The whole thing was pretty weird, tbh. The person who fronted the cash for the project went by a pseudonym, "Robert Christian". The person who was approached to carve the stones for the monument said that he didn't really want to do it, so he quoted a ridiculous price, to which "Christian" immediately agreed. According to the front man, the group he represented believed that humans would eventually bomb ourselves back to the stone age, and so they wanted to provide a guide post for rebuilding civilization. To that end, they designed it to function as a compass, calendar, and a clock, in addition to a moral guide. They inscribed the same text in several different languages on it that included such commandments as keep the human population to a maximum of 500 million to stay in concert with nature, unite humanity with a new living language, don't elect petty people to public office, etc.

Anyway - he donated the monument and the land it's on to the county, so the destruction of it in 2022 was considered destruction of public property, which carries a minimum sentence of 20 years, provided they ever find out who did it.