This story was originally published by Slate and is republished here through a partnership with Climate Desk.
Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary wants to bring the world’s largest A.I. campus to Utah. Over the past month, the Canadian American businessman has been planning out this megaproject alongside financiers, private landowners, military strategists, and state officials, on 40,000 acres of unincorporated land in Box Elder County, right next to the ever-dwindling Great Salt Lake. The idea is to collaborate with the military to install a 30-building “hyperscale” cluster as a matter of national security — i.e., to use a swath of undeveloped Western land to produce high-level American A.I. because, according to O’Leary, “the country with the best AI is gonna win the wars,” and he does not want China to get there first. When constructed, the facility will be more than twice the size of Manhattan and bigger even than Bryce Canyon’s 35,000 acres. For Utah, that means a space with dozens of data centers, a handful of research facilities, and, potentially, some worker housing. The builders are also adding sleek glass panels and internal office space to craft the “sexiest, coolest construction posting in America,” according to Paul Palandjian, the CEO of O’Leary Digital.
There’s a problem with these futuristic plans, however: A lot of people in Box Elder County don’t want this. Community data center resistance is not a new trend in the U.S. But it’s been potent enough for Box Elder County that, even in deep-red Utah, the people are likely to demand significant political overhaul.
“Most people feel betrayed, and that’s bipartisan,” Stephen Otterstrom, a longtime Salt Lake City resident running to represent District 21 in the Statehouse, told me. “I have not encountered a single person who’s said, ‘Wow, this is going to be a great thing for us,’ outside of public officials.”
To take it from Otterstrom’s fellow Utahns, the betrayal is not just that the already data-center-dense state is getting another one, but that they feel there was no opportunity for democratic deliberation. O’Leary first began discussing his “Stratos Hyperscale Data Center” with Gov. Spencer Cox back in January and announced the proposal a month later. (Neither O’Leary Digital nor Cox responded with comment when reached for this story.) However, Box Elder residents didn’t learn about Stratos until late April, when the county commission held its first public hearing. It was a hasty process for everyone involved; the state’s Military Installation Development Authority, a partner on Stratos, sought to get permits going right away, even though the commissioners complained they hadn’t adequate time to assess Stratos. Locals insisted upon the need for more public awareness and discussion, leading the board to temporarily set aside the data-center resolution — before pressure from Cox, who claimed that Utah had an “obligation” to allow the data centers as part of the tech race against China, got the commissioners to take it up again. Thousands of Utahns submitted negative comments, and hundreds of Box Elder residents flooded the commission meeting on May 4, shouting down the politicians as they left the room to continue the meeting virtually and unanimously rubber-stamp the A.I. partnership with MIDA.
“I keep an ear out on things, but like many Utahns, this data center came as a shock — not that it was proposed, but that it was all but approved from every level,” Larry D. Curtis, a lifelong Salt Lake City resident and former local journalist, told me. “To me, and to other people I’ve talked to, it felt like it was done in the dark: backroom deals and assurances made with no transparency or government accountability.” Their rage is so pitched that it has also attracted national attention, with Paramore singer Hayley Williams taking a moment to call O’Leary out at a recent concert in Salt Lake City. The resistance efforts haven’t let up: A new grassroots organization called Box Elder Accountability Referendum filed for a process to allow voters to overturn the commission’s approval. (The county attorney rejected the referendum, but its organizers plan to appeal the ruling.) Utahns have also deluged Cox with thousands of letters in opposition, while regularly convening on the state Capitol with unflattering signs featuring O’Leary and Cox.
In fairness to the county commissioners, there wasn’t much they could have done. The acres parceled out for Stratos all lie on private, unzoned property, and the landowners there had already granted their blessing. One of them told the Salt Lake Tribune that “it’s going to bring a lot of good-paying jobs” and that “if we really need it to stay ahead of China, I am all for it.”
“They can buy this property, build this data center, and I can do nothing to stop it,” Box Elder County Commissioner Lee Perry told area public radio station KUER. So after “looking at all the options that I had available,” Perry attempted to add in some deal sweeteners (higher tax revenue, thorough state-corporate coverage of the construction costs) so as to lessen the financial burden on Box Elder residents reasonably worried over the nightmares they’ve heard from neighbors: higher utility costs, further water shortages, noise and air pollution. (There’s a reason Iron County, in the southern portion of the state, just approved a six-month moratorium on new data centers.) That may not save Perry and his colleagues, said Curtis, who predicted that “they probably won’t run again — I think people fully expect those county commissioners will never be elected again.”
Despite such potential drawbacks, Stratos’ pitch to the populace seems intuitive: The campus, also referred to as “Wonder Valley,” will be built out in separate phases, each part estimated by the state to bring in tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue, along with thousands of (mostly temporary) jobs in construction, maintenance, and IT. Power needs would be met by an already-extant gas pipeline and a new on-site solar farm, while Stratos backers promise that some of the water taken to cool the hot-running, desert-sited servers would become part of a “closed-loop” system that flushes out used water back into the Great Salt Lake. That line has also been pushed by Cox, the governor, who claimed — at the very same press conference where he declared a state of emergency over Utah’s drought conditions — that the newest “data center is going to use less water” than the Great Salt Lake’s other stressors, such as agriculture and lawn care.
But Utahns have their doubts. “Just 2,000 permanent jobs isn’t much when you’re considering the size of that facility,” said Otterstrom. “Also, we’re in a situation where the Great Salt Lake is drying out, and we haven’t even begun to stop the decline.”
“We’re in a situation where the Great Salt Lake is drying out, and we haven’t even begun to stop the decline.”
Curtis agreed, pointing to the climate emergency indicated by the most recent dry season. “There’s never been a winter like this, where we had virtually no precipitation, very little snow, very little rain. We count on that snowpack from the mountains,” he said. “Every Utahn is aware of our shrinking and dying Great Salt Lake and the role that plays in our economy, our climate, the lake effect, even for sending snow to ski resorts.” And on top of that: fishing, boating, mineral extraction, and protection from underground toxins that could blanket Utah’s most heavily populated area and drive everyone away — not just from Box Elder, but from the state altogether.
“Our economic growth is in the Salt Lake Basin. If you look for high-paying jobs elsewhere within the state, there are not a lot of opportunities,” said Otterstrom. “In the past, one thing I could’ve agreed with Gov. Cox on was that we need to save the lake. Now this puts into question whether there is any sincerity in that.”
So, in spite of O’Leary’s concerted efforts to smear the protesters as “proxies” for the Chinese government, and to dismiss opposing arguments as “poo-poo,” Utah politicians sound quite different right now. State Sen. Scott Sandall, who represents Box Elder County, went from unconditionally supporting Stratos to endorsing a new legislative study on data centers’ potential wildlife harms. Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz, shouted out by O’Leary as an early supporter of Stratos, appeared to backpedal after local media reported that he owns land near the planned data-center plot; he denied being briefed early on by O’Leary, called for a wholesale environmental review, and endorsed the now-scrapped Box Elder Accountability Referendum.
Those doubling down, however, are subjecting themselves to public wrath. J&J Nursery, a facility owned by a state senator who helped approve the Stratos megaproject, is facing widespread calls for a boycott. Jason Chaffetz, the Republican ex-representative now hoping to succeed Cox in the governor’s mansion, is facing blowback for admitting to being part of the consulting firm that brought Wonder Valley into Box Elder County. Senate President Stuart Adams, who chairs MIDA, is facing a slew of primary opponents. “He’s politically untouchable, but I actually think this makes him vulnerable. It’s that much of a backlash,” said Curtis, pointing out that Adams was also weakened by a political scandal last year, after he pushed for a law change that ended up benefiting a granddaughter of his who pleaded guilty to sexual battery.
Notably, Spencer Cox has himself retracted some of his disparaging comments, admitting that “people are right to push back,” committing to a thorough environmental-impact review, even issuing an executive order Friday requiring a “higher bar for data center development in Utah” that includes consideration of utility rates and environmental impacts — though it might be too little too late. “Gov. Cox, who once seemed like a reasonable moderate, has done everything state lawmakers have told him to. People can’t stand politicians who stand for nothing,” said Curtis, who added that he had been a lifelong Republican prior to the MAGA age. “ ‘Vote them all out’ has been in the mouths of Democrats and Republicans over the data center. In my lifetime, I’ve rarely seen such a universal level of community response to any one thing.”
That response is ongoing. Developers’ recent applications for water rights tied to Stratos were immediately countered with formally filed objections from everyday Utahns; two of these applications have already been withdrawn. People are still gathering at the Utah Capitol itself, and some groups are even planning a lawsuit against MIDA. There is sustained popular resistance here, with the resultant political blowback we’ve already seen in states like Virginia, Missouri, and Michigan. For Utahns, it’s especially existential: An A.I. competition with China should not trump their natural wonders, quality of life, and ability to even stay in the Salt Lake Basin for the long term.
“We have public programs, such as our education system, that go woefully underfunded year after year, and it’s not because there’s a lack of resources. It’s because there’s a lack of allocation,” said Otterstrom. “More often than not, those who have inexhaustible means, like the billionaires, they get what they want.” Perhaps this data center battle, then, was just the tipping point for widely frustrated and fearful Utahns.
Without realizing it, Kevin O’Leary may have awakened a new political uprising in Utah — one that could come back to bite the very lawmakers he partnered with for his latest moneymaking venture.
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