Marsha Blackburn’s Red Scare Campaign Pivots From AI to the Farmland
The Tennessee gubernatorial candidate’s 'fortune cookie' ad is racist garbage. It’s also notable for what it doesn’t invoke: her obsession with beating China in a nebulous AI race.
Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn’s lengthy political career is owed to her far-right impulses and hateful rhetoric. She was an early adopter of the Tea Party movement and an early backer of then-candidate Donald Trump during his first presidential run. In 2018, after roughly 16 years serving in the House of Representatives, she won a Senate seat with Trump’s support.
Much of her first term in the Senate was spent pinning America’s ills on China. In late 2020, she posted that China “has a 5,000 year history of cheating and stealing.” In 2023, she accused Barbie movie producers of intentionally displaying a map that “supports Communist China’s territorial claims to the South China Sea.” (The map in the scene she referenced was supposed to be “a child-like crayon drawing,” a Warner Bros. spokesperson rebutted.)
When Blackburn ran for re-election in 2024, her campaign circulated an advertisement called “Breaking China,” where she threw down plates with the Chinese flag on them. “China stole our jobs, sent us a virus, they’re buying up our land and spying on us,” she said.
Now 74 years old, Blackburn is running for Tennessee governor. She is very likely to win, though lately she’s been trying and failing to explain why she’s been evading debates in the lead-up to next month’s GOP gubernatorial primary. Rather than appearing on stage with her main opponent, Rep. John Rose (an equally thirsty MAGA acolyte), Blackburn is hoping that an extra obnoxious and xenophobic campaign ad about—you guessed it, China—will carry her home. Take it away, senator:
Blackburn: “How hard am I gonna crack down on China? Well, here’s a clue.”
Narrator: “Marsha Blackburn worked with President Trump to take on communist China. As governor, Marsha will fight to protect Tennessee land from Chinese front companies, close loopholes, and hunt down every communist who tries to defy us.”
Blackburn: “It doesn’t take a fortune cookie to figure it out. Here in Tennessee, we’re going to stop communist China and protect Tennessee land.”
As others have clocked, fortune cookies have little to do with China. That part of the ad is racist. The rest is much ado about nothing. There is no evidence that “Chinese front companies” are buying up land in Tennessee; Blackburn admitted as much to a local reporter. Recent reporting indicates that 2% of agricultural land in the United States is foreign-owned, and out of that segment, less than 1% is estimated to be owned by Chinese entities. Tennessee has its own laws on the books that restrict foreign investment in agriculture and real estate. Like many conservative policy planks, this is Blackburn treating her constituents like they’re cats drawn to a laser pointer. Oooh, look over here!
If we presuppose that Blackburn’s first ad of this election cycle was inevitably going to blame China for something or other, then the question becomes: why did she make “farmland” her bogeyman?
I ask because typically, when Blackburn invokes China, she finishes her sentence with menacing mentions of artificial intelligence. “Our adversaries like China are not slowing down on AI, and we cannot give them any advantage in the deployment of this emerging technology,” Blackburn said in September 2023. She’s delivered variations of this line dozens of times. “AI is going to be our biggest development,” she said in 2025. “If China wins that, they’re going to be able to break a lot of encryptions that we rely on… China would like to dominate this market by the time we get to 2030.” This sort of language is common among executives at OpenAI, Anthropic, and Palantir, too. America must win the AI race over China for the sake of our economy and for national security reasons. (Reasoning that conveniently implies the financial success of AI providers is our collective patriotic duty.)
Blackburn is not exactly a strategic mastermind, but she does know more about the AI industry than most of her Senate colleagues. She’s the chairperson of two tech-oriented subcommittees, and presents as having a relatively antagonistic relationship with Big Tech: she’s floated purported “child safety” bills about social media and AI that would mostly be a disaster. On the whole, she’s roughly as deferential to AI providers as anyone else in Congress. She’s previewed how she’ll govern around AI, which is to say, she’ll eventually tell Tennesseans to stuff it and go with it. “Let me be direct: Data centers are going to be a good and important part of Tennessee’s economic growth, but we’ve got to be thoughtful about their placement,” she said last month, when she cautiously recommended against a data center next to a zoo.
Americans do not want to hear half-assed data center solutions from their governor. Nobody is requesting data centers in their state, let alone their neighborhood! My theory: Blackburn is generally aware that sustained AI chatter isn’t to her benefit outside of Capitol Hill. It’s one thing to saber-rattle about winning a nebulous AI war against the “new axis of evil” (her phrase) in the Senate; it’s another thing for a gubernatorial candidate to remind voters that you’re ultimately bullish on a job-killing technology viewed negatively by the public. Blackburn doesn’t shy away from discussion about AI in her current job, but her campaign site doesn’t mention AI (or at least, AI isn’t listed as an “issue” on her site). She penned a Breitbart op-ed on Thursday entitled, “Tennessee Must Show America How to Stand Up to Communist China.” It’s almost entirely about the made-up farmland conspiracy. No AI talk.
It’s a macabre reflection of conservative politics in 2026. Bigoted, trollish advertisements that fearmonger about Chinese conspiracies can garner media attention and help you cinch the governor nomination in a deep-red state. Expanding your red scare routine to rile up your base about AI, though? Even Blackburn seems to believe that might be a step too far—and she’s right. Just…not about literally anything else.
Here’s what else we’re reading this week:
XBOX CEO Asha Sharma announced plans to lay off approximately 3,200 workers by the end of 2027; 1,600 of those workers were laid off this week. Sharma wrote that “our business today is not healthy” and “we must reset XBOX.” Bethesda Game Studios Union, which was affected by the cuts, posted a thread about their impact.
Sony tried to sneak in its own not-good video game news: no more physical discs for PlayStation games after January 2028. People are not happy about it!
Getty photojournalist Kevin Dietsch smartly posted up outside of the Smart Valley Lodge in Idaho, site of a somewhat notorious billionaire summer camp. Among those in attendance this year: Palantir CEO Alex Karp, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, OpenAI Chairman Bret Taylor, and Huge Fan of Mergers and Acquisitions David Zaslav.
From the Financial Times, Meta is testing-driving novel ways for people to be creepy. The tech company is prototyping AI glasses “that would use cameras and audio recordings to capture a wearer’s every moment.” More, from the report: “With Meta’s current AI smart glasses, an LED in the corner of the frame lights up to signal to others when a wearer is taking photographs or filming. However, executives are planning not to activate the LED when the super-sensing features are being used, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.”