The Trump administration has opened a new front in the AI buildout: treating domestic opposition as a counterintelligence threat. Over the past week, President Trump posted a series of statements on social media calling AI skeptics "Revolutionaries" for a "Bad and Evil Cause," "Treasonists," and "Conspiracy Theorists," while blaming unnamed foreign countries — principally China — for manufacturing public resistance to data centers. On September 19, he alluded to using the criminal justice system against "BAD" actors in the AI space. The Justice Department formalized the threat. In a new advisory, the department warned that "citizens and noncitizens" who further the "goals" of a foreign power in "any public activity" — including "public demonstrations" — must register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act or face criminal prosecution. No specific protests were named, but the timing and context leave little ambiguity about the intended targets. Congress is running a parallel track. Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Tom Cotton wrote to then-acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in June requesting a full DOJ investigation into "foreign influence efforts targeting the buildout of American AI infrastructure," citing Shanghai-based American tech mogul Neville Roy Singham and his network of left-wing nonprofits as the CCP's alleged pipeline into domestic opposition. House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Brett Guthrie and top Republicans sent a similar request to FBI Director Kash Patel. Neither produced evidence of foreign coordination beyond the Singham connection, which remains under scrutiny but has yielded no FARA charges. The private sector is singing the same tune. David Sacks, Trump's former AI czar and now co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, has repeatedly cast domestic AI resistance as a gift to Beijing. Kevin O'Leary, the investor behind a planned $100 billion Utah data center, claimed hundreds of millions of Chinese dollars were funding anti-data-center protesters — then conceded on June 25 he had "no evidence" for the claim. Fox News aired apologies. Two targeted groups have since sued O'Leary and Fox for defamation. The pro-AI Innovation Council told the Daily Caller the opposition was "a manufactured op by dark anti-American forces and foreign governments." The polling tells a completely different story. A March Gallup poll found 71 percent of Americans oppose building an AI data center in their area — more than the 53 percent who oppose a local nuclear plant. Opposition crosses party lines: 63 percent of Republicans are opposed. A February Pew survey of over 5,000 adults found 40 percent believe AI will hurt society over the next 20 years versus 16 percent who believe it will help. Sixty-three percent said AI is advancing too quickly, 71 percent said it will make their personal information less secure, and 67 percent had little or no confidence in the federal government to regulate it. The administration has already deployed the national security argument in court. In June, the DOJ intervened in an NAACP lawsuit against Elon Musk's xAI over dozens of unpermitted gas turbines powering a Tennessee data center. The department asked a federal judge to dismiss the case, arguing it "threatens American national, economic, and energy security." Pentagon chief digital and AI officer Cameron Stanley filed a sworn declaration that Grok was "a matter of paramount national security." The strategic logic is circular and self-defeating. Labeling 71 percent of the public as unwitting foreign agents does not build trust in AI governance — it destroys it. People who already distrust the government's handling of AI are now being told their distrust is traitorous. The administration is manufacturing the very legitimacy crisis it claims to be fighting, while clearing regulatory obstacles for a handful of firms whose executives happen to orbit the White House.
