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Current Affairs

In a small Virginia town, distrust of Big Tech hampers Trump’s AI push

The front page of the Danville Register & Bee, a local newspaper in southern Virginia with a circulation of fewer than 4,000, carried an unusual…

By Samantha Johnson / August 26, 2026

The front page of the Danville Register & Bee, a local newspaper in southern Virginia with a circulation of fewer than 4,000, carried an unusual headline.

“LEADER: CHINA BEHIND THE MISCONCEPTIONS”, it read, above a photograph of two homes dwarfed by a data centre behind.

The leader in question was Vic Ingram, chair of the Danville-Pittsylvania Regional Industrial Facility Authority (RIFA), a local body jointly established by the city of Danville and neighbouring Pittsylvania County to promote economic development in one of the poorest parts of the state.

Ingram had just helped secure what officials described as the biggest economic development project in southern Virginia’s history: a proposed data-centre campus at Berry Hill, a 3,500-acre (1,416-hectare) industrial site about 16 kilometres outside Danville.

But some residents were questioning the project at public meetings and on social media over its environmental impact, power requirements, and the secrecy surrounding its approval.

As the chorus of discontent grew louder, Ingram told the local newspaper in June that much of the “propaganda” online against the area’s first-ever data centres was driven by the “Communist Chinese”.

Xi Jinping calls for ‘openness’ in AI development amid US accusations

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