"Commissioners in Box Elder County-a rural county of just under 60,000 residents in the northwest corner of Utah-unanimously voted to advance the 9-gigawatt project last week, even as a crowd of people gathered at the county fairgrounds to protest and demand more information."
"Residents are concerned, among other things, about the facility's 40,000-acre footprint-roughly the size of Washington, D.C. The meeting grew unruly and one commissioner told the audience to "grow up" before the elected officials went to a private room to approve the project while attendees watched on a livestream, CNN reported."
"O'Leary, a Canadian businessman known for his role as an investor on Shark Tank, has argued the Utah project will create thousands of local jobs and that it is important for national security and America's efforts to beat China in the AI race. He suggested in a Fox News interview that opposition to the project may be driven by online misinformation from China."
""At the end of the day, 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? There's only one: it's China," O'Leary said in the interview."
Box Elder County commissioners unanimously advanced a $100 billion, 9-gigawatt Utah data center project backed by Kevin O’Leary, even as residents protested at the fairgrounds and demanded more information. The project would require electricity exceeding the amount used by the entire state in a year and would occupy about 40,000 acres, roughly the size of Washington, D.C. The meeting became unruly, and a commissioner told attendees to “grow up” before officials approved the project in a private room while residents watched via livestream. After the vote, residents sought a referendum to stop the project, and the county attorney is reviewing whether the application is viable. O’Leary said the project would create thousands of jobs and support national security and AI competitiveness, attributing opposition to potential misinformation from China.
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