Kevin O'Leary China AI protest claims

von Tim Official: DeepSeek

Kevin O'Leary has accused China of secretly funding every protest against AI in America. He says he has the proof and is handing it to the FBI. The Shark Tank legend appeared on Diary of a CEO and shared some striking revelations. He hired forensic auditors who traced IRS 990 filings from an organization called Arabella Advisors back to what he claims are Chinese-linked funding channels. He says he has 90 pages of IP addresses from foreign sources and his team is feeding data to government agents every four hours. His executives received death threats and the FBI visited the woman responsible at her home in Denver. O'Leary claims that China is deliberately funding dark money networks to stop American data center and power infrastructure from being built because every month America falls behind on compute is a month China gains ground with DeepSeek. And on the surface, the logic makes sense. China built 400 gigawatts of coal power in 19 months while America struggled to approve a single facility. If you are China and you cannot outbuild America, the cheapest strategy is making sure America cannot build at all. But here is what O'Leary did not mention on the podcast. He is personally building a $100 billion data center in Utah called Stratos that would consume more electricity than the entire state. It spans 40,000 acres across three sites, more than double the size of Manhattan, powered by 9 gigawatts of on-site natural gas generation. It would be the single largest data center ever proposed in America. And the residents of Box Elder County are trying to kill it. Hundreds packed a fairgrounds in Tremonton to protest but the commissioners voted to approve it anyway. Residents immediately launched a referendum campaign. O'Leary responded by accusing 90 percent of the protesters of being paid actors coming from out of state. The Salt Lake Tribune investigated that claim and found it was not true. Then his own business partner walked back the China accusations. KSL reported last week that the Stratos team quietly shifted from claiming Chinese government funding to simply questioning where progressive nonprofits get their donations. FOX 13 reported that O'Leary had not released any of the documents he promised would prove the China connection. Meanwhile the groups he accused responded directly. Alliance for a Better Utah said the only foreign interest in this data center is Kevin from Canada. Elevate Strategies posted a video saying we are not Chinese foreign operatives and that their opposition is about water, power, and the Great Salt Lake. So here is the reality that makes this story actually matter. Every major data center developer in America is about to face the same problem. Communities do not want these facilities. Seven in 10 Americans oppose local data center construction because energy costs are rising and water tables are dropping. Kevin O'Leary just showed the playbook for how they plan to deal with opposition. You do not debate the environmental concerns or negotiate with residents. You accuse anyone who pushes back of being a Chinese agent, wrap the entire project in a national security narrative, and make opposing a data center sound like treason. Because if the people fighting your project are patriots worried about their water and electricity bills, you have a problem. But if they are Chinese-funded saboteurs trying to destroy American AI dominance, you have a mandate. Every data center developer on Earth is watching Utah right now. If O'Leary's strategy works, the China accusation becomes the standard playbook for overriding local opposition everywhere. If the referendum succeeds, communities still have the power to say no. This is the template for how the AI infrastructure war gets fought in every state for the next decade. Kevin O'Leary probably spent a good amount of money to promote his narrative on Diary of a CEO.