Owning Our Own Capacity in the Caribbean
Prepared for His Excellency CoP (Ret’d) Ian M. Queeley, CSM
Ambassador & Head of Mission · Embassies of Eastern Caribbean States to the Kingdom of Morocco
Owning Our Own Capacity in the Caribbean
Prepared for His Excellency CoP (Ret’d) Ian M. Queeley, CSM
Ambassador & Head of Mission · Embassies of Eastern Caribbean States to the Kingdom of Morocco
Global oil strategy moves tankers through the Caribbean Sea. More ships mean more chances for accidents and more attention from powerful nations.
Our internet runs along the ocean floor. A dragging anchor, a fishing net, or a deliberate act can cut a cable—and an island’s connection to essential services.
Satellites offer backup internet and communications. That is good. It also raises a question every nation must answer: who controls the backup?
We decide how our data is handled. We train the people who run it. We own some of the capacity.
No island can build every cable, satellite, and data center alone.
Monitor models during training and deployment, including for cybersecurity, biosecurity, and chemical threats.
Keep an internal team to make sure those controls work.
Hire an independent outside auditor to check them.
Give a board committee oversight of the reports.
Train regional engineers and policy staff. Start with a talent-first pilot; propose a women-focused cohort.
Pool compute and connectivity. Negotiate group terms for data, local jobs, and crisis service.
Co-own a ground station, secure data center, or small satellite program with allied partners.
Satellite connectivity can keep essential services online when seabed infrastructure fails.
Commercial service can be enabled or disabled by its operator. Dependency is a security question.
Negotiate shared terms for data protection, local jobs, and service during a crisis.
Country programs and dated claims are documented in the report; they require a current source check before external publication.
Simulate the outage, test backup routes, and train technicians and officials to respond.
Model flooded roads, damaged ports, and shelter logistics before the storm arrives.
Train port staff, customs officers, and police in realistic scenes.
Proposal only. No compute partners are committed and no finished lab exists.
Training, planning, and response—not general-purpose deployment.
The lab does not track or profile people.
Sensitive information is stored under regional law.
A trained person reviews every high-stakes output.
Access goes to partner governments that share these rules.
RSS and CARICOM IMPACS: sponsor the talent pilot and identify a regional owner.
UWI and Caribbean police commissioners: co-design the curriculum and training scenarios.
Governments, institutions, and providers: explore shared sites, funding, and group access.
All listed organizations are prospective partners. None is presented as a confirmed commitment.
Review with Ambassador Queeley. Confirm a regional sponsor. Identify three potential partners.
Draft the cohort curriculum and group-access terms. Test one cable-outage scenario.
Establish a shared training site. Publish guardrails. Decide the ownership structure.
Keep undersea cables and satellite backup on the regional security agenda.
Name the partners who will help build shared talent and capacity.
Agree that any regional capability belongs to the region.
Security is not only about what we defend against. It is about what we build together.