Every time news media report on overseas "investment" in Aotearoa, they need to also talk about the return the extractors making that "investment" expects on their capital.
I'm not a financial expert by any stretch of the imagination, but a quick web search suggests scAmazon usually aim for about a 15% return. So when news media report on scAmazon "investing" $7 billion here, the headline should read;
'Amazon hopes to extract $50 million from the NZ economy'
As Tech Won't Save Us (@techwontsaveus) explained in their Data Vampires series, scAmazon doesn't want to build datacentres in Aotearoa to benefit us. It's a way of mining our country for cheap renewable energy, and cheap labour (remember the infamous "Mexicans with cellphones"?). Which they can then extract from the country in the form of dollars.
Their extractive logic was laid bare when our energy prices went up, and they massively scaled back their plans.
MediaWatch did a good segment on the datacentre-related reputation laundering by scAmazon and NatACT First, and its Useful Idiots in news media (notably Mike Hoskins);
https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/mediawatch?share=18fdbc07-39b4-4deb-96ba-1d9809b54c6f
When anyone proposes building a datacentre in Aotearoa - or any other facility that requires a lot of electricity to run - they should be obliged to include renewable generation in their build plan. Enough to meet their needs for at least 10 years.
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