1.7.2025 by Keshaun Pearson - To build Colossus, Elon Musk’s pollution-spewing AI data center in Memphis, Musk used gag orders to silence city officials and bypass input from residents, whose asthma rates have since soared. Now Musk wants to take this strategy national.
In early June, the close personal relationship between Donald Trump and Elon Musk unraveled in spectacular fashion. But while Musk may have spun out of Trump’s immediate orbit, it would be optimistic to celebrate his ouster from government. He spent the first four months of Trump’s second presidency embedding his own enterprises into the functioning of the bureaucracy. His government influence is now deeply entrenched, built to withstand the president’s emotional storms.
Musk got exactly what he wanted from his time in Washington and his $200 million investment in President Trump’s reelection: expanded federal contracts, widespread deregulation of his industries, renewed backing from Wall Street and venture capital, and the mass firing of government officials who work to protect people harmed by his business practices.
In my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, where Musk runs a massive AI data center he calls Colossus, we’re seeing how intractable Musk’s corporate capture of democratic institutions can be. Colossus is a power plant running thirty-five methane gas turbines to power a warehouse of supercomputers. It’s pumping out pollution and making residents sick, adding to the health burden of a community that has a cancer rate four times the national average. But Musk has his hands on so many levers of government that closing it has been an uphill battle.
In a healthy democracy, Musk wouldn’t be able to do what he’s doing in South Memphis. We know that if he succeeds here, he’ll be moving on to other American cities and towns next, so we’re studying his playbook and fighting him at every step.
When Musk’s team built out the Colossus site last year, they did so with no approval from the city council and zero input from residents. We now know that he pushed Colossus through by pressuring fourteen of our city officials into signing nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) before the project was even announced. These officials are supposed to answer to the people of Memphis, not Elon Musk.
But when Musk dangled $12 billion in front of them — money that Memphis desperately needs after decades of federal disinvestment and generations of systemic racism and economic exploitation — they signed away their right to tell us what was happening. Musk has used NDAs as tools to repress dissent and subvert democracy from the federal level down to local municipalities, hiding critical information to prevent backlash from constituents.
After coercing Memphis public officials into NDAs, Musk flagrantly broke the law. The dozens of gas turbines that run Colossus were installed illegally, without permission or permits. These turbines release deadly pollution in the form of nitrogen oxides, formaldehyde, and particulate matter, which cause chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cancer, heart attacks, strokes, and aneurysms. My neighbor Alexis describes waking up one night, thinking there was a gas leak, only to run outside and find their neighbors were all investigating the stench as well. That stench, of course, was from Colossus.
Despite Musk’s company xAI’s clear violation of the Clean Air Act, the turbines continue to run. And Musk plans to open another massive data center nearby in the coming months. Memphis now has one of the highest rates of toxic air releases of any American city, and the area around Colossus leads the state in emergency department visits for asthma. Local, state, and federal officials have taken no decisive action.
South Memphis is a majority black neighborhood. The people now breathing in Colossus’s noxious fumes were systematically denied full participation in our democracy for generations and have a long and proud history of fighting for our rights, life, and liberty. Musk thinks we’re disposable and that corporations should own the government rather than people.
At a community meeting this April, hundreds of residents of all ages, races, and political affiliations showed up to demand the closure of Colossus. In response, an xAI representative read a short prepared statement and immediately walked out of the building.
When a powerful man breaks the rules, flouts local government, and puts people’s health at risk, the federal government is supposed to be the backstop. Instead, the richest man in the world went to Washington and captured the federal government, just as he captured Memphis.
In a cruel irony, he used Colossus to do it. With the assistance of xAI chatbot Grok, powered by the data center in my own backyard, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) slashed initiatives that exist to protect everyday people. At the same time, encouraged by Musk and DOGE, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) eliminated the office that assists heavily polluted communities like mine. It canceled billions of dollars of funding for addressing pollution. The EPA has now begun what it calls the “biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history,” and announced “AI investment and development” as a key priority.
What Musk did to advance his business interests in Memphis is a playbook that tech oligarchs like him use to protect and grow their wealth. We would do well to study it closely. Memphis offers a glimpse of the future that Musk and the Big Tech billionaires want for us all: a corporate-governed society that amounts to a plantation economy for the rest of the world.
While Musk pushes forward a future of technology that exploits our communities and our planet, communities like ours are developing our own strategies to fight for a future where technical innovation does not come at the cost of people’s health or the environment, but rather accelerates ethical progress. Technological change can contribute to abundance and human flourishing — but only if it is guided by true democracy rather than billionaire rule.
