Utah activists face China spy claim over data center

Utah activists – A Utah political consultant and an ally say they were accused on Fox News of being Chinese government operatives after Kevin O’Leary argued that “two cells inside of Utah” tied to the Chinese Communist Party were targeting his proposed Stratos data center. The

Utah political consultant Gabi Finlayson didn’t expect that the last thing she’d feel after leaving a canyon last week would be panic delivered by her phone.

She was driving out of the canyon when the signal returned and their messages started pouring in. Finlayson and her colleague, Jackie Morgan, were on the way to a speaking engagement in central Utah. Each phone lit up with about five texts apiece—“are you okay. ” “did you see this. ” and warnings that “it’s gonna get worse before it gets better. ” even as they tried to figure out what had happened.

Then someone sent a video.

Kevin O’Leary. the Shark Tank billionaire investor who is trying to build a 40. 000-acre data center campus in Finlayson and Morgan’s home state. had gone on Fox News. On air. he said his “guys” did a “deep dig into the IP addresses” and found “two cells inside of Utah” affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party. Those alleged cells. he said. were Finlayson and Morgan’s group. Elevate Strategies. and the nonprofit Alliance for a Better Utah.

Finlayson and Morgan say the accusation is an out-and-out lie tied directly to their opposition to the Stratos data center. “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. but here we are. ” Finlayson told me. She added: “I’d probably get paid a lot more if I was” spying for China.

Elizabeth Huntchings, who is identified as being of Alliance for a Better Utah, told Fox News that she’s not taking their stance because of foreign payment—“I’d probably get paid a lot more if I was” being paid by a foreign government.

The dispute is tied to how both sides describe the purpose of the project. Finlayson said they oppose Stratos not because they’re paid to do so. but because it appears “very much imposed upon people”—a massive construction project undertaken with very little public knowledge. She pointed to an estimate from a University of Utah professor that the data center could increase Utah’s net greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent.

O’Leary’s rebuttal is that red-spook explanations are the only ones that make sense. In remarks reported as part of his pitch on Fox Business News host Maria Bartiromo earlier this month. O’Leary asked: “Who would want us to stop building our electrical grid?. Who would want to stop us from having the compute capacity to develop AI?. Which adversary would want that?. There’s only one, it’s China.”.

That national-security framing echoes a broader push from Washington. The article links O’Leary’s argument to a 2025 executive order by Donald Trump accelerating the federal permit process for data centers. In that 2025 executive order. Trump wrote that “it is a national security imperative for the United States to achieve and maintain unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance.” The president has also invested millions of dollars in companies that build data center infrastructure.

Back in Utah. Finlayson and Morgan say they’re living in the middle of that clash between national-security narratives and local politics. They spend their working lives supporting local Democratic political campaigns—often a long shot in a Republican supermajority state—and they run a Substack on local news and politics.

That background, Finlayson said, doesn’t fit the story O’Leary is trying to tell. She also said O’Leary claims he will provide proof that his critics are foreign operatives, but that he “has as yet not done so.” His investment firm did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The human impact of the argument shows up in how quickly it spread beyond the data center debate and into their identities. Finlayson described a sense of being pushed and judged from a distance—then accused on national television.

Still, she says the outrage in Utah isn’t coming from one faction. Finlayson described it as “a wave of real. unpaid outrage among Utahns.” “Almost everyone in the entire state is so mad about this. ” she said. She said some people are focused on environmental impacts—calling Stratos the largest proposed data center in the entire country—while others include conservative ranchers and farmers who live in rural areas and “don’t want this infrastructure.”.

The backlash has been called the “most bipartisan issue since beer”—and in Utah. Finlayson said. it has indeed cut across lines. She tied that to local political culture in the western U.S. describing a “libertarian streak” that doesn’t take well to “investors and rich people wanting to come in and just impose this thing on people without really significant community input.” In her view. the process feels like a one-way decision.

“the government is telling you what to do, and they’re not interested in having any feedback,” she said.

Utah residents, she said, have offered feedback of their own. Hundreds showed up to protest at a Box Elder County commission meeting where the data center was approved earlier this month. Thousands of people filed formal protests against the project’s water rights applications.

Even if overturning the county commission’s approval wouldn’t necessarily stop construction—because the project has already been approved by Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority. described as a powerful state agency—one Box Elder County group wants to put the project on the ballot for a voter referendum.

The state political response is also sharpening. Caving to public pressure. the Utah legislature announced Wednesday that it will study the impacts of the proposed data center on the ever-shrinking Great Salt Lake’s water. The timing matters to Finlayson’s side: Utah declared a statewide drought emergency this week.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, has publicly acknowledged that the rollout of O’Leary’s Stratos data center “was not good.” And more protests are planned for the Utah State Capitol during Memorial Day weekend.

For Finlayson, the fight isn’t only about water or carbon emissions. She framed it as a struggle over decision-making power.

“This is not about where you fall in the political spectrum, it’s about who has power to make decisions over your life and who doesn’t,” she said. “Oftentimes, it feels like we don’t get to decide what happens to us, and we’re just getting things imposed on us by the government or by the wealthy.”

In a Republican-supermajority state, she said, coalition-building with people who don’t usually agree on much can be decisive. “I think that people that have had money and have had power for a long time forget what it looks like when real people have a real problem with a real issue. and they really push back.”.

Utah politics Gabi Finlayson Jackie Morgan Kevin O'Leary Stratos data center Elevate Strategies Alliance for a Better Utah Great Salt Lake drought emergency Chinese Communist Party national security Box Elder County