The hu­man body is the best da­ta cen­tre that I know of. It is loaded with a large brain and a su­per-de­vel­oped frontal lobe. Morn­ing, noon and night, even as we sleep, in dreams, it is gath­er­ing, stor­ing, pro­cess­ing in­fo, nowa­days quan­ti­fied in bits. Tril­lions of bits be­ing processed, every sec­ond up­on the sec­ond, to keep the or­gan­ism go­ing and com­ing.

We are al­so packed, pro­grammed, pre-in­stalled with a code, ge­net­ic ma­te­r­i­al stored in rib­bons, like digi­tised strips and tapes. This ma­te­r­i­al can al­so be quan­ti­fied in bits. Bil­lions of bits car­ry­ing da­ta from our an­ces­tral prog­en­i­tors, pre­hen­sile guys and gals, liv­ing in the prover­bial or­gan­ic soups and swamps, to mod­ern-day pri­mates, us. Pro­gram­ming us.

Now we, ho­mo sapi­ens, live in the in­for­ma­tion age. No longer do we need pro­grammed class­es of servile serfs, slaves, ser­vants, ple­beians, lumpen pro­le­tar­i­ans to do our me­nial work. We are try­ing to leap out of that past. With large ma­chine sweat­shops called da­ta cen­tres. You jam-pack a large build­ing with com­put­ers. Make the bug­gers work. Morn­ing, noon and night. Task them like we tasked the in­den­tures and slaves on our es­tates and plan­ta­tions. This is called com­pute pow­er. At their glo­ri­ous best, they are ca­pa­ble of rapid­ly learn­ing and per­form­ing over­whelm­ing­ly com­plex feats.

But these sweat­shop work­ers have to be fed. Like any tech­nol­o­gy, a car, for ex­am­ple, with en­er­gy. Nat­ur­al gas, elec­tric­i­ty. And just like cars, with cool­ing sys­tems, to cool them down. Lest they over­heat, bust. And vast amounts. Like feed­ing an en­tire caste or class of serfs. To trans­ship da­ta back to the “moth­er­land”, the US.

But eh, eh. Haven’t our man­u­fac­tur­ers re­cent­ly been com­plain­ing about in­creased elec­tric­i­ty rates, and been told to stuff it? And haven’t the heavy gas-based in­dus­tri­al­ists on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate been leav­ing, or putting down tools, due to fail­ure to win com­pet­i­tive gas prices or gas short­ages (Methanex/Ti­tan, Ju­ly 15 2026)? And doesn’t our Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly make us brace for in­creas­es in wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty hikes? And what about our wa­ter short­ages and elec­tric­i­ty out­ages? Can the GORTT guar­an­tee 99.9 per cent up­time for these large non-stop da­ta cen­tres?

And who will own the da­ta that this mil­lion-man army will gath­er? Will store? Will process and use? Who will pro­gramme them, and for what pur­pos­es? The race-based Tri­ni econ­o­mists at UWI and race-based GORTT politi­cians will tell you they are for be­nign pur­pos­es. To run the in­ter­net, en­hance our com­mu­ni­ca­tions ecosys­tems. But the cen­tres, con­tract­ed out by the US Gov­ern­ment, will be US-owned. US-con­trolled. US-dic­tat­ed; its al­go­rithms, task-sheets will be writ­ten by the small­fry con­trac­tor’s re­cruiter, the US.

The cen­tres can be con­trolled, pro­grammed from the US. Af­ter an ini­tial burst of em­ploy­ment in the con­struc­tion field, large da­ta cen­tres typ­i­cal­ly em­ploy around 250 peo­ple, most­ly tech­ni­cians, to main­tain them. And its US own­ers will own and li­cense it to con­trol the pro­ceeds of its da­ta. We know what T&TEC, WASA, our bank­ing, mo­bile com­pa­ny da­ta cen­tres are be­ing used for. To process what trans­ac­tions. But not these prospec­tive US ones. Does the GORTT pos­sess the will and ca­pac­i­ty to ne­go­ti­ate ac­cess and use of these cen­tres for T&T’s re­search and de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my?

The US, Trump or no Trump, is a mil­i­tarist cap­i­tal­ist tech­noc­ra­cy. Noth­ing fun­da­men­tal­ly wrong with that. But the US us­es its mil­i­tary, its eco­nom­ic sys­tem, its tech­nol­o­gy to dom­i­nate. Dom­i­nate the plan­et. Dom­i­nate West Asia (the Mid­dle East), dom­i­nate Chi­na, dom­i­nate Africa, the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca. It per­ceives Chi­na to be its key peer com­peti­tor. Hence, let’s piv­ot to Chi­na. Let’s con­tain Chi­na. Let’s block Chi­na and Rus­sia in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. In the in­for­ma­tion field, it is in­volved in a war with Chi­na for AI dom­i­nance. Da­ta cen­tres are not neu­tral. They form part of the US predilec­tion and pathol­o­gy for glob­al dom­i­nance.

Such cen­tres are used to gar­ner and store in­for­ma­tion. This in­for­ma­tion is not neu­tral. Such in­for­ma­tion may be mined to con­trol and dom­i­nate the mar­kets for food, com­modi­ties, news, en­ter­tain­ment, and fash­ion. To win the mil­i­tary and space tech­nol­o­gy races. They are al­so used for glob­al sur­veil­lance. Per­son­al in­for­ma­tion is coffined, and raised from the dead to at­tack op­po­nents. Da­ta is mined to fab­ri­cate in­tel­li­gence; “links” be­tween cho­sen op­po­nents and “ter­ror­ists”, for ex­am­ple.

Our Prime Min­is­ter has im­mo­lat­ed her­self on the cross of US im­pe­ri­al­ism. When the US in­stalled its mil­i­tary task force North of Venezuela last No­vem­ber, didn’t she say, yes? When the US navy be­gan its bomb­ing and snip­ing at Colom­bian, Trinidad and Venezue­lan ves­sels, didn’t she say kill them? When the US asked for radars, air­space, land­ing and re­fu­elling fa­cil­i­ties at Pi­ar­co to sup­port their de­cap­i­ta­tion of the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment, didn’t she lend them?

When the US/Ru­bio/Trump threat­ened to in­vade Cu­ba, didn’t she say com­mu­nism is bad? And when they at­tacked Iran, nu­clear weapons are bad? And doesn’t her gov­ern­ment ei­ther ab­stain or vote against any UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly mo­tion to pro­tect Cuban rights and sov­er­eign­ty? Is the da­ta cen­tre agen­da be­ing im­posed, take it or else? Is it a Tro­jan Horse for Trump’s Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Strat­e­gy (Don­roe Doc­trine) for the West­ern Hemi­sphere? Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar has put Amer­i­ca first, Amer­i­ca in front, and T&T (Drag­on gas) and the Caribbean (Cari­com/Cu­ba) be­hind. She’s not our as­set, but an Amer­i­can one.

Our cit­i­zens must re­ject such da­ta cen­tres. What are the wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty prices in the off­ing for these cen­tres? And why not de­vel­op our own da­ta cen­tres to put AI to sweat out mod­els for our own mass-tran­sit sys­tem, ASH af­ford­able sus­tain­able home­steads, in­dus­tri­al es­tates de­vot­ed to the pro­duc­tion of re­new­able en­er­gy tech­nol­o­gy, and a na­tion­al ar­chi­tec­ture for wa­ter cul­ti­va­tion, con­ser­va­tion, and dis­tri­b­u­tion? (Man­i­festo – A Promise to Fight, 2025-2040, Wayne Kublals­ingh, giv­en to the UNC in pre-elec­tion April 2025).

Why are we not in­tent on free­ing up the da­ta cen­tre bits and bytes of our own Tri­ni/Caribbean brains and body? Al­low­ing su­per-com­pute to take us where no hu­man mind has gone be­fore?