This, at least, was the idea when the project was officially announced in March 2026. Since then, however, the project has become an encapsulation of Americans’ distrust of the AI industry at large and the structural risk that unregulated data center development creates for investors across the board.
Despite this, and the complaints of thousands of residents, the project was approved by the Box Elder County Commission in May 2026—barely two months after it had been announced. The relative alacrity of their decision-making was partially enabled by the fact that Stratos utilized Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority, a state entity whose involvement let it bypass ordinary county zoning and the public review such projects normally require (since the project could theoretically help improve military AI adoption and cybersecurity).
But O’Leary’s promises have done nothing to dampen local opposition to Stratos. In fact, opposition intensified throughout the month of May until Utah Governor Spencer Cox—who had initially backed the project when O’Leary met with him in January 2026—signed an executive order on May 29 to ensure that the state properly evaluates data center proposals. While the Stratos Project was not specifically mentioned in the order, the timing of the announcement, coupled with the significant statewide pushback to the project, showed it was clearly an inflection point. Less than a week later, O’Leary agreed to significantly scale back the proposed data center from 40,000 acres to just over 20,000.
So, six months after the supposed “industrial marvel” of the Stratos Project was introduced, the results have been an angry local community, an embarrassed investor, and a local state government belatedly searching for a sensible framework with which to govern data center growth. The backlash has not stopped yet, either. On June 23, Utah state Senate President J. Stuart Adams, who was also the chairman of the Utah agency that initially approved Stratos, lost his Senate seat to a rival who explicitly criticized his support of O’Leary’s project.
Together, this suggests that regulatory and community friction is already taking a significant toll on investors’ bottom lines, alerting them to the dangers of rushing headlong into new proposals. A May 2026 note from the law firm Ropes & Grey warned as much, noting that “permitting challenges and local [community] resistance are emerging as serious obstacles” and that “standstills are a real risk absent industry engagement or federal preemption.”
Big Tech firms are now keenly aware of the need for their data centers to have at least some environmental protections and community considerations built into development plans. Microsoft, for instance, announced its “Community-First” AI infrastructure plan in January 2026, shortly after it was forced to cancel a proposed data center in rural Wisconsin. The plan calls for covering the grid and electricity costs its data centers create, minimizing and replenishing local water use, and paying its full share of local property taxes rather than seeking the tax breaks data centers typically negotiate. OpenAI has called for significant investment in renewables to help modernize the U.S. electrical grid and make data center build-out more sustainable, while Anthropic has pledged to cover the grid infrastructure improvements and electricity cost increases that are generated from the data centers it uses.
What’s more, both actors have fundamental limitations. Data centers are a footloose industry, meaning if one state is deemed to be overregulating, investors can easily shop for a friendlier jurisdiction. And while Big Tech firms might talk a good game, they are also subject to severe market pressures that could make them put their plans for equitable, environmentally friendly data centers on the back burner.
It’s a counterproductive way to win the AI race. On one hand, the Trump administration (as well as backers like O’Leary) insist that data centers are a strategic imperative for the United States. But the administration is blocking the one thing—a clear set of rules—that would allow for data center construction without risking a backlash in every county they touch.
The alternative is another dozen Stratoses, each one announced in the dark and built in haste, before an angry public demands concessions. That option leaves everyone on the losing end—including, it turns out, investors.
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