powering AI, that could create political pressure around data center construction, energy policy and the companies building these facilities. An influence campaign is a solid step towards achieving that.
Your electricity bill is not fake news
Should you ignore every complaint about data centers pushing up electricity costs because some bots were amplifying the issue? Absolutely not. If your power bill goes up, a Chinese bot farm didn’t magically print the number on it.
The smarter takeaway is to separate the underlying issue from the people trying to manipulate how you feel about it. And keep in mind that there is an influence campaign out there convincing you that your legitimate frustration belongs to someone else’s agenda.
Sources: Crypto Briefing, Axios