The Memphis File: This Isn’t A Story About AI. It’s A Story About Corruption
Welcome to my 10-part series on the grift that brought a data center to downtown Memphis – and how to keep one from coming to your city.
By the time the Memphis City Council found out that Elon Musk was building the world’s largest supercomputer in their city, the deal was already done.
They found out from a press release.
So did the County Board of Commissioners. So did the residents of South Memphis, where the thing was actually getting built. So did the people whose tax dollars fund the public utility that would supply the power. The only people who knew before the deal was done were a handful of officials sworn to secrecy and a chamber of commerce that had been hosting invitation-only meetings about it for months.
The chamber is the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce, and I had to keep reminding myself while I was reading into this – they’re not part of the city government. People assume the chamber is some kind of municipal arm because it has the city’s name on it and shows up at ribbon cuttings, but it isn’t.
Chambers of commerce across the country are private nonprofits. Their members are businesses. Their dues come from those businesses. Their job is to represent business interests, not yours. They aren’t subject to public records laws. They don’t have to hold open meetings. They have no legal obligation to the city they’re named after beyond the basic stuff every nonprofit follows.
I’ve never really thought about it before. Have you?
So, what this means is when Elon Musk was looking to build xAI’s very first data center, the Greater Memphis Chamber could take the meeting in a room nobody else got to enter.
Before I tell you how it happened, I think it’s important to point out that Musk got initial quotes of 18 to 24 months to build a data center from scratch. He rejected that timeline. The Memphis deal got finalized in about a week in March 2024, and Colossus went live 122 days after construction began – and just two months after the public announcement.
Here’s what had happened…
The Chamber set up what it later called a five-member operations team to give xAI what one Chamber executive described as “round-the-clock concierge service.” A concierge desk. For one company. Staffed by a private nonprofit, using a budget that comes partly from public money.
They held at least twelve invitation-only meetings about the project. Not one was open to the public. Not one had a public comment period. Not one was minuted and posted to a city website. The people in those rooms decided what would happen to a vacant Electrolux factory in South Memphis, what kind of facility would go on it, how it would be powered, and what the surrounding neighborhoods would be told and when.
The surrounding neighborhoods weren’t invited.
While these meetings were happening, the people who actually had legal authority over pieces of the deal were being asked to sign nondisclosure agreements. Chamber president Ted Townsend signed one. MLGW CEO Doug McGowen signed one. Local law enforcement – including the sheriff’s office, the Memphis Police Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI – reportedly signed them too, according to Forbes reporting that broke months later.
Memphis Mayor Paul Young says he didn’t sign one. He’s said it publicly. But the chain of secrecy still ran through people who report to him, and through the utility his city owns, and somehow he was standing in front of an empty factory smiling for the announcement photo while the council found out in real time.
How the hell does that work?
Another important thing to point out is that MLGW isn’t a private utility. The city of Memphis owns it. Which means the taxpayers own it. Doug McGowen works for them – for you, if you live there – and his job is to represent the people who fund and own the thing he runs. When that person signs a private agreement preventing him from talking to the public about a deal that uses the public’s infrastructure, the chain of accountability snaps. The person the city owns is no longer allowed to answer the city’s questions.
This is the part that matters most for any city about to go through its own version of this story. The NDA is the tell. If your utility executive comes back from a private meeting and can’t tell you what was discussed, you don’t have a representative anymore. You have a hostage.
The Memphis City Council wasn’t in the meetings. The County Board wasn’t in the meetings. The TVA board, which ultimately had to approve the power load, wasn’t at the meetings. None of these elected bodies got a chance to vote on anything before the announcement.
That announcement happened on June 5, 2024.
The Chamber put out a press release describing the deal as the largest capital investment by a new-to-market company in Memphis history. It said xAI would bring up to 500 quality, high-paying jobs in the initial phase. It came with the kind of photo op these things always come with – the mayor flanked by Chamber employees, an xAI executive between them, in front of the empty Electrolux factory.
A week later, council member Rhonda Logan said this in a public meeting, on the record, in a transcript later picked up by the trade press: “We don’t know anything. This is already here and we don’t know anything.”
That’s an elected official, sitting in a council chamber, telling the public she found out about the largest economic development deal in Memphis history from a press release.
McGowen, the utility CEO, eventually showed up to explain. He told the council MLGW had been in discussions with xAI since March. Three months before the announcement. Three months in which the council had no idea. Three months in which the utility CEO knew, the chamber president knew, and the body that exists to oversee the utility – the body the public elected – found out alongside the person reading the morning paper.
This isn’t just a Memphis problem. A researcher at the University of Mary Washington studied Virginia’s data center boom and found that of 31 localities with existing, approved, or proposed data centers, 25 had signed NDAs. That’s 80%. Same pattern everywhere. Private chamber or private developer. Private meetings. Public utility executive sworn to silence. Council finds out from the press release.
If this is happening in your town and you don’t know yet, you don’t know yet because that’s the design.
There’s one thing your city can do about this, and I’m going to keep coming back to it. Ban NDAs between public officials and private developers. Period.
There is no legitimate reason for a publicly accountable utility CEO to sign a confidentiality agreement with a private company about a project that uses public infrastructure. None. The proprietary information argument is a smokescreen. Cable franchise agreements involve trade secrets. Stadium deals involve trade secrets. Water contracts involve trade secrets. None of those requires sworn secrecy from the people negotiating them.
An NDA signed by a public official is the first clue that a grift is about to happen.
Which brings us to why they were needed.
That’s what I’ll cover next.
Sources
- Heinrich Böll Stiftung: The Promise of Peace of Plenty: How South Memphis Is Refusing AI’s Big Lies – https://us.boell.org/en/2026/01/28/promise-peace-plenty-how-south-memphis-refusing-ais-big-lies
- ProPublica: Inside the Memphis Chamber of Commerce’s Push for Elon Musk’s xAI Data Center – https://www.propublica.org/article/memphis-xai-colossus-elon-musk-chamber-messaging
- TechnoStateCraft / Justin Kollar: How South Memphis Became a Sacrifice Zone for xAI’s Data Center – https://www.technostatecraft.com/p/how-south-memphis-became-a-sacrifice
- Memphis Flyer: A People’s History of the Fight Against xAI – https://www.memphisflyer.com/a-peoples-history-of-the-fight-against-xai/
- Data Center Dynamics: Councillors in the dark over Elon Musk’s xAI Memphis data center – https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/we-dont-know-anything-councillors-in-the-dark-over-elon-musks-xai-memphis-data-center/
- Tech Policy Press / Good Jobs First (Greg LeRoy): Community Benefits from a Hyperscale Data Center are a Mighty Tall Order – https://www.techpolicy.press/community-benefits-from-a-hyperscale-data-center-are-a-mighty-tall-order/
Wow. Yikes. Musk strikes again in Memphis.
[url=https://kpmaklino.ru/]кп маклино
гостиница маклино
золотой карп малоярославец пруд в маклино
памятный знак строителям микрорайона маклино в малоярославце
маклино купить участок
[/url]
e2bcbk
0ynn4u
555
555
555
555
-1); waitfor delay ‘0:0:15’ —
555
555
555
1
1
-1′ OR 2+592-592-1=0+0+0+1 or ‘nWFsACUM’=’
0’XOR(if(now()=sysdate(),sleep(15),0))XOR’Z
1 waitfor delay ‘0:0:15’ —
-5) OR 84=(SELECT 84 FROM PG_SLEEP(15))–
1′”
1
1
1
925efg
2k2x03
Surely exultant with the blanket quality. The THCA flower has a unmistakeable, unfledged aroma and looks carefully handled. The THCA vape pen is simple, tactful, and works smoothly without any fuss. The https://tribetokes.com/all-thca-vapes/ has a charming constitution and does not pull out a recondite residue. All things arrives looking excellent, disinfected, and willing to use.