Senator Ted Cruz, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, has warned that the United States' artificial intelligence race against China represents "the single most important economic question" facing America. He argues that much opposition to data centres, which has become a significant policy debate heading into the midterm elections, is driven by a coordinated propaganda campaign designed to discourage American AI development. Cruz has drawn parallels to Middle Eastern nations funding anti-fracking campaigns, suggesting that convincing Americans to resist data centre development would benefit China at America's expense.

In June, OpenAI announced that it had banned ChatGPT accounts believed to originate from China that were generating social media content portraying data centres as raising electricity costs for Americans. Cruz has connected opposition to AI advancement with "effective altruism," a tech philosophy he associates with leftist ideology, and has criticised major AI companies such as Anthropic for seeking government protection and antitrust exemptions. He alleged this represents "rent seeking"—where large corporations lobby government for advantages that entrench their market positions. The article notes that Dustin Moskovitz, Facebook's co-founder and a Democratic mega-donor, and his wife Cari Tuna are major financial backers of organisations associated with the effective altruism movement through their foundation, Coefficient Giving.