DOJ to AI opponents: register as foreign agents or face five years

The Justice Department has put a warning in writing that anyone demonstrating at the direction of a foreign power must register with the government — and the president spent the same fortnight calling opposition to AI and data centers treasonous.

A Justice Department release dated September 16 tells "citizens and noncitizens" that anyone acting as an agent of a foreign power in "any public activity, including (but not limited to) public demonstrations designed to further the propaganda or other goals of the foreign power" must register with or notify federal authorities. Failure to do so, the department writes, "may result in significant civil or criminal sanctions, up to and including a maximum of five years in prison." The release — number 26-1066, titled "Liability of Unregistered Foreign Agents" — never mentions AI, data centers, or any specific group. It also states that the department "will not take action to inhibit anyone's constitutionally protected right to free speech," which sits uneasily next to a warning about protest.

What makes the notice read as AI policy is everything around it. On September 14, Trump posted that "there is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China," calling conspiracy theorists and leakers "Treasonists, Traitors… BEWARE!" In a second post he described people who say data centers are bad for their neighborhood as "Revolutionaries, but Revolutionaries for a Bad and Evil Cause." On September 19 he added that his administration "will also be looking for BAD, and we can do that, very easily, with our already existing Criminal and Civil Justice System."

Congress supplied the paper trail. In June, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Tom Cotton asked then-acting attorney general Todd Blanche to investigate "foreign influence efforts targeting the buildout of American AI infrastructure," complaining that "no entity in the network has been charged under the Foreign Agents Registration Act" and requesting a full DOJ investigation. Days earlier, House Energy and Commerce chairman Brett Guthrie and two colleagues wrote to FBI Director Kash Patel and the White House seeking a briefing on what they called foreign influence campaigns aimed at blocking data centers. Guthrie's own statement said CCP-backed entities "may be attempting to influence decisions related to American data center infrastructure."

The evidence for the underlying claim is thin, and one of its loudest promoters has already walked it back. Kevin O'Leary, the investor behind a planned $100 billion Utah data center, claimed this spring that Chinese money was paying protesters; in a June 25 post he conceded he had "no evidence" that the groups and people he named were funded by China, Fox News aired corrections, and two of the groups have since sued him and the network for defamation.

The polling points the other way. A March Gallup survey found 71 percent of Americans oppose building an AI data center in their area — more than the 53 percent who oppose a local nuclear plant, and with 48 percent strongly opposed. That is not a fringe position that needs a foreign paymaster to explain it; it is close to a consensus, and the administration's response is to treat it as a counterintelligence matter.

The precise thing to hold onto here: the DOJ document is a generic FARA and Section 951 reminder, and the AI link is inference — timing plus Trump plus two congressional letters — not a statement the department has made. Ken Klippenstein, who surfaced the notice, reads it as aimed at protest activity, and two independent legal analyses of the same release reach a similar conclusion. No mainstream newsroom has yet made the AI connection itself.

What to watch: whether the department ever names a protest group in a FARA action — that, not the release, is the test of whether this is a warning or a policy.

If opposing a data center in your own town can be framed as foreign propaganda, what's left of local objection? Tell us in the comments.

Sources: DOJ — Liability of Unregistered Foreign Agents · Sen. Tom Cotton to DOJ on data center influence · House Energy and Commerce oversight letter · Gallup — Americans oppose data centers in their area · The Independent — Trump's Truth Social posts on AI · Variety — Kevin O'Leary sued over data center claims · Ken Klippenstein — Feds Target AI Critics as "Foreign Agents"