Foreign donors, led by a Swiss billionaire and backed by British and Danish nonprofits, have funneled nearly $40 million to activist groups now pushing for a national moratorium on American data center construction, a Washington Free Beacon investigation found. The money flows come as Chinese state media amplifies the same anti-data-center messaging, and as Beijing subsidizes up to half the energy costs of its own AI facilities.
The convergence is not subtle. Eleven left-wing organizations signed a December 2025 letter demanding Congress "support a national moratorium on the approval and construction of new data centers." Watchdog data compiled by Americans for Public Trust and the American Energy Institute show that every one of those groups received substantial funding from overseas sources, donors based in Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Denmark.
The financial stakes are enormous. A boutique research firm, Data Center Watch, reported that opposition efforts blocked or delayed data center projects worth $152 billion in potential investment during 2025 alone. That figure represents jobs, tax revenue, and computing capacity the United States will not have, while China races to build its own.
Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss sits at the center of the funding web. As of March 2026, Wyss had contributed nearly $14 million to four of the groups that signed the moratorium letter: $7,455,000 to the Indivisible Project, $4,382,000 to Americans for Financial Reform, $2,107,400 to the Sierra Club, and $50,000 to Greenpeace USA.
A Wyss Foundation spokeswoman said the foundation "was not involved" in the letter and that its grants to the signatory groups were "unrelated." The other groups and donors contacted by the Free Beacon did not respond to requests for comment.
British hedge fund manager Chris Hohn contributed $200,000 to Extinction Rebellion, another signatory. Three foreign foundations rounded out the donor list. The U.K.-based Oak Foundation sent $7.5 million to 350.org, $6,375,000 to the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, $4 million to Oil Change International, and $550,000 to New York Communities for Change. Denmark's KR Foundation gave nearly $1.1 million to 350.org, nearly $1.9 million to Oil Change International, and nearly $500,000 to Friends of the Earth. Britain's Quadrature Climate Foundation contributed nearly $1 million to 350.org and $2.2 million to the John Muir Project.
Wyss's share alone accounted for more than a third of the roughly $40 million total. The pattern is clear: foreign money in, American energy infrastructure blocked.
While European-based donors bankrolled the activist groups, Chinese Communist Party-controlled media outlets ran a parallel messaging campaign. In October 2025, China Global Television Network, the English-language arm of Beijing's state broadcaster, published a video lamenting that "energy-hungry data centers that have sprung up due to AI investments" were "sadly" causing a "major spike in energy prices," especially "on the West Coast, Mid-Atlantic, and New England."
China Daily, a CCP-controlled newspaper, followed in March with an article headlined "AI boom sends electricity bills in US skyrocketing." The piece quoted a Siena University economics professor saying "electricity prices in the United States are emerging as a new source of economic strain" due to "surging power demand from data centers."
The Global Times, a China Daily subsidiary, published its own pieces in April championing China's AI "tech advances," including "in the fields of humanoid robotics" and "large language models." The message was consistent across outlets: American data centers are a burden; Chinese AI is thriving.
The Free Beacon investigation did not establish direct coordination between the Chinese state media campaign and the U.S.-based activist groups. But the alignment in timing and message is difficult to dismiss as coincidence, especially when Beijing is simultaneously subsidizing its own AI infrastructure. Reuters has reported that the Chinese government offers tech companies subsidies covering up to half of the energy costs from data centers.
The foreign influence operations targeting American technology policy extend beyond just funding and media campaigns. Watchdog groups have identified organized networks working to shape U.S. artificial intelligence policy in ways that would benefit Beijing's strategic position.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum addressed the issue directly on May 18, drawing a line between foreign money and state-level data center bans:
"There are some states that are literally passing bans on AI data centers. And it's not organic or local, some of this is foreign-sourced dark money coming in, and the people that used to fight on climate change have shifted. They don't talk about climate change because they've realized it's a losing argument, I can't get people excited about one degree of climate change, but man, I can lie to them about why their electric bill went up."
Burgum's bluntness was notable. The Interior Secretary was not hedging. He named the mechanism, foreign dark money, and the pivot in messaging, from climate fear to electricity bills.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, a Kentucky Republican, framed the competition in stark geopolitical terms during remarks in March:
"Whoever controls the flow of data and AI isn't going to be one of the super powers but the super power, and there's only two countries that can do it, us or China. If you're China, what would you want to do to keep Americans from building data centers, how do you do that? You use our system of free press and the freedom of information to influence people."
Guthrie's point lands harder when set against the funding records. The groups calling for a moratorium are not scrappy grassroots outfits running bake sales. They are well-funded organizations receiving millions from foreign donors, donors whose home countries do not face the same AI competition with China that the United States does.
Some of these same foreign-linked activist networks have been expanding their domestic operations, opening hubs across America to push policy agendas that align with Beijing's interests in slowing U.S. technological development.
Kevin O'Leary, the businessman and television personality, has a direct stake in the fight. O'Leary has been developing data center projects in Utah and has attributed opposition to those projects to what he described as "Chinese-linked funding channels."
In a Fox News appearance, O'Leary put the incentive structure plainly:
"Think about the incentive. If China is racing to dominate AI and compute capacity, why wouldn't they want to slow American infrastructure down?"
O'Leary's framing is that of a market participant who has watched projects stall. Whether or not every local opponent of a data center is knowingly advancing a foreign agenda, the money trail raises serious questions about who benefits when American AI infrastructure gets bottled up.
Fox News has reported on the broader web connecting Chinese propaganda, foreign dark money, and organized campaigns against data centers, a pattern that reinforces the financial records uncovered in the Free Beacon investigation.
The dollar figure that should focus every policymaker's attention is $152 billion. That is the value of data center investment blocked or delayed by opposition efforts in 2025, according to Data Center Watch. To put it in perspective, that sum dwarfs the roughly $40 million in foreign funding that helped fuel the opposition. The return on investment, from the perspective of anyone who wants to slow American computing power, is staggering.
Just The News reported that Michael Lucci, CEO of State Armor, framed the competition bluntly: "Either the United States or communist China will dominate artificial intelligence, and therefore, likely dominate the leading technologies of the 21st-century. China is actively executing strategies to win this competition." Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, described the opposition as "being fueled by a coordinated network of activist groups backed by more than $39 million in foreign funding."
Meanwhile, members of Congress have joined the policy debate from the left as well. Senators Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have pushed their own data center moratorium proposals, though energy research has undercut key claims behind those efforts.
The Wyss Foundation's denial that its grants were connected to the moratorium letter is worth weighing against the math. Nearly $14 million flowed from Wyss to four of the letter's signatories. The foundation says those grants were "unrelated." Readers can judge for themselves whether an organization that receives $7.4 million from a single foreign donor operates free of that donor's influence when it signs a letter calling for a national construction ban.
Several questions remain open. Which states, specifically, have passed or are considering bans on AI data centers? Burgum referenced them but did not name them. How are the foreign foundation grants legally structured, as direct contributions, pass-through vehicles, or something else? And did any of the eleven signatory organizations acknowledge or disclose their foreign funding sources when they put their names on a letter urging Congress to halt American data center construction?
None of the groups other than the Wyss Foundation responded to the Free Beacon's requests for comment. That silence is itself telling. Organizations that claim to speak for the public interest should be willing to explain who is paying for their advocacy.
The investigation into foreign-linked financiers behind far-left nonprofit networks continues to reveal the scope of outside money shaping American domestic policy, from energy to technology to national security.
The facts here are not ambiguous. Foreign money is flowing to American activist groups. Those groups are demanding a halt to data center construction. Chinese state media is amplifying the same message. And Beijing is subsidizing its own AI buildout while the United States debates whether to let its competitors' money shape its energy and technology future.
When your adversary is paying to slow you down and speeding up at the same time, the word for ignoring it isn't caution. It's surrender.
