Small towns across America keep packing zoning meetings to fight Big Tech’s newest building boom.
House Speaker Mike Johnson looked at those crowds and decided somebody overseas must be pulling the strings.
And the explanation he offered on national television is going to land like a slap in farm country.
Johnson Points the Finger at Beijing
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) sat down for an interview on Fox Business in late September 2026. Host Cheryl Casone suggested that China has been stoking American opposition to AI data centers.
Johnson grabbed the idea and ran.
“This is what Democrats do. Every election cycle they find something to glom onto and say that this is doom and gloom and everyone will die if we don’t win,” Johnson said. “Don’t buy it. This is a Chinese psyop. I really believe that. That’s not a conspiracy theory.”
So in the Speaker’s telling, the folks objecting to a server farm the size of a shopping mall down the road are either Democrats or dupes of the Chinese Communist Party.
That’s a tough thing to say about people who mostly vote Republican.
Breitbart News reported the remarks and then did something a lot of outlets skip. It checked the claim against the numbers.
The Polls Tell a Different Story
A recent YouGov poll found nearly two-thirds of Americans oppose data center construction in their own communities.
Gallup went further. The New York Times reported that a Gallup survey in May found 71 percent of Americans somewhat or strongly opposed having a data center built near them. That figure ran almost 20 points higher than opposition to a nearby nuclear power plant.
Americans would rather live next to a reactor than next to one of these things.
And they are acting on it. Data Center Watch reported that communities blocked or delayed nearly 120 data center projects across the country over a recent six-month stretch. Some cities and counties have passed moratoriums on new construction, according to the Times, a few of them permanent.
Beijing doesn’t run county commissions in the heartland. Neighbors do.
The Times laid out what those neighbors actually say. Many worry about what AI will do to jobs. People who live near the facilities call them eyesores and complain about the constant noise.
Even the intelligence angle cuts against Johnson. Jessica Brandt, a former official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence under the Biden administration, told the Times in July that China and Russia latch onto the fight without creating it.
“Foreign actors aren’t manufacturing American debates over the future of A.I., they are exploiting them,” Brandt said. She added that the goal was to “deepen our divisions in order to dent our appeal and weaken us from within.”
A Biden-era official is nobody’s idea of a friendly witness for conservatives. But on this narrow point she and the polls agree, and Breitbart reached the same conclusion: all available evidence shows the debate is homegrown.
Who Benefits When Washington Waves Off the Neighbors
Communist China is America’s top adversary, and the regime would love to see Americans at each other’s throats. Nobody serious disputes that. But Johnson jumped from “China enjoys the fight” to “China started the fight,” and a jump like that needs evidence he did not offer.
The Speaker also blamed Democrats, and there is a kernel worth chewing on there. Democrats did not care much about rural land or working families’ utility costs until the polling turned. Their sudden concern deserves a raised eyebrow.
But a 71 percent number does not come from one party. It comes from Republicans, independents, and Democrats all looking at the same concrete box and asking the same questions. Who pays for the power? Who gets the water? How many permanent jobs does a building full of servers really offer once the construction crews leave?
Those are fair questions, and company brochures rarely answer them.
Then there is the matter of who owns these buildings. Big Tech is running this buildout, and conservatives have long memories. They remember the platforms that took down and throttled posts about COVID policy, the 2020 election, and January 6. A voter who watched Silicon Valley silence his side is not going to cheer when Silicon Valley wants the pasture next door.
And the machines inside these facilities exist to power AI systems that could replace office workers by the thousands. The Times noted that worries over jobs drive much of the public’s unease. Calling that fear a foreign plot does not make it go away.
Maybe Johnson knows something classified that the public doesn’t. That’s possible. If so, he should show it, because “I really believe that” is a feeling and voters asked for facts.
This looks like an old Washington habit. Populist conservatives raise a concern about corporate power, and establishment Republicans answer by questioning the motives of their own voters. It happened on trade. It happened on immigration. The base turned out to be right both times, and the politicians who lectured them had to catch up.
Right-wing populism grew out of exactly this kind of moment, when ordinary people noticed that both parties’ leaders sided with the biggest corporations in the country against the town that had to live with the consequences.
Data center fights will keep coming, county by county. The polling suggests local officials who side with residents stand on solid ground. And any politician who wants to wave those residents off as pawns of Beijing ought to read the Gallup numbers first.
Sources: Breitbart News; Fox Business; The New York Times; Gallup; YouGov; Data Center Watch.
