I served a mission in eastern Ukraine (Донецк, Харьков) from 2008-2010 and there learned to speak Russian fluently. Since returning home I've had probably a half dozen offers to work for the FBI or other government offices. Every now and then the highest level Russian classes at BYU will get an announcement from some government agency trying to recruit us, and a lot of them are rumored to actually be the CIA.

It's more than just the language fluency (not all return missionaries speak the same level of Russian,) it's also having lived in the culture and living very conservative lifestyles (no smoking/drinking, emphasis on families, etc.) and fierce loyalty. It's the overall perfect stereotype for what government agencies want.

Combine that with how cheap everything is ($80K/year is a pretty solid job here and $500K bought my parents a 3-story 3,000 square foot house). That's the reason Adobe, Microsoft, Novell, eBay, Overstock.com, Goldman Sachs etc. have all started to put up shop in Utah - it's ideal if you want people who are content to do a good job with their 8-5 and go home to their families.

The new data center in utah is probably a mixture of all of these things; everything is uber-cheap including workforce, so why not put a data center there? (Bluehost is here as well).

Off topic, but one of those things is not like the others... Novell was founded in Utah more than 30 years ago.

When I hear "shocked", it makes me think that you think my comment is prejudiced in some way, or is perhaps making a wrong judgement on motivations for locating a data center.

Anyone who thinks there wasn't a big "there's plenty of Mormons there to recruit for the job" factor in the decision is kidding themselves. Cheap land can be found in virtually every part of the country. There are tons of tech workers in Colorado, Arizona, Alabama (Huntsville), Texas (Austin/San Antonio metro area), etc. All of these places have super cheap land.

A gay mormon (which is just as common as a gay catholic, or a gay atheist) will be likely to be in the closet. They would probably be ostracised by family and friends if they were outed, lots of people in the general community would not be ostracised. Mormons are more vulnerable to that form of attack and compromise.

If you have a very open person that engaged on the occasional responsible drink, they are much more useful to spy agencies. How do you blackmail someone whose life is an open book? On the other hand, it could be relatively easy to blackmail a Mormon over some minor (from an outsiders perspective) infraction, particularly as the price for being excluded from the Mormon community is so high

You still need to understand the Mormon culture and church more so. I'm not sure what you mean by being excluded (Excommunicated, shunned, offended?) isn't absolute, in fact, no one really is excluded from the church as all are forever welcome (Some extreme edge cases aside) back. This is in an ideal situation and I know that in some locations that maybe a local leader or some local members because of lack of experience, their own mistakes or whatever don't truly welcome and help someone return. I'm also curious what are some of the minor infractions that were induce someone being excluded from the Mormon community..

Not all Mormons hide everything from their family, friends and leaders. We're encouraged to do the opposite, actually, in appropriateness and relativeness especially so when it's something quite bad which are the things someone would be blackmailed about. You wouldn't go blackmailing someone because he didn't read the Ensign every month which is something a Mormon probably wouldn't really bother telling anyone.

Also, someone who is a Mormon probably has fewer things to be blackmailed about—lewd pictures, drunken mistakes, egregious offenses to others and the law, hidden relationships (Sexual or otherwise), etc. are not things we seek out, instead, we actively avoid those things and not only actions but locations (Bars, night clubs, etc.) where more embarrassing/illegal things tend to happen. This is based on what I've seen and learnt throughout my life and I'm not pretending that these are any great or completely accurate comments, simply some postulations.

You're presuming that non-heterosexual mormons are able to just "turn that off" easily, without fail. There are numerous examples of either religious leaders or conservative political leaders engaging in same sex activity to imply that this is not possible.

I doubt that's even possible. How do you detect if a candidate is actually homosexual if they've been lying to themselves, their family and friends for decades? They're only homosexual activity might be the odd shame-filled masterbation session every few months, or the rare hook up. All it takes is one of those hook up people to blackmail the candidate.

Oh, like you don't think the U.S. government knows how to turn on your cell phone camera without you knowing?

The data center in Utah has more to do with cheap land, low cost, and low likelihood of natural disaster.

Sadly, too many here in Utah support in the name of "bringing more jobs to Utah." They are willing to sell their liberty for a few extra jobs.

The cost of farm land seems to be around $9000/acre, and certainly under $20,000/acre. The major exceptions are places like Sonoma County, where vineyards are still profitable even though the land can go for $100,000/acre. But this is also a place where there's high population, so excluded from consideration.

A warehouse, for 30,000 sq. foot (about 0.7 acres) costs around $3 million, as does a 20,000 sq. foot office. (On average across the US.)

If you're talking about oil land, then that's not really farm land, is it? It's obvious that land with good mineral/oil rights can be worth a lot more.

In any case, oil doesn't seem like a good example. A derrick and pump don't need much in the way of land, and slant drilling means that any really expensive land can be avoided. I see prices in North Dakota of 'certainly under $20,000', even in that oil boom state:

"Linda Fisher, a Land Department leasing coordinator, said the three quarterly sales [in 2010] have fetched a record $269.2 million for about 135,000 acres, compared with about $103 million for 137,800 acres for all of 2009." (http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700059300/ND-oil-lease-au... ). That's an average of about $2,000/acre, though the boom has continued since then.

"At about the same time, records and interviews show, other companies were purchasing drilling rights to land on and near the reservation for $300 to $1,000 per acre plus royalties as high as 22.5 percent.... Two lawsuits allege that by buying Dakota-3, Williams effectively paid more than $10,000 per acre for those rights." (http://www.opb.org/news/article/land-grab-cheats-north-dakot...; )

I haven't found anything which says that $9,000/acre for oil land is "really a low figure these days." If anything, that seems to be only somewhat below the going rate.

On the other hand, it is high compared to non-irrigated farm land, which goes for no more than $3,000/acre for the most expensive county average in North Dakota. (The value in most counties is usually under $1,000/acre.)

So, where is this $20,000+/acre land you're talking about?

The topic asked about "bearings on constructing the new data center in Utah".

This specific branch started with "Low population density is almost redundant with "Cheap land"'. You said 'Not is the case where resources are found under said land or the land is farm land.'

That's two different cases: 1) resources are found under said land, and 2) said land is farm land.

I pointed out that category #2, "farm land", is generally not expensive compared to the price of building a data center. There are places where farm land costs $100,000/acre, but those are also places with high population density. Hence, I am in complete agreement with the statement that "low population density is almost redundant with farm land that doesn't have resources under said land."

You continue to talk about land which is in both category #1 and category #2. But that is not what my comment is about, and I never meant to imply that.

However, when I research it, I find that oil lands are not enough to greatly affect land which is both farm land and oil land. (BTW, not all farm land is oil land, and not all oil land is farm land.) I therefore would like more than your un-attributed claim that there is cropland going for $30K/acre in ND. The only examples I can find are for places which also have buildings on the land, which are included in the price.

I think would be misleading to include a $80,000 home on 5 acres of land for a total price of $100,00 as meaning that the land itself is worth $20,000 per acre. That isn't the situation we're discussing, since few would spend $100,00 on 5 acres with a house, only to tear down the house to build a data center, if 5 acres of land are available nearby for only $20,000.

I say these prices with some certainty having looked at news releases like http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/news/newsreleases/2013/april-1-2013/n... , which says:

"North Dakota cropland values increased by about 42 percent during 2012, according to Andrew Swenson, North Dakota State University Extension Service farm management specialist. ... The drivers that have pushed land values have been well-documented. Grain prices from 2007 to the present have been much higher than any year prior to 2007. Also, yields generally have been strong. For example, the three highest wheat yields ever have occurred within the past four years. This combination has provided several years of strong profit for crop producers, which has fueled their financial ability and desire to buy land. ... A factor that has been just as important in driving land values has been low interest rates. Interest rates to finance land purchases are attractive, while returns and confidence on alternative investments have been weak."

You'll notice that oil is not mentioned in that list as a major factor affecting farm prices.

That document also links to a PDF showing "the average per-acre values of cropland in North Dakota from 2007 to 2013." The highest average prices are in the South Red River Valley at just under $4,200 per acre. In western ND the highest average prices are $1,500/acre.

These numbers are so far from $30K that your $30K number must be an unusual outlier. It's certainly not high enough to affect someone's decision to build a data center in western ND.

Please provide some evidence which confirms your understanding.

Compared to the price of the data center, where the building alone costs $2 million to construct, $30K/acre is dirt cheap.

And I still don't believe you about the price of land. It must have been an extreme outlier, since I can't find any advertisements, any government reports, or anything else which agrees with you.

I wasn't much of an outdoors person before moving to Utah and really, really like that stuff now too.

Besides, I presume the CIA factors that into their recruitment. Clearly, they don't need ineffectual communication with foreign assets so they would control agents who do just that. I imagine if Mormons are employed en masse, it would be for translations of already recorded data.

On my mission I spoke with everyone from those in prisons to the general populace to someone running for president of the country. He did become the president too. I/we did quite well in conversing with the apparent equivalent of foreign informants in the context of this discussion.

[1] http://www.lds.org.au/manual/preach-my-gospel-a-guide-to-mis... [2] http://www.lds.org.au/manual/teaching-no-greater-call-a-reso...

The church operates Missionary Training Centers with the main one in Provo, UT and other smaller centers distributed around the world. When somebody starts their mission they go there for a few weeks for a crash course in how to teach religious priniciples, the policies for missionaries, etc. A lot of missionaries are assigned to foreign countries or even language-specific assignments in the US. Those missionaries stay for 2-3 months to learn the language. It tries to be a fairly immersive program, taught by native speakers of the language and former missionaries, and has a fairly significant software component to it as well. I don't know specifics first-hand, but it was widely spoken about that groups in governments, etc... would visit to learn more about why the program was so effective in so little time. I don't think it's entirely the software, it's a pretty good program all-around - but it's certainly nothing to dismiss.

edit: The main website is http://www.mtc.byu.edu, but as language learning consulting is hardly their main goal, I doubt you'll find much more of an answer to your question there.