Food Resilience Cannot Depend on Agricultural AI That Farmers Cannot Challenge
For a farmer waiting for rain, uncertainty is never an abstraction. Seeds may already have been bought, the soil prepared, and a loan repayment...
Beyond QR Payments: The Politics of Economic Mobility in the Global South
A market vendor in Indonesia can spend an entire day receiving QR payments and still struggle to obtain a bank loan. Her customers and...
After the Bangkok Blueprint, Can ASEAN’s Financial Systems Still Fail Separately?
The Bangkok Blueprint calls for cooperation against cross-border financial fraud. As ASEAN deepens digital integration and expands its role in the global AI economy,...
Beyond Critical Infrastructure: When Does Cyber Disruption Become a National Security Question?
In October 2026, a cyberattack on French supermarkets demonstrated how ordinary refrigeration equipment could become a source of physical damage. Remote controls were manipulated,...
Indonesia’s Rising Digital Power: From Market Influence to Global Coordination
In June 2026, Indonesia's Deputy Minister of Communications and Digital Nezar Patria put Indonesia's share of ASEAN's digital economy at around 40 percent, a figure...
The Next AI Crisis May Begin With the Wrong Suspect
Earlier this year, while the war with Iran was still under way, the US military came close to boarding a Chinese vessel transiting the...
The Cost of Proof Will Decide the Winners of US–China Decoupling
Every export increasingly carries two products: the good itself and the evidence that makes it admissible. The cost of producing the second may determine...
India Is Building a Third Way for BRICS’ Digital Economy
The 2026 BRICS Summit in New Delhi may be remembered for more than debates over de-dollarization, geopolitical rivalry, and the growing weight of the...
The AI Race May Be Measuring the Wrong Kind of Power
Why ecosystem diffusion may matter as much as frontier supremacy
On 3 September, two announcements offered different views of AI power. OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra,...
Can BRICS Build a Payment Ecosystem Without Becoming a Financial Bloc?
The most consequential expansion of BRICS may happen without a new currency, a dramatic fall in dollar reserves, or another flag being added to...