Elon Strikes Again

Judd Legum at Musk Watch had an interesting article about Elon Mush ignoring permit laws, safety rules, and environmental regulations leading to pollution and other negative outcomes.

Musk hired agents to build Colossus, “the world’s largest AI supercomputer,” in southwest Tennessee. Colossus launched in October 2024 with “100,000 NVIDIA Hopper GPUs” and now has 200,000. Musk intends to expand the facility to 1 million GPUs. However, that would use a lot of energy.

According to the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), the company broke the law. In January 2025, after the facility had already been operating for months, Musk filed a draft construction and air pollution permit for 15 gas turbines. This permit is open for public comment through April 25. But drone photos obtained by SELC revealed that at least 35 turbines at the facility are already operating without a permit. 35 gas turbines emit between 1,200 and 2,000 tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides (NOx) per year, making the facility likely the largest industrial emitter of NOx in Tennessee.

In an April 9 letter to the health department of Shelby County, Tennessee, SELC says that xAI’s 35 gas turbines were “all constructed and operating unlawfully without any air permit in Southwest Memphis.”