The fight over Kevin O’Leary’s proposed Stratos data center in Utah has moved from public meetings, petitions and court action to late-night television.

The project was initially pitched across roughly 40,000 acres, setting off concerns among residents that the development could strain water and other local resources, damage the environment and advance with too little transparency from its backers and local officials. Critics organized protests, petitions and legal challenges; amid that pressure, O’Leary cut the planned footprint to just over 20,000 acres.¹

O’Leary, whose O’Leary Digital backs the project, has portrayed the dispute as a predictable battle over an ambitious build. In June, he said the project faced “litigation,” “misinformation” and “propaganda,” but argued that if developers know they are right, they should “persevere.”¹

The confrontation grew sharper after O’Leary suggested in a May Fox News appearance that some critics had Chinese Communist Party ties — a claim he later walked back. A Utah advocacy group opposing Stratos subsequently sued O’Leary and Fox News for defamation.¹

This week, Saturday Night Live gave the dispute its broadest audience yet. James Austin Johnson, playing O’Leary on “Weekend Update,” mocked the original scale of the plan: “All I want is to buy up 40,000 acres of God’s untouched splendor and replace it with a very loud computer that steals your job.”¹ The sketch turned local fears over water use, jobs and profit into a cutting caricature, with the impersonator declaring: “I’m going to make the future go away.”¹

The joke lands because the underlying argument remains unresolved: supporters of data centers point to jobs, economic growth and U.S. competitiveness in AI, while communities asked to host them increasingly question who bears the costs.¹