Great Power Competition in Technology: Implications for ASEAN

The ASEAN region, invested in the supply and demand sides of tech, is in the crosshairs of a technological showdown between the US and China. While regional players have begun to preempt rather than simply respond to the fallout of that competition, the ASEAN Community could reaffirm its pledge to re-centre its people in charting a separate path for how tech is designed and deployed in Southeast Asia.

Southeast Asia and Security-side “Tech-conomics”

In 2019, Southeast Asia had a preview of what has since unfolded into escalating US-China competition across the entire technology stack and value chain from hardware to software, raw materials to applications, and logistics to personnel. That year, as Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand considered 5G infrastructure and services from Huawei to propel their digital growth, Washington slapped Huawei with a slew of trade restrictions on national security grounds resulting in geoeconomic ripples through regional capitals.

These pressures are not new. In Southeast Asia, the national security arrangements between the US government and US suppliers of submarine communication cables find precedence in comparable agreements of more than 20 years ago. These days, with US policies such as the AI diffusion framework released in the waning days of the Biden administration, regional countries are left wondering what kinds of access to compute capabilities and model parameters Washington will deign to share and the quid pro quo for such levels of technology. Southeast Asian capitals have now been put on notice about regulating tech within their own borders in light of President Trump’s executive order to protect US companies from what Washington deems to be prejudicial practices abroad, including cross-border data restrictions.

Beijing, on the defensive, has reacted in similar ways to Washington, placing US companies on China’s export control list and banning the export of several critical minerals to the US.

Southeast Asian governments and companies have sought to capitalise on the geopolitical churn by drawing tech-related investment to the region from China, the US, Taiwan, and elsewhere in their ‘plus-one’ supply chain diversification strategies. They have also begun outlining ambitious plans to scale up the tech value chain. Yet, two foundational questions remain for the ASEAN region to break out of an imposed binary.

First, what is great power competition in technology really about and what might its outcome look like? Second, how can the region be more proactive rather than reactive in shaping its own technological future(s)? Relatedly, what could the vision of technology look like in the region, if not in the image of ‘Tech Americana’ or ‘Tech Sinica’?

Technology as a Means to an End

Technological competition between the great powers is ultimately about exerting influence over, if not leadership of, the world order. The winner gets to (re)write the international playbook of power relations along with the rules, regulations, and standards governing those ties. History shows that technological superiority has usually driven economic and military dominance.

The nature of Washington’s strategic competition with Beijing has shifted on a spectrum spanning existential struggle to a pacing challenge, interspersed with descriptions of China as the US’ most consequential geopolitical challenge or strategic competitor. Labels aside, what the US has made clear is its resolve for the end-state of this competition to look like: continued US custody of a global order based on its touted democratic values. In other words, a world free “from authoritarian malign actors” led by an America First ethos. Technology is the vehicle to deliver that goal.

The problem is that this values-based polarity is a time-tested fallacy in the physical and digital realms. Silicon Valley’s surveillance capitalism and its datafication of everything based on “colonial” patterns of extraction, such as surveillance technology used to repress ethnic minorities rolled out from what the West considers ‘authoritarian regimes’, is as much a threat to the rights and freedoms of individuals and communities. Additionally, AI surveillance technology has been militarised by liberal democracies for export to non-democracies, honed by repeatedly harmful tests on marginalised populations as Israel has done in the occupied Palestinian territories. So, while China may be the lead supplier of AI surveillance technology worldwide through Smart City partnerships and the Digital Silk Road, countries that self-identify as democracies are also key proliferators of the same technology.

With China proposing an alternate model – one more collaborative, pragmatic, and responsive to the needs of the global majority in pricing, functionality, as well as skills transfers – it seems unlikely that the US or China will capitulate to the other without a fight. If anything, Beijing’s global security, development, and civilisation initiatives as well as Washington’s open alliance with US tech companies are a clear indication that both China and the US are doubling down on ideologically-driven great power competition.

People-centred, People-oriented Tech in ASEAN

Neither the battle between China and the US nor which will win is pre-ordained: both capitals could alter the course of this competition but regardless the outcome, it is critical for Southeast Asia to not be distracted by the rivalry, even if governments, businesses, and civil society must respond to its pressures in the short term.

For the longer term, ASEAN stakeholders should focus on centring the core constituents of technology – the region’s people – by recalling the grouping’s vision of a “people-oriented, people-centred” Community. This includes stamping an ASEAN identity onto home-grown tech innovations. Developments in local large language models (LLMs) in Southeast Asia are a testament to rising awareness among technical and policy communities that the region does not have to bend to the arc of so-called Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic (WEIRD) nation-states but can design and build LLMs that reflect local cultures and perspectives to serve local populations.

The vision of a people-oriented, people-centred tech in ASEAN would also be served by empowering agency among regional actors to reshape existing tech governance frameworks in a manner that meaningfully reflects and responds to on-the-ground realities. This could mean even critically reviewing existing models of governance rather than hastening to ‘copy-paste’-and-tweak them for local use.

Reassessing current models would require taking a comprehensive view of tech developments rather than through primarily economic lens, drawing in diverse groups of stakeholders apart from just the public and private sectors. It should also prompt greater exchanges within established platforms such as the G20 but also more directly at the non-governmental level with scholars, regulators, and policy leaders in Africa and Latin America who are devising distinct paths for their countries and regions.

Using the ASEAN-PIF Memorandum of Understanding as a departure point, ASEAN stakeholders should be encouraged to cultivate discussions with Pacific Island neighbours on reconciling the related tech and climate exigencies in both regions. There is fertile ground for good practices to be shared on preserving community data, given the establishment of indigenous data governance frameworks in Aotearoa/New Zealand and lessons to be learned from Tuvalu, impelled to become the world’s first digital nation due to the climate crisis.

For Southeast Asia, great-power tensions in technology should catalyse creative approaches to carve out its digital future. The world order is much changed and the region should challenge the status quo to its benefit rather than trod the well-worn paths of the powerful.

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Editor’s Note:
ASEANFocus+ articles are timely critical insight pieces published by the ASEAN Studies Centre.