The idea that China is meaningfully driving populist pushback to the American AI buildout is far-fetched, experts said.

Chinese state media tends to “take advantage of narratives that are already underway in the US” and is likely “riding that wave” of division over AI, rather than seeding an anti-data center campaign, US-China tech scholar Samm Sacks told Semafor.

It’s unclear how much traction this specific argument will get in Washington, but as populist pushback to AI grows, especially ahead of the midterms, analysts expect the threat from China to be a growing factor in US tech debates: “Beijing cannot out-build us, so it is trying to talk us into handcuffing ourselves,” the CEO of pro-tech advocacy group American Edge Project wrote last week, citing a Washington Free Beacon article on Chinese state media reports that explored the rising energy costs associated with data centers in the US.

Invoking Beijing isn’t a new phenomenon in Washington. But the speed of AI innovation and the wider infrastructure buildout has given the China card more potency across industries — from robots to port cranes — especially when coupled with a national security pitch, Sacks said.

But “when everything becomes a China national security issue, nothing becomes a China national security issue,” she said.

Chinese AI models currently lag behind those of the US, but Beijing’s technological ambitions can’t be ignored or dismissed, the Brookings Institution’s Kyle Chan said in recent testimony to Congress. China is “running several different AI races” at once, an approach that deserves a response from the US government, including export controls, assisting the data center buildout, and supporting the development of open-source AI models, according to Chan. “In the long run, the winner of the AI race will be determined not simply by who builds the most powerful models, but by who can most effectively translate AI into broad-based economic and societal gains.”