The US Department of Justice has moved to dismiss a civil rights lawsuit accusing Elon Musk's xAI of illegally operating unpermitted natural gas turbines near its Colossus 2 data centre in Memphis, Tennessee, arguing the case threatens national and energy security. The NAACP (the largest civil rights organisation for African Americans), filed the suit in April under the 1963 Clean Air Act, alleging the turbines — located in Southaven, Mississippi — were built without proper permits and expose hundreds of thousands of predominantly Black residents to pollutants linked to respiratory illness, heart disease, and cancer. The Justice Department's intervention, which legal experts are calling a "brazen" and unprecedented power grab, is drawing particular scrutiny because xAI's AI model Grok is actively used by the Pentagon, with a senior Defence Department official testifying that the system helped launch over 2,000 munitions against targets during the recent US-Israel conflict with Iran, making uninterrupted power to xAI's facilities a declared military priority.