Kevin O’Leary has become the public face of an AI data-center backlash tied to his Utah Stratos Project, but the article argues the real driver is broader local anxiety about AI’s economic impact—and poses a provocative fix: pay residents directly like a tangi
Kevin O’Leary has spent years sharpening his persona into something people love to hate. On “Shark Tank,” he built a reputation for what he calls brutal honesty. Last year, he leaned into the role again in “Marty Supreme,” including a scene where he spanks Timothée Chalamet with a ping pong paddle.
So it doesn’t take much imagination to see why his latest move landed as the hateable headline for the “AI Data Center Backlash.” O’Leary has emerged as the prominent face of an opposition fight tied to a major development in Utah: the O’Leary-backed Stratos Project, a 40,000-acre plan.
In the last month. stories about resistance to the O’Leary-backed Stratos Project have surfaced across national outlets and social media.. Tucker Carlson had O’Leary on his show last week, framing him as a real-life Mr.. Monopoly and setting up the charge that he is out to exploit Utah taxpayers.. O’Leary’s response has been to argue that people who don’t like his project are professional protesters—funded. he claims. via shadowy boogeymen.
But the argument inside the dispute isn’t just about one celebrity investor or one tract of land.. Opposition to data centers is described as a widespread. bipartisan phenomenon across the US. and recent Gallup polling is cited as evidence.. The technocratic counterargument. the piece says. is to tell residents who dislike data centers that they’re wrong—alongside claims that data centers don’t truly hog precious water or energy.. It notes that Business Insider published a “prize-winning series” last year about those claims and the counter-claims.
Still, the article makes a sharper point: in this case, the containment strategy feels broken.. Data centers. it says. have become convenient vessels for everyone’s fears and anxieties about AI—fears that extend beyond environmental questions and toward what AI will do to “everything. ” beginning with the economic future.
That anxiety is portrayed as reasonable for one reason that comes up repeatedly: the people running the biggest AI companies are expected to predict massive workforce change from AI.. At the same time. the public is told the upheaval is inevitable and that there’s little room to choose otherwise—“you can’t hold back technology!”—with adaptation framed as the only option.. In that atmosphere. the article argues. pushing back on a data center project in a town can become a reasonable form of protest.
Then it pivots to a more pointed question: what if a well-meaning AI booster—someone who believes the backlash is misguided—treats opposition the way they treat other infrastructure debates. as “dumb as fighting against highways”?. Analyst Ben Thompson’s suggestion is offered as the alternative cure: pay residents in data center towns.
The idea is simple enough to sound almost obvious in practice.. If data centers are meant to be a resource for the AI future. then residents should receive something concrete for hosting them—cash. not just promises.. If the project near a neighbor were sold based on a check in the mailbox every year. the article argues. far more people might get on board.
The piece also acknowledges the sober answer to the proposal: AI data centers are already supposed to be paying people in the towns where they’re built.. Jobs are brought in the short term, and the projects are meant to spur economic activity in the long term.. But the article draws a distinction that lands on the emotional core of the conflict: it’s one thing to tell someone that an ominous-looking building down the street will make electricians money.. It’s another to hand out checks directly.
And that is where O’Leary’s role returns to the story.. The article suggests that if the checks come from the Kevin O’Leary-type boosters and other technocrats—taking cash from their pockets and putting it into residents’—then the worrying future of AI might feel easier to handle in the present tense.
The takeaway the piece leaves with is not that fears are irrational, or that data centers have no economic upside.. It’s that the backlash is being expressed at street level. and the real question is whether the people asked to live beside AI’s infrastructure ever receive an immediate. personal share of the deal.
Kevin O'Leary Stratos Project Utah AI data centers backlash Tucker Carlson Gallup polling Ben Thompson workforce change local residents