Bitcoin Policy Institute takes its AI foreign influence fight to Capitol Hill

A think tank best known for advocating Bitcoin-friendly policy just held court in one of the most politically charged rooms on Capitol Hill, and the topic wasn’t crypto. It was China. The Bitcoin Policy Institute hosted a fireside chat on July 29 in the House Select Committee on the CCP’s hearing room, presenting research that documents how foreign influence operations connected to the Chinese Communist Party have systematically targeted US AI infrastructure development. The conversation featured BPI Head of Research Sam Lyman and journalist Robby Soave. The numbers behind the influence campaign BPI’s research, published across two reports in May and June 2026, estimates that approximately $23.6 billion in proposed AI infrastructure investments have been blocked or delayed as a result of these campaigns, spanning 21 separate campaigns across 14 different states. BPI’s reports document that the influence operations are connected to 10 data center moratoria, one permanent ban on data center construction, and four proposals that were scrapped entirely. The initial report, released on May 18, 2026, zeroed in on two key vectors of influence. First, CCP-affiliated state media amplifying ...