I’ve heard from a lot of Utahns over the past week about the proposed data center project in Box Elder County. Many are asking questions about water, air quality, energy, land use, and the long-term impact on rural Utah. Those are real concerns, and all Utahns should expect clear standards and accountability.
Industry is our state’s motto. And in our pursuit of economic strength, we must always ensure that development is thoughtful and in line with Utah values.
Based on conversations with residents, local leaders, subject matter experts, and project stakeholders, the following actions are now being taken regarding this project. 🧵
BREAKING UPDATE: Utah Supreme Court Justice Diana Hagen has RESIGNED amid an investigation for having an alleged romantic relationship with the lawyer who argued the Democrats’ Utah redistricting case, which she ruled in FAVOR of.
We're not gonna drain the Great Salt Lake. That's ridiculous. We are gonna create incremental jobs. This is not gonna destroy air quality because we don't have the option to do that. That's controlled both state and federally, and we don't want to do that. That's not what we wanna do. I want this to be the example of what we can do all across the country. This is not going to be my only project. But in order to do that, we have to prove it, and we're not building 40,000 acres of data centers. That's the size of the land parcel. So saying it’s twice the size of Manhattan is ridiculous. We're building very slowly and incrementally, and everybody around us nationally and internationally can see what we're doing. It'll be totally transparent, and we want it to be the shining example of how you do this.
The conversation around Stratos has gotten badly unmoored from the actual proposal, and it’s worth addressing the biggest misconceptions before the vote.
The loudest claim is that this project will draw more power than the entire state. True at full buildout. Beside the point, because Stratos generates its own power on site. It doesn't draw from the public grid. Last year the legislature passed SB 132 precisely for large private loads that build and operate their own generation off-grid. Utah's existing 4 GW stays where it is. Electricity bills won’t go up because of this project. The "more than the whole state" line sounds scary to some, but falls apart the second you dig in.
The water claim deserves more care than it's been getting. The water rights at issue are existing agricultural rights. Bar H Ranch is transferring 1,900 acre-feet currently used for irrigation. This is not new pressure on the basin, but a reallocation. The data center cooling itself is closed-loop. The gas plant will use some water for power generation, and we should want the developer to specify how much; that's a fair ask. But the framing that Stratos is "draining the lake" assumes new diversions that don't exist in the actual filings. The Great Salt Lake is in real trouble, and most of that trouble has names. Stratos isn't one of them.
The tax-giveaway argument frustrates me the most, because it imagines a counterfactual that doesn't exist and ignores the actual math. The reduced energy is the price of getting the project to land here instead of in Texas or Wyoming. Even at 0.5%, the county pulls in roughly $30M a year in Phase 1, and over $100M annually at full buildout. The state pulls in roughly $49M. The developer is prepaying the county $5.4M a year for the first three years to fund emergency services before tax revenue starts. The developer is paying for every road, sewer line, and stormwater system in the project area and deeding it to the county. If specialized fire equipment is needed, the developer pays for that too. Two thousand permanent jobs in a part of Utah that has been waiting a long time for a real employer. None of that exists if the answer is no.
And the site is the part of the case I keep waiting for someone to make. Hansel Valley is unincorporated, sparsely populated, sits on the Ruby Pipeline, and is adjacent to military infrastructure with strong reasons to want resilient on-site power. The land is doing nothing else. It has been, in policy terms, waiting for this.
I'll grant the strongest version of the critique. The process moved fast, and the commissioners felt blindsided. That's a real complaint and worth fixing in how these things come to the county next time. But the choice today isn't between this Stratos and a better Stratos. It's between this Stratos and the same project getting built somewhere else.
The country has decided, at the level of abstraction, that it wants to lead on AI. You don't get to keep saying yes to the abstraction and no to every concrete project that would make the abstraction real.
🚨 HOLY CRAP! Stephen Miller just PUMMELED the fake news in front of a packed crowd
"If we had an HONEST media, those statistics I gave you would be 24/7 ON THE NEWS." 🔥
"Think about this. Under President Trump: largest reduction of m*rders in American history, in crime, in drug overdose death, in fentanyl, in illegal migration...IN ONE YEAR!"
This didn’t begin Friday.
Carter started it.
He watched the Islamic Republic take power, watched American diplomats get seized and paraded on television for 444 days, spent the rest of his presidency negotiating with people who had already told us exactly what they were.
Reagan facilitated it.
October 23rd, 1983. A Hezbollah truck bomb funded and directed by Iran killed 241 United States Marines in Beirut while they slept. The deadliest single day for the Marine Corps since Iwo Jima. Reagan’s response? Tehran was heard clearly and never forgotten kill enough Americans at once and America will leave.
That lesson became the operational blueprint for every Iran-backed proxy attack for the next forty years.
Clinton ignored it.
1995 — a car bomb in Riyadh kills five Americans.
1996 — Khobar Towers. A massive truck bomb kills 19 United States Air Force personnel in Saudi Arabia. Nothing.
1998 — Embassy bombings in Africa.
2000 — USS Cole. Seventeen sailors killed. Clinton launched missiles at an empty training camp and an aspirin factory. Eight years. Hundreds of Americans dead or wounded. Zero consequences for Tehran.
Bush handed them the keys.
He called them the Axis of Evil correctly. Then invaded two countries simultaneously and handed Iran the greatest strategic gift in its history. Iranian Quds Force operatives flooded across the border funding, training, and arming the militias killing our soldiers.
And the response was to continue the war while avoiding direct confrontation with the country killing our people.
By the time Bush left office Iran had deeper influence in Iraq than we did.
Obama funded it.
This is where failure becomes unforgivable. The Green Revolution of 2009 where millions of Iranians in the streets begging for American support ignored.
The protesters were crushed. The regime survived. Then came the $150 billion in sanctions relief, sunset clauses that expired within a decade, zero restrictions on ballistic missiles, and zero restrictions on funding proxy terror networks.
Then came the cash. $1.7 billion. On pallets. On an unmarked plane. In the middle of the night. Delivered simultaneously with American hostages.
The regime used the imagery as propaganda for years and used the money to fund Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthi expansion in Yemen, and the proxy militia networks in Iraq and Syria that spent the next decade killing Americans.
Obama literally funded the apparatus that put the drone into Tower 22.
Biden surrendered to it.
160-plus attacks on American forces from October 2023 forward. American soldiers killed in Jordan. Two Navy SEALs lost at sea intercepting Iranian weapons shipments to the Houthis.
Houthi missiles disrupting global shipping lanes.
Iranian proxies running operations across five countries.
Three Georgia soldiers died in their beds.
Then came Trump.
He looked at forty-five years of this record and did something no president had done since the hostages came home.
He said no.
Maximum pressure. IRGC designated as a foreign terrorist organization. Sanctions reimposed. The JCPOA abandoned. Soleimani the architect of Iranian proxy violence across the entire Middle East, personally responsible for hundreds of American deaths killed in a precision strike in January 2020.
The regime paralyzed.
The proxies recalibrated. The nuclear program set back. For the first time in four decades the regime faced a president it genuinely could not predict.
Then Trump left office. Biden came in. The pressure evaporated. The appeasement resumed. And the regime, patient as it has always been, went back to work.
And now we’re here.
So the next time someone tells you this is Trump’s war tell them they are brainless twats.
This isn’t Trump’s war.
This is forty-five years of American presidents refusing to finish it and one president finally deciding that the bill comes due.
If you are not capable of comprehending that move to Iran and defend the regime personally.
Our AOG team is busy collaborating with cities, counties, and towns across the Five County Region. Today, we're at a Beaver County Economic Development Meeting. Who knows what tomorrow holds? #AOG#EconomicDevelopment#utah#southern#fivecounty
Leaders from Virgin, Rockville, and Springdale gained valuable insights on OPMA, ethics, funding, planning, data privacy, and effective meetings-Thanks to all participants for your dedication! Resources available via Five County Association of Governments #Leadership#Utah#utpol
You’re invited! 💙 Circles Open House—Cedar City
Tue, Mar 17 • 4–6 PM
St. Jude’s Episcopal Church
Meet the team + participants. Learn how Circles helps families build budgeting skills + community support. Refreshments.
Questions: Dayna 435-865-6902
#Circles#CedarCityUT
Join us February 21st for the Southern Utah Military, Veterans and Family Wellness Fair. 10:00am-2:00pm at Utah Tech University. #utah#veterans#washingtoncounty#washco
TPUSA Presents: The ALL-AMERICAN HALFTIME SHOW https://t.co/fdcSOuftla via @YouTube REAL AMERICAN MUSIC HERE, NOT THAT SH** ON SUCKING LOLLIPOPS ON NFL @nflcommish
🚨 JUST IN: The All-American Halftime Show is GOING INSANE
You can't convince me anything Bad "Rabbit" is doing beats this!
Pure America.
USA! It's not complicated! 🇺🇸🇺🇸
For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years.
The mission of SpaceX remains the same: extend consciousness and life as we know it to the stars.
It is only possible to travel to Mars when the planets align every 26 months (six month trip time), whereas we can launch to the Moon every 10 days (2 day trip time). This means we can iterate much faster to complete a Moon city than a Mars city.
That said, SpaceX will also strive to build a Mars city and begin doing so in about 5 to 7 years, but the overriding priority is securing the future of civilization and the Moon is faster.