Introduction
This week, the internet lit up with news that Anthropic was building a data center in Memphis. Everyone panicked. Here we go again.
Except that’s not what happened. Anthropic isn’t building anything. They’re renting compute from Colossus, the xAI supercomputer that’s already running in downtown Memphis. The facility’s already at maximum capacity. Anthropic’s deal doesn’t add a single watt of new power, a single gallon of new water, or a single truck of new pollution. It’s a billing change. There’s no second data center coming.
But watching that panic unfold in real time, I realized something. A lot of people are mad about xAI for the wrong reasons. Not wrong like invalid – wrong like incomplete. They’re mad about the air quality issue and the water. and the noise. All real. All worth being mad about. But that’s not what this story is about.
This story is about who let it happen.
I need to say that up front because there’s going to be a lot of pressure, as I write this series, to make Elon Musk the villain. He’s an obvious choice – rich, loud, unempathetic, he dropped a supercomputer in a Black neighborhood that already had a cancer cluster. He’s an easy target. And honestly? I get it.
He is the villain. He’s just not the only one.
Musk did what every billionaire does when nobody’s watching. He found a city that wanted his money. He found officials who’d say yes. He built what he wanted, where he wanted, on his timeline. That’s not surprising. That’s what billion-dollar companies do. The shocking part isn’t that he tried it – it’s that nobody stopped him.
The villains in this story are actually local. They have names you might not have ever heard of. They’re the people who took the meeting, signed the NDAs, got the raise, sent the mailer, and kept their jobs. Many of them – no one ever voted to put them in charge. But they were absolutely in charge – and all of the issues that come with a data center in downtown Memphis – they are responsible for. Not Elon Musk. Because they let him do it. All of it.
And if you think this is a new story – it isn’t.
A hundred years ago, electric utility companies pulled this exact move. Found cities that wanted their power. Built power plants where they wanted. Ran transmission lines through poor neighborhoods. Nobody asked the people living there if they wanted to breathe coal smoke. Nobody regulated where the infrastructure could go. People got sick. Neighborhoods got written off. And then – slowly, expensively, against constant industry resistance – we regulated it. Rate commissions. Environmental standards. Public utility commissions. Now those rules feel normal. We don’t even think about the fight it took to get them.
But it took a generation. And it took people getting loud, organized, and refusing to let this is just how it works be the answer.
Data centers are the same infrastructure. Different century, same playbook. We have a choice right now – we can wait for the damage like we did with utilities, or we can write the rules first.
That’s what this series is about.
Over the next ten essays, I’m going to walk you through what actually happened in Memphis. Who took the meetings. Who signed the NDAs. Who got the raise. I put this series together by synthesizing the reporting that’s already out there – MLK50, ProPublica, Capital B, Memphis Flyer, Tennessee Lookout, Time, Democracy Now, the Southern Environmental Law Center – all of it stitched together into one story about how Memphis got sold and who profited.
And hopefully – once you understand who the supporting actors are in this narrative – you’ll feel differently about who to blame. And my hope is that once you understand how the trap got set in Memphis, you’ll know exactly what to watch for in your own city.
Data centers are coming to cities near you. If they’re not knocking on your door yet, they will be soon. NDAs are already being signed behind closed doors. The paperwork’s moving faster than public awareness.
This isn’t theoretical. In the second quarter of 2025 alone, residents and activist groups in the United States blocked or delayed twenty data center projects worth ninety-eight billion dollars.[1]
Wisconsin canceled a twelve-billion-dollar project after residents found out their officials had been negotiating in secret for months.[1]
Maine passed a statewide moratorium.[2]
Maricopa County, Arizona is fighting. Prince William County, Virginia is fighting. Rural towns most people have never heard of are fighting.
Stick with me. I’m going to show you what happened in Memphis, person by person, dollar by dollar, so that when this comes to your city – and it will come to your city – you’ll know exactly what questions to ask.
Sources
- CLEAResult: How community engagement can green-light a data center proposal — https://www.clearesult.com/insights/blog-community-engagement-for-data-centers
- Democracy Now: Maine statewide moratorium on data center construction — https://www.democracynow.org/2026/4/22/memphis_xai_data_center_pollution_keshaun