I know right, why do people care so much about air pollution? It’s not like it kills anyone, right? What’s smog anyway?

Many investors use imaging to see how many customers visit a store -- they count the cars in the parking lot at certain times of day.

Too bad they're not smart enough to do anything useful with that capacity

If you mean the financial power to pay for such power plants, then I agree. But the technical capabilities to quickly provide stationary or mobile power plants can be purchased from a few large, international companies; noteworthy suppliers can be found in the USA, Europe and Asia. And they will build it for you in almost any country in the world, as I said, provided you pay accordingly. Of course, the delivery time of turbines is often a bottleneck, but this applies more to the very large ones than the smaller ones that should actually be installed here (and it also applies equally to all manufacturers).

16.48 MW each: https://www.shelbytnhealth.com/DocumentCenter/View/7174/0115...

They're big, by the standard of a domestic source such as a car, but they're not what I'd call "massive" in an economic dominance sense. About the size of a large shipping container, give or take, eyeballing from other photos that tell me which objects the turbines even are: https://www.capacitymedia.com/article/musks-xai-data-centre-...

Source for the timeline? Nowhere in the article is it said that the construction happened within weeks.

You've nailed the pattern. And the regulatory environment actively enables it through what amounts to a pricing model for violations.

When the EPA or county eventually fines xAI for running unpermitted turbines for a year, it'll be what - a few hundred thousand? Maybe low millions if they're feeling particularly spicy? For a company chasing the AI gold rush with Musk's billions behind it, that's not a penalty - it's a rounding error. It's cheaper to violate now and pay later than to wait for permits while competitors build capacity.

And unfortunately, this isn't a bug in the regulatory system - it's the feature. When fines are pocket change relative to potential profits, "ask forgiveness not permission" becomes optimal strategy. The only things that actually change behavior are existential threats (criminal charges, shutdown orders) or catastrophic reputational damage - and Musk has proven immune to both.

Until penalties scale with company valuations or include mandatory shutdowns, this playbook will keep printing money. Memphis residents get respiratory disease, xAI gets compute capacity, and regulators get a check that wouldn't cover a week of Musk's jet fuel.

I mean, lots of people in history did what they thought would be good for the world...

If it were truly ideological for him, wouldn't that roof be covered in solar panels and he'd be leading the charge on shifting this huge energy consumption in this emergent high-use use cases towards renewable resources?

you are totally right which makes this so sad. a lot of regulations might be tedious but they have (most of the time) a good reason to exist. now the people around the data center will have to deal with terrible air quality so twitter users can ask about white genocide all day long

Somehow I doubt that he is personally involved in provisioning auxiliary power sources for a Tennessee datacenter.

Perhaps this article clears things up:

https://www.selc.org/news/resistance-against-elon-musks-xai-...

> I’d expect them to be very noisy as well.

I expect they are muffled. They are not jet engines.

I'm still skeptical this falling out is real and not just promo for his party.

> I realize I'm just a pleb, but I really don't understand why a company with, essentially, limitless money, won't simply install the emissions reducing hardware and properly permit the turbines.

Its about exerting power by willfully defying law. "Catch me if you financially can."

Read the article carefully.

They are allowed to run N turbines.. but have N+B turbines on the property.

They.. aren't breaking their permit. The article never says they are, it just sets things up for you to have that belief.

It looks like they are swapping turbines, thus the extras. They may also be hoping to get more approved.

These may also be properly emission reducing. The article never says they aren't - it only includes quotes from people saying they don't think they are with no evidence.

The news doesn't lie, but it gets as close as it can.

It'd have to be a solar farm 3 kilometers on each side to meet a 400 megawatt load (with battery storage). If you take the entire block xAI colossus is on—it's 1.2 by 1.6 km—cut down all those trees, raze the elementary school (the one being smogged right now—did anyone notice there was a school right next to it?)—that, times five, is what you'd actually need.

https://www.google.com/maps/search/xai+colossus

The end goal is 2,000 megawatts for this datacenter, so multiply that by five again.

This CEO founded a solar power company, and a battery-storage company as well—I'm very certain he considered the all-solar option carefully, and rejected it for actual technical reasons; not vibes.