The AI super PAC is paying TikTok influencers

Hi —

Two weeks ago we wrote about an AI safety firm that was hiring researchers to monitor the communities fighting data centers. This week, an OpenAI- and Palantir-backed super PAC was caught paying TikTok influencers to push pro-AI deregulation framed as anti-China content. Same theme, new surface. Plus the bipartisan opposition pages of the New York Times, and the regular round-up.

Data Center News

A super PAC backed by OpenAI and Palantir is paying TikTok influencers to fear-monger about China.

Wired reported this week that Leading the Future — the $50 million pro-AI-deregulation super PAC bankrolled by OpenAI president Greg Brockman, Andreessen Horowitz, and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale — is paying TikTok influencers to push pro-AI deregulation messaging framed as anti-China content. An affiliated PAC, American Mission, ran a Texas primary ad explicitly invoking “defeat China.”

Two weeks ago in this newsletter, the lead was an AI threat-intelligence firm hiring researchers to monitor community organizers fighting data centers. Same week, same theme, different surface. The first story was about watching the people opposing the buildout. This one is about manufacturing the opinion that supports it.

When AI labs are spending fifty million dollars to make voters believe a particular political position is the patriotic one, that tells you something about how much is at stake in the buildout layer. It also tells you why the receipts matter — the donors, the affiliated PACs, the candidates they boost, the ads they run, all on the public record.

We track Leading the Future, American Mission, Fairshake, Build the Future, and the rest of the AI / crypto super PAC network on the money page. Every donor named, every disbursement, every state where the money is moving.

The Wired story → · Our PAC tracker →

The bipartisan opposition is now the politics-page story.

The New York Times ran a politics-section piece this week documenting what every community fighting a data center already knew: data centers are scrambling the typical left-right alignments. Rural conservatives worried about land use are joining progressive climate and consumer advocates against the same projects.

More than 360,000 Americans are organizing across 37 states. Over 100,000 of them in swing states alone. The fight is no longer fringe coverage in trade press — it is the institutional politics-page story.

This is what every weekly issue of this newsletter has been documenting since we started: the projects, the politicians taking the money, the communities winning the fights. Free, open, no paywall — for the next 360,000.

Our national overview → · 88 community wins on one timeline →

From the Communities Fighting Back

Readers in Montana and North Carolina sent us their state-level tracking lists this month. Those imports are why those state pages now have the depth they do — the local nonprofits and organizers in MEIC and NCEJN-adjacent networks have done the hardest work, and we are grateful for it. If you have a list for your state, our tip line is at poweredbywho.com/tips.

Montana — Nine data-center projects on file as of this week, up from one. 3.4 GW of in-flight demand against a rural grid where NorthWestern Energy has already committed 1,400 MW to data-center customers. The mix is half crypto, half AI: TeraWulf and Atlas mining today, Quantica/BSDI (1 GW), Sabey (250 MW), and Krambu in negotiation. Krambu's Bonner site is 500 feet from a residential area, across the street from an elementary school — the supplemental info filed April 27 reveals build-out could reach 100 MW over 2-3 years. Community win: TAC withdrew its 600 MW Great Falls proposal in November.

↘ Find your Montana reps · 30 seconds · poweredbywho.com/states/mt

North Carolina — The state with the most successful local data-center moratoriums in the country. 12 jurisdictions have already passed them — five in Western NC (Boone, Canton, Brevard, Swain, Watauga, Kings Mountain), six in Central NC (Chatham, Apex, Wendell, Orange, Rowan), and one in Eastern NC (Gates). Project pipeline jumped from 22 to 101 tracked projects in a week. Microsoft's Catawba County 4-campus cluster (765 MW) restarted in March after a long construction pause. Stokes County's Project Delta drew a community lawsuit; the community is suing back over the rezoning.

Arizona — Maricopa County's Board of Supervisors approved Takanock's Project Baccara on May 6, 160 acres near Luke AFB — 700 MW of on-site natural gas generation feeding two ~1M sq ft data centers. The 1,400-member “Stop Project Baccara” coalition put 225 opposition letters in front of the P&Z hearing in April. Backed by ArcLight Capital and DigitalBridge.

Pennsylvania — Two data-center hearings are scheduled for next week in Archbald (Lackawanna County), per the Times-Tribune. PA is also where AWS is building its 1,920 MW behind-the-meter nuclear deal at Salem Township. The Susquehanna nuclear deal is still in front of FERC.

Idaho — Meta's Kuna campus is now under construction with a late-2026 operational target. The political environment in Ada County continues to shift fast as the project moves from rumor to steel in the ground.

Read This Week

A super PAC backed by OpenAI and Palantir is paying TikTok influencers to fear-monger about China Leading the Future — the $50M pro-AI-deregulation super PAC bankrolled by OpenAI president Greg Brockman, Andreessen Horowitz, and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale — is paying influencers to push pro-AI deregulation framed as anti-China content. — Wired

Data centers are scrambling the left-right divide More than 360,000 Americans are organizing across 37 states — rural conservatives worried about land use joining progressive climate and consumer advocates in the same fight. Over 100,000 in swing states alone. — The New York Times

Big Tech's false solutions to the climate crisis A new Kairos Fellowship primer for organizers. Three buckets — nuclear power, carbon capture, and AI itself — named as scams that benefit tech bottom lines while diverting from the renewable scale-up the energy transition actually needs. Sharp framing for anyone working on the buildout layer. — Kairos Fellowship

Canaries in the coal mine: six facts about AI's employment effects Stanford Digital Economy Lab paper from Brynjolfsson, Chandar, and Chen. Employment for 22-25 year-old software developers is down 20% since late 2022. Young workers in AI-exposed jobs are down 13% relative to peers. Pair this with Time's recent Oracle layoffs piece — the “data centers create jobs” pitch is starting to read differently when the labor market is actively shedding the people the data centers exist to serve. — Stanford Digital Economy Lab

Insights — the receipts, by the numbers

Two new things on the site this week. The national overview at /states/usa rolls every project across all 50 states into one view — with a Tufte-style EIA dashboard and a comparison of buildout pressure between states with Democratic vs Republican sitting governors (the buildout pressure shows up in both columns).

And we dropped the email gate on the toolkit at /toolkit. All 10 tactics that have actually stopped data centers, all 19 policy interventions, free, no signup. If you are organizing in a town that has not figured out the playbook yet, send them there.

Hot projects this week

Ranked by clicks on our map in the last seven days. Full leaderboard →

Prometheus Hyperscale Evanston Campus · Uinta Co., WY 1,200 MW under construction in southwest Wyoming. Top of the leaderboard this week as more readers find the project on the map.

Microsoft Malaga Data Center · Chelan Co., WA 360 MW under construction along the Columbia River corridor. Pacific Northwest hyperscaler density keeps growing on the same stretch of cheap hydropower.

AWS Salem Township Nuclear Campus · Luzerne Co., PA 1,920 MW under construction next to the Susquehanna nuclear plant. Behind-the-meter power deal still in front of FERC.

Adams County / Former Stuart Plant Data Center · ON HOLD · Adams Co., OH 1,300 MW proposed at the retired Stuart coal plant site — on hold pending county and AES Ohio review. Aberdeen-area community pushback held the decision back.

Microsoft Catawba County 4-Campus Cluster · Catawba Co., NC 765 MW under construction. Restarted in March after a long pause — the four-campus footprint plus the long pause make it the project with the most active narrative arc in NC.

Open the map

Or look up your reps: poweredbywho.com/your-reps

If this email was worth your time, forward it to one person in a town where a data center has been proposed — especially someone who has been speaking up about it. They should know the room is bigger than they thought. The second best thing you can do is a small coffee. Every dollar funds FOIA requests, source verification, and the next state in the cleanup queue.

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Thank you for being here.

George

george@poweredbywho.com

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