The US Justice Department has taken Elon Musk’s side in a pollution lawsuit, arguing that the gas turbines powering his AI data centre are too important to national security to switch off.
In a filing on Monday, the department, joined by the state of Mississippi, asked a court to dismiss the case the NAACP brought against xAI in April. It is an unusual move: the government intervening to defend a private company against an environmental claim.
The NAACP sued over the methane gas turbines powering xAI’s Colossus 2 data centre near Memphis, which it says run without the proper Clean Air Act permits. It has asked the court to halt them, citing higher ‘risks of asthma attacks and heart disease’ for nearby residents.
‘National security’ as a defence #
The Justice Department’s argument is striking. Stopping the turbines, it wrote, ‘threatens American national, economic, and energy security by seeking to shut off the power supply for artificial-intelligence innovation that supports the Department of War’s military operations’.
It said the government relies on just four AI models for mission-critical work on top-secret networks, and that xAI’s Grok is one of them. Cameron Stanley, the Defense Department’s chief digital and AI officer, filed separately to say Grok’s government model supports ‘vital national security missions’, including the recent Iran War.
In other words, the feed-the-war-machine argument now extends to the power plant behind the chatbot, days after questions over Grok’s slow federal uptake shadowed the record SpaceX IPO that folded xAI in.
An ‘asthma capital’ next door #
The community case is hard to wave away. The turbines emit nitrogen oxides, fine particulate matter and other hazardous pollutants, and they sit beside homes in a largely Black part of South Memphis.
Memphis ranked second in the US for asthma-related emergency-room visits in 2024, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. The NAACP’s suit named 27 turbines, but emails obtained by the Southern Environmental Law Center later showed xAI kept adding more, to around 46, after the case was filed. (Engadget puts the total at 57.)
xAI has not been found liable, and denies it needs the permits the NAACP says it skipped. It filed its own motion to dismiss on Monday.
The contradiction Musk can’t shake #
The standoff sharpens a tension that trailed SpaceX into its IPO: the same Musk empire that sells Tesla solar burns gas, around the clock, to train Grok.
That clash is not unique to Memphis. Across the industry, AI’s power hunger is colliding with the grid and the communities near it, from Europe asking households to cut usage to US utilities planning $1.4tn in new spending to keep up.
What is new is the government’s willingness to label one company’s private data centre a strategic asset, and to fight in court to keep it running. xAI’s neighbours are now arguing not just with Musk, but with the Department of War.
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