Elon Musk's SpaceX has quietly spent about $1 billion buying a US gas turbine company to keep its vast AI data centre powered, even as the US government now argues in court that shutting down the unpermitted turbines behind the project would threaten national security. The Department of Justice and the Pentagon have both warned judges that turning off the fossil-fuelled units supporting Musk's Grok AI system could undermine military operations, according to filings cited in SpaceX's own IPO prospectus.
Musk is building his public image on clean technology. As head of Tesla, he turned electric cars from a niche experiment into a global mass-market business. In 2016, Tesla absorbed SolarCity and began selling solar roofs that were supposed to help break dependence on fossil fuels.
