Utah Data Center Fight Draws Spy Claims as States Weigh Bans

Kevin O’Leary took to Fox News last week to claim that two Utah groups opposing his proposed 40,000-acre data center campus were fronts for the Chinese Communist Party. The Shark Tank investor said his team had traced IP addresses and uncovered “two cells inside of Utah” tied to Beijing, naming Elevate Strategies consultants Gabi Finlayson and Jackie Morgan along with the nonprofit Alliance for a Better Utah.

Finlayson said she learned of the accusation while driving out of a canyon with Morgan on the way to a speaking event. Their phones lit up with messages from worried contacts once they regained service. “You don’t wake up in the morning often thinking, like, maybe I’ll get accused of sedition today on Fox News by Kevin O’Leary,” Finlayson said. Both women called the charge a fabrication aimed at silencing resistance to the Stratos project, which would consume enormous amounts of electricity and water in a state already facing resource strains.

Elizabeth Hutchings of Alliance for a Better Utah told the same network that she would probably earn far more if she were actually on a foreign payroll. The groups have argued that the data center would drive up power rates for ordinary households and alter the character of rural communities without delivering promised local benefits.

O’Leary’s project is one of many data centers racing ahead amid the artificial intelligence buildout. At least eleven states have considered restrictions on such facilities this year, and Maine’s governor recently vetoed what would have been the first statewide ban. Critics point to the facilities’ heavy draw on the electric grid, which often forces utilities to keep older fossil fuel plants online or accelerate new generation. Federal rules already cover emissions and environmental reviews, yet local battles continue because residents see rising bills and land use conflicts that distant regulators overlook.

Seven major tech companies signed a pledge in March promising their data centers would not raise household electricity costs. Skeptics note that such voluntary commitments have not stopped rate increases in areas where large users have already come online. More than 300 bills targeting data center energy use have appeared in statehouses nationwide, reflecting pushback that goes well beyond any single project.

The Utah opponents say their concerns center on transparency and long-term costs, not foreign intrigue. They question why legitimate questions about grid reliability and taxpayer subsidies are met with accusations rather than answers. O’Leary’s “deep dig” into IP addresses produced no public evidence of espionage, only the assertion that opposition itself signals disloyalty.

Finlayson and Morgan continue their work against the campus while fielding calls from people who now view them through the lens of the televised claim. The episode illustrates how quickly debate over infrastructure that serves global tech interests can shift from kilowatts and water rights to loyalty tests. Residents in several states are discovering that resistance to these projects invites similar pressure, whether framed as economic necessity or national security.