In the latest example of corporations existing outside of the law, SpaceX (who is for some reason the controlling entity of xAI now) announced they'll be removing the illegal, unpermitted gas turbines they've been running at their Memphis Colossus data center... by July 2027. xAI gets to flout economic planning and restrictions that any normal group would have to follow, all for the sake of being able to get another fuckass data center built in record time. In the meantime, real people will face declining health and increased pollution. This is not a new story, but it's worth telling anyway.

xAI, SpaceX, and the Race for AI Buildout

For those blissfully unaware, xAI is the subsidiary of SpaceX (previously under X, which itself was previously Twitter) that is in charge of AI development and data centers for the xAI series of products. This includes Grok, which has thus far been involved in controversies including but not limited to:

• Spreading antisemitic slurs and conspiracies while calling itself "Mecha-Hitler"
• Creating widespread non-consensual nude images of primarily women and children
• Acting as a mouthpiece for Elon's racist belief in South African white genocide
• Generally being used by chuds to try and back up or reject things they don't like ("Grok, is this true?")

Beyond that, xAI has also been happy to partner with the federal government for the use of its models across agencies including the Department of Defense (come on, enough with this Department of War shit). Now with a product like that, you might be surprised to learn that some people aren't jazzed about its continuing development and growth, especially when it spews smog in their backyard. xAI continues to barge forward however; decriers be damned in the name of "progress".

The AI models keep expanding, requiring more memory and cores for what "improvements" there are. So the name of the game right now is data centers; acres and acres of computer racks, loaded with the best money hardware can buy (and some less so, given the current supply crunch). These racks are needed to keep up with the ballooning requirements of each new "frontier" (a buzzword label with no actual inclination of performance of improvement) model developed, which everyone bought into the AI hype will immediately hop to because it's all novelty over utility.

Colossus: A Short History

The Colossus I Data Center was brought online in 122 days from breaking ground to operation. Some hail that as an achievement, but others (like myself) see it as a brutal pace to avoid having to answer pesky questions like "How will this affect the nearby area?" and "What sort of mitigation plans to do you have for the data center's waste?" The data center is powered by dozens of unpermitted gas turbines, which they initially refused to acknowledge were running until journalists and groups used thermal imaging to prove they were indeed on and spewing toxins into the air (including smog, formaldehyde, and other nasty things). This resulted in a suit from the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) on behalf of the NAACP for violations of the Clean Air Act. Their claim was that the company operated without public oversight or accountability for these illegal constructions and sought legal stoppage until proper accounting can be done of the effects of said turbines.

Enter the Federal Government and the Department of Justice, who pushed the courts to dismiss the suit as a matter of national security, stating that the xAI models were needed for "artificial-intelligence innovation that supports the Department of War’s military operations." So, residents are left without legal means of contesting these developments, barring individual claims and damages.

This all brings us to July 30, 2026, where xAI announced that the company had entered an agreement with the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (as it sits on the border of Tennessee and Mississippi) that it will complete removal of the "temporary" turbines (now online for 2 years) and replace them with a natural gas power plant by July 2027. This reads, to me at least, as a swift stomp on the balls of the nearby area for several reasons. First, it seems all but certain they will face no punishment for spewing toxins into the environment for the past years because this is now in a timeline agreed upon by the state, with no announcement of any fines or actions.

"Facts" and "Fiction"

Embarassingly, they can't seem to get their propaganda straight either, as in their update on the construction where they announced the agreement, they specify "69... temporary, mobile turbines that currently power our facility in Southaven, Mississippi." This seems at odds with their "Fact V. Fiction" FAQ linked at the bottom of the page, which contains a string of statements I truly can't make heads or tales of. Please check out the link and we'll reconvene to talk about what it says.

So according to statement one, there were temporary turbines, but they were moved to an extremely nearby different site, and then they were removed. They applied for 15 permanent turbines, still running the temporary ones in the meantime, and received approval 6 months+ later. However, they won't need that many, and they'll only be backup, so they'll primarily (assumedly) be drawing from the local power grid. The next statement clarifies that there won't be any turbines at Memphis data center; they'll be down the road at Electrolux, connected via substation that talk about spending millions to build in statement seven. In statement two, they say that there's nowhere near 90 turbines at its next data center (a number significantly higher than any I've seen in these conversations, most likely to make them sound silly), and say that they'll not have any turbines at the new one (because it'll be wired in to all the turbines they have elsewhere).

They'll eventually be hooked into the grid according to the statement three, and they will draw from it but have battery and turbine backup if things get overdrawn according to statement five. There's then extremely careful wording in statement six where they contest "Colossus will be one of the largest emissions sources in Memphis" by stating "actually we'll be using state-of-the-art to reduce emissions" but then stops short of saying "and thus the statement is wrong", probably because even with the fancy tech it still will be highly polluting.

So after all these words and attempts to clear the air, the only thing I'm confident in is that they absolutely, desperately do not want to directly discuss their overall plans for these sites. They make every opportunity to speak around and negate concerns, without really clarifying the extent of anything barring the 12 (claimed) permanent turbines at Electrolux and two power substations. I guess they also do claim the wastewater treatment was supposed to come online in 2026, however officials were told last month that construction on the site isn't even supposed to restart until Q12027. In the meantime, they will continue to drain the area's aquifer. It is unclear how long they need to complete it.

So, Why Memphis?

I, and other smarter people, would attribute the location of this data center, and its use of unpermitted gas generators which it denied for months existed or being used, to institutional and historic racism. See, Memphis is a majority Black population, who historically have been redlined to more industrial and polluted areas such as these across the country. This is a known issue to this day, where minority heavy neighborhoods will be subject to worse pollution and health outcomes than similar, whiter areas. This includes things like this exact situation, where the development of health hazards such as data centers are allowed only in less affluent and darker communities. The situation in Memphis is actually worse than I thought, as there somewhere in the range of 10-15 data centers in the outlying Memphis area where people very much do live.

The physical pollution coming from Colossus' 69 gas generators is one thing that indisputably will hurt the environment around the area and its residents. However, there's growing concern around audio or sonic pollution and the effects it has on flora, fauna, and people in the area. That type of pollution can include easy-to-identify things, like the loud sounds of construction or machinery moving then disrupting sleep and normal life, but it also includes infrasonic pollution, or audio that is below the range of human hearing (sub 20mhz). Despite humans not being able to hear it, there's growing academic and other research that show these sounds can and do have very direct negative health effects, up to several miles away. This can include things like a general sense of unease all the way to debilitating migraines, nausea, and other symptoms. The fact that these sort of symptoms have been reported across many communities that have had data centers pop up and this data center (plus at least one more from xAI alone to come) were allowed to be be built so close to housing shows a damning disregard for the health and well-being of the people living there.

No One Is Held Accountable For "Moving Fast And Breaking Things"

This is the Silicon Valley ethos used to justify harm in the name of "progress". It's one thing when it's contained to Silicon Valley or on the worldwide web, it's another when it comes to your backyard or to the health of entire communities. The pollution, amongst everything else, will have clear and quantifiable harm to the communities surrounding these new data centers. Normal, smaller developments are bound by permits and hearings and the like. These permits require impact reports or citizens to sound off on the ways that it will effect them. Clear, traceable paths where developers can be held liable for deadlines, emissions, and negative outcomes.

xAI faces none of those things. Their developments are draped in shadow and purposefully not publicized because they are aware of how bad what they're doing is. They hope that if they just refuse to talk about it long enough, eventually we'll just accept this as the price of progress and let them off the hook for purposefully making life worse for a considerable amount of people. All this for the war crime and child porn generator; for something that's being used to harass women online right now. All this for something a majority of people don't even want; to add to the bottom line of SpaceX. We should not be willing to overlook the human and environmental costs for a company to profit. We've done that far too long, and look where we are now; talking about a bunch of illegal generators stood up to make the racism machine work more gooder.