Dispatches, essays & public arguments

The region’s success will depend on how quickly leaders can reduce those vulnerabilities through strategic infrastructure investment, targeted industrial policy, regional standardization, and coordinated risk-management. Without these measures, factories across ASEAN will remain profitable in calm markets but exposed during periods of geopolitical tension.

The region’s industrial sector must adapt in a new climate of supply-chain weaponisation.

China remains dominant in the global rare earths supply chain, with its leverage increasingly exercised through licensing delays, quota management and administrative control rather than overt export bans.

Malaysia is entering a decisive phase where Chinese firms are shaping the country’s next industrial frontier. Three developments anchor the shift.

For decades, the image of maritime power centered on gray hulls and carrier groups. Today, the center of gravity has shifted to the white hulls that police, escort, ram, repel, rescue, and repair in the murky space between peace and open conflict

Frontier AI is moving from white papers to war rooms across Southeast Asia. ASEAN defense planners now face a hard question.

Unless the US wants to pay more and wait longer, it should secure trusted capacity from non-Chinese supply chains.

Scarborough matters because it sits astride the sailing patterns that feed U.S. shelves and assembly lines.

Thai-built electric vehicles are no longer a thought experiment. They are already loading for Antwerp and Bremerhaven.

While trade tensions rise and Trump tariffs bite, SE Asia is responding with interoperability, visibility and end-to-end integration

Transparency in rare earth licensing could tame market volatility.