Don't Let Foreign Actors Set the Terms of Florida's Data Center Debate

FDISA board member Dr. Brian Fonseca has a new op-ed in the Miami Herald. Dr. Fonseca is Vice Provost for Defense and National Security Research and Director of the Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy at Florida International University. Before joining FIU, he led socio-cultural intelligence analysis at U.S. Southern Command, and he served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1997 to 2004. His research has long focused on national security and foreign policy, with particular attention to China, Russia, and cyberspace.

His piece looks at recent reports of foreign-linked accounts inserting themselves into America's argument over data centers. He makes a case FDISA shares. Floridians' concerns about water, power, land use and cost are real and deserve hard questions. Those questions should be answered on the facts, by Floridians, under the protections Florida already has in law.

On August 28, X’s safety team disclosed it had identified roughly 200,000 suspected Chinese inauthentic accounts operating on the platform. About 200 of them were posting content X said could manipulate the American debate over artificial intelligence and energy policy. The accounts were pushing claims that data centers are driving up household electricity prices and straining the power grid, alongside AI-generated cartoons depicting developers enriching themselves at the public’s expense.

The social media platform did not disclose how many Americans saw the posts, and no independent researcher has publicly verified the attribution. Still, the activity is worth taking seriously. TOP VIDEOS The video player is currently playing an ad.

This was not the first warning. In June, OpenAI reported it had disrupted a likely Chinese-origin influence operation that used its models to generate social media posts and images claiming that U.S. data center development was raising electricity prices for ordinary Americans. OpenAI found no evidence the campaign broke through meaningfully, but the choice of target was telling.

Read the full op-ed in the Miami Herald →
https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article317186570.html

Originally published in the Miami Herald, September 10, 2026.