The Trump administration and “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary claimed anti-data heart sentiments across the US are being fueled by a Chinese propaganda marketing campaign.
O’Leary — whose 40,000-acre knowledge heart plans outside Salt Lake City have been met with protests — claimed in a Monday video that “nefarious accounts out of the country” tied to China were spreading misinformation about his project as half of a coordinated attack on American AI infrastructure.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum agreed during a Tuesday look on Fox Business.
Kevin O’Cleary — AKA “Mr. Wonderful” — claimed China-linked teams were fueling anti knowledge heart sentiment in the US.
“Any place that’s trying to build data centers is getting bombarded with foreign-directed propaganda to try to block these from being built,” Burgum said. “This is just another attack on the US and our ability to be competitive.”
O’Leary backed his claims with “90 pages of evidence” which he said indicated “millions, hundreds of millions of dollars” value of funds were being funneled from entities around the world to fuel focused misinformation campaigns against his knowledge heart.
And he isn’t the only one to arrive at such conclusions — at least three reports from tech and Trump-aligned thinktanks and non-profits, including the Bitcoin Policy Institute, Power the Future and the American Energy Institute, drew related conclusions about Chinese meddling in US data-center sentiments in research of their own.
“The opposition to US data center construction is not a spontaneous grassroots movement,” a latest American Energy Institute report learn. “It is a coordinated campaign financed in substantial part by foreign donors, operating through a network of national advocacy organizations and their local chapters.”
Utahns protesting O’Leary’s knowledge heart plans for Box Elder, a distant space northwest of Sal Lake City. Getty Images
A Facebook Data Center in Eagle Mountain Utah. O’Leary’s heart would be constructed on 40,000 acres of land. Getty Images
But at least two of the teams named in those reports advised the Washington Post they had nothing to do with a international affect marketing campaign against knowledge facilities — and that they were baffled by the allegations.
“These reports are false, misleading and an attempt by big crypto special interests to manipulate the public into accepting data centers,” said spokesperson for the Wyss Foundation, an environmental conservation and Democratic social gathering non-profit.
The anti-war group Code Pink, also named in the reports, called the claims “false and defamatory” — while a spokesperson for Alliance for a Better Utah, who O’Leary talked about in his claims, called the Chinese allegations “laughable.”
O’Leary’s knowledge heart has been met with the type of backlash many have confronted as they’ve begun to crop up across the nation to meet the rising computing wants of AI systems.
Many locals have decried having the huge services — warehouses crammed with laptop servers, usually masking a whole lot or 1000’s of acres — dropped in their communities, while others have raised fears about water and energy prices going up, along with real estate being devalued.
Some have also raised issues about how such services could have an effect on the health of surrounding communities.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum repeated O’Leary’s claims Tuesday about a Chinese plot against US knowledge facilities. AFP via Getty Images
About 70% of Americans oppose the developments, according to a 2026 Gallup survey, with many fearing destructive societal results and job losses from AI proliferation.
But O’Leary has insisted his project — called the Stratos Project, in Box Elder, Utah — is taking every precaution to roll out responsibly, telling NBC News Thursday that the project would be developed in phases over 10 years to guarantee native security issues were met.
He also said only about 9,000 acres of the project’s 40,000-acre plot would be used after that time, and that upwards of 6,000 jobs would be introduced to the space — which he also said was in nobody’s yard, but in the center of distant and arid pasturelands.
Some opponents still aren’t satisfied, however, and think O’Leary and the Trump administration’s claims of a Chinese plot are a clear signal of large tech making an attempt to pull out the stops to get what it needs.
“This is like gaslighting 101,” said activist and three-time Trump voter Kyle Schmidt, who organized opposition to an Arizona knowledge heart despite his president’s sturdy support for the tech industry.
“They are saying, ‘Trust me. It is not what you think. It is what I am telling you,’” he added. “I would love to sit down with Mr. Wonderful and ask him, do you want one of these in your backyard?”
