Soros Groups Orchestrated China-Funded Scheme To Harass Seattle Data Center Developers and Workers: Lawsuit

The lead plaintiff, a union electrician in Washington, alleges the scheme put him out of work and cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars in wages

A class action lawsuit filed this week accuses the Foundation to Promote Open Society, the central cog in billionaire liberal donor George Soros’s behemoth nonprofit network, of conspiring to execute a Chinese-backed scheme to obstruct data center development in Seattle. According to the complaint reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, the alleged scheme has cost workers jobs and subjected their families to harassment.

The lawsuit comes amid heightened scrutiny of the growing anti-data center movement, which has largely posed as grassroots, but has ties to deep-pocketed left-wing funders. Data center development was among the most important issues for Americans during Tuesday’s elections, according to exit polls, while voters approved 40 out of 41 ballot measures, offered nationwide, placing new restrictions on data center construction.

President Donald Trump and other lawmakers have suggested China is behind the opposition to data centers, which house much of the computing power needed by the U.S. artificial intelligence business. “China could not be happier with this anti-data center movement,” Trump said in August. Days earlier, xAI, the social media platform, reported that its safety team had identified a network of 200,000 Chinese “inauthentic accounts,” hundreds of which had actively posted anti-data center content claiming that data centers strain the grid, drive energy prices up, and enrich a handful of wealthy developers.

Like several cities, counties, and states nationwide, Seattle recently voted to adopt a measure banning new data center development, after pressure and protests from local activist groups. According to the class action complaint, those groups received funding originating from international sources, namely China, that was funneled through the Foundation to Promote Open Society and the Proteus Fund, another massive left-wing nonprofit. The Proteus Fund is not part of the Open Society Foundations network, but has collaborated on various liberal initiatives with the fund, according to the nonprofit watchdog Influence Watch.

Seattle’s moratorium had an acute impact on Monte Pringle, the lawsuit’s principal plaintiff and licensed electrician who lost at least $200,000 in wages and multiple long-term job opportunities, the complaint states. Pringle and other members of the class are individuals who are, or were, employed at companies involved in building data centers in Washington.

Pringle, for example, had been hired to work on a Microsoft project in Malaga, Wash., before the project was scrapped due to constant protests and unlawful site entries.

“This case is about protecting American workers and American jobs,” Rich Kelsey, counsel at Impresa Legal Group, which is representing Pringle in the case, said in a statement to the Free Beacon.

“Mr. Pringle and working Americans like him are being shut out by an intentional effort to interfere with their right to work by individuals and groups funded for the purpose of damaging our economy,” he continued. “The complaint alleges that funding for this campaign against data center companies, their employees, and contractors may trace back to foreign economic competitors.”

Kelsey said there has been a war waged on the nation’s digital economy and that the “battlefield has been data centers.”

In addition to the Foundation to Promote Open Society and the Proteus Fund, the complaint lists two Seattle-area chapters of the Indivisible Project, which is known for organizing nationwide anti-Trump “No Kings” protests, and three activists who founded or run local groups that staged disruptive protests against data centers.

The groups, fueled by big funders, allegedly entered secured private data center construction sites without permission, blocked vehicle and pedestrian entrances, and prevented construction workers from accessing their assigned jobs. They also allegedly threatened workers with violence.

Altogether, those actions led to the decision to suspend or abandon projects and influenced Seattle’s moratorium on new projects.

“Defendants’ proliferation of anti-data center activities instilled significant fear and anxiety in Pringle and others that they may be the next targets of physical violence as Defendants continue to foment hatred against data center employees across Washington State,” the complaint adds.

The complaint does not identify a particular foreign payment to the nonprofits, but notes that federal investigative efforts “point to at least partial Chinese government funding.” An investigation published earlier this year by the Bitcoin Policy Institute linked several anti-data center campaigns to Chinese government-tied organizations.

Following that report, Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, called for a federal probe and said: “a network of foreign actors, led by the Chinese Communist Party, is attempting to manipulate U.S. policy and public opinion on data centers.”

And two of the defendants listed in the lawsuit are local chapters of Indivisible, which has received significant funding from left-wing Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss. According to tax filings dating back several years, one of Wyss’s funds has directed more than $7 million to Indivisible, including $1 million between 2024 and 2025.

“China has been a growing economic powerhouse and its primary interest is to weaken the United States and to reduce its enormous advantage—first in AI and second in data processing,” a person familiar with the litigation, who asked not to be named since the litigation is active, told the Free Beacon.

“That’s what this is all about. That is all that China cares about.”