The chair of a powerful House committee says U.S. nonprofits taking money from China are stirring domestic opposition to data centers and should be penalized, a move that could set up a confrontation in the broader battle over artificial intelligence.
Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in an interview that China is funding numerous nonprofits to turn the American public against the data centers pivotal to AI development. Smith, who has launched his own investigations, is calling on Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to strip these entities of their tax-exempt status, arguing that the government should not effectively aid groups that “jeopardize our national and economic security.”
“We’ve tracked down Chinese money that’s come into U.S. non-for-profits that are organizing the protests against data centers because China wants to win computational dominance,” Smith said. “If they can sow discord and chaos within the American citizenry, they’ll slow down [America in] the AI race — and they win. We have to be guarded.”