Algorithms and arrogance

You really have to marvel at the sheer nerve. A foreign developer walks into a chapel in Oton, Iloilo sets up his slides, and expects the town to simply smile and hand over its resources. When some residents committed the apparent crime of asking how the facility would get its water, Daniel Stefan Robertsen snapped. He refused to answer, cursed at the reporters outside, and bolted.

Good riddance. But the tantrum is not the story. The real scandal is how he got the microphone in the first place.

Robertsen was pitching a 50-MW hyperscale AI data center under a company called “Norway Green Energy.” Look them up on the SEC portal or run a web search and you will find absolutely nothing. We gave a municipal platform – and entertained handing over 10 hectares in Abilay Sur – to a corporate ghost. A hyperscale project of this size would easily demand upwards of USD 500,000,000 in capital. Yet this proposal breezed right into a public hearing before anyone in the local government bothered to do a simple background check.

We need to talk about the physical reality of what was actually being proposed. Fifty megawatts of power running continuously, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Have we completely blanked on the island-wide Panay grid collapse of January 2024? The local infrastructure already struggles to keep the lights on during peak months. Splicing a massive, power-hungry server farm into the ILECO I grid without a brutal, publicly scrutinized grid-impact study borders on negligence.

And then there’s the cooling problem. The attendees hit the nerve for a reason. AI data centers run hot, and they require staggering amounts of water to keep from melting down. Oton is an agricultural community. It survives on its surface and groundwater. If this ghost company planned to use evaporative cooling, it would eventually compete directly with local farmers for every drop.

An ugly reality underlies the current artificial intelligence boom, and it almost set up shop in our backyard. First-world tech firms are desperate for computing power, but their own governments are pushing back against the massive carbon footprint, the noise, and the drained aquifers. The solution? Find cheap land in the developing world. Show up in the provinces, toss around buzzwords like “innovation” and “computing hub,” and expect the locals to fall in line. They want the land and water of the Ogtonganons, but they feel insulted the second someone asks a technical question.

The municipal council is currently mulling over a persona non grata declaration against Robertsen. Sure, ban him. But locking out one arrogant developer doesn’t fix the fact that they left the door wide open. Every local government unit in Western Visayas needs to write a hardline vetting protocol today.

If a developer can’t produce SEC registration, a verified water extraction plan, and a certified grid impact study, they don’t get a public hearing. They don’t even get a meeting. We have to stop acting like we owe these people our resources.