Utah Voters Give Senate President Who Supported Giant Data Center The Heave Ho

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Kevin O’Leary is a media star who is known as Mr. Wonderful on the reality TV show Shark Tank. Recently, he placed his boldest bet yet, on Stratos, a proposed data center in Utah that he said would create thousands of jobs, add millions of dollars in revenue for local governments, supply its own power, and might even add some water to the rapidly shrinking Great Salt Lake.

Despite O’Leary’s sunny predictions, the reality is that Stratos would require 9 gigawatts of power. Is that a lot? Look at this way: the entire state of Utah uses half that much. According to Grist, when complete, Stratos would cover 40,000 acres — an area twice the size of Manhattan — and raise the state’s carbon emissions by 64 percent. “While its water needs remain unknown, the sprawling data center would neighbor the northernmost tip of the shrinking Great Salt Lake, which will likely hit a record low elevation this year following an unprecedented dry winter,” Grist said.

Robert Davies, a physics professor at Utah State University, believes the giant computer center will create a massive heat island capable of devastating the area’s ecology. He estimated the finished project would cover about as many square miles as Washington, D.C., making it the largest data center on the planet, and that it could produce enough heat to spike nighttime temperatures by as much as 28 degrees Fahrenheit [emphasis added] in the high desert valley where it will be located. “What I’ve found is, it’s so much worse than I even thought it would be,” Davies said.

He warned the additional thermal load on the valley will be the “equivalent of about 23 atom bombs’ worth of energy dumped into this local environment every single day,” and that trapped heat could devastate the local ecology. “What happens if you deposit that much energy continuously into a topography like this? Right at the north end of the Great Salt Lake, a watershed that is in collapse? A high-desert environment? A valley?” All are excellent questions.

J. Stuart Adams is a long serving member of the Utah legislature, where he rose through the ranks to become president of the Utah Senate. He also served as the chair of the Utah agency that approved initial plans for Stratos this spring. The plan to build what could become the largest data center in the world did not sit well with the citizens of Utah, however.

According to the New York Times, thousands of Utah voters, many of them lifelong Republicans and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, have turned out at public meetings to register their objections to the Stratos project. They are worried about how much energy Stratos would consume and how its water usage would affect the Great Salt Lake. They also accused state officials of granting the project generous tax breaks while ignoring the public’s concerns.

Payback Is A Certified Blue-Eyed Bitch

In early May, Adams praised the Stratos data center, saying: “This project supports the free world through reliable energy supply while creating real opportunity for communities here at home.” But as the tide of opposition rose, Adams did what politicians do — he changed his tune. He sent O’Leary a letter demanding huge cuts to the size and scope of the project, which O’Leary agreed to. In the unkindest cut of all, his campaign sent out mailers praising him for getting tough on data centers. One of those mailers showed Kevin O’Leary underwater in a shark tank shaped like the state of Utah — an image apparently generated by artificial intelligence.

Adams’ about face is proof, if any is needed, that the way to tell if a politician is lying is whether his lips are moving. This week, the voters took their revenge on Adams by voting him out of office and electing Stephanie Hollist, a former university lawyer, to take his place. The New York Times called Adams’ defeat “a stunner.” In Box Elder County, where officials enthusiastically embraced the Stratos project, a Republican commissioner who voted for it was soundly defeated in a primary contest and another was trailing a challenger as the votes were being counted.

In his concession speech, Adams did not refer to the data center project directly. Instead he noted that he was an advocate for “policies that have strengthened Utah, supported businesses, helped working families.”

Hollist told the press her win showed that voters were “tired of feeling like they’re not seeing themselves represented in government.” She is expected to win the November general election in the heavily Republican district, and Utah legislators will have to pick a new Senate president. Adams had won re-election for years with minimal opposition, but Hollist said she heard from many discontented voters as she knocked on doors over the past six months.

The data center, she said, had been “the straw that broke the camel’s back” for many in the northern Utah district that Adams represented. The public’s concern showed that Republican voters were just as worried about the impact of data centers as Democrats, Hollist said. “It concerns our way of life — our resources, our water, our air quality. Across the Republican spectrum, people care about it.”

AI Fury

The debate over building data centers that will support artificial intelligence has helped to tip races in Alabama, Missouri, Wisconsin, and beyond, with supporters arguing they will generate money and jobs and opponents assailing their environmental impacts and a lack of transparency surrounding their approval and operations, the New York Times reported. In April, voters in Festus, Missouri, ousted four city councilors who had supported a $6 billion data center project. That same month, voters in Menomonie, Wisconsin, elected a new mayor who campaigned on his opposition to data centers.

Voters this week are also choosing sides in the battle between Anthropic and OpenAI over government regulation of artificial intelligence. Anthropic is for it; OpenAI is against it. According to Politico, Alex Bores was one of five candidates in a primary to choose a successor to longtime New York congressman Jerry Nadler. Bores was in favor of less regulation of AI and was supported by as much as $18 million from Silicon Valley interests. The winner was New York Assembly member Micah Lasher, who favors AI regulations and a data center moratorium.

The fight over AI regulation is just beginning. Both sides have beaucoup buxs, thanks to John Roberts and his fellow stooges on the US Supreme Court. Their Citizens United decision means this year’s election is likely to be awash in more money than any in US history as the industry tries to wriggle out of attempts to regulate it.

The dethroning of J. Stuart Adams is a signal that Americans are not as enamored of AI as its proponents might wish. What comes next will be a titanic struggle between people and machines. If you are a science fiction buff, you know what the likely outcome of that contest will be.