DOJ intervenes on behalf of xAI in data center gas turbine lawsuit – Utility Dive
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The Department of Defense said the xAI data center powered by the gas plant is critical to national security, revealing Grok was used to fire thousands of missiles in the Iran war.
The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality said in July that the plant was protected by the Clean Air Act’s mobile source provisions as the turbines are portable units. The NAACP has argued against this and seeks federal relief from the state’s decision, alleging that pollution from the turbines “on top of the already high levels of ozone and NOx pollution [in] the greater Memphis area” will have negative health effects locally.
In May, the NAACP requested a preliminary injunction against the continued operation of the turbines.
Stanley argued that if the Colossus 2 data center were shut down due to a lack of power from the Stanton Road site, “xAI would lose capacity to train and develop future, improved versions of Grok. And if xAI is hindered from continuing to improve and upgrade Grok, including the Grok Gov Model, [DOD’s] ability to meet its national security mission and keep pace with adversaries will be impaired.”
“The Grok Gov Model offers features unique to xAI that are found in no other frontier AI model,” Stanley said. He cited Grok Gov’s integration into Maven Smart System, an AI-powered command-and-control platform, and revealed that Grok was used in the Iran war.
Grok’s integration with MSS “enabled U.S. forces to deploy over 2,000 munitions to 2,000 distinct targets within 96 hours during Operation Epic Fury, a testament to the greatly increased operational efficiency made possible by the Grok Gov Model,” he said.
Stanley said that in the modern theater of operations, “data center inference capacity must be recognized not merely as commercial infrastructure, but as a long-term strategic tool vital to maintaining our technological advantage against adversaries.”
The DOJ also included a letter from Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, R, who wrote that the NAACP is “seeking to materially slow or outright stop the largest private investment in Mississippi’s history — an investment that already has created thousands of construction jobs and will create hundreds of long-term high paying jobs.”
In a Wednesday release, the Environmental Protection Network said the DOJ’s filing “goes far beyond a single data center” and amounts to the DOJ “asking a federal court to grant the Executive Branch a sweeping ‘veto power’ to shut down congressionally authorized citizen lawsuits whenever community enforcement conflicts with the administration’s political priorities.”
“The administration is deploying this sweeping legal theory in service of its AI and data center agenda,” EPN wrote. “EPA has made AI and data center expansion one of its defining priorities, including efforts to speed permitting and power generation for data centers, while moving to weaken pollution standards for coal and gas power plants at the same time data centers are driving new electricity demand.”
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The Southwest Power Pool service aims to help data centers and other large loads get online quickly, but they can have their service cut when grid conditions are tight.
The grid operator urged states to develop rules to shield other ratepayers from data center-driven costs, but analysts said it remains unclear how a reliability auction’s costs could be allocated only to hyperscalers.
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Get the free daily newsletter read by industry experts
The Southwest Power Pool service aims to help data centers and other large loads get online quickly, but they can have their service cut when grid conditions are tight.
The grid operator urged states to develop rules to shield other ratepayers from data center-driven costs, but analysts said it remains unclear how a reliability auction’s costs could be allocated only to hyperscalers.
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