OPINION:
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul just handed Beijing a win in the race for artificial intelligence supremacy.
Americans are asking whether their water is safe and whether their electric bills will skyrocket from grid strain. Those are genuine concerns, but they have given way to hysteria amplified by geopolitical adversaries pumping our social media channels with propaganda as part of cognitive warfare.
Ms. Hochul just gave them their biggest victory yet. On July 14, she signed an executive order banning new hyperscale data centers — those drawing 50 megawatts or more — through July 2027. New York is the first state in the country to go this far.
Ms. Hochul said the goal was to protect New Yorkers from a grid under strain and bills that keep climbing. New York’s average residential electricity price is up roughly 68% since 2019, according to CNBC.
The pain for New Yorkers is real. Ms. Hochul’s fix is political.
Here is what the moratorium actually does: It stops new construction. It does not touch a single one of the more than 130 data centers already running in New York today. It means fewer jobs and less economic development for a state already losing ground.
It also reeks of politics. Ms. Hochul is up for reelection and wants to placate voters rather than explain the issue. She even frames her order as “being at the forefront of innovation.” It is the kind of soft-minded, weak governing that China counts on.
Remember that a top Hochul aide was indicted in 2024 for acting as an unregistered agent of the Chinese government. She once texted a Chinese consular official that Ms. Hochul was “much more obedient” than was Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Albany already has a track record of Chinese influence. Congress should determine who is really driving the campaign against America’s AI build-out.
My organization, the Coalition for Affordability and Prosperity, raised the issue of foreign influence in our AI infrastructure build-out in a June 5 letter to the House and Senate intelligence committees and the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. It was weeks before Ms. Hochul signed her order.
New Yorkers deserve a debate free from foreign malign influence. They deserve to know who is behind moratoriums such as Ms. Hochul’s. One such person, Neville Roy Singham, funds the People’s Forum in Manhattan.
Mr. Singham, a committed communist who moved to Shanghai after selling his company for nearly $1 billion, is married to the co-founder of Code Pink. Mr. Singham’s anti-AI network is described as “enormous” and is responsible for stalling $23.6 billion in AI infrastructure investment across 14 states.
A grand jury in the Southern District of New York is reportedly investigating Mr. Singham’s network, whose anti-AI propaganda is spearheaded by the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Kathy Hochul just gave him the momentum he did not need.
Nobody claims Ms. Hochul knew who was cheering her on, but the grand jury is investigating the same nonprofit network that has spent years opposing American data center construction. State media outlets tied to Beijing and Moscow have run parallel messaging warning Americans that this infrastructure will wreck their grid and water supply.
China subsidizes its own AI build-out while funding opposition to ours. Let that sink in.
New Yorkers with real concerns about their utility bills and water tables are not part of that story. They deserve a governor who fixes the problem. What they got instead is a pause that happens to align with a foreign campaign now under scrutiny by federal prosecutors.
President Trump was on Ms. Hochul within a day, posting on Truth Social that data centers are one of the biggest drivers of American jobs and telling her to reverse course immediately. He is not wrong that the politics here cut both ways.
Other states are watching. Georgia, Maryland, Oklahoma, Vermont and Virginia all have moratorium bills pending, and every one of those legislatures is waiting to see whether New York pays a price.
Ms. Hochul did not single-handedly create New York’s electricity problem, but she just guaranteed the state will not fix it for at least another year. Meanwhile, the people who wanted this outcome for reasons unrelated to anyone’s utility bill get exactly what they asked for.
New Yorkers have genuine concerns about data centers, and they deserve a debate free of the foreign influence campaign run by proxies such as Neville Roy Singham.
A moratorium is not leadership. It is closing your eyes and hoping the problem goes away before the next election.
• Chuck Flint is executive director of the Coalition for Affordability and Prosperity.
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