The Revolt Against AI Data Centers is EXPLODING

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]There's also a cell operating inside of Utah. Gabby Finlay. Gabby, what are you doing? And why are who's paying you?

[00:00:06]>> Well, hi. Hello. It's me, Gabby Fin.

[00:00:10]What am I doing? Apparently, we've reached the part of the Stratos data center journey where Kevin Oolir goes on national Fox News to accuse us of being uh cells for the Chinese Communist Party.

[00:00:20]>> They asked and they voted and they it it was a three to zero vote. They they got fun.

[00:00:27]on Google and Kevin Oly got three county commissioners in rural Utah on their side. Good work.

[00:00:33]>> Hi everyone, JJ here. Welcome back.

[00:00:35]Well, the growing revolt, the opposition to AI data centers, some of the massive seems to be exploding right now and it's bipartisan, rare bipartisan thing. I'll show you what I mean by that. There's a lot to get into. So, let's see. This is Breaking Points and notable about this show is that they have a left and right host, which is pretty rare these days for a new show. Let's get straight into it.

[00:01:02]>> First, I wanted to talk a little bit about the immediate bipartisan backlash that is really building into sort of a grassroots movement against data centers being located in local areas. And the bipartisan nature of this was on display in a recent Tucker Carlson debate with Kevin Olirri who is behind this massive data center buildout project in Utah.

[00:01:25]Tucker challenges him quite aggressively on that. Let's go ahead and take a listen.

[00:01:29]>> I would think since you disagree with the Chinese way of life, which is pretty civilized in a lot of ways, but the one way in which it's barbaric is that it grants its citizens no real rights. And so I would think that you would be very worried about aping their system, which we are now doing. Like they have total surveillance. It's a panopticon in China. We should create our own. Let's take 40,000 acres in Utah and make it possible for the government to know where you are at all times and what you're thinking, listening to you on your phone. Like we have that, but upset about >> you have to you you have to choose the the less of two evils in your scenario.

[00:02:01]And I'm telling you the what you should do is say I want Kevin Olri to succeed.

[00:02:06]I want him to beat the Chinese in compute power and then then use the laws of the United States to make sure that you keep that compute power in check whichever way you want but to not have it available to put down my shovel. I don't think people want me to do that.

[00:02:20]Even the people in box elder the majority of them want me to hold my shovel and start digging. And that's basically the debate we're having.

[00:02:28]>> How do you know? How do you know that?

[00:02:30]that the majority >> because they voted for it unanimously before the Chinese guys.

[00:02:34]>> There was a referendum dispatch like all this crap that's being spewed up.

[00:02:38]>> Wait, hold on. I'm Yeah, and I may have fallen for some of it, so you correct me. There was a referendum among citizens or did some like county board vote?

[00:02:48]>> We we actually went through the whole process that you have to do by their laws and were granted. So, just to catch you up on what's going on here, Kevin Oly, known from Shark Tank, of course, wants to build a massive data center in Utah. And he's putting forward this conspiracy that is the Chinese that are only against it. The people aren't against it, which is clearly rubbish.

[00:03:11]And Tucker Carlson is is calling him out here. So, Tucker Carlson definitely on the right. MAGA ex MAGA at the moment seem to be going against Trump but firmly on the right he is calling out Kevin Oly but people on the left are too which we're going to see in a second to zero the the commissioners of the county said we want >> three people voted the people of the county >> elected officials that's how you do it >> how hard is it for Kevin Olirri and Amazon and Microsoft and Google to subvert three county commissioners in rural They vote. They they wanted they asked us to come. They asked us to bring $15 billion. They asked and they voted and they it was a three to zero vote. They they that's how Google and Kevin Oly got three county commissioners in rural Utah on their side. Good work.

[00:04:05]>> Terry Coulson definitely calling out Kevin Oly. So there's a lot of opposition to this data center, but others also around the US and here just to show you that it's not just on the right. Of course, it is from the left and Bernie Sanders and AOC have been calling for a moratorum on these data centers. But yes, bipartisan. This is pretty funny where Kevin Ori saying that it's a it's a Chinese plot. They're the only people against it. But here it makes it plain. That's clearly not the case. Listen to this. Strategies, also a cell operating inside of Utah. Gabby Finson. Gabby, what are you doing? And why are who's paying you?

[00:04:43]>> Well, hi. Hello. It's me, Gabby Fin.

[00:04:46]What am I doing? Apparently, we've reached the part of the Stratos Data Center journey where Kevin Olir goes on National Fox News to accuse us of being uh cells for the Chinese Communist Party.

[00:04:57]>> By the way, if you're getting value out of this episode so far, I really appreciate it if you remember to hit that like button. And also, if you don't know about my other channel, spin-off channel, I've got a few channels at this one, JJ Politics Unfiltered. I'm going to be doing more on there on a regular basis. The latest one is about the FIFA World Cup about to happen in the US.

[00:05:17]Turns out tourism is taking a dive because of Trump. Basically, you know, mixed message about tourism. People are fearful of going to the US for good reason. I'll put a link in the pin comment this time if you want to go and check that out. Yeah, because at the end of the day, who would want us to stop building our electrical grid? Which adversary would want that? There's only one. It's China. So, what I think is happening, and I I got my guys to go a deep dig into the IP addresses, and here's what we found out. This is fascinating. We found two cells inside of Utah elevates strategies. Gabby Finson. Gabby, what are you doing? And why? Who's paying you? So, what I'm doing right now is after getting this data, I'm calling out Gabby operating in Utah.

[00:05:59]>> So, hi Kevin. We are Elevate Strategies.

[00:06:01]Um, this is Utah. You might not know it because you're from Canada. This is where we live. Before we get into anything too serious, this is the very scary, very intimidating man that is threatening us. We are not taking the criticism of anyone who is wearing flip flops and a suit on.

[00:06:15]>> That is weird. Wearing a suit with flip-flops or jandles as we call them in New Zealand, >> national television. You know, it's not every day you get called out by first and last name on Fox News by a Canadian billionaire trying to ruin my state, but here we are.

[00:06:29]>> Kevin, are you okay?

[00:06:31]>> So, it goes on like that. So, clearly Kevin is barking up the wrong tree here, calling out that it's some sort of Chinese plot. And also Matt Walsh here, who is pretty far right. If you listen to anything that this guy says, it's kind of like if his policies were implemented, it would be some form of the handmmaid's tale, I think, from what I've seen him say. But he says here, "Big tech companies are sprinting forward, building data centers as fast as they can, sometimes using imminent domain to seize the land by force, making their AI more and more powerful, expanding the technology at lightning speed with no guard rails of any kind at all. Yet, none of these tech gurus or any of the apologists have even attempted to explain what exactly all of the millions of people who lose their jobs and the increasing numbers who lose their homes, all sacrificed on the AI altar, are supposed to do? How does any society support millions of unemployed and displaced people? So, you get the idea. It sounds like it's coming from the left, but this is definitely coming firmly from the right. So a bipartisan thing and this is democracy now. So definitely on the left here. This video is called Astra Taylor on AI data center resistance and fighting billionaire big tech agenda. I'm Amy Goodman. polls are growing across the United States for moratoriums on new AI data centers over their impact on energy costs, water and land use, the US economy, greenhouse gas emissions, and democracy.

[00:08:19]In Maine, state lawmakers recently approved the first statewide moratorum, but the governor, Janet Mills, vetoed the legislation. A new Gallup poll released today shows seven out of 10 Americans oppose data centers being built near them. And the opposition spans the political spectrum. In Utah, residents are fighting plans to build what would be the largest data center in the world in Boxelder County. If built, the facility would generate and consume more energy than the entire state of Utah.

[00:08:57]>> Just an amazing stat, isn't it? And this is Kevin Oly's one. I believe this is why there's so much opposition to it and from both sides of politics from pretty much everybody citizens living there don't want their power to be taken away.

[00:09:12]More on that in a minute because there's other stories about that as well in different places.

[00:09:16]>> The proposed complex would cover an area more than two and a half times the size of Manhattan. Estimates show the project could increase Utah's greenhouse gas emissions by 50%.

[00:09:29]On Capitol Hill, Vermont's independent Senator Bernie Sanders and Democratic Congress member Alexandria Kaziocortez have introduced legislation to impose a temporary national moratorum on new artificial intelligence data center construction. More than 100 local communities across 12 states have already enacted local moratoriums on data centers and Congress itself has a moral obligation to stand with them and stop big tech from ruining their communities. Our legislation in the House and the Senate would hit the brakes on construction of new data centers until we address several of the key areas of harm AI poses.

[00:10:08]>> As you can see clearly coming from both the left and right. And this is a story I wanted to get to elsewhere. Nearly 50,000 Lake Tahoe residents have to find a new power source after their energy source looks to direct lines to data centers. So an idyllic part of the US as well. Instead of reading that article out, L from House of Lip, she puts it so well. So let's listen to it. Data centers just took power from 49,000 people. Oh, let's see what she says.

[00:10:42]>> This week, Fortune reported that Envy Energy, the Nevada utility that has supplied the majority of Lake Taho's electricity for decades, has informed Liberty Utilities, the small California company that serves the region, that it will stop providing power after May 2027. The reason stated plainly and on the record, Envy Energy needs the capacity for data centers. 49,000 residents, 75% of their electricity supply gone by next ski season so that Google, Apple, and Microsoft can run servers in the desert. Let me make sure that landed. A utility company looked at its available power, looked at its existing customers, families, businesses, hospitals, schools, ski resorts serving 25 to 28 million visitors per year, and then looked at incoming data center contracts and chose the data centers. This was not a quiet thing, not through some invisible cost-shifting mechanism buried in raid structures. They just literally told 49,000 people to find electricity from somewhere else. Danielle Hughes, a North Lake Tahoe resident and supervisor within the California Energy Commission's efficiency division, told Fortune, I'm quoting her, "It's like we don't exist." Here's what makes this story structurally different from the cases I covered in my previous video. In Georgia, the harm was invisible.

[00:12:02]unmetered water connections the county didn't know about. In Maryland, the harm was buried in rate structures cost shifting that appeared as a line item on electricity bills. Those were cases of extraction through opacity. Lake Tahoe is extraction through declaration. The utility isn't hiding anything. It's openly saying we have a finite resource and we've decided these customers matter more than those other customers.

[00:12:27]>> Okay, so you get the idea there. This is happening all over, not just in in Utah in one place. They're giant data centers, smaller data centers, and people obviously are resisting. It's happening. And on the bright side, if there is a bright side to this, electric says here, this headline, data centers are cutting power to homes, driving homeowners to solar and batteries. I suppose that may have to be the case to getting a solar system on the roof and powered so you can run your own power.

[00:12:59]Is that what it's come to? An absolute necessity because power has been taken away by the big techs for AI data centers. So this is an interesting story and I'm not against this. It is a good thing for people to be independent about their power especially in you know more sunnier places around the world.

[00:13:17]Definitely a good thing, but to have it be forced to do it by grid power being taken away and really is by force. You know, in in Utah that there were scenes there where there was a public town hall, people showed their opposition to it and Kevin Oly said it's China doing it or he did say they were paid protesters which is something that Elon Musk said, you know, in Doge when he was doing that and he was, you know, blaming billionaires on the left busing in protesters, which is what Kevin Liri is basically saying here, which is just seems to be absolute rubbish. So, what do you think about this? I'd love to know what you think about this. Is there a data center being being planned in your area? What do you think of this these data centers going up? Do you agree with the opposition or do you think they should happen? They don't employ a lot of people either. So they are saying that but really it seems to be from 25 to 150 people even for a big data center. Yes, for for the construction maybe, but after that not really. They're sucking power and water.

[00:14:17]So definitely many many communities around the US in particular, but they are around the world. And that's another thing that they they're saying the US will have to go outside the country, but I don't see it being any different anywhere else quite frankly. So let me know what you think about this wherever you are. And right now I'm going to put a related link on screen. Do go and see that now if you want to. And a subscribe link as well. Do subscribe if you're not already. If you're new here or you've been watching a few videos and just not subscribed yet. and on Spotify. If you're watching on Spotify, do follow to get any new episodes in your new episodes feed.