Senator Tom Cotton is calling on the Justice Department to investigate what he says is a Beijing-backed network organized to block American AI infrastructure from being built.
Cotton sent a letter to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche this week urging a federal investigation into a network of domestic nonprofits he alleges are working at China's direction to halt construction of U.S. data centers, the physical backbone of the AI arms race. "Communist China is attempting to influence our policy and public opinion on data centers," Cotton wrote, according to Fox News Digital. "They want to kneecap our processing power to win the AI race."
The letter follows a detailed report from the Bitcoin Policy Institute documenting what the group describes as three converging vectors of foreign influence aimed at stalling American AI infrastructure. Chinese state media outlets CGTN, China Daily, and Global Times have run sustained attributed campaigns opposing U.S. data centers, the report found. Alongside that, a network of domestic nonprofits with alleged ties to Beijing has spent nearly five years producing parallel content targeting AI labs, export controls, and the data centers that large language models depend on.
Central to both the report and Cotton's letter is Neville Roy Singham, a self-described Marxist who sold his software firm Thoughtworks in 2017 and relocated to Shanghai. The Bitcoin Policy Institute says Singham routed approximately $285 million through nonprofits, shell companies, and a donor-advised fund at a Goldman Sachs philanthropy arm to fund the domestic campaign. Singham is already the subject of an interagency investigation by the DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security over his reported ties to the Chinese Communist Party, according to Fox News Digital.
Groups in the Singham network, including the ANSWER Coalition, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and CodePink, have organized protests targeting U.S. technology and defense companies in recent years, according to the Bitcoin Policy Institute report and coverage by Fox News and the Daily Caller. CodePink published an article in January 2026 framing the fight against data centers as a battle against "the new Cold War on China," a phrase that had appeared verbatim in a 2023 Xinhua news wire that cited the Singham-linked coalition by name.
The Bitcoin Policy Institute pointed to legislative timing as evidence of coordination. Legislation co-sponsored by Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calling for a national moratorium on data center construction was introduced 107 days after a coalition letter drafted by affiliated groups began circulating. "That kind of efficiency typically distinguishes coordinated advocacy infrastructure from spontaneous grassroots opposition," the report states. Beyond the Singham money, the report also traced more than $2 billion flowing through separate foreign-linked charitable vehicles, including funds tied to Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss and the Oak Foundation, into U.S. advocacy groups opposing data center build-out.
Congress Closes In
Cotton is not acting alone. Three House Republicans from the Ways and Means Committee, the House Oversight Committee, and the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party launched a parallel probe, the Washington Times reported on June 4. Those lawmakers sent a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel and the Trump administration's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology requesting an intelligence briefing no later than June 18. The Ways and Means chairman accused the nonprofits of trying to "sow discord and chaos within the American citizenry" to Beijing's benefit, according to NOTUS.
Advocacy groups named in the investigations disputed the allegations. Food and Water Watch, which has backed national and state data center moratoriums, called the congressional claims "disingenuous attacks" tied to Big Tech lobbying and said the campaigns reflect genuine concerns about energy costs and water consumption, according to E&E News reporting.
Whether Blanche moves to open a formal FARA investigation will be the first real test of how far the administration is willing to take its China hawkishness into domestic civil society. An existing interagency inquiry into Singham's CCP ties was already underway before Cotton's letter arrived, giving investigators a running start. If the DOJ acts, it would mark one of the broadest applications of the foreign agent statute to a domestic activist network in recent memory, and send a direct signal to Beijing that using American nonprofits as proxies in the AI competition carries legal consequences.
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