Activist network wants you scared of AI killing people — unless China’s using it

Former Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon made a splash in early September for resigning and claiming artificial intelligence could one day kill humanity. One American anti-capitalist group was especially happy to see it.

“They know that they’re in way over their head and that they need international outrage, which I see happening, about the runaway AI agents,” said Marcy Winograd, media producer for Code Pink, in the group’s Sept. 17 podcast discussing Coxon.

“How about putting this on the cards? Shut down the data centers and shut down OpenAI, Anthropic, all of those,” she asked Code Pink cofounder Medea Benjamin. “What do you think?”

“Well, I think there is incredible momentum right now to do something, and unfortunately, it’s not to shut them all down, but it is to have some kind of safety rules,” Benjamin said. The Washington-based activist, known for getting kicked out of congressional hearings for protesting, noted that far-left Democrats are proposing strict AI guardrails in Congress.

Anti-war activist Medea Benjamin shouts in protest as Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin make the case to the Senate Appropriations Committee that the United States should immediately send aid to Israel and Ukraine on Oct. 31, 2023, at the Capitol in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The picture is much different when Code Pink describes China, where the group has taken multiple field trips. A January 2025 article by Code Pink declared that the Chinese state-controlled AI company DeepSeek is an “incredible achievement” in China’s competition with the United States. The article accuses American AI developers of boosting “the American war machine,” helping Israel “commit genocide,” killing the environment, and benefiting “the wealthy few.”

Code Pink is part of an overlapping activist network spearheaded by cofounder Jodie Evans and her husband, China-based Marxist Neville Singham. In keeping with the news cycle, organizations in the network have added AI to their many talking points for why Americans should fear their “capitalist” economy and military. Recent polling suggests Americans broadly agree with their push to slow down AI development, as the communist adversary the leftists support is powering ahead with the technology for military purposes.

“China’s stated policy, going back nearly a decade, is to beat the United States in the AI race,” Sam Lyman, head of research at Bitcoin Policy Institute, told the Washington Examiner. “So naturally, the CCP wants to turn Americans against AI.”

“Many Americans have genuine concerns about AI and the broader data center buildout,” said Lyman, a former Treasury Department advisor. “Those concerns deserve a fair hearing. But a fair hearing requires transparency into the nonprofits and political networks shaping the debate, many of which have been funded by a Shanghai-based Marxist who openly supports China over the United States. Americans deserve to know how and why these CCP-aligned organizations have decided to weigh in so heavily on this topic.”

Battling ‘imperialist monopoly’

Singham was a technology entrepreneur who sold his Chicago-based company, Thoughtworks, in 2017 and funneled his wealth to leftist causes. Journalists and researchers have traced his overall influence to around 2,000 groups worldwide that oppose deportations, support for Israel, or other U.S. policies while carrying water for the narratives of hostile regimes. A federal grand jury is investigating Singham for possible financial and foreign agent-related crimes, U.S. officials anonymously told media outlets over the summer.

China’s progress on AI reveals the failures of American capitalism and “imperialist monopoly,” according to Tricontinental, a think tank that lists Singham as board chairman. The Chinese Communist Party hosted Singham and Tricontinental at a November 2025 summit in Shanghai, where speakers promoted “digital sovereignty and AI,” the think tank’s website shows.

The state-backed event also unveiled a history paper Singham wrote for Tricontinental about the CCP and the Soviet Union’s “brilliant” foreign policy strategies against “fascist” rivals.

Neville Singham, third from left, poses for a photo with Tricontinental Executive Director Vijay Prashad, left, at a Chinese state-backed forum held on Nov. 13-14, 2025, in Shanghai. (Global South Academic Forum/East China Normal University)

The Party for Socialism and Liberation, which partners with leaders of other Singham-backed groups, is leading protests in America against AI data centers that it says steal jobs. The party is no less overt in its pro-China sympathies: it released statements on Sept. 9 glowing with praise for Mao Zedong on the 50th anniversary of his death.

“It seems appropriate to take careful note of his critical role in the transformation of China from a suffering victim of foreign imperialism and domestic exploitation into a modernizing socialist state that rapidly and dramatically improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people,” the PSL said of Mao, leaving out the tens of millions of deaths he caused through famine and political violence.

Code Pink, Tricontinental, and the PSL did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the Washington Examiner.

Lyman has sought to raise awareness of Singham’s influence in Congress and gave warnings on Capitol Hill in July.

“It’s concerning that China-aligned activists are shaping public opinion here at home because the propaganda they spread gives the advantage to the CCP,” he told the Washington Examiner. “And if the CCP wins the AI race, the global balance of power could very well tip to the East. A world where China is more powerful than the U.S. is not a world that is safe for liberty and human rights.”

China’s AI-powered war machine

While homegrown leftists decry AI’s fusion with a “military industrial complex,” the same is happening on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, according to U.S. and international officials.

As early as 2019, the United Nations Security Council reported that Libyan military forces used a Chinese AI-powered drone called Wing Loong II to cause dozens of deaths in a local conflict. The U.N. portrayed the killings as breaking international law.

Pedestrians wait near a giant screen promoting recruitment for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in Beijing, May 4, 2016. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

China was also using facial and gait recognition tools to monitor political targets as of that year, the State Department reported. This technology has assisted what the United States calls a CCP genocide against Uyghur Muslims and other religious minorities, who reportedly face detainment, internment camps, forced labor, and torture.

Additionally, a May 2025 hearing for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission sounded the alarm on how AI is turbocharging China’s military via the development of combat machinery such as drones and “robotic dogs.”

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army is issuing requests to AI developers to create tools for numerous military functions, including intelligence, targeting, and more, according to research from Georgetown University published in February. Some requests were for DeepSeek’s technology, a finding that bolsters assertions from Congress that the company is in bed with the CCP’s military and spying apparatus.

China is showing “an emphasis on AI applications that would counter perceived U.S. military advantages,” the Georgetown study found. “This emphasis was especially apparent in numerous requests for technologies to detect U.S. naval assets on and under the sea, as well as technologies that could counteract U.S. space-based systems,” according to the researchers.

INTENSE GOVERNMENT SURVEILLANCE BECAME NORMAL AFTER 9/11. AMERICANS NOW SAY IT’S TOO MUCH

The push for naval capabilities could add to the threat posed if President Xi Jinping acts on his threats to invade Taiwan, an island that provides crucial electronics to the United States. Experts believe a war with China over Taiwan would revolve heavily around the strength of both sides’ navies.

China’s Defense Ministry labeled reports of DeepSeek’s military ties as “slander and smear” in June 2025.

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