00:00Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary wants to build the world's largest AI data center in rural Utah.
00:05Hundreds showed up to stop it, three commissioners approved it anyway.
00:09Here's what's happening.
00:10So Kevin O'Leary, or Mr. Wonderful as he's known on Shark Tank,
00:14wants to build a 100 billion dollar AI campus in Box Elder County, Utah.
00:19At 40,000 acres it would be bigger than Washington DC and would need 9 gigawatts of power to run.
00:25The entire state of Utah only uses four.
00:28He says it'll run on clean energy, but the actual plans call for natural gas.
00:33He also claims this will do wonders for job growth with 10,000 construction workers needed.
00:38But his own executives have since revised that number down to around 4,000, spread over 10 to 15 years.
00:44And once construction ends, the worker headcount at facilities this size consistently lands in the hundreds,
00:50sometimes fewer than 100, for a campus bigger than Washington DC.
00:55When residents pushed back, O'Leary went on Fox News and suggested the opposition was being funded by China,
01:01practically calling it un-American to resist.
01:04I'm calling out Taylor, Josh, and Gabby, operating in Utah.
01:08I want a forensic auditor who's funding their platforms.
01:11But the internet was quick to notice something.
01:14Kevin O'Leary is Canadian.
01:16He's not even an American citizen.
01:18And he's simultaneously building another massive data center back home in Alberta,
01:22where he made the same promises about jobs and economic growth.
01:26Now, residents have filed for a referendum, but even if they win, it doesn't kill the project,
01:30it just wipes out the protections the county already negotiated on their behalf.
01:34Utah's governor calls the data center a national security priority America can't afford to lose.
01:40Critics online say it's a Canadian billionaire selling rural America a promise he's already broken once.
01:45So here's the big question.
01:47Is blocking this data center un-American, or is handing rural Utah to a Canadian billionaire?
01:53Drop your take in the comments, read the full story on our website, and follow us here for more.
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