A military band conductor leads during a ceremony to mark the 105th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, July 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)Lately, in the US news cycle, the “psy-op” allegation in AI policymaking has cut multiple ways.Individuals or organizations advocating to slow or halt frontier AI development and enact more regulatory oversight are accused of being psy-ops either backed by China or other domestic ideological groups. For instance, Elon Musk referred to former Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon’s viral resignation post from Anthropic as such, and White House science and technology advisor David Sacks called out the lack of similar “doomer” discourse groups within China as a primary tell that the campaign is manufactured.The same allegation has befallen organizations and individuals pushing back on the aggressive local buildout of data centers. Sacks’ boss, US President Donald Trump, has emphatically stated that “there is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China.” Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan wrote in late August that “the datacenter discourse is a documented psyop” and connected dots from the Chinese government and state media to anti-data center messaging in America. Both of these movements are, according to prominent US figures inside of and adjacent to politics, psy-ops backed by—or at least benefiting—the Chinese government.This piece does not…

Because you read this