Kevin O’Leary, the conservative investor and “Shark Tank” star, is facing a tempest of bipartisan backlash over his support of a massive data center in Utah.

Against the wishes of local Utah residents, leaders in northern Utah’s Box Elder County voted last week to approve the data center plans. At 40,000 acres, the O’Leary-backed project is set to be the world’s largest data center, more than twice as big as New York City’s Manhattan.

Amid growing concerns about data centers’ impact on their surrounding environments and ability to spike energy costs, public agita toward these artificial intelligence projects — and the companies seeking to launch them — has been mounting. A recent Gallup poll found 7 in 10 people oppose the construction of an AI data center in their area, with 48% “strongly” opposed.

Those numbers help explain the backlash to O’Leary, who has baselessly said opposition groups in Utah are being paid by China. The reality is much simpler: People are wary of rich tech companies building costly, resource-sucking facilities that could make their lives worse.

The fact that this project is opposed by people as ideologically apart as Utah Democrats and conservative commentator Tucker Carlson shows how toxic such projects have become to many Americans.

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Ja’han Jones

Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.