Elon Musk is just Elon Musking – who is actually in charge of stopping him?

And for my next trick…

Introducing my new daily series – THE XAI FILES…

Some of you may remember that while I was running for Congress, I started digging into xAI. Then I went quiet. That wasn’t me losing interest after the primary and it wasn’t me dropping it. Every answer I found just led to three more questions, and I didn’t want to say anything until I found something worth talking about. There are plenty of people angry about the four data centers that have popped up in the last 2 years – and several lawsuits already fighting them.

Here’s the thing – my view has always been – why are people mad at Elon Musk? He’s just doing the exact same thing that other titans of industry have been praised for for centuries. Elon Musk is just Elon Musking – instead of being mad at him, I’ve always believed that the real villains are the people we appointed or elected to protect us from these people – that have failed to do so.

So, I set out to find out if XAI’s data centers are harming people – who is responsible for letting that happen – and who is responsible for stopping it.

My first task was looking into the pollution studies – I’ve already written about those – and I will circle back – but while I was researching – I stumbled across something I hadn’t seen anyone else digging into – the batteries.

Both Memphis sites have Megapack installations – fields of big lithium storage units that hold power for the campus. While I was reviewing the permits – I noticed that no safety measures seemed to be set up for them.

The permit for the first one lists 24 inspections. As of late July, the city’s permit portal showed none of them completed. The fire department approval and seismic anchoring inspections still had no inspector assigned – and the fire bureau’s sign-off so far covered the foundation plans only. Yet, the batteries are built and running.

So I filed records requests. Then I read what came back and filed more. There are 41 of them now, to ten different offices in two states, and one request from Mississippi alone turned up 307 files.

Last week the EPA emailed to say that they wanted to combine two of my requests from July into one, because somebody else had already asked for what I was asking for. I guess I’m not the only one with questions.

So, I downloaded the EPA FOIA request logs – I am learning so much about what is available to the public if you just go looking for it – and I found every records request they’ve received about xAI or data centers since the start of 2025 – and then I requested those records too. I was told yesterday that a portion of my requests won’t be available until February. They’re about policy discussions and they have to go through 3 different systems of checks before I can see them.

Here’s what I do know so far – for the sites in Tennessee, back in March 2025, the company’s consultant proposed pollution controls twelve times stricter than the federal floor, and that application went past the EPA, two National Park Service reviewers, the USDA, the state, and a 30-day public comment window.

In Mississippi, eight months later, 60 portable turbines were treated as exempt from that kind of review.

One of these things is not like the other…

This illustrates why it’s so difficult to get any concrete answers about anything when it comes to xAI. They’ve got two sites, a stack of addresses, and a power plant sitting in Southaven. Connected to the sites are city permits, county health permits, two state environmental agencies, the EPA, TVA, and MLGW – the list is overwhelming. Every one of them owns a piece and none of them owns the whole thing.

The simple question I started out asking was – if xAI is harming residents of TN, whose responsibility is it to stop them – and the answer ended up being – there’s no single set of rules or regulators. There’s a stack of them, in different buildings, in different states, held by a variety of different agencies.

So, here are my questions now:

Did xAI follow the rules?

Did the agencies do their jobs?

Is anyone even capable of overseeing all of this?

The other questions I am now digging into are – Is this the way this should work? Is the complexity by design? Should the system be changed?

I made this argument during the campaign about air rules and I still believe it – saying the air in South Memphis is bad doesn’t fix the air, even with a study behind it. Somebody has to name the agency, the rule, the person who signs, and the standard they’re supposed to hold to.

To find out any answers in regards to xAI, and data centers in general, is a huge, complex investigation.

So I’ve decided to write about it as I go. Short pieces, one thread at a time. I can’t give you a schedule – I’m aiming for most days, sometimes twice when news breaks that connects. It ends when it ends.

And I might be wrong about the whole thing. It’s possible xAI, and everyone else connected, did everything by the book and what I’m really documenting is a set of laws that let this happen legally. A company following the law isn’t the problem when the law is the problem.

I don’t know yet which story this is. But I hope you stay tuned…

Update, September 27th, 2026: The inspection lines now say they reflect the city’s permit portal as of late July, and that the fire bureau had approved the foundation plans.

Everything I have written about AI is in one place at rachelandthecity.com/the-ai-files.

If you like facts-first info on all this, consider leaving a tip on Venmo or PayPal – this stuff takes a lot of time to put together. And check out everything I’ve written with citations and receipts at the xAI Files.