AI Growth Zones: Gift Horse or Trojan Horse?
In September 2025, the UK government announced an AI Growth Zone for the North East of England. The headline numbers sound impressive: £30 billion in potential investment, "up to 5,000 jobs", partnerships with Blackstone, OpenAI, and NVIDIA. Similar investments are happening globally. Microsoft alone is spending $80 billion on AI datacentres this year.
This is genuinely exciting. Regions like the North East that have been economically neglected for decades deserve investment in future industries. I'm not arguing against it.
But I have concerns about what we're building, who will own it, and what happens to our data from day one.