Last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) claimed during an interview on Fox Business that opposition to data centers is a “Chinese psyop.” Johnson said, “I really believe that.
Page F3From§Eachthe breakfast edition — 6 October 2026
Industry lobbies to shield data center neighbors' water bills, then House Speaker calls them a Chinese psyop.
As it ran on the front
On August 31st the President told the country, in writing, that any town that said no to a data center was choosing to be backwards and poor. Three days later, Microsoft's own lobbyists went to work on a different problem: a bill to keep water systems from passing a data center's connection costs on to the neighbors next door. If the water bill were nothing to worry about, the company building the data center would not need a law to keep it off the water bill.
Twenty-six days after Microsoft filed in support of that bill, on September 29th, the Speaker of the House found a different explanation for why the neighbors next door were worried in the first place. Mike Johnson told an interviewer he believed opposition to data centers is a "Chinese psyop." He said it the same day Washington Examiner columnist Salena Zito was telling readers the opposite case: that data centers are "great job creators" building new football fields and community centers, being "good neighbors." The industry's own columnist and the Speaker of the House could not agree, on the same day, on whether the backlash was organic or foreign-run.…
…(cont) The backlash had already been measured the day before. On September 28th The Hill reported that more Americans now oppose data centers than fear artificial intelligence itself. By October 1st, The Hill reported that Republicans themselves were growing worried that data centers are a liability heading into the midterms, as rising power bills tied to the facilities become what the story called a pocketbook issue for voters.
Which brings the ledger to today. A Popular Information report finds the Speaker still saying it, on Fox Business, days later: "I really believe that." Not a slip. A repeated position, held by the man who runs the House floor, that the same bipartisan backlash the industry's own water-bill filing was built to manage is run from Beijing.
Reconciled: the industry writes a filing admitting the water bill is worth fearing. Twenty-six days later, the Speaker calls the opposition a Chinese psyop. Both filings describe the same voters. Only one admits they might be right. Hon, that's not a psyop. That's a paper trail.
“They file a bill admitting the water bill is real, then they get the Speaker of the House calling anybody who noticed it a Chinese psyop. That's not a messaging problem, that's a confession filed twice. Your bill's about to go up, and the Speaker of the House wants you blaming Beijing instead of the server farm next door.”
“Look, these facilities are job creators, they're building new football fields, they're being great neighbors — ask Salena Zito, she said it herself. And on the water thing, golf courses use more water than data centers do, that's just — did I say golf courses? That's not — the Speaker never said the water bill wasn't real, he just said the people complaining about it might be foreign-run. That's different. That's completely different.”
Earlier in this story
- Same industry that calls resisting towns backwards and poor quietly lobbies to shield them from the water bill. By Ruth · the wee small hours edition, 6 October 2026
The receipts
· Mike Johnson Blasted for Dismissing US Voter Concerns About AI Data Centers as ‘Chinese Psyop’ from the morgue, 29 Sep 2026
· Salena Zito explains how data centers are benefiting communities from the morgue, 29 Sep 2026
· Republicans hit crunch time on data centers from the morgue, 1 Oct 2026
· Data center developers should have known how much Americans love their land from the morgue, 28 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.