Fox News published a report on May 25 citing two named experts who characterize the coalition opposing data center siting as ideologically coordinated and, in their analysis, connected to foreign funding. Zineb Riboua, a fellow at the Hudson Institute, described the convergence of climate activists, anti-war groups, and other organizations as driven by what she characterized as "Third Worldism" and an "anti-American trend." Brenda Shaffer, a professor at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, called it a "red-green-green alliance" joining communist, Islamist, and environmental movements. Fox News reported that Neville Roy Singham, described as a U.S.-born tech entrepreneur living in Shanghai, allegedly funneled approximately $285 million into six activist nonprofits. Kevin O'Leary publicly accused groups opposing his Box Elder County project of having China-linked funding connections.
The Cooling Report does not independently verify the funding allegations. The sourcing is Fox News, citing named experts making attributional claims about financial flows that we have not confirmed through independent reporting. We are covering this article because the operational question it raises is real and documentable on its own terms, separate from the funding narrative entirely.
Permit opposition to data centers is now coordinated across causes. That coordination is visible in public records, permit hearings, and ballot efforts. The question of who funds it is genuinely interesting and politically contested. The question of what it costs operators in time, capital, and project certainty is quantifiable today.
The Box Elder County referendum effort is real. The Box Elder Accountability Referendum group is currently collecting signatures to place the Stratos AI Data Center approval on the November ballot. The protest organized by TogetherWorks Southern Utah on May 21 drew participants from St. George and Cedar City, more than 100 miles from the project site. That geographic spread reflects coordinated outreach, not spontaneous local opposition.
Millville, New Jersey passed a data center ban. New York had an active moratorium push. Ohio municipalities have passed moratoriums. The $64 billion in projects blocked or delayed by community opposition is a documented figure drawn from project filings, not an estimate. The pattern is visible across jurisdictions, across political environments, and across project types ranging from small county approvals to gigawatt-scale complexes.
A 2024 New York City rally cited by Fox News under the theme "Climate Justice Means Free Palestine" is offered as evidence of ideological crossover between climate and geopolitical causes. Whether that crossover is evidence of foreign coordination or simply reflects the organizing dynamics of activist coalitions is a question the Fox News report answers one way, based on the named experts' interpretations. Other analysts would answer it differently.
The funding source question matters for policy and national security analysis. For an operator managing a permitting timeline, the practical implication is the same regardless of whether opposition is domestically funded by environmental nonprofits, funded by sources the Hudson Institute characterizes as foreign-linked, or some combination of both.
Approval processes that were administrative three years ago are now political. County commissioners who vote yes on a data center project are now approving something that may end up on a referendum ballot. State legislatures that passed favorable development frameworks are now watching executive orders get challenged by organized coalitions that understand how to use permit hearing processes, environmental review requirements, and ballot initiative mechanisms to extend timelines or force reconsideration.
The specific pattern: opposition movements that were previously organized around single issues, water rights, local zoning, environmental review, are now coordinating across those issues and arriving at permit hearings together. An operator that prepared a strong water use case may face organized opposition on noise, grid strain, and community character simultaneously, from groups that share research, legal strategy, and media relationships. That coordination compresses the time available to respond at each hearing and multiplies the number of issues requiring public defense.
Permit delays at the scale documented in the $64 billion blocked or delayed project count represent real capital costs. A 100 MW data center under construction but unable to commission because of a permit challenge costs the operator roughly $50,000 to $100,000 per day in financing costs alone, depending on the capital structure. A six-month delay on a $500 million build is not a minor inconvenience. It is a material impact on project returns that shows up in pro formas and changes the economics of development decisions.
Insurance and financing markets are beginning to price permit risk as a line item. This is inference on our part, based on conversations with developers and the visible trend in project financing structures, not a confirmed market-wide development. But the trajectory is consistent: lenders and insurers who have watched $64 billion in projects get blocked or delayed have adjusted their risk models. That adjustment shows up as longer due diligence periods, higher coverage requirements in markets with active opposition histories, and in some cases, reluctance to finance projects in jurisdictions where ballot mechanisms can reverse commission approvals.
Kevin O'Leary's public accusation that groups opposing his Utah project have China-linked funding connections is a political strategy as much as it is a factual claim. Framing opposition as foreign-funded changes the political valence of the fight. It reframes a local debate about water use and community character as a national security matter. Whether that framing holds up to scrutiny depends on the documented funding flows, which the Fox News report attributes to its own reporting on Singham and the six nonprofits named. That specific claim should be treated as a claim attributed to Fox News and the named experts, not as established fact, until independently verified.
The underlying operational reality needs no foreign funding narrative to be consequential. Opposition to data center siting has learned to coordinate. It has learned to use every available legal mechanism. It has learned to show up at permit hearings in volume, to sponsor ballot initiatives, and to reach across single-issue boundaries to build broader coalitions. That is a change in the operating environment that every developer, operator, and investor in the sector is now managing. Permit risk is a real line item. The source of the risk is secondary to the question of how to price it and plan for it.
Developers that engage communities before the permit application, rather than after the opposition has organized, continue to have better outcomes. That is not a new insight. It is a finding that predates any coordinated opposition campaign by several years. The coordination makes the stakes of skipping that step higher, not different in kind.