Mottley wants CARICOM to acquire independent satellites

WESTERN BUREAU:

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley says Caribbean nations must own their satellites or risk losing control of their sovereignty by a new kind of colonial conquest, not by sea, but through cyberspace and content.

“We have to be able to own our own satellites and not be the victim of somebody pulling them on us because they do not like the position we took on a war across the world,” said Mottley, while speaking at the recent 49th Regular Meeting of the CARICOM Heads of Government in Montego Bay.

According to Mottley, modern sovereignty goes far beyond borders and flags, as it now lies in digital self-determination.

“The price of sovereignty is no longer simply that which we have started to do in the first two or three generations since independence,” she said. “The price of sovereignty now extends to our ability to control our information and to generate our content.”

Mottley further argued that dependence on foreign media and technology leaves the Caribbean vulnerable to censorship, manipulation, and erasure.

“We have to generate our own content, because it is only us who know our reality, and we cannot simply be the victims of other people’s judgement as to who we are and what we stand for,” she said.

In her wide-ranging address, she drew on both history and urgency, comparing today’s digital threats to the brutal realities of colonisation.

“If we don’t do these things, then we will fail to recognize that the new Armada and the new Flotilla are not the ships that came and brought our forefathers here under protest, but in fact, the new Armada and the new Flotilla is that which will control our mind,” noted Mottley.

Quoting Jamaica’s National Hero Marcus Garvey, she reminded the region: “We know what Marcus Messiah Garvey told us about emancipating our mind from mental slavery.”

And as she often does, Mottley grounded her message in cultural pride and creative identity.

“Let us now remember that we as Caribbean people, have a flair that we know how to walk and talk, that we know how to talk and dance, that we know how to sing and move and reflect,” she said.

Mottley’s comment comes amid the United States-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) decision on July 31, to cut off satellite data that helps weather forecasters track hurricanes.

That decision will see the discontinuation of key data collection by three weather satellites that they operate jointly with the US Defense Department, which cannot be sourced from conventional satellites, such as three-dimensional details of a storm, what is going on inside of it and what it is doing in the overnight hours.

NOAA has indicated that they are shutting down the cutting off the sharing of satellite data, “to mitigate a significant cybersecurity risk”.

albert.ferguson@gleanerjm.com