The Stratos Project and the Battle Over Utah's AI Future

The Stratos Project and the Battle Over Utah's AI Future

The Stratos Project, a massive data center planned for Box Elder County, has run up against equally massive public opposition, even as state officials champion its benefits. A panel of local journalists joins us to help make sense of the debate.

What's Up With Mr. Wonderful's Data Center?

Earlier this month, Republican county commissioners fast-tracked approval for a 40,000-acre data center in northwest Utah, blocking public comment from hundreds of furious locals.

Utah's fragile desert could feel like the Sahara if America's biggest data center gets built

Plans for a celebrity-backed “hyperscale” data center in rural Utah, so massive that it would consume more than double the state’s current electricity use, have generated an intense public and political backlash in a state where the motto is “industry” and a Republican supermajority tends to be deferential to development.  The project, brought by “Shark Tank” TV personality Kevin O’Leary, would span 40,000 acres, demand 9 gigawatts of power once…

Mr. Wonderful’s Utah Gamble: O’Leary Accuses Locals of Chinese Ties in $100 Billion Data Center Fight

Kevin O’Leary sees an existential race. China races ahead in artificial intelligence. America must build. Fast. The “Shark Tank” star and billionaire investor has thrown his weight behind the Stratos Project. A proposed 40,000-acre hyperscale data center and power campus in remote Box Elder County, Utah. The venture could reach nine gigawatts of capacity. It might consume twice the electricity the entire state uses today. Approval came quick. Co…

Data center opponents to gather voter signatures at rally in Brigham City on May 27

BRIGHAM CITY – Advocacy groups united against the proposed Stratos Data Center in Box Elder County will rally on Wednesday, May 27 to voice their continuing opposition to the project.

Mr. Wonderful’s Pink Flip-Flops, CCP Smears, and Utah’s AI Land Rush

Mr. Wonderful, eh? Or Monsieur “M’as-tu-vu”, tabarnak What caught people’s attention about the Stratos AI data center project in Utah was not just the size of the proposal. It was the growing sense that the public process itself had started to bend around the project. The project’s main investor, Kevin O’Leary the Canadian entrepreneur from Shark Tank Fame (kind of a latter day Donald Trump wannabe) went on Fox Business to respond to grassroots …