DOJ Rushes To Help xAI Pollute The Skies Over Mississippi
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According to legend, F. Scott Fitzgerald once said to Ernest Hemingway, “The rich are different than us.” To which Hemingway replied, “Yes, Scott. They have more money.” In a world based on capitalism, money is the yardstick we use to take the measure of our fellow humans. By that metric, more is always better. Having lots of money allows you to buy power, and power is the one thing you can never have enough of.
The latest example is xAI, which has created a series of gigantic data centers in Memphis, Tennessee, and next door in northern Mississippi. Those data centers are where Grok resides, Elon Musk’s answer to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Data centers, as we know, consume stupendous amounts of electricity. The local utilities do not have enough electricity available to meet the needs of xAI, so Elon Musk has brought in a fleet of 50 or more portable methane-powered generators to keep the current flowing to all the AI chips inside those data centers.
The first xAI installation was inside a former Electrolux factory in a part of Memphis that is populated mostly by low-income residents. It has since expanded to parts of northern Mississippi. In America, the least wealthy communities are where the wealthy decide to build their oil refineries, chemical plants, and factories. Land there tends to be cheap and the residents — being poor — usually have limited political power. As a result, those communities tend to have the most polluted air, land, and water, which means the people who live there have more health issues and shorter life spans than those who live in cleaner environments.
Mississippi Loves Pollution — If There Is Money Involved
Residents in Mississippi who now find themselves breathing the effluent from xAI’s methane generators have protested the pollution created by xAI, but to no avail. In April, the NAACP filed suit in federal court, seeking relief from the outflow of crud into the skies above those neighborhoods. But the world’s first trillionaire doesn’t have to fight those poor and powerless people alone. Deeply embedded in the current administration, where he headed the hateful DOGE operation that took a chainsaw to USAID, Musk has the Department of Justice to carry water for him. It swooped into court on June 16 to demand the case against xAI be dismissed.
The DOJ told the court the data center is being used to train and develop AI models that are “critical to the economy and the Department of War” and the turbines are necessary to power the facility. It also said the court had the power to terminate such lawsuits under the terms of the Clean Air Act — the same legislation the administration has eviscerated by eliminating the so-called “endangerment finding” that says carbon dioxide is a pollutant. This administration is shameless about wanting everything both ways. “Do as we say, not as we do,” is its motto.
In a statement dripping with righteous indignation, Deputy Attorney General Adam Gustafson snarled, “The Department of Justice will not sit idly by while private organizations use environmental laws to undermine our national security.” In its court filing, the DOJ wrote that Grok’s continued availability was “paramount” to national security and that the military version of the chatbot had assisted US forces “to deploy over 2,000 munitions to 2,000 distinct targets within 96 hours” in the war against Iran. One of those targeted assaults during the first day of the war killed over one hundred young women at a school, a fact the DOJ conveniently choose to ignore.
The NAACP Responds
Lawyers representing the NAACP countered by saying the affected communities had long had the right to file suits against polluters and that the Justice Department cannot simply quash those cases. They added that all companies, even those contracting with the federal government, must follow environmental laws.
“There is no moral or legal precedent for this,” said Laura Thoms, the director of enforcement for Earthjustice, which is representing the NAACP, along with the Southern Environmental Law Center. “This isn’t about national security; it’s a desperate attempt to protect wealthy tech companies from obeying the laws meant to protect people from pollution.”
According to The Guardian, the NAACP claims xAI has illegally installed and is operating 57 gas turbines at its Southaven facility in Mississippi — each one the size of a large bus. The group claims the data center has the capacity to emit more than 5,000 tons of harmful nitrogen oxides per year, along with fine particulate matter and toxic chemicals like formaldehyde, making it one of the top polluters in the region. These pollutants are tied to an increase in asthma, heart disease, respiratory illnesses, and cancer.
“Laws like the Clean Air Act are a bedrock insurance policy for communities to hold polluters accountable for decisions that cause them harm,” said Abre’ Conner, the director of environmental and climate justice for the NAACP. “This should not be up for debate.” And yet it is, in a nation where wealth counts for everything and the rule of law is a distant memory to the likes of Adam Gustafson, who must have been absent the day they discussed ethics while he was in law school.
Once again, the Great And Powerful Musk has shown himself to be immune to the suffering of others. Psychologists have a term for such behavior and it has nothing to do with autism.
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