President Santiago Peña announced the construction of the world's largest artificial intelligence center in Paraguay, with an investment of US$ 40 billion in partnership with Taiwan. The project, according to Chief of Staff Javier Giménez, would operate under a model similar to that of the Itaipú and Yacyretá hydroelectric plants, converting Paraguayan hydroelectric energy into data processing capacity to sell supercomputing to giants like Google and Meta.
However, Luis Benítez Aguilar, secretary of the Paraguayan Society of Artificial Intelligence, questioned the viability of the initiative. In an interview, he stated that the country lacks the technical and human capacity for a project of this scale: “In terms of engineer production, no more than 10 know this technology. Those involved in research are only 5. Today it is a delusion, it is impossible.”
Benítez Aguilar highlighted that the project depends on international agreements and access to high-performance hardware, amid the global dispute over semiconductors. He mentioned that TSMC manufactures chips, but the technology is owned by Nvidia. “Eventually, this center is installed with Taiwanese capital through some agreement with Nvidia, and the systems can operate at the country level,” he explained.
The expert also questioned the lack of clarity about the concrete use of the data center and who the beneficiaries would be. “The question is: will they be used by schools, SMEs, the government? Because, in the end, these centers, once built, do not need many people to operate. The dangerous thing is that those who work in them are in California, Taiwan, or elsewhere in the world,” he warned.
For Benítez Aguilar, the announcement has a geopolitical component linked to the growing energy demand of AI centers. “This project, as presented by the president, is basically a cheap energy outlet that alleviates a serious problem for the United States, which does not have enough energy to generate these data centers,” he stated. He concluded that Paraguay could occupy a peripheral role, leveraging its hydroelectric capacity, but inserted into a global geopolitical struggle.