Two days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, with no phones and no power, Gov. Haley Barbour and I finally connected on a satellite phone. I offered one of the only things still standing that I controlled at the time: the conference room at the Sun Herald in Gulfport. I sent employees out in four-wheel drives – our version of the Pony Express – to find public and private-sector leaders across the Coast and tell them: “Sunday, be here at 3 p.m. to meet with the governor.”
That Sunday, they all showed up.
From inside that room came the Governor’s Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding, and Renewal, and the fiercest regional unity most of us will ever witness. We decided we would not just survive Katrina; we would come back stronger, smarter, and together.
20 years later, we’re the undisputed world champions at exactly that: surviving the visible catastrophe, chasing the federal and private-sector dollars, rebuilding what the storm took, and calling it progress. It has been the foundation of our economy over the last two decades.
But the next huge challenge isn’t coming with a 30-foot storm surge and a name. There are no storm warnings on The Weather Channel. It’s already here, quietly, relentlessly, in software updates, robotic arms, and algorithms that don’t take coffee breaks. And nobody is sending the Pony Express this time.
Look at China, where shipyards now run on robotic welders and artificial intelligence schedulers, churning out hulls 30% faster and locking up contracts no human-paced yard can touch. It’s not the end of shipbuilding; it’s the end of shipbuilding the old way.
The good news? We’re not standing still.
From Ingalls to Bollinger, from Stennis to the Port of Gulfport, even inside our casinos, companies are embracing robotics, AI, digital twins, and next-generation propulsion. We are adapting, proudly, skillfully, and faster than most places on earth.
But for 20 years, we’ve been laser-focused on recovery, rebuilding, and upgrading the companies and industries we already had before Katrina. Every ounce of energy has gone into making the old economy more resilient and more efficient instead of using this same window to plant bold new industries next to them while we still have time, talent, and BP money left.
While we’ve been heads-down doing that, the Golden Triangle and others throughout the region built an entirely new economy from scratch, no hurricane required. Look at the Golden Triangle Development LINK: One regional alliance, five megasites, over $11 billion landed, thousands of fresh high-wage jobs in aluminum, steel, aerospace, and EV supply chains.
They treated opportunity like an emergency. As Gov. Tate Reeves put it in May, “Project-ready sites are the lifeblood of economic development. Today’s unveiling of the Cinco Mega Site in the Golden Triangle is another [win].”
Two weeks ago, Ashley Edwards reminded us on the TEDx stage at the University of Southern Mississippi that this invisible storm is our next Katrina-level moment, except nobody’s boarding up windows together, nobody’s forming the unified front, and nobody’s demanding we swing for the fences with the same all-in energy we showed two decades ago.
As Bill Cork, executive director of the Mississippi Development Authority, tells communities across the state, “You can win something – but only if you’re aligned, prepared, and committed. … Get organized. Make a plan. Stick to it. That’s how we win.”
So, here are my questions to every Coastal Mississippi leader reading this:
Who’s sending the Pony Express this time? Who’s reserving the conference room?
Because tomorrow is already here, and it’s not waiting for another hurricane to force us to change.
The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of SuperTalk Mississippi Media.