Federal Bureau of Investigation insignias adorn desks in the agency's Joint Operations Center in New York, Thursday, June 4, 2026, ahead of the World Cup soccer tournament. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

To Mitigate Anti-Tech Violence, Strengthen Democracy

Indian Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw addresses a press conference during AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026.

India's Telegram Ban Risks Normalizing Platform-Wide Blocking

Local students speak in opposition to a proposal by Elon Musk's xAI to run gas turbines at its data center during a public comment meeting hosted by the Shelby County Health Department at Fairley High School on xAI's permit application to use gas turbines for a new data center in Memphis, TN on April 25, 2025. (Photo by Brandon Dill for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Local Reporter Neil Strebig on Covering xAI's Expansion in Memphis and Beyond

MEMPHIS, TN - APRIL 25, 2025: Demonstrators gather outside of Fairley High School in opposition to xAI's use of gas turbines for its data center ahead of a public comment meeting on the project. (Photo by Brandon Dill for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

The Debate Over xAI's Expansion in Memphis, Two Years In

In this photo illustration, the logo of open-source AI agent OpenClaw is displayed on a smartphone screen on March 9, 2026 in Beijing, China. (Photo by VCG/VCG via AP )


Building Trust Infrastructure for Agentic AI

A rock embedded with intricate circuit board patterns, held delicately by pale hands drawn in a ghostly style. The contrast between the rough, metallic mineral and the sleek, artificial circuit board illustrates the relationship between raw natural resources and modern technological development. The hands evoke human involvement in the extraction and manufacturing processes.

Rare Metals 2 by Hanna Barakat & Archival Images of AI + AIxDESIGN / 

Without Open-Source Hardware, There Is No EU Tech Sovereignty

On the left is a grey-scale version of a rat with inaccurate and oversized reproductive organs recognizable from an academic article which contained AI slop. The image has been edited to be sliced, and blue painted torus icons overlay the image. The background features a green mountainous range with a magenta tiled floor and gradient sky. 

AI Didn’t Kill Design—It Exposed It

Detail from Digital Society Bell by Lone Thomasky & Bits&Bäume. 

How State Utility Regulators Are Shaping AI Infrastructure Deployment

European Flags in front of the European Commission Headquarters building. 

Brussels, Belgium - November 3, 2022; European Flags in front of the European Commission Headquarters building. 

Designing Europe’s Search Data Sharing Rules for Competition in the AI Era

The exterior of the United States Department of Commerce in Washington, DC.

Alex Stamos on Why the US Should Lift Its Fable and Mythos Export Ban

President Donald J. Trump holds a cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room Wednesday, May 27, 2026. (Official White House photo by Daniel Torok)

President Donald J. Trump holds a cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room Wednesday, May 27, 2026. (Official White House 

Transparency and Accountability Gaps in Trump's New AI Executive Order

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AI, Privacy, and the Hidden Architecture of Harm from Inference

AI Am Over It by Nadia Piet & Archival Images of AI + AIxDESIGN / 

AI's Catastrophic Risk Isn't Rogue Machines, It's Cognitive Surrender

The image depicts a large, diverse crowd of miniature figures, representing a wide variety of people. The figures are painted in different colors, wearing various clothing styles, and some appear to be engaged in conversations or interactions. The focus of the image is on the middle part of the crowd, with the surrounding figures gradually blurring into the background, creating a sense of depth. The diversity of the figures, in terms of skin tones, attire, and activities, suggests themes related to social cohesion, diversity, and community.

Toward Representative AI Governance

A Meta sign at Meta Headquarters in Menlo Park, California, in January 2025.

Tech Workers Are Fighting Against Silicon Valley’s AI Push

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Canada Has a Precedent to Regulate Surveillance Pricing

Protesters march through downtown Memphis, Tennessee, carrying signs opposing Elon Musk and xAI during the "Get Out of Memphis" demonstration on October 4, 2025. (Photo by AUSTIN JOHNSON/AFP via Getty Images)

Addressing Regulatory Arbitrage in the AI Supply Chain

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva holds a cabinet meeting at Planalto presidential palace in Brasilia, Brazil, Wednesday, June 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

Big Tech's Proxy War Against Brazil's New Platform Accountability Rules

Members of the European Parliament Arba Kokalari and Michael McNamra pictured during the AI omnibus interinstitutional negotiations. / Photo: EP

Members of the European Parliament and Arba Kokalari and Michael McNamra pictured during the AI omnibus interinstitutional negotiations. / Photo: EP

EU Lawmakers Move to Ban AI Nudifiers, but Enforcement Remains Unclear

An array of colorful, fossil-like data imprints representing the static nature of AI models, laden with outdated contexts and biases.

Luke Conroy and Anne Fehres & AI4Media / 

A Case Against Forever: Why Cloud and Social Media Need Inactivity-Based Deletions

 at the house of Indianapolis Councilman Ron Gibson. Fortunately, neither the councilman nor his son were harmed. The only immediate indicator of the shooter’s motive was a note left on their doorstep, reading “NO DATA CENTERS.” Gibson had recently backed a controversial data center project. While many of his constituents were vocal in their opposition, only one took violent action.

Less than a week later, a man named Daniel Moreno-Gama allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s house and was later 

 attempting to break into OpenAI headquarters. Moreno-Gama was found with a “manifesto” that included a kill list of AI leaders and a description of AI’s threat to humanity.

Most recently, as President Donald Trump planned to have a UFC fight in front of the White House, the FBI announced it had disrupted a plot to use drones with explosives to attack the event. One of the 

 alleges that one the suspects had recently been in contact with an "ultra-religious and anti-government” group which, among other grievances, was concerned about “data centers taking up all the water in communities.”

This photo provided by Sara Hindi, chief communications officer for the Indianapolis City-County Council shows damage at the front door of Councilman Ron Gibson's Indianapolis home on Monday, April 6, 2026. (Communications office for the Indianapolis City-County Council via AP)

This trend toward anti-tech extremist violence is 

. Its growth is driven by opposition to AI infrastructure on the ground, by the increasingly blurry line between tech and government elites, and by fear of AI’s social consequences. But the US is on a dangerous path: instead of taking public concerns seriously, 

 shows that law enforcement has begun monitoring local opposition to data centers as a potential national security threat. Further, the Department of Justice 

 that xAI, part of Elon Musk’s empire, is “vital” to national security efforts. This may well be true, as AI is now integrated into government activities from 

A purely national-security-focused approach is the wrong way to tackle this challenge. Instead, policymakers must recognize and respond to legitimate public concerns about the development of AI and the increasing US lapse into techno-oligarchy. This, combined with a narrow focus on indicators of violent intent, is the most appropriate response.

,” writes that “anti-technology extremism emerges as a cross-cutting ideological current found in different ideological milieus.” History bears this out: while the most famous example may be Ted Kaczynski—dubbed the 

, whose politics were notoriously difficult to describe in contemporary partisan terms—anti-technology sentiments are flexible enough to appear across the political spectrum. Among the far right, 

 has been a popular justification for attacks including the Christchurch shooting in 2019, as well as Christchurch-inspired attacks, including the May 

On the far left, environmentalist causes may justify attacks—historically through 

 like the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Earth Liberation Front (ELF). These have more modern equivalents like Vulkangruppe (Volcano Group) in Germany, which 

 a Tesla factory out of opposition to Elon Musk, whom they called a “techno-fascist.”

This moment is different: AI is driving the emergence of anti-tech extremism not as an appendage to another ideology but as a distinct worldview capable of contributing to violence on its own. Yannick Veilleux-Lepage, a scholar of political violence, has created a 

 in which three AI-driven grievance domains—the shifting economic order, changes to state and institutional power, and tears in social and personal fabrics—create a foundation for political violence.

Further, the framework identifies an “accountability gap” in assigning responsibility for AI harms, as well as a “tempo problem” stemming from technological development which has drastically outpaced regulation or redress. These are force multipliers which amplify the risk of political violence.

The blurring of the line between government and tech elites represents a combination of the Veilleux-Lepage framework’s force multipliers. From tech elites influencing policy and government institutions—or the perception that they are–to the government awarding 

 to tech companies, where government ends and industry begins is no longer clear to the public. As a result, tech companies are innovating at a breakneck pace while neither industry nor government are responsive to public demands for regulation.

The political marriage between tech elites and the Trump administration had an immediate impact on federal policy. On the first day of president Trump’s second term, he revoked Biden-era regulations on AI, switching the US government’s footing to pursue innovation through deregulation and AI supremacy over its rivals in Beijing. In July 2025, the Trump administration released their 

, focused on three pillars: accelerate AI innovation, build American AI infrastructure, and lead in international AI diplomacy and security. Ahead of the 2026 

, some of the largest tech companies “spent a combined $50 million on federal lobbying” over nine months and spent even more money through super PACs (Political Action Committees) to play a part in the electoral process. These same companies have nearly 

Perhaps the most obvious example of the blurred line between Silicon Valley and the Beltway was the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. The 

 establishing DOGE was vague in its stated purpose: “to implement the president’s DOGE Agenda, by modernizing federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” In practice, this meant aggressively purging the federal bureaucracy and upending institutions.

Though Musk and Trump’s relationship quickly soured, Musk remains inside the tent on AI issues: he joined the president on his highly anticipated trip to China in May 2026 alongside Apple CEO Tim Cook, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Meta President and Vice Chairman Dina Powell McCormick, and 

. The addition of a tech-elite entourage was meant to create 

 for American businesses to join the world’s second most populous market.

Trump retains strong relationships with other tech leaders, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who joined the president to 

 the United States’ AI dominance. More recently, the president said that he is 

to meet with the leaders of major AI companies to discuss US government investment in their firms.

Promoting American business is ordinary for any administration, but the widespread perception that Big Tech is calling the shots in Washington has damaged Americans' trust in the government's ability to regulate technology for public benefit. Trust in the government to do what is right has been declining for decades, but in 2025, only 

 say they trusted the US government to do what is right “just about always” or “most of the time.” Trust in government is the foundation of the social contract that guides democratic processes; when it breaks down, 

 like polarization, decreased confidence in election processes, reduced effectiveness in government institutions, and the erosion of social trust accelerate. Recent polls also 

 that the US public is among the least likely in the world to say it trusts its own government to regulate AI responsibly, at 31 percent.

Simultaneously, the public has lost trust in the tech sector’s ability to self-regulate and mitigate social harm from its products and services. The results from the first 

 survey series, which released results in June 2026, found that, “Only 15% of Americans said they trust AI companies to make decisions about how AI is developed and used.” Further, local opposition to data center development—a rare area of 

 agreement among voters—is also skyrocketing.

However, if government leaders and authorities do not respond to the citizenry in regulating technology, what does the citizenry do? When there is loss in trust of the system of government, for some, violence can seem like the only answer.

The increasingly apocalyptic rhetoric about AI does little to quell concerns about the technology’s continued, unregulated development. Tech leaders themselves have claimed that AI poses an existential risk, for example when Altman 

 at a Senate Judiciary subcommittee meeting that “if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong.” These unnerving claims may create an urgency for action, including potentially violence, as a way of bringing attention to the issue, disrupting the infrastructure behind these systems, or even harming individuals connected to the AI industry.

Exacerbating the urgency is the fact that the democratic process is slow. Without immediate safeguards from the government preventing the perceived existential risk, individuals may feel the need to take matters into their own hands.

To avert future violence, policymakers must meet their constituents where they are on AI. 

 are considering moratoriums on the development of AI data centers while they study their effects on local communities. Such measures, if implemented, may release some of the pressure driving anti-tech violence. Likewise, the Trump administration’s turn toward AI regulation through a recent 

 on AI regulations in the House of Representatives suggest that a constructive government response to public anger is possible.

While these are important first steps, they are reactive. In the long term, government must disentangle itself from the tech elite. A 

 found that by “a two-to-one margin, voters believe the Trump Administration is too close to Big Tech.” Until this perceived coziness changes, citizens will continue to distrust the motivations and representativeness of their institutions.

In the meantime, anti-AI sentiments are growing. While only a small subset of individuals with these views will turn to extremist violence, responding to that risk requires addressing legitimate public grievances. It is vital to separate those committed to nonviolence from the small—but potentially dangerous—minority who are not. Intelligence collection efforts should focus on true indicators of violent intent and mobilization, while law enforcement should apply the law equally across partisan lines and avoid the impulse toward expanded surveillance—which would, after all, risk further validating anti-tech sentiments. Elsewise, the threat of anti-tech extremist violence will become a midwife to increased political repression.

Amber Sinha is a contributing editor at Tech Policy Press. 

The intersection of digital platform governance, state authority, and constitutional rights in India has been a battlefield with shifting boundaries for the past decade and a half. However, the mid-June 2026 emergency action taken by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) against the cloud-based messaging platform Telegram—and its subsequent validation by the judiciary—marks another milepost in the consolidation of power in state authority. By analyzing the statutory maneuvers, the judicial deference displayed by the court, and the broader political economy of the Indian internet, we can observe a worrying phenomenon: the normalization of platform-level blocking as an acceptable, primary regulatory tool.

Examination paper leaks as a new ground for blocking

The catalyst for this unprecedented regulatory intervention was the systemic crisis surrounding the 

National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (Undergraduate) or NEET-UG 2026

. Following the cancellation of the original May exam due to 

, a re-examination was scheduled for June 21. In the days leading up to the re-test, the 

Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C)

 flagged what they described as an uncontainable proliferation of cheating networks, paper-leak syndicates, and coordinated misinformation campaigns operating across Telegram.

The technical specifications of the app—its large public channels, automated bot ecosystems, and high-capacity file-sharing features—were deemed by authorities to act as a "new dark web." Furthermore, security agencies pointed to a distinct structural feature: Telegram's message-editing capability. Fraudsters were allegedly exploiting this feature to alter historic messages, inserting actual exam papers into old posts after the fact to manufacture a false timeline of pre-exam leaks, thereby destabilizing public confidence and stoking student panic.

Faced with these infrastructural challenges, MeitY bypassed localized, content-specific interventions. On June 16, the ministry issued an emergency blocking order directing internet service providers to completely restrict access to Telegram across India until June 22, alongside an explicit mandate disabling the platform’s message-editing feature until June 30.

The legal anchor for this sweeping action was 

Section 69A of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000

Rule 9 of the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009

. Section 69A grants the Central Government the power to direct intermediaries to block public access to information in the interest of the sovereignty, integrity, or defense of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign states, or—critically here—public order and the prevention of incitement to cognizable offenses. Under Rule 9, the state invoked its emergency powers to execute this blockade immediately, deferring the standard procedural requirement of a pre-decisional hearing.

 before the Delhi High Court, seeking a stay on the platform-wide restriction. The intermediary argued that a wholesale blockade directly infringed upon the fundamental speech and associational rights of over 150 million legitimate Indian users who relied on the platform for educational resources, professional coordination, and lawful communication. Centrally, Telegram argued that Section 69A is structurally designed for the targeting of ‘specific information’ or particular URLs, and cannot be creatively stretched into a statutory license for complete platform decapitation—especially when the intermediary had already complied with taking down over 900 of the 1,300 specific URLs flagged by MeitY.

 on June 19, Justice Tejas Karia systematically dismantled these safeguards. The court accepted the Union government's premise that entity-specific, localized interventions had repeatedly failed due to the platform’s unique architectural resilience, where the deletion of a single channel merely triggered the instantaneous creation of mirror channels and the rapid migration of subscribers.

To bridge the statutory gap between blocking ‘specific information’ and blocking an entire platform, the court turned to 

. Justice Karia highlighted Section 2(1)(v) of the IT Act, which includes ‘codes, computer programs and software’ within the statutory definition of ‘information.’ By treating an entire software-based communication application as a monolithic unit of “information” generated or hosted within a “computer resource,” the court concluded that the state was fully empowered under Section 69A to block access to the entire platform.

Evaluating the measure against the landmark proportionality standards established by the Supreme Court in 

, the High Court held that the order was the "’least restrictive measure’ available. It reasoned that the extreme public interest of protecting 2.2 million medical aspirants outweighed the temporary informational disruption, concluding that the strict time-bound nature of the order (operative only until June 22 and 30, respectively) saved it from the vice of disproportionality.

Redefining the limits of content moderation

Despite the court's presentation of this outcome as a neatly tailored emergency response, the 

 decision is deeply flawed. First and foremost, the judgment's statutory translation exhibits a profound failure to engage with the structural grammar of the IT Act, 2000. By reading "software" so broadly that it encompasses an entire multi-layered social network and messaging platform, the court creates an alternate regulatory logic where the state can switch off an entire ecosystem under the guise of content moderation.

Furthermore, the court’s proportionality analysis is startlingly underdeveloped. To satisfy the 

 framework, the state must demonstrate that no alternative, less intrusive means exist to achieve the regulatory objective. Yet, the court accepted the state’s claims of "inadequacy" with minimal evidentiary probing. The fact that students were actively using Proton VPNs or migrating to other encrypted applications immediately after the ban indicates that the measure was both overbroad for innocent users and remarkably ineffective at stopping determined criminal networks.

By failing to subject MeitY’s assertions to rigorous empirical scrutiny, the High Court transformed the constitutional test of proportionality from a strict hurdle into a rubber stamp, offering future litigants a narrow but necessary path to distinguish this ruling based on proper technical and structural definitions of networks.

This judgment should concern every internet platform operating in the Indian market. In the digital economy, consumers rely on the friction-free integration of platforms into daily personal and professional workflows. A temporary suspension of this nature is potentially catastrophic, permanently shattering user habits and causing immense economic and operational disruption. The judicial blessing of this order will embolden MeitY from threatening any internet intermediary with complete infrastructure blocking to enforce conformity with even legally dubious content-takedown or data-access demands.

The inevitable consequence will be the rise of highly aggressive, proactive corporate censorship across all social media platforms. Intermediaries, operating under the perpetual hanging sword of a total shutdown, will almost certainly over-comply with informal executive desires. Crucially, these sweeping exercises of state authority will no longer require radical justifications; they will be framed through universally palatable and emotionally charged narratives: public safety, morality, national sovereignty, and, as we have now witnessed, examination integrity.

What this means for digital rights in India

Historically, the sheer inertia, technical illiteracy, and clumsy drafting of the state bureaucracy often meant that over-broad blocking orders were flawed, procedurally deficient, and easily dismantled upon judicial review.

The Telegram blocking order demonstrates that this assumption no longer holds true. MeitY’s contemporary orders reveal a striking leap in procedural sophistication, granular technical description, and legal reasoning. What is certain is that the Indian state is ostensibly speaking the language of the judiciary. By presenting an order that is polished, superficially compliant with procedural frameworks, and wrapped neatly in the vocabulary of "narrow tailoring" and "temporary restrictions," the executive has demonstrated that it can easily overcome this challenge.

 order has effectively codified a dangerous precedent: in the digital age, the Indian state no longer needs to censor the message if it can simply turn off the medium.

Audio of this conversation is available via your favorite podcast service.

Two years ago this month, the Greater Memphis, Tennessee Chamber of Commerce 

 a deal to host a substantial new computing facility with Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI. Dubbed "Colossus," the data center was built in an old Electrolux factory. It was brought online at record speed, and almost immediately 

 about transparency, air quality, water use, and how a project of this scale had moved through local government so quickly.

Two years on, the story continues to expand alongside the company’s growing footprint, with a second campus—Colossus II—across the state line in Southaven, Mississippi; a contested gray water recycling plant; an ever-rising count of gas turbines; multiple lawsuits; and communities in South Memphis still pressing for straight answers.

Few people have tracked the details more closely than 

 in Memphis who has covered the xAI story daily from the beginning. He’s attended community meetings and hearings; filed right-to-know requests; parsed the differing interpretations of the Clean Air Act by the EPA, the Shelby County Health Department and the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality; counted turbines; and spent time with residents living alongside the facilities. The result is a command of a level of detail that few can match.

In this conversation, Strebig brings us up to speed on the latest developments — including 

 in Southaven, the implications of the SpaceX IPO and the impending IPOs of other AI firms, and the 

 Memphis leaders had counted on. And, he reflects on what it has been like to chase facts as the story spread across two states and a thicket of jurisdictions.

This is the first of three episodes we’ll release over the next few days on the situation in Memphis and Southaven, and what it tells about the future of the AI infrastructure boom in the United States and the political debates and power struggles surrounding it.

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the discussion.

I'm Neil Strebig, reporter with the Commercial Appeal out here in Memphis, Tennessee.

So, Neil, the last time I saw you, it was a hot day in Memphis and I was there just briefly. It was just before I actually had a chance to take a drive out to see Colossus, the xAI facility out in South Memphis. And I don't think I told you this, but I got about three quarters of the way there and somewhere on one of those industrial roads I caught a bolt in the tire of the car I was driving, got a flat and ended up having to change the tire on the side of the road. Some nice gentleman from South Memphis pulled up and offered a hand. I had it mostly in hand at that point, but just goes to show, I suppose, how friendly the folks in Boxtown are.

Yeah, no, they definitely are. Did you end up seeing the site then after that or no?

I did. I got to drive past and could see these much disgust turbines in operation and it was a hot day, a humid day and you could see the exhaust coming off those. Of course, that was in the early days of this story. You've been following this since the very get go and want to talk to you a little bit about your coverage and what you've learned, but you have stories just up in the last couple of days on xAI and what's going on there. Bring us up to speed to the news. What's going on? What are you covering right now at this very moment?

It's definitely a lot. And this week especially because we're just a little bit over the two-year mark. It was June 2024, so two years and a week and change figure. But I mean, this week I would say SpaceX purchasing it this year, SpaceX IPO, that's the big component there. There was a civil lawsuit filed from residents in Southaven, Mississippi where their secondary plant is Colossus two. And we can get in all those weeds as well as far as the campuses and the names because it is confusing. It's a lot of redundancy all names and just the sheer amount of land xAI has purchased here in Memphis is fascinating.

I mean, I had a story in January this year and at that time they had just over 1,100 acres, which is about more than almost a third of downtown Memphis as far as total acreage and square acreage. Just to give you an idea of scope in just two years time, they accumulated that much land between Memphis and Southaven, Mississippi, which is just fascinating. But the main things here are the greywater treatment plant named Colossus Water Recycling Plant. That is a big topic here in Memphis because that was promised when they got here. That was also a need long before xAI even got here as well, but that was something that city leadership really hung its hat on to get off the Memphis Aquifer.

The other component is of course Colossus II, Southaven, the power plant, the use of gas turbines. There's two lawsuits down there with that. That one lawsuit just got updated as well yesterday actually. The discovery for the legal team and the groups suing, the advocacy groups and the Mississippi chapter of the NAACP. The lawsuit is filed on their behalf by the Southern Environmental Law Center, but their discovery team just saw that there's 57 unpermitted turbines at the site now, which when they filed it back in May, it was actually outdated when they filed it at that time.

So, there's about 30 more turbines from when their initial filing from May, just to give you an idea of how much has happened since then. And again, we can go in the weeds of why that's an issue because the interpretation of the Clean Air Act law with the EPA's new changes is a big portion of what's happening down in Southaven on top of just residential concerns with noise and air pollution.

So, one of the things throughout this has really been how to get accurate information. I mean, there's been lots of back and forth about how many turbines are on this site, that site, what's actually in operation, what's going on. Can you just take us behind the scenes? I assume you're effectively trying to sort through this, trying to tack these things down, get to the facts. What's it been like effectively dealing with these technical claims both from the city, the community, and of course from xAI itself?

Well, it's tricky and I think I got a lot more gray hairs because of it. But I think the biggest thing and we see with a lot of Musk companies as well, don't really have a media team. I mean, here in Memphis, xAI developed one about middle of last year and even still with a bunch of leadership changes, shakeups, that's hit or miss as far as response times and everything else. But for a long while, that was a big component that was difficult here because there really wasn't a media personnel, even an email to kind of reach out to or anything to connect with. Katie Miller filled that role for a short bit of time. She's still associated to the best of my knowledge with the company.

But again, as far as here's a media person to directly connect to xAI can be hit or miss with that, which is a bit of a headache in itself. But as far as reporting information goes, a lot of right to know requests sourcing here, I mean, you have your regular sources on the ground talking to people in the community, but it definitely is tricky. And I think the trickiest part of this story in the last two years is just how much has happened. I mean, the layers in this story are plentiful to say the least. You could talk and go in the weeds just from turbines and microgrids. You can go in the weeds on water usage. You can go in the weeds on hyperscale data centers versus regular data centers.

It kind of list goes on and on. And then you just get into, even this week, the IPO and the role that xAI and SpaceX's artificial intelligence arm plays into that whole offering. Because I mean, I'm not sure if you look at the IPO. They're basically just hemorrhaging money if you look at the IPO from the artificial intelligence side. Now, that's not unique to xAI either. We see that with Anthropic and some of the other IPOs that came out the last two weeks, but in a general sense, it is kind of fascinating to think that these companies are just losing billions of dollars and doing this AI race. And just from the monetary side, it's like you do have to ask yourself, is it worth it?

That's a general kind of 30,000 foot view. But for me personally though, the biggest bit has just basically been tracking the scale and how they're building out. And I think when you were down here, it was just Colossus at 3231 Paul R. Lowry Road, the old Electrolux facility here in Memphis. I mean, they've got a bunch of land even around that. The Colossus Water Recycling Plant is just north of that, but I mean, it's really just ballooned up now with their property in South Memphis off a two lane road and connecting into Southaven, Mississippi.

And that's really kind of their focus then too. The blowback here in Memphis has been that Musk himself said that they're prioritizing Colossus two over the great water recycling plant, Colossus Water Recycling Plant, which is supposed to be the greywater treatment plant here in Memphis. And like I said, that was the big component locally that city leadership essentially kind of kept coming back, hanging its hat on as far as a positive for the city. And xAI's credit, that was something they promised to pay for and build themselves and did their due diligence to get the land, the state permits, all of that.

So, that is a bit of a black eye, so to speak, for the city then after the rug kind of got pulled on them. And that is a massive talking point here. But when you look at the grand scope of things, I mean, it's just pick your poison. What layer and what type of weeds do you want to go into? I mean, you guys talk about a lot on your website and your stories and content. I mean, the AI and hyperscale just energy needs and the microgrid component to me is the most fascinating part of it all of just how you're going to meet those needs. You're talking a gigawatt of power plus in a short amount of time is just fascinating.

And how about your sourcing in the community? I mean, I think one of the most extraordinary things about this story and one of the reasons why it's resonated across the country and across the world has been such an extraordinary set of leaders on the ground there in Boxtown and the broader Memphis area. How do you think the community's feelings have changed over the last couple of years? I mean, I wanted to ask in particular, I mean, I know that the community, the city has negotiated some benefits directly to the surrounding community and now there are, as I understand it, some resources that'll be set aside out of the tax revenues. What do you make of that relationship right now?

Chippy, I think is the best way to describe it. That particular group actually just had their third meeting before some more budget hearings and that group essentially met to discuss how the resources are going to be used and then present that to city council as a recommendation and we'll see what city council does and how they decide with that. But even in those meetings, just from a very micro level, there's discrepancies of they used a survey to get a sense of what residents in South Memphis wanted. Initially, they put the survey out, not a whole lot of people responded to it.

And again, Boxtown, Whitehaven, South Memphis, you do have some older populations that just aren't tech-savvy either. So, sending out an email survey might not be the best way to get responses. So, they did use different avenues. I forget the exact number of responses. I want to say it was around like 3,000 or so maybe. What they responded to use for funds and how it was worded was essentially where do you want to see investment back in your community? So, a lot of it was public safety, potholes, infrastructure. I think it was fifth or sixth on the list as far as environmental quality or air monitoring. So, for some of the folks involved, that again is kind of like, that's not what this was designed for.

There is animosity there of, "Hey, we want to use these funds for specific uses." And when you're talking about you have a cap on as far as the tax revenue going into that, just in a ballpark figure, if you have three million going to even, hey, say public safety, and then you have to cipher that down into 30 other things. Well, 30K on any one matter versus three million is a big difference no matter where you're allotting those funds. So, that has been the discrepancy just from how those funds are going to be allocated. But since this was announced in 2024, to me, the consistent theme from the public's perception of this project is twofold.

One, you did have environmental pollution and air pollution, legacy pollution in South Memphis, that's been ongoing. xAI did kind of reiterate that conversation and bring a lot of that back up and some of that indirect criticism towards them just kind of coming into a problem that existed for decades and perhaps should have had solutions or better pathways around it already. The other half of this is a lot of folks weren't anti-xAI when this started. They had questions around it, and Musk is a polarizing personality. He was polarizing before the election, perhaps more so now.

But you take that aside, a lot of residents that spoke in front of city council and in front of public meetings, they just had questions they wanted answered and they didn't have any questions answered or they got immediate pushback and kind of felt that they got floored. Memphis as a community prides itself on the civic outreach. And again, that's tied for decades as far as how the city's conducted itself, handled itself and essentially been a big proponent as far as free speech is concerned, especially in black communities here in Memphis. That was atypical and I think folks took notice of that of, "Hey, usually when we stand up and voice concerns, we can get at least an extra meeting or there's going to be a pause here."

We're speaking up and this is just getting steamrolled through in city council. And that I think is what raised a lot of flags to where people then, they were like, "Hey, new business is good for Memphis. We're excited. We have questions. They're not being answered." That's when it started to turn as far as, "Hey, we don't feel like we're being heard. We just don't like this project at all." And that's when you go in the weeds then as far as environmental concerns, power concerns, water concerns. And again, pick your poison as far as the layers you're going to go in the weeds with. I think that's really why we see a bit more animosity towards it now than we did when this was initially announced two years ago.

Do you get a sense that in that kind of developing relationship that there's also a kind of change in the sentiment about xAI as a AI project? Are there concerns about artificial intelligence that are coming in a little more broadly to just the concerns about the facility and the data center, or are those still sort of on the margin?

On the margin I think would be fair just because that's still pretty broad. Here in Memphis, there's a term that was coined by Fred Smith, FedEx founder with the late great Fred Smith, if you will, and the Greater Memphis Chamber called the Digital Delta and that's essentially a big push towards being a tech hub and industry. And that has been thrown around quite a bit associated with this project. And I would say Memphis from a medical device side of things has had a significant tech boom. So, AI infiltrating all industries and aspects has kind of been added to that. And I think still scratching the surface is how that's going to be interpreted.

And I think a big part of this though is this is the biggest hyperscale data center we've seen. And as you've covered, xAI has also from how they've built out their particular data center is also a bit atypical of what we've seen. The reliance on turbines for microgrids is a bit more unique and especially the scale they've built that. And we can get in kind of the weeds of why that is with them having to catch up and kind of coming in late to the race, they needed power to meet the demand and maybe that public input was just sacrifice to meet said demand. But the other half of this too is across the river in West Memphis we have Google building a massive campus out there as well.

So, you do have two massive tech companies and two massive hyperscale data centers coming into the area, which is very unique. And again, is Memphis going to be an AI capital as far as workflow and tech in the Silicon Valley? I think we're way too early to tell on that. And again, you can kind of work those jobs from anywhere. So, it doesn't necessarily mean that's all going to come here in Memphis per se.

It has been a bit fascinating to see in West Memphis and actually this week as well, big news week, I guess for me, Olive Branch in DeSoto County, same county Southaven Mississippi is in and where Colossus two and the xAI power plant is located, they responded to some zoning ordinances and essentially called Memphis and Southaven out as far as language and say, "Hey, we saw what happened in those cities. We're trying to get ahead of it on future data centers."

Google and West Memphis with how they've approached water, public input, public partnerships, and essentially their entire rollout for that project, there has been members within that that have said like, "Hey, we looked at what happened in Memphis and thought, let's do the complete opposite." So, I do think that's a fascinating component of this as well of right or wrong, you are seeing other communities or other businesses say like, "Hey, let's not go about it that way. There's a better way to perhaps do this."

That's fascinating. I want to also just ask you a little more about Southaven. I mean, since xAI effectively kind of jumped the state line for this second facility, is there anything different about that project to what you see in South Memphis? Anything that sets it apart? Is the jurisdictional kind of arbitrage something that you can tell whether the company's kind of taking advantage of somehow or I don't know, what do you make of it?

I don't know if I'd say taking advantage of our job as a reporter is to figure some of that stuff out and as we already mentioned it's definitely a story that can flood out some information sometimes and then slow leaks at the other times. But to give an idea, when you were here, it was just Colossus. That was at Paul R. Lowry Road. They're renting out that building and honestly, that building is going to be partially rented out by Anthropic now as well, which is fascinating. In February 2025, an xAI affiliate CTC Property LLC purchased about 186 acres off of two lane road and White Haven is a neighborhood in South Memphis.

Colossus is in Boxtown, which you're familiar with and White Haven is about southeast of that, give or take 10, 15 minutes. Right at the end of two lane and where xAI purchased that property is state line road and then that connects into DeSoto County and Southaven. Colossus two is there. They've got work permits for two other warehouses on the two lane properties and then in July 2025 they purchased Duke Energy site, the former Duke Energy site was a gas power plant in Southaven and that's right next to an industrial plant as well, industrial park, if you will. What they've done then is basically put all the turbines at the Duke Energy site on 2875 Stanton Road.

That's the source of power for Colossus. Their next stages would be Macro Harder, which was announced in January of this year that was, they caught a $20 billion investment, a lot more money than 20 billion is going into all of this, but what's happening in two lane road in White Haven and that portion of South Memphis and Southaven, that really is the kitten caboodle. I mean, that's the big operation really at this stage. The Colossus site, when you were here, that's kind of where things got started, but it's been a massive shift down below and part of that is because that power plant in Southaven, where the turbines are and the former Duke Energy site is, that's powering everything across state lines.

So, now that's kind of, you have one data center operational right there, you could have three more in who knows by the end of the year, next year. Either way, that's coming on top of the property that they've already built up Colossus, which you have visited. And the last count is 57 turbines at that site. Now that's between... that was in the lawsuit that was filed June 10th, the updated one and that count comes from an engineering firm that helped do some of the studies on turbines for some of the permits here in Shelby County and also with the Mississippi Environmental Department of Quality MDEQ.

MDEQ staff and folks from the engineering firm turning into consultants, I've reported all this stuff this week as well, always feel free to, if you need me to drop links or anything else, let me know. But all stuff I've reported on, but those emails cite that there's 57 portable turbines there. 59 total, two of those are not on the site. Where that gets tricky with Southaven and I'll kind of shed more light on why this has been such a, I don't even say tale of two data centers. It's just a shift of some of the same issues, but on a much larger scale in a very short amount of time. They got an MDQ permit, PSD permit in March approved for 41 turbines.

But to my knowledge, and as it's been explained, those turbines aren't at the site. It's still unpermitted turbines because they're portable, which is tricky. Now you have residents in Southaven that since xAI got control of that property in Stan Road, the old Duke Energy site have cited concerns over noise and air pollution. The civil lawsuit that was filed this week, one of the residents in Southaven, Jason Haley, he's one of the plantiffs in that lawsuit, did a big deep dive in the community back in February about what they were going through, visited his house, talked to him. This is 11:30, 1:00 in the afternoon. You can hear it and we're about three, four miles away.

Now you showed me a video of like 2:30 AM from his house and it's like a lawnmower in your living room just from the audio from his phone at 2:30 AM. We were there in the afternoon. I mean, it's a construction hum that's noticeable. I mean, it's one of those things of like once you pick up on it, if you're locked on it's not going to go away once you hear it. At that time, Southaven was supposed to be building a sound wall that's still going and that February story highlighted some discrepancies between city leadership and Southaven with the mayor citing that the noise is kind of temporary.

I think that's been the rub with a lot of this and going back to public perception is they say things are temporary, either it's noise pollution, whether it's turbines, construction, this or that, and just more stuff is getting added or happening. Whether that's coming from my personal reporting or another outlet, that to me has been from a resident side point of view. You can understand the frustrations they have. It's kind of like, what is going on here? We're getting more information from news outlets, which again is our job, but when you're coming to city leadership, whether it's in Southaven or it's in Memphis and you're getting question marks or you're leaving with more questions and answers, it's not leaving too much for the public to really be happy with at that point.

There's going to be frustrations. I know that was a lot I threw at you, but I mean, it's changed a lot since you last visited and you got the crash course in Memphis roads. They are where tires go to die.

Well, I mean, it sounds like this part of this, the complexity is just the regulatory machinery spread out two states, multiple jurisdictions. You've mentioned the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, the Air Pollution Control Board, the Shelby County Health Department, EPA also of course playing a role here. I don't know, is that part of it, that it must be exceedingly difficult just to keep up with what each of these agencies is doing, the timelines for their different deliberations, the methods of extracting information from each of them.

Yeah, it's kind of plucking hairs for each one, so to speak, anecdotally, but EPA's involvement is, well, twofold, I guess you can say starting with just a turbine topic. Here in Shelby County, that was an issue when you were here for the big thing. I think that got up to 30 some turbines at that time. They eventually did get an air permit for 18 of them by the Shelby County Health Department, but Shelby County Health Department kind of set the statute of you could use permits or turbines unpermitted for up to 334 days. So, basically up until that one day in a year mark, you could operate all these turbines didn't need a permit.

That was Shelby County's interpretation of this and they said that was based on EPA guidance at that time. There was an appeals process here in Shelby County that got denied then by some environmental groups. That was back in December and that was a fascinating hours long meeting as well, which we can talk about if you want to go in the weeds with that. That kind of became the precedence here and again, folks were upset because more turbines kept getting added. It took them a while to finally apply for the permit. It wasn't like these things weren't being used.

So, even if the company was operating in good faith, the reality was you did have unpermitted turbines in operation and that did ruffle a lot of feathers here from environmental groups and residents in Boxtown that were already dealing with legacy pollution. That's a very general topic of how could that have been handled better or worse however you go. In Mississippi then, the change there, MDEQ is interpreting the law the same way Shelby County Health Department did saying the portable turbines don't need permits. In August, and I had an article this week detailing all this and I think a couple weeks ago too, that went into more details with the timelines on the Southaven plant.

They approved basically 18 unpermitted turbines that scaled up significantly by December and now here we are in May 2026, it's at 57. So, you went from 18 in August 2025 and now you're at 57 in less than a year. That's a big jump and you're talking emissions for these overly supersedes Tennessee Valley authorities combined and cycle plant, well, potential total emissions for these, the TVA's combined cycle plant and the Memphis International Airport. Memphis International Airport is the second-largest cargo airport in the world. I mean, yes, we have passenger there, but it's commercial with FedEx there.

So, just to give you an idea of a very active airport and the Southaven plants already almost quintupled the amount of emissions coming out of that, which is just wild. Where the EPA comes in with the Southaven plant is in January when they update the Clean Air Act Federal Register. They updated it saying that all turbines portable or not with either temporary operating for under a year require permits. So, that's been the very big rub here then of in Shelby County, you could be retroactive interpretation that you take that out of the equation.

Here in Mississippi then we've seen 30 some turbines be added just from when the EPA changed those regulations, yet there's one approved permit back from March for 41, yet those 41 are not at the site still based on information that we've received and confirmed. That's a lot of discrepancy there and how they're interpreting the law, you guess is as good as Fine. All we can go on is what we're seeing, how that federal register is worded right now. I don't really know how it's going to unfold still, but from a public perception then, I mean, that's where a lot of the angst comes through then as well.

As myself, other news outlets are reporting on all this, it poses more questions than answers and that's naturally going to lead more frustration.

In the next few months, what are the key things that you're going to follow? What do you expect will be coming up, deadlines and lawsuits or filings or particular pivot points or decision points that communities will face?

Yeah, definitely have to follow the lawsuits, see how that goes. I am still a bit curious myself with just how the IPO and the tech industry and IPOs unfold with that just in the sense of investment. I mean, what in first quarter of 2025 AI and data centers were what? 90% of the GDP at one point, which was NVIDIA strangled hole on the economy and propping it up. I'm curious on the supply chain there with all these companies going public and how that investment in supply chain's going to be impacted. For me, I think it's going to be the tax revenue here in Shelby County. How things continue to scale because that's been a big component of this locally Southaven Memphis side.

The thing we've been told is that they're in a continuous state of build and scale. What does that mean? I haven't seen too much discussion on that from a citywide leadership side of things too, which again, I think leaves the public with a bit more questions than answers. I think the other half of this too is the water here in Memphis. That is a really big topic with the recycling plant being put on hold. I cannot stress enough of how much people in Memphis are prideful of the Memphis aquifer and having some of the cleanest water in the world. That is a huge thing that people here hang their hat on.

So, the Colossus Water Recycling Plant being put on hold is definitely, you could argue that's a bigger concern for residents here in Memphis than having a hyperscale data center in the backyard than even the legacy air pollution issues as well. People really do care about their water. So, that is something that definitely would be on the radar and see how that unfolds. The other half of this too is kind of what other data centers are going to pop up there. They have the third one at 2400 State line Road, which is the third one announced, but they have two construction permits for two more buildings, about 300 square feet on those two lane properties I mentioned before.

So, again, that's a total of potentially four data centers right there on the border of Shelby County and Southaven, Mississippi.

Memphis in many ways kind of became a early harbinger, a kind of bigger story than just in the local community. You've been obviously following this incredibly closely. You've got probably more detail in your head than most folks will forget about any of this. What do you make? Are you able to zoom out and think about Memphis as an example for the broader kind of data center story that's been roiling the country?

I think it's very fair to say this has been a pulse on that conversation. And I think it's twofold. One, because xAI came into the AI race so late. So, it's kind of like you could make a case of how does a company, anybody take the world's richest man out of the equation? How does anybody essentially start an AI company from scratch? Because in some capacities, xAI did do that to their credit with how they came into the race and how do you meet those power needs and demand and make all that happen. So, I do think that's a fascinating component there.

The other part of that is I do think, as I've mentioned before, we've seen already one company in Google and one community in Olive Branch address like, "Hey, we want to do things differently than what we saw happen in Memphis and Southaven." I think from a larger scale, when you take it from a national lens, you have folks that are now associating all data centers, not just hyperscale data centers, because there is a difference as no-fly zone or no go. You see Memphis then as a community that didn't have a whole lot of chances to push back on this per se. It kind of all happened and happened fast and some of that too, like some of the things we couldn't report on fast enough either.

So, I do think that's part of that gambit, but naturally there's going to be retroactive and proactive things that come out of anybody being first. And Memphis definitely was the fastest boom and also a company that happened to be using a microgrid system that was very unique to the rest of the AI world. So, from a tech sphere, and I'm sure your audience and your reporters have dove into that, that microgrid capacity they did relying on Tesla battery packs and megapacks as one for redundancy and then this reliance on gas turbines to meet their energy needs is fascinating.

We've seen the massive push for fossil fuels coming back, but xAI was the first one to really be like, "Hey, we have the megapacks in place for extra redundancy. We're going to lean on getting this massive amount of energy demand and the best and cheapest way to do that is through turbines." So, yeah, from a national lens then, as cheap and efficient as turbines can be as options, it is also a very significant issue with air quality then in an area that already had legacy pollution.

So, yes, Memphis absolutely I think is a pulse in that national conversation of should there be more public input with construction economic development like this, but it's difficult because historically, any new development, economic development or industry push, historically in America, it takes a long time for those conversations to really come into the fold and have, I think it's more subjective as far as communities that do open up and delay development to have those discussions and do things with everybody involved in progress as efficiently as you can.

Here, you did have a case where a company was trying to get into a rat race as fast as possible and they were able to do that. We could argue about effectiveness or could that have been done better, but I do think for a lot of reasons Memphis absolutely is the pulse on this entire data center component and you could extend that further even Tennessee with Oak Ridge and the Oak Ridge data center out there, which is a research data center, but Oak Ridge is also applying small modular reactors to power things and SMR reactors are still the safest, most efficient way to power data centers, hyperscale data centers specifically.

The thing with turbines is the electricity yield on those, don't completely quote me on this because I'm going to give a general, I want to say it's 75% to 80% electrical yield in that ballpark. I could be over, under on that. SMR reactors are about 88%, 90%. Turbines are the closest to that, but you can hook up a turbine next day, day of. Small modular reactor is going to take years to build infrastructure wise. So, there is a gap there as far as scale to need and market demand as xAI needed versus, okay, we could do this cleaner and efficient, but that's going to take X amount of years.

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