As was the case with the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment, the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion seems very caught up in mak­ing an­nounce­ments that do not ap­pear to be based on any well-thought-out pol­i­cy or even a sem­blance of a cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis, not to men­tion the en­vi­ron­men­tal and so­cial im­pacts of their an­nounce­ments.

Giv­en the sur­pris­ing, im­me­di­ate neg­a­tive re­ac­tion to the an­nounce­ment last Fri­day that T&T can look for­ward to bil­lions in for­eign in­vest­ment from three po­ten­tial projects, it would be a shame if the two da­ta-cen­tre projects go the way of the pro­pos­al by the late chair­man of San­dals Re­sorts In­ter­na­tion­al, Gor­don ‘Butch’ Stew­art to op­er­ate two re­sorts in To­ba­go.

I sup­port the es­tab­lish­ment of new da­ta cen­tres in T&T, as this would be one path to di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my, gen­er­at­ing for­eign ex­change earn­ings and em­ploy­ing hun­dreds of lo­cals. But this col­umn's sup­port of da­ta cen­tres, this coun­try al­ready has at least five, is con­di­tioned on the two new projects meet­ing the cri­te­ria of pos­i­tive re­turns to the coun­try, trans­paren­cy and na­tion­al ac­cept­abil­i­ty.

It is great that we can boast that T&T is the first coun­try in the Caribbean that is se­ri­ous­ly think­ing about en­cour­ag­ing in­vest­ments in new da­ta cen­tres, but the pop­u­la­tion has to agree that that is an ap­pro­pri­ate use of our re­sources, in­clud­ing land, labour and cap­i­tal.

For the new da­ta cen­tres to be set up here, the Gov­ern­ment needs to an­swer some dif­fi­cult ques­tions AND it needs to con­sult the na­tion­al and fence­line com­mu­ni­ties.

The Caribbean Me­dia Cor­po­ra­tion re­port­ed on Mon­day, that an on­line pe­ti­tion start­ed by Syam Nath, a Trinida­di­an-based bio-acousti­cian and con­ser­va­tion re­searcher, call­ing for the sus­pen­sion of ap­proval for the project, had re­ceived near­ly 5,000 sig­na­tures in less than 24 hours ago.

The re­searcher ar­gued that no en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact as­sess­ment, wa­ter avail­abil­i­ty study, cool­ing strat­e­gy or drought re­silience plan have been pub­licly re­leased and that the Gov­ern­ment should “sus­pend ap­proval of large-scale AI da­ta cen­tres un­til com­pre­hen­sive en­vi­ron­men­tal wa­ter re­source and in­fra­struc­ture as­sess­ments have been com­plet­ed, in­de­pen­dent­ly re­viewed, as well as made avail­able for pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion.

“This pe­ti­tion does not op­pose tech­nol­o­gy or in­vest­ment. It calls for re­spon­si­ble plan­ning, trans­paren­cy, and ev­i­dence-based de­ci­sion-mak­ing. Ac­cess to re­li­able drink­ing wa­ter is a fun­da­men­tal pub­lic ne­ces­si­ty and should not be placed at risk by in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment with­out rig­or­ous in­de­pen­dent as­sess­ment.”

The pe­ti­tion, and the ex­pla­na­tions for it, are of course quite pre­ma­ture, be­cause an MoU is a pre­lim­i­nary agree­ment or a frame­work for how ne­go­ti­a­tions, to ar­rive at the fi­nal agree­ment, will pro­ceed.

But a re­port in the New York Times yes­ter­day (Wednes­day) in­di­cat­ed that there is grow­ing op­po­si­tion to da­ta cen­tres in the US. The found­ing ed­i­tor of Heatmap, Robin­son Mey­er, said the pub­li­ca­tion, which cov­ers cli­mate change, de­car­bon­i­sa­tion and en­er­gy tran­si­tion, start­ed ask­ing about AI da­ta cen­tres as well.

“Every quar­ter, we poll about 4,000 Amer­i­cans, and we ask: would you sup­port or op­pose a da­ta cen­ter be­ing built near where you live? We asked that ques­tion in Au­gust of last year, and Amer­i­cans were very split. They were about 43 per cent in sup­port and 42 per cent against.

“We asked again in the spring, and this time, 21 per cent of Amer­i­cans said they would sup­port a da­ta cen­tre be­ing built near where they live, and 71 per cent said they would op­pose it.”

Con­text is every­thing

Last Fri­day, Ju­ly 10, the new US Chargé d’Af­fairs in Port-of-Spain, Philip Kern, an­nounced that on that day, the Cab­i­net of Trinidad and To­ba­go ap­proved Mem­o­ran­dums of Un­der­stand­ing with two Amer­i­can com­pa­nies: Pin­na­cle Steel and Vana­di­um, and Hum­ming­bird AI.

In the pre­pared text of his speech, Mr Kern added, “These agree­ments cre­ate the frame­work for al­most US$2 bil­lion in in­vest­ment and hun­dreds of jobs at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.”

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so spoke at the func­tion, which was held at the Hy­att Re­gency to mark the 250th an­niver­sary of the De­c­la­ra­tion of In­de­pen­dence in Philadel­phia on Ju­ly 4, 1776.

In her speech, the T&T Prime Min­is­ter said, “Ear­li­er, be­fore I came here, we signed three agree­ments with three US com­pa­nies, who will want to come and part­ner with us. They are go­ing to in­vest here to work on da­ta cen­tres, two for da­ta cen­tres, and one to help us re­ju­ve­nate and re­build our steel in­dus­try. So, can I thank your com­pa­nies as well, Charge, for in­vest­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The first as­pect of the slight­ly con­fused mes­sag­ing from that aus­pi­cious event is that Mr Kern, in the pre­pared text of his speech, said the T&T Cab­i­net ap­proved MoUs with two Amer­i­can com­pa­nies, Pin­na­cle Steel and Vana­di­um, and Hum­ming­bird AI. But, in her com­ments, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­ferred to the sign­ing of three agree­ments with three US com­pa­nies.

In a news re­lease dat­ed Ju­ly 10, the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter clar­i­fied that the Gov­ern­ment en­tered in­to a da­ta-cen­tre de­vel­op­ment MoU with Ernst & Young LLP to es­tab­lish “a frame­work for col­lab­o­ra­tion on the de­vel­op­ment of large-scale da­ta cen­tres and sup­port­ing in­fra­struc­ture, and that EY “in­tends to part­ner with third par­ties in the de­vel­op­ment of a 300MW da­ta cen­tre.”

A sec­ond MoU, ac­cord­ing to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, was signed with Hum­ming­bird AI Hold­ings LLC to es­tab­lish “a frame­work for pre­lim­i­nary co­op­er­a­tion, due dili­gence and co­or­di­na­tion in re­la­tion to a Pro­posed 150MW AI in­fra­struc­ture and da­ta-cen­tre fa­cil­i­ty, with po­ten­tial longer term ex­pan­sion to 500MW.

In the last Sun­day Guardian, Ju­ly 12, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Bar­ry Para­dath, said the da­ta cen­tres would be lo­cat­ed in a spe­cial eco­nom­ic zone (SEZ) in Debe (not Point Lisas) and that the Gov­ern­ment has tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the im­pact of da­ta cen­tres on the wa­ter sup­ply to Debe and the sur­round­ing area would not be im­pact­ed.

The re­al is­sue for the es­tab­lish­ment of da­ta cen­tres here is not the sup­ply of wa­ter, but the sup­ply of elec­tric­i­ty and whether T&T will have to in­crease its pow­er gen­er­a­tion ca­pac­i­ty to ac­com­mo­date two da­ta cen­tres.

Who is Hum­ming­bird AI Hold­ings?

In a post on Mon­day on Face­book, a gen­tle­man named Pearce Robin­son, who de­scribes him­self as an ad­vo­cate, wrote that the Mem­o­ran­dums of Un­der­stand­ing were signed at the US Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain, and that set­ting gave the an­nounce­ments an im­me­di­ate ap­pear­ance of cred­i­bil­i­ty.

“But an em­bassy cer­e­mo­ny is not a sub­sti­tute for cor­po­rate trans­paren­cy, fi­nan­cial ver­i­fi­ca­tion or tech­ni­cal due dili­gence. Hum­ming­bird AI Hold­ings has been de­scribed as a Flori­da-head­quar­tered com­pa­ny propos­ing a 150 MW AI in­fra­struc­ture and da­ta-cen­tre fa­cil­i­ty. Yet ba­sic pub­lic search­es re­veal no read­i­ly ver­i­fi­able com­pa­ny his­to­ry, es­tab­lished web­site, iden­ti­fi­able lead­er­ship team, pre­vi­ous projects or vis­i­ble track record in de­vel­op­ing in­fra­struc­ture of this scale.”

Had Mr Robin­son done a sim­ple Google search for Hum­ming­bird AI Hold­ings, he would have dis­cov­ered a news re­lease, dat­ed Ju­ly 10, from Plipde­co, the land­lord of the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, head­lined ‘Plipde­co to play a piv­otal role in three land­mark de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives.’

The Plipde­co news re­lease states, in part, “Hum­ming­bird AI Hold­ings LLC, signed by man­ag­ing mem­ber Marc-Kwe­si Far­rell, pro­vides for co­op­er­a­tion on a pro­posed 150 MW ar­ti­fi­cial-in­tel­li­gence and da­ta-cen­tre fa­cil­i­ty, with po­ten­tial ex­pan­sion to 500 MW and ini­tial op­er­a­tion tar­get­ed for the first quar­ter of 2028.”

Mr Far­rell was ap­point­ed as a non-ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Massy Hold­ings in Feb­ru­ary 2022 and is the founder and CEO of Ten To One Rum.

Ac­cord­ing to the Massy bio of him, be­fore launch­ing the rum brand, he held a num­ber of roles at Star­bucks as its youngest vice pres­i­dent, lead­ing the ecom­merce busi­ness, US Re­tail Lob­by and Bev­er­age In­no­va­tion, dur­ing his tenure.

“This fol­lowed ear­li­er pro­fes­sion­al stints at Fi­deli­ty Eq­ui­ty Part­ners and Bain & Co. Far­rell at­tend­ed MIT at age 16, fol­lowed by Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty and Har­vard Busi­ness School,” ac­cord­ing to the Massy bio. The bio al­so de­scribes Far­rell as an ac­tive an­gel in­vestor, which is how, one imag­ines, he be­came in­ter­est­ed in the idea of get­ting in­volved in a da­ta cen­tre in T&T.

Al­though he comes from a very dis­tin­guished T&T fam­i­ly, I do not imag­ine Mr Far­rell has the lux­u­ry of hav­ing mil­lions of US dol­lars in in­vest­ments that can be liq­ui­dat­ed to fund the start-up eq­ui­ty for Hum­ming­bird AI Hold­ings. But, giv­en his ed­u­ca­tion, work ex­pe­ri­ence and en­tre­pre­neur­ship, he would have a net­work of peo­ple who would be will­ing to in­vest in his start up.

The point is this: In or­der to pre­vent an es­ca­la­tion of neg­a­tive com­ments, such as those made by Mr Robin­son, it be­hooves Mr Far­rell to make pub­lic his part­ners and as­so­ciates in Hum­ming­bird AI, how much a 150MW da­ta cen­tre will cost and how he plans to raise the funds to build the cen­tre if he is giv­en the green light.