Southeast Asia risks becoming an AI infrastructure provider without controlling its own digital future

The Strategic Autonomy Challenge

Asean nations face a fundamental shift in what it means to remain independent in international affairs. Power once rested on military strength, territory, energy reserves, capital and trade routes, but the digital revolution elevated information itself into a strategic asset. Now artificial intelligence is converting that information into a capability that can reshape entire economies, governments and societies.

For Southeast Asia, the question is no longer whether the region will join the AI revolution but whether it will control enough of the underlying infrastructure, knowledge and systems to determine its own trajectory, or whether it will simply lease intelligence from external powers.

Infrastructure Without Control

The region is becoming a physical centre of the AI economy, with data centres multiplying and investment pouring into digital infrastructure. The International Energy Agency projects that electricity demand from data centres across Southeast Asia will more than double by 2030. Malaysia and Singapore are positioning themselves as major regional hubs, while Indonesia and Thailand compete for a larger share of the digital infrastructure boom.

Yet a strategic paradox emerges beneath this expansion. Asean may supply the land, electricity, connectivity, markets and physical infrastructure that power the AI economy while remaining dependent on outside actors for advanced chips, foundational models, cloud platforms and the technological standards that govern them. This creates a more subtle form of dependency: states retain formal sovereignty even as they rely on foreign AI systems to operate critical functions.

Eroding Assumptions

The dilemma matters because Asean's traditional approach to strategic autonomy was forged in an era when states could diversify economic and diplomatic ties without committing to a single technological architecture. That assumption is weakening. The United States and China are building rival technology ecosystems.

Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Washington was preparing to encourage countries participating in its Pax Silica initiative to choose between competing American and Chinese AI frameworks. China, meanwhile, is deepening AI engagement across Southeast Asia through training programmes, infrastructure projects, research partnerships and industrial applications.

The choice Asean confronts is not between technological dominance and isolation but between dependence and agency.

Source: South China Morning Post