In Genesis 11, the people in Shinar are building a city and a tower that will reach to heaven so that they may make a name for themselves and not be scattered abroad.  God responds by confounding their language and scattering them across the earth.  It would be a simplistic misreading of the text to assume that the problem is the mere building of a tower or that it somehow was a threat to God.  The problem, fundamentally, was one of the sinful human heart seeking self-exaltation and autonomy from God.