Singham Network is CCP ‘influence vector’ in AI competition between U.S. and China, institute says

A new report argues that the Singham Network is part of a Chinese Communist Party “influence vector” seeking to steer the American policy debate related to the artificial intelligence competition between the U.S. and China in favor of the CCP.

This alleged “campaign against American AI” is “being waged across three vectors of foreign influence,” the Bitcoin Policy Institute said in a new report released this week, with one of the three “influence vectors” being the pro-China financial and activist network backed by wealthy Marxist businessman Neville Roy Singham.

The Bitcoin Policy Institute describes itself as “the leading non-profit, non-partisan think tank dedicated to advancing sound Bitcoin policy through research, education, and direct engagement with policymakers.”

“Foreign state media” and “foreign-billionaire funding" in play

“The CCP-aligned Singham network, a US 501(c)(3) ecosystem funded by Shanghai-based U.S. expatriate Neville Roy Singham, who is currently under congressional inquiry for his reported ties to the CCP, has openly collaborated with China’s official state media organs and spent nearly five years producing parallel domestic content opposing US AI infrastructure, AI labs, and AI export controls,” the institute’s new report contended.

It added that the Singham Network was “the most operationally significant foreign-aligned actor” pushing the CCP’s line in the AI debate. The new report — titled “Foreign Influence in the Campaign against American AI” — was written by the institute’s head of research, Sam Lyman, who previously worked as a senior advisor and chief speechwriter for Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

The report also pointed to the role played by “foreign state media” and “foreign-billionaire funding.”

“Ensuring that AI is safe and empowers American workers must be a top priority for U.S. policymakers,” the institute’s new report argued. “But the discussion about AI safety should not be influenced by geopolitical rivals, especially China […] an honest conversation about AI safety requires filtering any foreign influence.”

The institute pointed to a “disturbing trend” of “international actors” who are “working through state media organizations, nonprofit networks, and dark money groups to shape U.S. policy and public opinion on artificial intelligence.”

The new report specifically pointed to the role played by the Singham-linked Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, led by close Singham ally Vijay Prashad, as well as the role played by the radical far-left anti-war group Code Pink, which was co-founded by Singham’s wife, Jodie Evans.

Additional research by Just the News showed that other elements of the Singham Network — including Singham-aligned outlets like the People’s Dispatch, NewsClick, and BreakThrough News — also pushed the same pro-China and anti-U.S. narratives in the AI policy debate.

Just the News has previously reported on how these and other radical activist groups have leadership links or financial ties to the funding network backed by Singham, who himself is linked to the CCP and whom some in his network call "Comrade." 

“This extensive, multiyear foreign influence campaign has been taking place against the backdrop of mounting tensions between the U.S. and China,” the Bitcoin Policy Institute argued this week, adding that “the choice facing our country — and the world — is not between AI or no AI but between American AI or Chinese AI.”

Singham did not respond to a request sent to him through his activist wife.

Tricontinental “dossiers” and reports push the CCP line

Tricontinental issued a November 2021 “dossier” on “Big Tech and the Current Challenges Facing the Class Struggle” which aimed to praise the Chinese government and attack the U.S., especially in the technology arena, critiquing the U.S. for not allowing China access to all the American tech it wanted.

“Though China’s state capacity has allowed it to be the first country to implement a commercial 5G network on a large scale, the country’s direct and indirect dependence on U.S. integrated circuit products and technologies serves as the main choke-point for the U.S. to delay or even block China’s progress,” the report by Tricontinental said. “The U.S.’s centrality to the production of cutting-edge semiconductors and the machines that produce them, as well as to the progress of the technological frontier in these segments, gives the country the ability to intervene in the global production network and to activate channels to block China’s development in Information and Communication Technologies, given the latter’s critical dependence on these core components.”

The Tricontinental dossier also criticized U.S. actions aimed at the CCP-linked tech behemoth Huawei.

“As Huawei is the only company offering large quantities of the necessary equipment to implement a 5G network on a large scale, banning the company — as the U.S. has suggested — would put those countries that do not have the ability to build their own infrastructures and compete in the telecommunications equipment market in a disadvantaged position in various other markets and set them back in the production of the specific masses of data needed for the development of artificial intelligence,” Tricontinental wrote.

The Singham-linked group also argued that countries should not rely on the U.S. for technology, writing, “The provision of financial resources to implement 5G in the periphery is one area where competition between the great powers as well as developed economies is on display. Without a sovereign development project, peripheral countries are left to follow the development models designed in the interests of and aligned with the objectives of the great powers or developed countries.”

A piece by Tricontinental in April 2023 was titled “You Are Reading This Thanks to Semiconductors: The Seventeenth Newsletter” and was written by Prashad himself. The piece openly parroted the Chinese government’s arguments attacking U.S. limitations on technology transfers tied to China’s semiconductor industry.

The Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security had announced at the time that it was “implementing a series of targeted updates to its export controls as part of BIS’s ongoing efforts to protect U.S. national security and foreign policy interests” and that “these updates will restrict the People’s Republic of China’s ability to both purchase and manufacture certain high-end chips used in military applications and build on prior policies, company-specific actions, and less public regulatory, legal, and enforcement actions taken by BIS.”

“The export controls announced in the two rules today restrict the PRC’s ability to obtain advanced computing chips, develop and maintain supercomputers, and manufacture advanced semiconductors,” the Commerce Department said at the time. “These items and capabilities are used by the PRC to produce advanced military systems including weapons of mass destruction; improve the speed and accuracy of its military decision making, planning, and logistics, as well as of its autonomous military systems; and commit human rights abuses.”

The piece by Prashad for Tricontinental continued by stating that “an expert on the subject told the Financial Times, ‘The whole point of the policy is to kneecap China’s AI [Artificial Intelligence] and HPC [High Performance Computing] efforts’.” However, the full quote from the Financial Times — which was truncated by Prashad — noted U.S. concerns about Chinese military applications.

“The whole point of the policy is to kneecap China’s AI and HPC efforts, at least those related to the military, with the commercial side collateral damage from the US government point of view,” Douglas Fuller, an expert on the Chinese semiconductor industry at Copenhagen Business School, had told the outlet.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman: "A blow to global industrial and supply chains and world economic recovery"

The piece by Prashad continued that “the next day, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning” ripped into the October 2022 announcement by the U.S. government, with Prashad quoting the Chinese official at length.

“In order to maintain its sci-tech hegemony, the U.S. has been abusing export control measures to wantonly block and hobble Chinese enterprises. Such practice runs counter to the principle of fair competition and international trade rules. It will not only harm Chinese companies’ legitimate rights and interests but also hurt the interests of U.S. companies,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning said on October 8, 2022 in a quote included by Prashad. “It will hinder international sci-tech exchange and trade cooperation and deal a blow to global industrial and supply chains and world economic recovery. By politicising tech and trade issues and using them as a tool and weapon, the U.S. cannot hold back China’s development but will only hurt and isolate itself when its action backfires.”

The Bitcoin Policy Institute report critiqued the Tricontinental report by Prashad. “That is Beijing’s official position, issued the day after the U.S. export controls on semiconductors dropped, parroted by a US 501(c)(3) publication six months later, co-produced with the Singham-network ‘No Cold War’ coalition,” the new report said.

The article by Prashad added that “it is important to note that the U.S. is not only targeting China in this conflict: Washington fears that China’s technological development will lead, through trade and investment, to the dispersal of advanced technologies more broadly throughout the world, namely, to states in the Global South that the U.S. sees as a threat. This would be a significant blow to the U.S.’s power over these countries.”

Bappa Sinha, like Singham, is a far-left tech executive, the founder and chief technology officer at Virtunet Systems. The company’s advisors include Cruz Bustamante, the former Democratic lieutenant governor of California

The March 2026 piece by Tricontinental written by Sinha was titled, “Breaking the Stranglehold: How China is Shattering U.S. Technological Hegemony.” China’s rapid technological advances offer hope for the Global South to break the dominance and dependence imposed by the West, he said.

“For over a century, imperial power has rested not merely on military force or financial dominance, but on monopolistic control over the most advanced means of production. From the industrial revolution through the age of digital platforms, successive imperial cores have secured global dominance by capturing technological frontiers, extracting monopoly rents, and using those rents to finance further technological leadership,” Sinha wrote. “This cycle produced what appeared to be a self-reproducing hierarchy: the imperial core monopolised technology and capital, the periphery supplied labour and resources, and unequal exchange transferred value upward, even in the absence of formal colonial rule.”

Quoting Lenin

Sinha also claimed: “The rise of China has placed that system under strain. The United States’ escalating campaign of export controls, sanctions, and technology embargo against China is widely described as a ‘great power competition’. Such framings obscure the real stakes. This is not simply a rivalry between two nations but a confrontation between two fundamentally different logics of technological development: one rooted in monopoly and rent extraction, the other in production, scale, and diffusion. At stake is not only U.S. primacy, but the viability of technological monopoly as the foundation of contemporary imperialism.”

The piece by Sinha also referenced Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin, whom Sinha said “identified imperialism as the monopoly stage of capitalism.”

“The multipolar world is not a future aspiration. It is a present condition,” Sinha’s anti-U.S. and pro-China piece concluded. “For the first time in five hundred years, liberation for the Global South from the Western-dominated order built on genocide, slavery and loot, and later sustained through unequal exchange, appears to be materially possible.”

The People’s Dispatch also echoes CCP themes

The People’s Dispatch — a Singham-linked outlet closely tied to the People’s Forum — has also pushed anti-U.S. and pro-China pieces focused on the AI and tech race.

Bappa Sinha is also an author at the People’s Dispatch, and has penned similar articles there.

The same day that his March 2026 story for Tricontinental came out, the People’s Dispatch also published a story by him titled, “Kill chain: Silicon Valley, AI, and the war on Iran.” The article aimed to undermine the U.S. military’s use of AI, with the piece also harshly criticizing Israel.

“The traditional process of military targeting, what the Pentagon calls the ‘kill chain’, historically required teams of thousands of intelligence analysts poring over imagery, cross-referencing reports, and building target packages over days or weeks,” Sinha wrote. “Now it’s done in seconds.”

Sinha added: “AI use in the Iran war did not emerge from nowhere. Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza provided the testing ground. The Israeli military deployed AI systems called Lavender and Gospel to identify targets, programmed to accept up to 100 civilian casualties for a single strike on a suspected Hamas combatant. Over 75,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023. What was tested in Gaza has now been scaled up against Iran.”

The new Bitcoin Policy Institute report remarked that “same-day publication across two sister outlets is often the signature of a coordinated messaging operation.”

Sinha also wrote another piece for the People’s Dispatch back in March 2025 on “Trump 2.0: U.S. revivalism driven by tech oligarchy” where he alleged that “the big tech monopolies and their billionaire owners are front and center in the Trump administration and its ambitious efforts to reshape US domestic and foreign policy.”

Mauro Ramos — described as a “Beijing-based Brazilian journalist” for the People’s Dispatch — has written numerous pro-CCP articles, including a January 2024 one titled, “Understanding the latest U.S. restrictions on chip exports to China. The latest measures aim to limit China’s AI technological development; though specialists think it will have a limited impact.”

Ramos wrote another article for the People’s Dispatch in March 2025 where he critiqued American democracy and praised the version of “democracy” promoted by the CCP.

“What are the differences between U.S. and Chinese democracy?” Ramos wrote. “It’s time to build consensus on how harmful US corporate-led democracy is and make some historic justice with China by understanding the whole-process people’s democracy.”

“The China Report” sides with the CCP in AI debate

The Singham-linked BreakThrough News show dubbed “The China Report” has also aimed to critique the U.S. over AI and tech while pushing pro-China themes on this topic. The show is produced “in collaboration with” the Singham-linked group called Pivot to Peace.

“Our understanding of China — and U.S.-China relations — has become a defining feature of all global politics. The China Report is a weekly show that provides an independent view of the country we are taught to hate, but know so little about. We help you navigate beyond the headlines with expert analysis and on-the-ground perspectives,” the outlet says of this show.

The YouTube description for a February 2025 episode says that Chinese AI “DeepSeek still continues to dominate the news, and corporate media is scrambling to undermine Chinese tech, resurrecting the usual anti-China racist tropes.”

An episode in November 2025 argued that “China is experiencing an AI revolution, but what does this $84 billion industry mean for Chinese citizens and the Global South? This week, Professor Shen Yi of Fudan University in Shanghai joins Amanda Yee to discuss how China is harnessing artificial intelligence to transform its economy and society, and how it plans to bridge the digital divide so that no one is left behind.”

Indian outlet tied to Singham also critiques U.S. over AI, defending radical Palestinians

Bappa Sinha — the far-left technology writer who published AI-focused pieces at both Tricontinental and the People’s Dispatch — also published similar articles at NewsClick, a Singham-linked and India-based outlet.

One such April 2024 story on “How AI Kill-Lists Drive Israeli Genocide in Gaza” alleged that “a probe report reveals how AI programs, such as Lavender and The Gospel, were used to target supposed Palestinian militants in Gaza through bombing attacks that resulted in mass civilian casualties.”

Another such article in October 2025 alleging “Big Tech’s Deep Links With Genocide in Gaza” contended that “Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Palantir are not mere tech corporations — they are weapons manufacturers of the digital age, producing infrastructure of genocide.”

The New York Times reported in 2023 that “in New Delhi, corporate filings show, Mr. Singham’s network financed a news site, NewsClick, that sprinkled its coverage with Chinese government talking points.” The Hindu reported in 2023 about Indian authorities conducting raids related to NewsClick, with the outlet stating that Anurag Thakur, the Indian Union Information and Broadcasting Minister, “said investigating agencies are independent and they act according to law.”

“I don’t have to justify the raids. If someone has committed any wrong, investigating agencies do act on them. Nowhere it is written that if you have wrongfully acquired wealth and committed offense, the investigating agencies would not take action,” Anurag Thakur said of the Singham-linked raids.

The Indian outlet also published statements in 2023 from a lawyer linked to NewsClick and from Singham himself denying wrongdoing, with Singham saying his statement was “a rejection of the false claims that I have received funds from any government or political party, including China and the Communist Party of China.”

The outlet said in 2024 that New Delhi police had argued that the “ultimate paymaster” for NewsClick was the “Chinese state.” New Delhi police also argued that Singham was plotting “nothing else but to forcibly replace Indian democracy with the Party-State system like the one that exists in present-day China.”

It was also reported by Fox News earlier this year that the outlet “tracked $10.5 million” from the Singham-linked Justice and Education Fund sent to NewsClick from 2019 through 2023.

Calls for Singham Network to be held accountable under FARA laws continue

Republicans in Congress have spent years pushing the Justice Department and IRS to scrutinize and investigate the CCP-linked activist network in the U.S., but so far the groups organizing far-left protests nationwide appear to retain their tax-exempt status and have avoided any foreign agent laws regarding prosecutions.

GOP members have long called for investigations into the Singham network, its links to the CCP, its leadership in nationwide leftwing protests, and its role in anti-Israel encampments, vandalism, and violence on campus. The GOP has wanted the DOJ to look into possible Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) violations and has called upon the Treasury Department and IRS to consider revoking the tax-exempt status for Singham’s network of non-profits.

The Bitcoin Policy Institute argued in its new report that “Treasury and the FBI should treat continued FARA non-registration of the Singham network as the open-record matter it is: The legal threshold for designation has been met in public reporting, and continued non-action signals a policy choice rather than an evidentiary gap.”

The GOP-led House Oversight Committee also voted this year to subpoena Singham for information about this sprawling activist network. The People’s Forum responded to GOP calls for investigations with derision back in 2024. 

“The political assault against the People’s Forum is part of a larger effort by Republicans and other right-wing forces in Congress to criminalize and demonize Palestinian, Muslim-American, and anti-war organizations,” the communist group tweeted at the time.