Utah data centre project draws scrutiny after O’Leary’s China claims

Kevin O’Leary promoted Wonder Valley, a proposed data centre in rural Utah, as a major national security project and said online criticism of it was linked to Chinese agents. He later said he had no evidence that several named critics were funded by China; Fox News also apologised for the claim. The episode led to a defamation suit and intensified scrutiny of how the project was advanced.

Wonder Valley was proposed for 40,000 acres in Box Elder County, with a dedicated gas plant planned to produce nine gigawatts of electricity, more than twice Utah’s average consumption. The article draws on interviews with more than two dozen people and thousands of pages of public records, describing a hurried process amid competition for data centre tenants and investment. O’Leary and Fox sought dismissal of the defamation case in late September.