Fact-Finding in Silicon Valley—or Chasing the Next Hype

Fact-Finding in Silicon Valley—or Chasing the Next Hype

6 October 2025

There’s currently a “fact-finding mission” to Silicon Valley so that the island can, as they say, orient itself on Artificial Intelligence. Orient, yes—but deepen? I can’t quite imagine that.

Given the global hype around AI, it all sounds impressive. I can understand that software developers might tag along and actually learn something useful. But when I hear that educational institutions, policy officers, and policymakers are part of the delegation, I struggle to picture what exactly they will take home—and what the next step will be when they return.

It reminds me of the many missions to InfoTraffic and Parlatino over the years. I know of a few that have yielded any tangible results. The exception might be the 2009 mission of the Minister of Education to UNESCO, in which I was part of the organizing team. That visit resulted in the establishment of two UNESCO Chairs at the UNA, now the UoC: one in Water Desalination and another in Caribbean Small Island Developing States. Yet even those chairs have since fallen into neglect.

Since 2009, I have been proposing a fact-finding mission to Singapore. Each time, people—usually those without much understanding of governance or development—dismiss it by saying, “But Singapore is a dictatorship.” They miss the point. Others have told me that we know what to do; our problem is executing the plans.

To me, Singapore would be a far more relevant destination than Silicon Valley. In Silicon Valley, you learn about a technology, a sector—but not about vision or long-term planning. Singapore would teach us precisely that: the power of Meritocracy, Pragmatism, and Honesty.

The similarities between Curaçao and Singapore are greater than most people think. We could learn from them, be inspired by them, even build a twin-state partnership. But I fear that, as usual, we prefer to chase the latest hype—with the typical result.

Silicon Valley represents the chase for the next big thing. Singapore represents the discipline to make big things last. Curaçao must decide which path it wants to follow: the path of excitement or the path of endurance.

Miguel Goede