The Left-wing activist network behind the nationwide “No Kings” protests has expanded its political battlefield to include artificial intelligence, data centers, and Flock license plate cameras, according to a new report examining the groups, funding, and messaging driving the campaigns.
Organizations tied to the same activist ecosystem that has mobilized against President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Tesla, Israel, and ICE are increasingly organizing opposition to the infrastructure needed to power AI and to the surveillance technology used by local police departments.
The overlap comes from Neville Roy Singham, a Connecticut-born tech entrepreneur who moved to Shanghai and has emerged as a major funder of American Marxist and Left-wing organizations. Singham and organizations he has supported have denied acting at the direction of the Chinese government or any political party, and neither Singham nor the organizations have been charged with wrongdoing.
A new report commissioned by Consumer Action for a Strong Economy shows that activists have increasingly connected opposition to data centers with concerns about artificial intelligence, policing, immigration enforcement, energy consumption, and surveillance.
“The money, media infrastructure, organizing capacity, and campaign objectives … converge in the same ecosystem,” the report states. The findings offer a picture of an activist movement that has repeatedly repurposed existing protest infrastructure for new political causes.
At the center of that effort are organizations associated with Singham, including the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), CodePink, The People’s Forum, and the ANSWER Coalition. Their activities have frequently intersected with organizations that operate closer to the mainstream Democratic activist world, including Indivisible and the Sunrise Movement.
Opposition to the technology has also attracted Republicans and other Americans who don’t have connections to the political Left, particularly over concerns about privacy, data retention, and how law enforcement uses license-plate data. Republican officials including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott have taken action against Flock cameras, while Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has launched an investigation into the technology.
But the activist network identified in the report has sought to deliberately combine the issues. According to the report, social media posts mentioning both Flock and data centers jumped from 639 during the 10 weeks preceding May 19 to 9,009 during the following 10 weeks — an increase of more than 14 times.
Among posts for which the researchers were able to determine political affiliation, 81% came from conservative or libertarian accounts, suggesting that the messaging had moved beyond the activist circles that initially promoted it. “Issue pairings rarely multiply fourteen-fold in a matter of weeks without a catalyst, particularly when the surge begins immediately after organizers start promoting the connection,” the report states.
Rob Joyce, former National Security Agency cybersecurity director, told Fox News that the political effect of such campaigns can matter even when activists do not explicitly advocate for a foreign government.
“These influence actions are cognitive warfare,” Joyce said. “Foreign actors don’t need Americans to become pro-China. They need Americans to argue for the outcomes Beijing wants.”
In Denver, PSL activists promoted a campaign against data centers while simultaneously attacking Flock cameras and describing both as components of a broader surveillance system. By May, the Denver PSL chapter was urging residents to oppose data center construction with the slogan “FIGHTING BACK AGAINST DATA CENTERS MEANS FIGHTING FOR SOCIALISM!” The group also published material opposing Flock cameras.
In Tucson, Arizona, PSL joined a coalition opposing Flock cameras and data centers for an event called “It’s ALL Connected.” Organizers asked participants what mass surveillance and data centers had in common, providing their own answer: “IT’S ALL CONNECTED.”
CodePink has similarly sought to frame data centers as part of a larger “war economy,” arguing that the facilities are tied to artificial intelligence companies, military contractors, Palantir, ICE, and surveillance technology. The organization has urged activists to oppose data center projects as part of a broader campaign against the American defense and technology industries.
Flock cameras are particularly useful to activists attempting to make that argument because they provide a physical target for concerns about increasingly centralized computing and surveillance. “Flock gives that abstraction a visible local target,” the report says, allowing activists to connect an individual police camera or license-plate reader to a much broader argument about cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and data infrastructure.
The report’s authors argue that the campaign has already produced measurable effects on American infrastructure development. It identifies four data center projects that were dropped, 10 local governments that imposed construction moratoriums, and one project that was permanently banned, representing what the report estimates to be approximately $23.6 billion in delayed or blocked investment.
The campaign is also attracting increased scrutiny because of Singham’s broader network of political and nonprofit organizations. Congress has investigated Singham’s funding relationships, while the Senate Judiciary Committee has previously asked the Justice Department and FBI to examine whether CodePink and The People’s Forum should register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The House Oversight Committee has also sought information about Singham’s financial relationships with Left-wing organizations, while the House Ways and Means Committee has subpoenaed records from BreakThrough News, Tricontinental, and The People’s Forum.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York has separately launched a grand jury investigation into Singham and financial activity involving his network.
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