A self-described Marxist just helped shut down a major AI data center project in Virginia. The trail does not stop at local zoning boards. It runs through a national network of radical organizers and lands in Shanghai, where a Chinese Communist Party-linked financier has poured hundreds of millions into American nonprofits that just happen to wage war on U.S. artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Jack Tensley stood before the Frederick County Planning Commission in January and painted the proposed data center as a security nightmare.
“My really big fear here is the security risk. We have infrastructure attacks and failures, cyberattacks that happen — I want to know if this puts a target on the back of Frederick County,” he said. “I see a lot of risk here.”
Tensley is no ordinary concerned neighbor. Digital records show he identifies as an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a hardline Marxist-Leninist outfit whose stated mission is to “carry out the struggle for socialism inside the United States.”
Capitalism, according to PSL, is a failed system that must be dismantled. The same group has thrown its organizers into anti-data center fights in at least 14 states.
According to a detailed investigation by the Bitcoin Policy Institute, PSL has served as the ground game in 21 separate campaigns that delayed, scaled back, or outright blocked roughly $23.6 billion in proposed AI infrastructure investment.
Ten local moratoria, one permanent ban, and multiple rejected projects later, the pattern is clear. Local energy and water complaints get amplified. Petitions circulate. Public hearings fill with coordinated voices. Projects die.
In Frederick County the results were decisive. The Board of Supervisors voted 10-0 last month to deny a 220-acre data center application in Clearbrook. A second 71.8-acre project in Winchester went down 7-1. Tensley also signed on with the group Protect Frederick County from Data Center Development and has previously donated to Bernie Sanders. Breitbart first highlighted the foreign influence concerns surrounding this local fight.
The Shanghai Connection
PSL does not operate in a vacuum. The Bitcoin Policy Institute found substantial leadership overlap between the party and a web of nonprofits bankrolled by Neville Roy Singham, the Shanghai-based American expatriate who has funneled at least $278 million into left-wing groups over the past decade.
Singham has long faced congressional scrutiny for his ties to the Chinese Communist Party. The nonprofits he funds regularly show up at anti-ICE, anti-Israel, and pro-Iran protests. They also produce messaging that tracks closely with Beijing’s strategic interests, as documented in the institute’s broader report on foreign influence against American AI.
Senator Tom Cotton has seen enough. In a letter to the Department of Justice he warned of “a network of foreign actors, led by the Chinese Communist Party,” attempting to manipulate American policy and public opinion on data centers.
Cotton specifically named Singham’s network. “Alarming reports indicate that a network of foreign actors… is attempting to manipulate U.S. policy and public opinion on data centers,” he wrote.
It is not yet proven that Singham’s money flows directly into PSL’s bank account. What is documented is the personnel overlap and the perfect alignment of interests. China is racing to build its own AI capacity while American projects face coordinated local resistance that just happens to serve Beijing’s competitive goals. The “grassroots” language is convenient. The strategic outcome is not.
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Matthew 7:15
Virginia already hosts the densest concentration of data centers on earth. Public support for new construction has cratered. Foreign state media from Beijing and Moscow amplify every local complaint about power prices and water use. Meanwhile China pours state subsidies into its own AI build-out. The pattern is not subtle.
Americans have every right to debate the local costs of data centers. Power grids, water use, and property values are legitimate concerns. What they do not have is a right to pretend that organized Marxist cadres with documented foreign-aligned funding are simply neutral citizens raising process questions.
When the same network that celebrates socialist revolution and maintains ties to CCP-linked money shows up to kill American AI infrastructure, the conversation is no longer about zoning.
It is about whether the United States will build the computational foundation of the next century or hand strategic advantage to the Chinese Communist Party by default. Local supervisors in Frederick County just delivered a 10-0 vote that advanced the second option.
The Marxists who helped make it happen are already looking for the next county board meeting.
