When Elon Musk’s Data Center Came to Town

Summary

Lawless Planet: When Elon Musk’s Data Center Came to Town

Podcast: Lawless Planet
Host: Zach Goldbaum (Audible)
Date: March 9, 2026
Episode Summary by Section and Timestamps

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OVERVIEW

This episode examines the arrival of Elon Musk’s XAI data center—dubbed Colossus—in South Memphis. Framed within the town’s long struggle against industrial pollution and environmental racism, host Zach Goldbaum tells the story of grassroots resistance, regulatory lapses, and the real-world impact of the data and AI boom on marginalized communities. Using interviews, reporting, and archival audio, the episode spotlights how rapid technological expansion amplifies historic injustices.

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I. SOUTH MEMPHIS: A COMMUNITY UNDER SIEGE

• Pipeline Protest Origins

  • In October 2020, South Memphis residents gathered to oppose the Byhalia Connection pipeline, planned through nearly all-black neighborhoods ([00:00]–[02:57]).
  • Residents felt railroaded by oil and gas giants Valero and Plains All American, describing the pipeline route as the “point of least resistance.”
  • Quote:
    • Keyshawn Pearson: “It is cruel to have to continue to lose people because of decisions that are being made by huge billion dollar corporations and nobody hearing you.” ([02:30])
  • Local activism paid off; the pipeline was ultimately canceled in July 2021.
    • Justin Pearson (Keyshawn’s brother): “You helped to stop two oil conglomerates with a combined worth of over $72 billion.” ([04:42])

• Legacy of Pollution and Sacrifice Zones

  • Industrial pollution has plagued South Memphis for decades—iron mills, refineries, chemical plants, leading to cancer rates 4x the national average.
  • Quote:
    • Keyshawn Pearson: “South Memphis is what's known as a sacrifice zone.” ([10:11])

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II. THE ARRIVAL OF XAI: MUSK’S DATA CENTER

• Behind Closed Doors

  • In 2024, Elon Musk’s XAI secretly leased the defunct Electrolux factory to build the “world’s most powerful supercomputer.”
    • Negotiations with city leaders were held under NDAs; the community was kept in the dark.
    • Residents, like Keyshawn Pearson, first learned of the center only by accident ([15:11]).

• Economic Hopes vs. Environmental Fears

  • City and business leaders touted thousands of jobs and higher tax revenue, branding the project “transformative” ([16:07]).
  • Residents compared this to past “copy-paste” practices of exploiting poor black neighborhoods for risky development.
  • Quote:
    • Keyshawn Pearson: “They have decided that we are the path of least resistance.” ([18:24])

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III. ENVIRONMENTAL AND HEALTH IMPACTS

• Colossus Operational Reality

  • Colossus, Musk’s data center, draws immense power (~1 million gallons of water/day and the energy of a small city).
  • Widespread concerns:
    • Strain on an already stressed grid—weekly blackouts were not uncommon prior.
    • Water pumping from the Memphis aquifer risks arsenic contamination ([18:07]–[21:50]).
    • Residents reported worsening respiratory health and a significant rise in asthma events.
      • Quote:
        • Latricia Adams: “I had an asthma attack… I couldn’t catch my breath. I had to use my inhaler twice. Not once, but twice.” ([22:09])
  • Utility bills soared by ~12%, largely attributed to data center operations ([23:22]).

• Unpermitted Methane Turbines

  • Despite denials from utility officials, XAI secretly installed 35 methane gas turbines to supplement the grid—without any public notice or permits.
    • These released dangerous pollutants, exacerbating existing health risks.
    • Quote:
      • Keyshawn Pearson: “...companies had to get permits that ensured they were following safety and environmental regulation. Not the case here.” ([25:01])

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IV. COMMUNITY RESPONSE AND THE REGULATORY BATTLE

• Public Outcry and Cover-ups

  • April 2025: Town hall meeting erupts over XAI’s long-term permit request for the turbines.
    • XAI’s rep is booed off stage; residents and activists denounce secrecy and lack of accountability ([26:03]–[29:09]).
    • Quote:
      • Keyshawn Pearson: “It's time to tell the truth about what political abandonment looks like.” ([28:37])
      • Dr. Stephen Smith: “They're bringing in this Silicon Valley mindset, which is go fast and break things… [but] now they're going to break this community.” ([29:38])

• Legal Challenges and Setbacks

  • NAACP and the Southern Environmental Law Center threaten suit for Clean Air Act violations ([29:48]).
  • July 2025: County grants XAI the air permit anyway—activists devastated; worried this sets a pattern for marginalized communities ([37:00]).
  • Quote:
    • Keyshawn Pearson: “I feel like it's a slow lynching where you slowly lose the ability to breathe.” ([37:00])
  • Musk, meanwhile, publicly boasts of his achievement:
    • Elon Musk: “It's the most powerful supercomputer of any kind.” ([26:03])

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V. EXPANSION, GREENWASHING, AND COMMUNITY SKEPTICISM

• Colossus 2 and Beyond

  • XAI opens a second, even larger, data center (Colossus 2) in a neighboring Black community, Whitehaven, doubling down on the same exploitative model ([32:02]–[34:58]).
  • Total energy use for both equals nearly a third of the entire county’s consumption on peak days.

• “Corporate Saviorism” and Green Initiatives

  • XAI touts a new solar farm and water recycling as proof of “responsible corporate citizenship,” but locals remain unconvinced.
    • Quote:
      • Sarah Houston, Protect Our Aquifer: “I don't support billionaires owning all of our infrastructure. That is a dangerous place to be in.” ([38:26])
      • Keyshawn Pearson: “There are few things more disgusting to me than corporate saviorism… while you also cause the cancer, cause the killing…” ([38:51])
    • Token charitable donations (e.g., for sports fields) are seen as inadequate by residents.

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VI. ACTIVIST VICTORIES AND NEXT STEPS

• Small Wins and Ongoing Struggle

  • January 2026: The EPA rules XAI's turbines are not exempt from Clean Air Act permits—a possible national precedent for AI/data centers ([40:20]).
    • Quote:
      • Keyshawn Pearson: “We are up against a Goliath, but what I know is the power is in the culmination of the movement…” ([40:45])

• The Battle Continues

  • XAI announces plans for a third data center, humorously dubbed “Macro Harder.”
  • Community groups vow to keep fighting for environmental justice.

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MEMORABLE QUOTES & SPEAKER ATTRIBUTION

• “It is cruel to have to continue to lose people because of decisions that are being made by huge billion dollar corporations and nobody hearing you.”
  — Keyshawn Pearson ([02:30])

• “South Memphis is what's known as a sacrifice zone.”
  — Keyshawn Pearson ([10:11])

• “They have decided that we are the path of least resistance.”
  — Keyshawn Pearson ([18:24])

• “I had an asthma attack the other night for the first time in what, like, 15 years...I had to use my inhaler twice.”
  — Latricia Adams ([22:09])

• “It's time to tell the truth about what political abandonment looks like.”
  — Keyshawn Pearson ([28:37])

• “They're bringing in this Silicon Valley mindset, which is go fast and break things. That's exactly what it is. And what they're now going to do is break this community, because they're not being transparent. They're not being honest.”
  — Dr. Stephen Smith ([29:38])

• “I feel like it's a slow lynching where you slowly lose the ability to breathe, and that's what our community feels.”
  — Keyshawn Pearson ([37:00])

• “There are few things more disgusting to me than corporate saviorism. This idea that you're gonna be the savior while you also cause the cancer, cause the killing...”
  — Keyshawn Pearson ([38:51])

• “I don't support billionaires owning all of our infrastructure. That is a dangerous place to be in.”
  — Sarah Houston ([38:26])

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THEMES & INSIGHTS

• Environmental Justice: The classic struggles against pipelines and pollution are now found in the fight against tech’s ravenous need for data and power.
• Lack of Transparency: Industrial and tech expansion continues to proceed without community input or meaningful regulatory scrutiny.
• Burden on Marginalized Communities: Across decades, environmental sacrifices are repeatedly demanded of the same people and places.
• Corporate Greenwash: Clean energy and donations are not enough to address fundamentally extractive practices.
• Grassroots Hope: Persistent organizing and legal challenge can produce small, significant victories even against the world’s most powerful interests.

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For further reading and investigation:

• Time magazine: “We are the Last of the Forgotten: Inside the Memphis community battling Elon Musk's XAI” by Andrew Richard Chow
• Memphis Commercial Appeal reporting
• Wall Street Journal
• NRDC: “The AI boom is stressing the grid, but it doesn’t have to be this way”

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This episode offers a powerful, at times infuriating, and ultimately hopeful view into South Memphis—where the intersection of tech, power, and justice is navigated by ordinary people determined to keep fighting for their health, community, and future.

Transcript

[Zach Goldbaum]

Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of Lawless Planet ad free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app. It takes a lot to get a group of people to organize for anything, let alone for a town hall in the middle of a pandemic. But in October 2020, that's exactly what the people of South Memphis did. On a sunny day in a state park just east of the Mississippi River, a small crowd massed up and gathered to speak their minds to a group of representatives from Valero and Plains All American, two oil and gas companies that were planning to build a pipeline in their backyards. The pipeline, called the Bihalia Connection, was proposed back in December 2019. If approved, it had run nearly 50 miles through Tennessee into Mississippi, tracing along a series of nearly all black neighborhoods in South Memphis. There had been a series of community meetings about it in the 10 months since, but to most people it felt like Valero and Plains All American thought construction was a foregone conclusion. Among the attendees that day is the Pearson family. There's Dr. Kimberly Owens Pearson, who's trying to keep her emotions in check, and her sons, Justin, sporting an afro and a suit, and Keyshawn, who's got buzzed hair and is wearing a hoodie. Here's Keyshawn explaining the growing frustration around town.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

There were appraisers walking on people's property, digging into people's land, not getting approvals or talking with them and just moving around like we didn't matter.

[Zach Goldbaum]

One land agent for the oil companies even called the proposed pipeline route, quote, the point of least resistance, which did not sit well with the people of South Memphis. One by one, citizens stand up, voicing their concerns to the oil company representatives who've shown up. They worry about oil leaking into Memphis's groundwater aquifer, the impact the pipeline might have on property values in the predominantly black community, and the general health ramifications of yet another industrial project in an already heavily industrialized area. Finally, it's the Pearsons turn. Justin gets up to the mic in his suit and rallies the crowd, talking about how they won't accept the idea that South Memphis is the path of least resistance. Then Keyshawn's mother stands up and she

[Keyshawn Pearson]

says simply, why is it always us? Why is it always here? And as she was speaking, the tears started flowing because it is cruel to have to continue to lose people because of decisions that are being made by huge billion dollar corporations and nobody hearing you.

[Zach Goldbaum]

The pipeline's construction was set to start around the end of 2020, so it was now or never. For the citizens to put a stop to it. Following this meeting, Keshan, his brother, and others formed an organization called Memphis Community against the Pipeline, or mcap. They condemned the Bihalia Connection pipeline plan as environmental ra and urged local officials to support their fight against it. They held rallies and tried to pressure the US Army Corps of Engineers to deny the final federal permits the pipeline needed to get started.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

Whether it was folks fighting for our legacy, fighting for our community, or just fighting to protect the water, we all had a unifying reason to push back against this crude oil pipeline. And I promise you, we did.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Their fight got national attention. Al Gore even came to a rally in South Memphis, and he had some choice words.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

This pipeline project is a reckless, racist ripoff. Reckless, racist ripoff. Remember the three Rs?

[Zach Goldbaum]

Along with all the newfound attention, the Memphis organizers kept phone banking and showing up to neighborhood meetings. They refused to let up on the pressure until finally, in July 2021, right before the 4th of July weekend, news came out that the Byhalia pipeline project was canceled. Valero claimed their decision was because of market factors, but others argued that it was because of all the local pushback. And that same day, Keshan's brother Justin posted a video declaring victory.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

You did that. We did this together. And you helped to stop two oil

[Zach Goldbaum]

conglomerates with a combined worth of over $72 billion. But as rewarding as it was to put a stop to the pipeline, Keshan knew this was just the latest chapter in a story that had become all too familiar to the residents of South Memphis. His community was still vulnerable to marauding industrialists and polluters looking for poor, politically marginalized communities to exploit. But South Memphis next challenge would turn out to be their most formidable yet. An AI data center owned by the richest man in the world. From audible originals. Hi, I'm zach goldbaum, and this is lawless planet. Each week we tell a new story about the true crimes fueling the climate crisis and the people fighting to save the planet or destroy it.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

They have a formula. They're following the same playbook and exploiting and killing the same.

[Zach Goldbaum]

There's not much middle ground when it comes to artificial intelligence or AI. Proponents say AI chatbots and image generators are the greatest technological innovation since the printing press. And detractors point out that they're already taking away jobs and being used for mass surveillance on autonomous weapons. I'm more of a glass half full guy, though, and think it'll largely be used the way most revolutionary technology is used for porn. But AI outputs might not even be the scariest part, because all of the computing power necessary to write a high school term paper or put a deep fake pope in a puffer jacket requires massive data centers that consume staggering amounts of electricity. In 2020, three data centers consumed nearly 4.5% of all U.S. electricity, and that number is projected to more than double in just a few years. Just one 5 gigawatt data center, the kind planned by companies like Xai, OpenAI and Meta, can suck up as much power as 3.5 million homes. Running these facilities puts strains on local power grids, threatens water supplies and drives up utility costs and in some cases, worsens air quality and public health. None of this is helped by our current culture of deregulation that encourages speed over scrutiny. States are competing to attract data centers to help grow their economies, seemingly without considering the downsides for their residents. To be fair, we're living in the first generation of AI. New developments are happening at such a fast pace that sometimes the true impacts of this technology are hard to discern. It might not be as bad as everyone's saying, but it could also be orders of magnitude worse. The this story isn't just about technology. It's also about regulatory failure. It's about who gets a seat at the table and who doesn't. And it's about how rapid, unchecked growth often puts the heaviest burden on communities of color, like the one that's home to the Pearson family in South Memphis.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

South Memphis is really, for me, a time capsule of what I believe community should look like. I felt safe just feeling like this community cares about me as an individual, as a person, that I'm not alone.

[Zach Goldbaum]

That's Keyshawn Pearson again, who was born and raised in South Memphis, a predominantly black area with roots going back more than 150 years. It consists of neighborhoods like Whitehaven, Mallory Heights and Boxtown. The last one's name came from the fact that when formerly enslaved people settled there, they built homes out of old boxcars. It's also long been an industrial and manufacturing hub for Greater Memphis. Keeshon remembers what it was like growing up with industry as a fabric of the area.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

I can recall hearing trucks, seeing trucks in my neighborhood, seeing smokestacks and billows of smokes. Very early. I didn't really think too much of it. It had become something that was just a part of part of my neighborhood.

[Zach Goldbaum]

The one thing that really stood out to Keshan growing up was the stench that wafted through the neighborhoods every now and then, like rotting eggs.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

I remember as being outside and we throwing a football, and the stench just got increasingly more pointed. And it got to the point where I felt like a headache was coming on, like just breathing it in. Just felt like something bad was happening to my body. We, as people from that community, we normalized it. You know, it was just a part of living in Westwood and the boxtown area.

[Zach Goldbaum]

But even if they accepted it as part of their daily life, the community knew who was responsible.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

It's the power plants. It's the industry around the corner. There's all those factories down there. And so they must be doing something right. And then you just get used to them, quote, unquote, doing something.

[Zach Goldbaum]

According to Keyshawn, South Memphis is what's known as a sacrifice zone. It's home to iron mills and steel mills, a chemical plant, and the Valero oil refinery, all of which have been polluting the air for years, increasing the risk of serious illnesses for residents who are often too poor to fight back. In southwest Memphis, where Boxtown is located, cancer rates are four times the national average. Many people have lost family members to the disease, and they blame the industries in the area for exacerbating and causing the harm. Keeshan has felt that personally. He's lost both of his grandmothers to cancer.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

Losing my grandmothers has had a deep ripple effect on my family. And that shockwave of pain and suffering and grief, I think, has continued to be felt by different families in our area and also eroded the community feeling.

[Zach Goldbaum]

And yet, despite all the industrial issues plaguing the area, by the 2020s, the city was trying to woo new companies into south Memphis. Greater Memphis had been in an economic downturn for decades, and the mayor was desperate to revitalize the community with big investment from big business. Enter Elon Musk. By the spring of 2024, OpenAI was the undeniable leader in the AI space with its generative chatbot, ChatGPT. And chances are that really annoyed Elon Musk. That's because Musk was the co founder of OpenAI, along with Sam Altman. But they had a messy breakup after Elon made some ultimatums that backfired. Classic billionaire breakup story. So Musk went out and built his own artificial intelligence company, xai, which launched its own chatbot grok. Here's Musk on the Lex Friedman podcast.

[Elon Musk]

Our AI Grok is modeled after the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, which is one of my favorite books. It's a book on philosophy disguised as a book on humor. We are actually working hard to have engineering, math, and physics answers that you can count on. So underlying the humor is an aspiration to adhere to the truth of the universe as closely as possible.

[Zach Goldbaum]

It's worth mentioning that in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, an AI supercomputer called Deep Thought says, the answer to life, the universe, to everything, is the number 42. So, yeah, it should absolutely alarm you that Elon Musk modeled his AI after a book that foreshadowed how dumb AI was going to be. But in the AI race, there's no time to understand literature. Every day that you're behind your competitors is an exponential loss. For Musk to stay in the game, he needed to catch up insanely fast. To save time, Musk and his team decided to repurpose an existing facility rather than build one from scratch. They found what they were looking for on the outskirts of South Memphis in an old factory previously owned by the appliance company Electrolux. It seemed like a perfect fit. The mayor was thrilled to find a use for the old factory. The city had paid Electrolux nearly $200 million in economic incentives to take over the factory in 2014, only for it to shut down by 2022. Five hundred people had lost their jobs, and the factory had been empty ever since. So that part was easy. XAI signed on the dotted line to lease the building in March 2024. And they got to work. Here's Musk explaining Xai's plans for the Memphis data center.

[Elon Musk]

Warburg, Jenkins. We're actually training Grok 3, so that'll probably finish training in about three or four months. And we're hoping to release Grok 3 by December. And Grok 3 should be the most powerful AI in the world at that point.

[Zach Goldbaum]

But aside from pronouncements like that, Musk's movements were very secretive. He and his XAI team held a series of backroom meetings with the mayor, the Memphis Chamber of Commerce, and the city's utility company, Memphis Light Gas and Water, and Musk made many of them sign NDAs to keep his plans under wraps. Meanwhile, South Memphis residents were kept free, fully in the dark. No one from Musk's team bothered to see if they wanted an AI data center in their backyard. Instead, Musk struck a deal to expand the power available on the grid to accommodate xai, no matter the cost to the people it would affect the most. According to Keyshawn Pearson, the first time he heard about the data center was in June 2024, three months after Xai signed the lease. The Old Electrolux factory. Keshan says he was at the mayor's office on behalf of his group, Memphis Community Against Pollution. He was pitching the mayor on a proposal to create an environmental justice plan for the city.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

At the close of this meeting, the mayor says, I don't think we're going to agree on this, but I want to tell you that Elon Musk is bringing a company to Memphis.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Keshawn was blindsided.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

My first question was, where is it going to be? And that's what he told me, that this facility is going to be in southwest Memphis. And he doesn't have too many other details. He's going to have to look more into it. What he does know is it's going to be a data center. Red Flag Ask, you know, what about the water consumption levels, energy, any pollution? Did have any details for us?

[Zach Goldbaum]

According to Kishan, the mayor was not exactly forthcoming about Elon Musk's new data center. But not long after that meeting, the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce holds a televised press conference and makes it official.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

I'm pleased to announce that XAI's Gigafactory of compute, the world's largest supercomputer, is to be located in Memphis, Tennessee.

[Zach Goldbaum]

For the Chamber and the mayor, this is a dream scenario. They call the deal Transformative, the city's largest corporate investment in a generation. They estimate that the data center's property taxes will bring in around $15 million a year to the city and that it could create hundreds of jobs. They also claim that Xai didn't ask for any tax incentives or other economic concessions. Everyone at the press conference is all smiles and handshakes, all very proud of themselves. But Kishan can't believe what he's hearing. He thinks to himself, there's gotta be a way to stop this, just like they did with the Baihalia pipeline. But the announcement made it sound like it was a done deal, like the data center was already up and running. He decides to go see it for himself. He gets in his car and he drives out to the industrial area of South Memphis. Down a long stretch of road, he passes trucks, factories, the Tennessee Valley Authorities plant, and then finally the old Electrolux factory.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

I pull up, I see the facility. My first time ever seeing it in person. And it's just a huge warehouse. But it's a bit different because this warehouse is very long. I mean, it's. It. I. I'm driving for at least a couple minutes, and, you know, I finally reached the end of it, and I'm just blown away. The Fact that the parking lot is full, people are going back and forth, trucks are going in and out. Dust is coming up from the work that's being done. Like this project was announced today. How is all of this being done?

[Zach Goldbaum]

Alarm bells are ringing in Kishan's head. It reminds him of the pipeline project he fought four years earlier. Only this time, he's not sure how to put a stop to it. The trains already left the station and the people of South Memphis are stuck on the tracks in front of him.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

It really made me feel that they have decided that we are the path of least resistance.

[Zach Goldbaum]

But Keshan refuses to give up. He and the people of South Memphis are going to make their voices heard and bring the fight straight to Elon Musk. In the summer of 2024, South Memphis residents watched helplessly as Xai trucks rolled into town and set up shop. Elon Musk announced that his new data center would be called Colossus, a name that only stoked the community's fear that it would soon overrun them. From the outside, Colossus doesn't look like much, just a huge nondescript warehouse. But inside, Musk is building the world's largest AI training cluster with over 100,000 data processors. We actually asked Grok to describe the Colossus data center and it said that it was a awe inspiring factory of compute that feels more like a sci fi supercomputer than a traditional data center. To keep everything running constantly. Underneath the servers is a cooling system, a network of giant pipes moving water in and out of the facility, flushing out the hot water used up by the servers and replacing it with cooler water to keep everything at the right temperature. Considering how many processors are running at all times, that requires a lot of water and a lot of electricity. And that was a problem because even before Colossus came online, Memphis electrical grid was already under strain. Some South Memphis residents said they experienced weekly blackouts. Now, with Colossus using a disproportionate amount of energy, they worried what the next major heat wave might do to the grid. The utility company, Memphis Light Gas and Water claimed that its system had the capacity to take on xai's demand. But that was hard to reconcile when XAI was already using enough energy to power a small city on its own. Then there was the issue of the drinking water supply. XAI had drawn 30,000 gallons from the Memphis aquifer every day since construction began. But it was expected to jump to 1 million gallons a day once the site was fully operational. That could be disastrous, thanks to coal ash pits from old power plants. The groundwater in Memphis had elevated levels of arsenic, which the aquifer filtered out. But extensive water pumping increased the risk of arsenic migrating within the aquifer, Potentially allowing the toxin to seep into the water supply. Elon Musk didn't seem to care much about any of that. His goal was to have the data center full, fully operational by the fall. An insanely fast timeline. And let me remind you, this was all to train Grok, you know, the chatbot that would go on to compare itself to Hitler and then generate sexualized AI images of children. But those were problems that would come later. In the earliest days of xai, most people in South Memphis were far more concerned about the effect the facility had on their environment and their own health. Residents living nearby were starting to smell chemicals wafting from the facility. Some even reported having trouble breathing. The air quality in South Memphis had already received an F rating from the American Lung association, and yet residents complained that it had gotten worse. One woman told reporters from Time magazine that she suffered her first asthma attack in years after the data center was up and running.

[Latricia Adams]

I had an asthma attack the other night for the first time in what, like, 15 years, maybe. I couldn't breathe. And I was like, mama, I cannot catch my breath. I feel like my chest was decaying in. I couldn't catch my breath. I had to use my inhaler twice. Not once, but twice.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Doctors saw more and more residents with asthma and breathing conditions. They thought it could be linked to the new data center, but they couldn't be sure. There had been no environmental impact study, so no one could prove whether the facility was harmful or not. The citizens of South Memphis also started to notice xai's effects on their finances. Even though the grid seemed to be holding up, Electric bills across Tennessee jumped more than 12% in 2025, the year after Colossus opened, According to one independent monitor. About three quarters of that increase was driven by growing demand from Data Cent in Memphis. Those higher electric bills came on top of rate hikes imposed just before xai's arrival for infrastructure improvements. To Keyshawn Pearson, Piling these energy costs on the people least able to afford them isn't just unsustainable, it's unjust.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

Who's thinking about the energy burden, right? Where some families in Memphis are paying 30% of what they bring home just on their energy bills, this doesn't include rent.

[Zach Goldbaum]

The XAI data center was unlike any other business that South Memphis had seen, but there was even more going on there that residents had been kept in the dark about. As work continued on Colossus, Kishon made more trips to the facility just to see for himself the monster he was up against.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

Trucks were everywhere. So many trucks going in and out that there was a line to get in. But what also came with those visits was a noise. And it's this very loud, continuous humming sound. And I was like, what is that?

[Zach Goldbaum]

That noise was the sound of 35 methane gas turbines. Despite assurances from Memphis Light Gas and Water that the city's electrical grid could support the data center, turns out, it couldn't. So to make up for the shortfall, XAI brought in the turbines, all without a permit or public notice, and not a single air pollution control to be seen. Xai said the turbines were just temporary and that according to local regulations, they were allowed to operate without permits.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

The initial response to the Shelby County Health Department was actually tantamount to, well, we don't really know what's happening, so we're going to ask the EPA what to do. That was literally their response.

[Zach Goldbaum]

But regardless of whether the turbines were temporary or permanent, they immediately started releasing harmful chemicals like nitrogen oxide and formaldehyde into the air, along with particulate matter pollutants that were known to form smog and cause increased rates of asthma, heart disease, and cancer. And yet XAI was running the turbines all day, every day. Now, these weren't the only turbines running in South Memphis where asthma rates were already extremely high. But usually companies had to get permits that ensured they were following safety and environmental regulation. Not the case here. There were no air permits on file for XAI at either the county or state health departments. By September 2024, as Musk had predicted, Colossus was fully operational. Here's Musk on the all in podcast, boasting about the accomplishment. You guys just turned on Colossus, which

[Keyshawn Pearson]

is like the largest private compute cluster, I guess, of GPUs anywhere.

[Elon Musk]

It's the most powerful supercomputer of any kind.

[Zach Goldbaum]

It had only taken 122 days to complete complete the XAI Gigafactory. Keshan couldn't believe how quickly it had gone from a nightmare to a reality. Seven months later, in April of 2025, the Shelby County Health Department held a public hearing in a South Memphis high school auditorium. We have several representatives from the Memphis Greater Chamber here, and we have Representative Keyshawn Pearson from Memphis Against Pollution. An XAI representative was also in attendance, as well as some sheriff's deputies and members of the Tennessee National Guard seems like overkill for what was essentially a town hall meeting. The tensions were running high as hundreds of people poured into the auditorium to voice their opposition to xai's recent moves. For months, XAI officials had said the turbines would be gone once a more permanent solution was found. Besides, Musk's team had sworn that only 15 of their 35 turbines were operational, so whatever exhaust they were spewing out really wasn't that bad. But activists at the Southern Environmental Law center didn't believe them. They did a flyover of the facility using a thermal camera, which confirmed that XAI had been lying. In reality, 33 of the 35 turbines were running. And then in early 2025, Xai requested permits to make 15 of those turbines permanent. They wanted to run them 24, 7 for the next five years. The city was willing to consider their application, but the process required a public comment period, which is what led to the public hearing in the high school auditorium. And oh boy were their comments. When XAI representative Brent Mayo got up to speak at the public hearing, the crowd made their feelings known. I'm going to invite a representative up from the applicant, XAI, Mr. Brent Mayo, to come up and have a few words with the. Mayo tried to give a statement about being a good partner to Memphis, but the crowd was unrelenting. They continued to shout and scream boo. The entire time he spoke until finally, after he finished, Mayo, he left without taking any questions. The citizens of South Memphis remained speaking their piece, including Keshawn.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

It's time to tell the truth about what political abandonment looks like. It's time we tell the truth about our public institutions serving private interests.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Keshan's brother Jostin, now a Tennessee state representative, spoke as well. And later, another resident named Latricia Adams took the mic.

[Latricia Adams]

Living in this hip hop hasn't continues

[Zach Goldbaum]

to be a destiny for black migrants. A clear act of genocide. Nearly every comment at the public hearing opposed the permit. The county health department director left the meeting right after it ended, rushed to a van by law enforcement. Plenty of others still had lots to say. Dr. Stephen Smith, the executive director of Southern alliance for Clean Energy, spoke to Fox 10 News after the meeting, summing it up nicely.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

They're bringing in this Silicon Valley mindset,

[Zach Goldbaum]

which is go fast and break things.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

That's exactly what it is.

[Zach Goldbaum]

And what they're now going to do

[Keyshawn Pearson]

is break this community, because they're not being transparent. They're not being honest.

[Zach Goldbaum]

They're not. Two months after the disastrous town hall, the NAACP and the Southern Environmental Law center threatened to file suit against Xai for violating the Clean Air Act. They made it clear that it was about environmental justice, but it was also more than that. It was also environmental racism. These turbines were impacting predominantly black neighborhoods, and no one thought that was an accident. Even so, in July 2025, the Shelby County Health Department granted Xai's request for an air permit. The company would be allowed to operate 15 methane gas turbines through January 2027. And let me remind you that while all of this was happening in Memphis, Elon Musk was acting strange. Ten months had passed between Colossus going online and XAI getting permits for the turbines. During that same time, Musk is bouncing up and down like a child next to Donald Trump at political rallies, wearing his Occupy Mars shirt and showing up at CPAC wearing blacked out sunglasses and wielding a literal chainsaw, appearing to be high on ketamine. Our amazing fact checker insisted we hedge and say appearing. After Trump won the election, Musk created DOGE and started slashing federal funding left and right. Many of the cuts he made either directly or indirectly benefited him, like cutting billions of dollars from the EPA's budget, including programs that specifically addressed environmental justice. Keshan doesn't see any of this as a coincidence.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

These things are not separate, right? These are interconnected issues. I don't believe that Elon Musk didn't target Memphis specifically. I don't believe that Elon Musk just haphazardly installed one of the world's largest supercomputers with some of the world's most sensitive data, using GROK that continues to push out propaganda, Nazi propaganda, racist, misogynistic propaganda. Like none of this is disconnected, right?

[Zach Goldbaum]

It is really wild that an unelected billionaire got to cut government programs that could have reined in his private sector projects. And yet here we are. And despite local outcry, Elon Musk wouldn't let up. In fact, he had already laid out plans to build an even bigger data center again in South Memphis. While residents protested the Colossus facility in South Memphis, Elon Musk had been looking to expand. His new goal was to open a second data center that was more than double the size of the first. He would call it get this, Colossus 2. Nice. He found the space he needed in the neighboring town of Whitehaven, another predominantly black area in South Memphis, near two schools and an apartment building that Kishan Pearson's family used to live in. There, XAI bought a 1 million square foot property, and in January of this year, Colossus 2 came online. Taken together with Colossus 1, it is now the largest AI training facility in the world. Once again, that was going to stress the grid. Colossus 2 alone requires a gigawatt of power to operate at full capacity. It would use up about 30% of electricity used by the entire county of 910,000 people on the hottest days of summer. To Kishan Pearson, it just felt like Musk was able to waltz in and get away with anything he wanted.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

It was just an example of the copy and paste nature of these foul racist projects. It is this continual proliferation of this idea that there are actual people who can be sacrificed. They're going to have to suffer through the pollution, they're going to have to deal with it and it's always the same people in the same area.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Musk claimed that they would import the power for this new facility, possibly using Tesla megapacks, giant external batteries that would allow the company to come off the grid at times of high use. And XAI did end up using the Tesla megapacks to help power the site. But they also brought in another 66 gas turbines. And the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce didn't seem to have any issue with it. They released a statement praising the work of Colossus II and calling Memphis America's digital delta. And now Musk is dreaming of using more power on X. He wrote, quote, been thinking about the fastest way to bring a terawatt of compute online that is roughly equivalent to all electrical power produced in America today.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

We are living in a climate catastrophe because of the lack of guardrails, because of the lack of influence around protecting our environment in the industrial era. Now we are in the midst of the beginnings of the AI era and it is rooted right now in the imagination of the most manic individuals on our planet who don't see folks in different places or of different wealth categories as deserving of our human rights to clean air, clean water, clean soil and a healthy the environment. But they also are willing to sacrifice our planet.

[Zach Goldbaum]

In 2025, the City of Memphis released an air quality study that found no dangerous levels of air pollutants at testing sites near the data centers. Keshan and his fellow activists didn't buy that, so they decided to conduct their own study.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

We have a pre Xai period and a post Xai period. In the post Xai period, they have increased our peak nitrogen oxide levels by 79%. One company, 79%. And it's concentrated in this area and around Boxtown.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Another air quality analysis Conducted by researchers at the University of Tennessee confirmed that 79% increase. And it was almost certainly related to Xai's use of turbines.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

And so the people feel slighted. They feel lied to. Right?

[Zach Goldbaum]

Meanwhile, the Southern Environmental Law center had filed an appeal on behalf of the NAACP trying to block Xai's air permits. But in December 2025, the appeal was dismissed. XAI was officially allowed to keep its turbines running. Activists were devastated by the decision. They worried that the ruling would set a precedent to allow XAI or future companies to operate turbines without proper permits or. Or any public notification.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

These companies are being rewarded, and that's really just a slap in the face to subjugate people to this. I feel like it's a slow lynching where you slowly lose the ability to breathe, and that's what our community feels.

[Zach Goldbaum]

XAI has made efforts to improve their image in South Memphis. In November 2025, the company announced that it was working on a solar farm next to Colossus 1. Some say the size of the available land will only have the capacity to power about 10% of the center, but it is something. And toward the end of 2025, Xai also broke ground on a wastewater recycling plant in South Memphis. The idea is that it will recycle sewer water to be used by the Colossus data centers to cool the supercomputers. Instead of drawing from the aquifer, other industrial companies will be able to use the recycled wastewater too. Here's the Memphis City Council chairman speaking during the announcement.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

This is what responsible corporate citizenship looks like. Innovation matched with accountability. Progress paired with purpose.

[Zach Goldbaum]

The wastewater recycling plant is a good step. It'll mean taking less from Memphis's aquifer. But Sarah Houston, the executive director of Protect Our Aquifer, told Time magazine that it's also an example of tech oligarchs taking control of our infrastructure.

[Sarah Houston]

I think building infrastructure for the oligarchy is a really scary path to start walking. I don't support billionaires owning all of our infrastructure. That is a dangerous place to be in. And public interest should. Should not be based on profits. It should be based on our core needs, and one of which is clean drinking water.

[Zach Goldbaum]

And Keyshawn agrees.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

There are few things more disgusting to me than corporate saviorism. This idea that you're gonna be the savior while you also cause the cancer, cause the killing, cause the suffering, and the breakdown of. Of our air quality is infuriating. This is corporate colonialism, right? Like, this is an imperialistic idea where you come in, you build something you own it and you make sure you hire your people to operate it.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Elon Musk would probably disagree with that assessment. He has donated funds to Memphis schools and other organizations and he's claimed to create more jobs in the area, everything from roles at Colossus to hiring workers to pick up trash around the city. But Keshan feels that it's all just a marketing ploy to try to get people to look the other way.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

That is easy to get lost and say, oh, well, he's doing this, well, he's doing that. You know, what more do you want? What more do we want is we want the elimination of the turbines. We want to breathe cleaner air, live longer lives. That's what we want. What we've gotten is we're going to invest in improving the football fields, improving the football fields where they'll be breathing the air from the toxins that are coming from the turbines. These things don't offset each other.

[Zach Goldbaum]

In January of this year, Kishon and his fellow activists got some rare good news. An EPA regulator declared that xai's gas turbines were not exempt from obtaining federal clean air permits. It is too soon to tell whether XAI will comply with the new ruling, but for now it's a major victory that could change the way data centers are allowed to operate nationwide.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

We are up against a Goliath, but what I know is the power is in the culmination of the movement and so there is no one moment, no one defining situation. What I am confident in is, is that this movement is going to ensure environmental justice for not just our community, but communities all across the country.

[Zach Goldbaum]

The work is only beginning. It was just announced that XAI is planning a third data center in South Memphis. And no, it will not be called Colossus 3. It'll be called Macro Harder. As if the people of South Memphis haven't suffered enough. Coming up on Lawless Planet, a two part series about a team of lawyers who risk everything in a decades long battle to hold Chevron accountable for polluting the Amazon, only to find themselves accused of being criminals.

[Keyshawn Pearson]

We went down to the Amazon of

[Zach Goldbaum]

Ecuador, talked to people, took water and soil samples, did visual inspections of waste

[Keyshawn Pearson]

pits, and what we found was really an apocalyptic nightmare.

[Zach Goldbaum]

For today's episode, we've relied heavily on the reporting of the Memphis Commercial Appeal as well as Time magazine's We are the Last of the Forgotten Inside the Memphis community battling Elon Musk's xai. By Andrew Richard Chow. The Wall Street Journal's Elon Musk gambles billions in Memphis to catch up on AI by Alexander Saidi and the Natural Resources Defense Councils. The AI boom is stressing the grid, but it doesn't have to be this way. By Courtney Lindwall Lawless Planet is produced by Audible. This episode was produced and hosted by me, Zach Goldbaum. It was written by Alex Burns. Our senior producer and senior Story editor is Derek John. Senior producer producer for Audible is Andy Herman. Our senior Managing producer is Lata Pandya. Our Managing producer is Jake Kleinberg. Our producer is Lexi Pirie. Music and sound design by Kenny Kusiak Dialogue edit by George Drabing Hicks. Our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Frison Sync. Fact checking by Naomi Barr Our Legal counsel is Shepard Mullen, Executive Producer for Audible Jenny Lauer Beckman, Head of Creative Development at Audible Kate Navin, Head of Audible Originals North America Marshall Louie Chief Content Officer Rachel Giazza Copyright 2026 by Audible Originals, LLC Sound Recording Copyright 2026 by Audible Originates, LLC thanks for listening. We'll see you next week. Follow Lawless Planet on the Audible app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to all episodes of Lawless Planet ad free by joining Audible.