WHY IT MATTERS: There's been a lot of talk about whether the anti-data center sentiment sweeping the US is being driven by China. Investor Kevin O'Leary, widely known as "Mr. Wonderful" on the ABC show Shark Tank, appears to believe it's true. He called opponents of his Utah data center proxies for the Chinese government during a Fox News appearance, a claim the network has now apologized for airing.
The Stratos project is a new hyperscale AI data center set to be built across roughly 41,200 acres in an unincorporated area of western Box Elder County, Utah. The lead developer is O'Leary Digital, owned by the billionaire.
As with all these facilities, plenty of groups and individuals are pushing back against its development, including Party for Socialism and Liberation, People's Dispatch, Alliance for a Better Utah, and Elevate Strategies.
In May, O'Leary appeared on Fox News to discuss the controversy. "Who would want us to stop building our electrical grid? Who would want to stop us from having compute capacity to develop AI? Which adversary would want that?" he asked. "There's only one: It's China," he added, before naming some of the opponents.
Now, several Fox hosts, including Maria Bartiromo and Johnny Joey Jones, have apologized for O'Leary's claims, adding that there is no evidence that the groups and individuals he called out are funded by or working with the Chinese Communist Party.
