‘A different set of rules’: thermal drone footage shows Musk’s AI power plant flouting clean air regulations

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/13/elon-musk-xai-datacenters-air-pollution-mississippi

Images confirm xAI is continuing to defy EPA regulations in Mississippi to power its flagship datacenters

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company is continuing to fuel its datacenters with unpermitted gas turbines, an investigation by the Floodlight newsroom shows. Thermal footage captured by Floodlight via drone shows xAI is still burning gas at a facility in Southaven, Mississippi, despite a recent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ruling reiterating that doing so requires a state permit in advance.

State regulators in Mississippi maintain that since the turbines are parked on tractor trailers, they don’t require permits. However, the EPA has long maintained that such pollution sources require permits under the Clean Air Act.

Any exemption for these machines “could leave these engines subject to no emission standards at all”, the agency wrote in a January final ruling.

463 points · 35 comments · view on lemmy.world

35 Comments

betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world · 77 pts · 188d (4 replies)

One method of solving this type of problem also involves drones.

shatterling@lemmy.zip · 10 pts · 188d (3 replies)

So an underground US version of the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces targetting data centres to take them offline?

betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world · 24 pts · 188d (2 replies)

First rule of Flight Club.

SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 9 pts · 188d (1 reply)

I think you mean first rule if Project Mayhem.

Fedizen@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 186d

You can be in as many clubs as you want

DrSleepless@lemmy.world · 33 pts · 188d (1 reply)

Who’s gonna hold them accountable?

tidderuuf@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 188d

Right?! Trump just gutted like the last of the EPA and not a single judge looked up from their roasted stork.

grue@lemmy.world · 23 pts · 188d (1 reply)

If the government won't enforce the law, vigilantism is the only alternative. If the turbines are destroyed, they can't emit.

Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 187d

and constructive rioting.

Sanctus@anarchist.nexus · 19 pts · 188d

Looks like if nobody will represent the people, the people must take this into their own hands. Datacenters are polluting enough without the hackjob power source.

danc4498@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 188d (2 replies)

Who knew the AI apocalypse would be due to its massive energy usage.

lemonskate@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 188d (1 reply)

Wasn't that part of the plot of the Matrix?

4am@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 188d

They’re so unoriginal, it’s always a misunderstood dystopian plot, willfully ignored, flouted as genius.

Unleaded8163@fedia.io · 16 pts · 188d (1 reply)

They'll be in real trouble when they get fined into oblivion. I bet they're looking a thousands of dollars here!

A_norny_mousse@piefed.zip · 1 pts · 188d

IIRC this admin explicitely gives AI stuff a free pass for the next ten years.

finallymadeanaccount@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 188d (2 replies)

State regulators in Mississippi maintain that since the turbines are parked on tractor trailers, they don’t require permits.

What sort of stupid fucking ruling is that? Do things magically stop polluting when you put them on tractor trailers, or something?

partial_accumen@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 188d

It was probably a law written expecting the use case to be temporary power perhaps for an event or temporary maintenece need. The drafters of that law likely didn't think someone would blatantly skirt the spirit of the law by simple placing the generators on trailers as a permanent fixture.

In short, the state needs to update its laws to remove this loophole.

SpiceDealer@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 187d

Redneck logic.

tanisnikana@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 188d (7 replies)

I hope that when Elon Musk is guillotined, all of his family goes with him.

This does except his ex-daughter, who rightfully disowned him.

Edit: I accidentally misspelled his name, I’ve corrected it. Whoever is in charge of carving his gravestone has the correct spelling now.

Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 187d

his brother kimball musk got into the us on a similar scheme that elon did.

Eheran@lemmy.world · -15 pts · 188d (5 replies)

What the fuck you psycho.

tanisnikana@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 188d (4 replies)

If Elon dies, the heir raised with his values gets the stuff and perpetuates it.

This is how executive monarchy inherits in the corporate age.

otter@lemmy.zip · 13 pts · 188d (1 reply)

If he's guillotined why not just disinherit his children at that stage?

tanisnikana@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 188d

Yeah, prolly. Saves wear and tear on the guillotine. Lots of pedophiles to get through after all.

Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 187d (1 reply)

are they, ELON doesnt seem to give attention to any of his Breed fetish children, only one time as a human shield.and it will be 14+ children trying to fight the same inheritence since they are all the same or very close the same age.

tanisnikana@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 187d

You might be right. If I was his daughter, I would disown him too.

Formfiller@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 187d (3 replies)

Guillotine time? Or are we letting it get worse? I have an executive functioning disorder so genuinely asking because I think we should be chopping of heads.

Fedizen@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 187d (1 reply)

We need some kind of citizens court it seems like.

Formfiller@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 187d

I second this motion

Sunflier@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 187d

Guillotine time? Or are we letting it get worse?

Ultimately that is a question only you can decide on.

A_norny_mousse@piefed.zip · 6 pts · 188d (1 reply)

As a European it annoys me that

  • the EU is dead set to "not be left behind" wrt AI
  • the main reason the US are ahead is because of shit like this
Fedizen@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 187d

Reminder: these are literally powering the world's largest CSAM generator.

Fedizen@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 187d

How is everything this guy does so dystopian.

Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 187d

thats why he chose red states, regulation free states.

utopiah@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 187d

this isn't a mistake, it's a pattern. He cuts corners with every project.