SNL Turns Kevin O’Leary’s Utah Data Center Fight Into a Punchline

SNL Turns Kevin O’Leary’s Utah Data Center Fight Into a Punchline
The fight over Kevin O’Leary’s proposed Stratos data center in Utah had already moved from planning documents to protests, petitions and legal action before it reached late-night television.

O’Leary Digital initially proposed a project spanning roughly 40,000 acres. Residents and local critics objected to the possible strain on water and other resources, environmental damage, and what they described as inadequate transparency from the developer and local officials. Under pressure, O’Leary cut the footprint to just over 20,000 acres — a concession that did not end the conflict.

The investor has portrayed resistance as an obstacle rather than a reason to retreat. In June, he said: “There are bumps in the road. There’s litigation. There’s misinformation. There’s propaganda. You name it. But if you know what you’re doing is right, you make it, you get there.” His earlier Fox News claim that some opponents had ties to the Chinese Communist Party, later walked back, led a Utah advocacy group opposing Stratos to sue O’Leary and Fox News for defamation in July.

Then came Saturday Night Live. On “Weekend Update,” James Austin Johnson’s O’Leary reduced opponents’ fears to a brutally neat parody: “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.” The sketch also mocked water consumption and the profit motive, turning a local land-use battle into a national joke.

The Verge framed the segment as another example of satire finding easy material in Silicon Valley’s most conspicuous ambitions. For Stratos critics, the joke lands because the underlying argument remains unresolved: who gets the promised technological future — and who pays for it?

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