Tag Archive for: Singapore

Southeast Asia faces AI influence on elections

Artificial intelligence is becoming commonplace in electoral campaigns and politics across Southeast Asia, but the region is struggling to regulate it.

Indonesia’s 2024 general election exposed actual harms of AI-driven politics and overhyped concerns that distracted from its real dangers. As the Philippines and Singapore head to the polls in 2025, they can draw lessons from Indonesia’s experience, while tailoring insights for their electoral landscapes.

While deepfakes dominated concerns in last year’s elections, a quieter threat loomed: unregulated AI-driven microtargeting. These covert and custom messages are delivered at scale via private channels or dark posts—targeted advertisements that don’t appear on the publisher’s page, making them difficult to track. This isolates recipients, making verification trickier. The risk is even greater in Southeast Asia, where fake news thrives amid low media literacy rates.

AI in Indonesia’s general election was more commonly used for image polishing and rebranding than attacking opponents, though some attacks occurred. Prabowo Subianto, a retired military general known for his fiery nationalism, rebranded himself as a cuddly grandfather to soften his strongman image. This redirected the focus from substantial issues, such as corruption and economic challenges, to superficial narratives, including his cheerful dances.

Darker deepfakes also emerged, such as an audio clip of then presidential candidate Anies Baswedan being scolded by the chair of the National Democrat Party, Surya Paloh. A video of late President Suharto endorsing the Golkar party also went viral. This was controversial given Suharto’s dictatorship and violent record.

Microtargeting in Indonesia also notably focused on young voters instead of racial segments. Prabowo’s rebranding resonated with youth—usually first time voters who lacked political maturity. This demographic emerged as an important voter segment, comprising about 60 percent of the total electorate in Indonesia’s 2024 general election.

The situation emphasises a need for intentional regulations. Currently, the Indonesian Electronic Information and Transactions and Personal Data Protection laws address electronic content, including deepfakes, but lack election-specific AI guidelines. The General Election Committee could have helped, but it earlier declared AI regulation beyond its jurisdiction. Instead, Indonesia’s Constitutional Court now prohibits AI for political campaigning.

Indonesia’s experience offers valuable lessons for its close neighbours. In May 2025, the Philippines will hold mid-term elections, and Singapore will have a general election this year too. Both nations are enforcing some rules but their approaches differ to Indonesia’s.

Given the Philippines’ complex experience enforcing technology-related bans (some effective, others not so much), simply prohibiting AI during elections may not be ideal. Instead, the Commission on Elections is taking the transparency route, requiring candidates to register their digital campaign platforms—including social media accounts, websites and blogs—or face penalties. While the use of deepfakes is prohibited, AI is permitted with disclosure.

Singapore has previously implemented measures that ensure comprehensive coverage. For instance, its Elections Bill complements its legislation on falsehoods by barring AI-generated deepfakes targeting candidates. However, the proposed legislation applies only during the official election period and excludes private conversations, potentially leaving gaps for disinformation outside election season, microtargeting through private messaging and deepfakes of influential non-candidates. Such vulnerabilities have already been observed in Indonesia.

These cases also highlight Southeast Asia’s uneven regulatory readiness. Tackling AI risks demands a stronger stance, more binding than a guide or roadmap, bolstered by a whole of society collaboration to address complex challenges.

An article in Time argued the effect of AI on elections in 2024 was underwhelming, pointing to the quality—or lack thereof—of viral deepfakes. But Indonesia’s case suggests that power may lie not just in persuasiveness but also in appeal. Prabowo’s camp successfully used AI-generated figures to polish his image and distract people from real problems.

To dismiss the effect of AI is to miss the normalisation of unregulated AI-powered microtargeting. Last year revealed AI’s capability to target vulnerable yet sizable populations such as the youth in Indonesia, potentially beyond election cycles.

Blanket bans are an easy cop-out and may just encourage covert uses of AI. With choices available, people can simply use other companies. When OpenAI banned its use for political campaigning and generating images of real people, Prabowo turned to Midjourney, an AI image generator.

An alternative solution is to ensure transparent and responsible AI use in elections. This requires engaging those with contextual knowledge of the electorate—academics, industry leaders, the media, watchdogs and even voters themselves—alongside policymakers such as electoral commissions and national AI oversight bodies. But a key challenge remains: some Southeast Asian countries still lack dedicated AI regulatory bodies, or even AI strategies.

In the development of such bodies and strategies, public participation in AI policy consultations could ensure electorate concerns are heard. For instance, Malaysia’s National AI Office recently opened a call for experts and community representatives to help shape the country’s AI landscape. International organisations may also contribute through capacity building and stakeholder engagement, fostering relevant AI policies and regulations.

Certainly, further studies are needed for tailored AI governance for specific societies. But overall, adaptive and anticipatory regulation that evolves as technology advances will help mitigate AI-related risks in Southeast Asian elections and beyond.

Australia–Singapore comprehensive strategic partnership lives up to its billing

In 2016, I wrote a report on Australia’s defence and security partnership with Singapore, a few months after bilateral ties were upgraded to a comprehensive strategic partnership. I concluded then that the ‘lion and kangaroo’ were natural partners because of an unusual commonality in outlook and capability that each found hard to replicate elsewhere as fellow odd ones out in their immediate region. In the defence domain, I noted, Singapore and Australia had further potential to augment each other’s strategic depth, by enhancing reciprocal access and tightening what was already a close military relationship.

Back then, it’s fair to say, Singapore was regarded as a niche partnership: too small to exert sufficient pull across Southeast Asia, while easily eclipsed by Canberra’s preoccupation with Indonesia, ASEAN’s first among equals. Australian and Singaporean officials told a more confident story about the partnership’s potential, but the prevailing impression in the public debate was of a friendly but finite relationship.

Seven years on, it’s much harder to question Singapore’s status as a major regional partner for Australia and vice versa, judged against the mutual depth and breadth to the relationship, both official and unofficial. Yet it’s still not appreciated widely enough that Singapore is one of Australia’s most enduring load-bearing bilateral partners. Singapore is a city-state but functions like a large country for Australia, in several ways.

In people-to-people terms, the Singaporean community in Australia is more than 72,000 strong. More than 130,000 Singaporeans have graduated from Australian universities. Singaporeans are the sixth-largest nationality among tourist arrivals to Australia, trailing only New Zealand and India in August. Not bad for a country with a total population under 6 million, of whom only 3.6 million are Singaporean citizens.

In the economic arena, Singapore has risen to become Australia’s fifth-largest trading partner, as well as its largest trade and investment partner in Southeast Asia. It is Australia’s seventh-largest investor overall. Investment flows from Singapore have grown rapidly since the comprehensive strategic partnership was signed, aided by a number of sectoral initiatives, including a digital economy agreement that entered into force in December 2020. A green economy agreement that, according to Foreign Minister Penny Wong, ‘will drive trade, economic and environment cooperation as we decarbonise our economies’ is expected to be finalised this year. Australia is a major food supplier to Singapore. The significance of this for Singapore was brought home during the pandemic when supplies from other markets were disrupted. Australia is a growing energy provider too. The two countries are collaborating on low-emission fuels, with a focus on the maritime sector. There are ambitious private-sector plans to lay a 4,200-kilometre submarine cable to distribute solar electricity generated in northern Australia directly to Singapore. The growth of bilateral trade and investment thus masks a deeper interdependence in economic security. For its most important imported commodities, Singapore’s supply chains lead increasingly to Australia. Australia is correspondingly reliant on Singapore for the import of refined petroleum products.

In defence, Singapore has for decades provided access to the Australian Defence Force via the undergirding framework of the Five Power Defence Arrangements, which Singapore interprets relatively flexibly—sometimes more flexibly than Malaysia. Singapore hosts FPDA logistics facilities at Sembawang and offers access to its naval base at Changi, helping to sustain the Australian navy’s forward presence in the northeast Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. Australian maritime surveillance aircraft fly regularly from Paya Lebar air base. Singapore’s sub-regionally superior military capabilities make the Singapore Armed Forces Australia’s most sophisticated exercise partner in Southeast Asia, and contribute generally to deterrence. Australia offers Singapore the strategic commodity it lacks most: space. Singapore’s military training program in Australia has approximately doubled under the comprehensive strategic partnership.

Expanded training areas in northern Queensland, funded at Singapore’s expense, are capable of hosting 14,000 SAF personnel and have the capacity for two large, unilateral combined-arms exercises annually. A treaty on military training and development, ratified by Australia’s parliament in December 2020, guarantees these arrangements for 25 years. The SAF and ADF train jointly in both countries, as well as multilaterally through the FDPA and ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting Plus framework. Singapore’s military presence in Australia, as a set of training arrangements rather than a basing agreement, has conspicuously avoided domestic controversy. Indeed, the SAF has built goodwill in Australia by assisting the ADF’s disaster-relief efforts against bushfires and floods.

Bilateral security cooperation extends to intelligence exchanges, joint cybersecurity exercises, counterterrorism, as well as collaboration on artificial intelligence, personal data protection and other digital areas. The relationship is obviously not without its strains and complications, some of which arise because of the closeness of ties. Optus, which recently suffered a massive cyberattack and data breach affecting 10 million Australians, is owned by Singtel, for example. However, the close inter-governmental and personal connections within the comprehensive strategic partnership encourage policy solutions and prevent bilateral differences from becoming politicised.

Australia and Singapore do not always see eye to eye on China, and Singapore has sometimes publicly counselled Canberra to adopt a more conciliatory approach towards Beijing. But there is value to such differences in perceptions and Canberra’s pioneering policy responses to countering foreign interference have offered pointers for Singapore, which finds itself confronted by similar challenges. Approaching Australia’s security and defence relationship with Singapore narrowly through a China lens can be a quick way to discover its limits. Singapore’s core threat perceptions tend to be more local in nature. Yet Australia and Singapore share a common commitment to maintaining rule of law, a favourable balance of power and freedom of navigation. Singapore’s pragmatic acceptance of AUKUS and vocal stance against Russian aggression in Ukraine have aligned with Canberra’s positions.

A ‘comprehensive strategic’ designation can all too easily set up a bilateral relationship for disappointment. The Australia–Singapore partnership, unusually, continues to live up to its billing and delivers reciprocal benefits beyond the sum of its parts.

Bold steps needed to power Australia and the region

Halfway between Alice Springs and Darwin is a 10,000-square-kilometre property formerly used by the Packer family as a cattle station. In the 20th century, this land was part of Australia’s vast and economically vital agricultural industry. Now, it’s set to become a key element of a new Australian economic vision. The land is flagged for a massive project that’s attracted support from prominent Australian tech billionaires and has been assessed by Infrastructure Australia as ready for investment.

Sun Cable’s proposed Australia–Asia PowerLink (AAPL) consists of a 12,000-hectare solar farm generating 17–20 gigawatts, an 800-kilometre, high-voltage direct-current overhead cable from the farm to Darwin, a 30-gigawatt battery and storage load-balancing facility in Darwin, and a 4,200-kilometre subsea cable to Singapore.

The federal and Northern Territory governments have designated the proposal as a ‘major project’ and Mike Cannon-Brookes’ Grok Ventures and Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest’s Squadron Energy have both invested significant capital. This backing from the public and private sectors is a critical sign of confidence in the project—but it faces significant regional competition. William Stroll, a Singapore-based lawyer specialising in energy, told the ABC that Sun Cable’s vision was ‘commendable’ but likely to be prohibitively expensive.

Australians accept that it’s time to turn to large-scale renewable energy. While we’ve been lagging the rest of the world on the progression of our public discourse, we’re in front in terms of northern Australia’s comparative advantage in producing clean energy. The NT’s Barkly region is positively sun-soaked; far enough south to escape most of the north’s tropical wet-season deluges, but far enough north to easily provide zero-emissions power transmission to Darwin.

The project would be good for the north economically with spin-off industries and the potential to establish Darwin as a clean manufacturing and energy hub. It will provide 1,500 jobs during construction and 350 ongoing. As a source of affordable and reliable power, it’s expected to reduce Darwin’s energy prices by 12% and help leverage northern Australia’s natural advantages to boost regional development.

It would also be good for the country and the globe in environmental terms, with an estimated abatement of 2.5 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent per year in Australia and a further 6 million overseas. It demonstrates that economic growth does not need to result in carbon pollution and that such activity can in fact reduce pollution.

Because the exact route of the subsea cable is yet to be decided, the environmental risks of laying it haven’t been formally assessed.

Most broadly, the project would be good for Australia as a regional power and for our neighbours. With energy demand in our region rising, the AAPL will establish an Australian renewable energy export industry. The AAPL will supply Singapore with up to 15–20% of its energy needs. Singapore sets that limit to diversify its energy sources, and the target is not limited by any capacity constraint on the Australian end. There’s also a robust Indonesian investment link and global exposure. Many of our neighbours have emissions reduction targets more ambitious than Australia’s, which will make them reliable consumers of renewable energy, especially as their economies develop and incomes grow, and there’s scope to expand and replicate the AAPL to meet surging demand.

With Sun Cable a new company established for the initial purpose of delivering the world’s biggest solar farm and intercontinental energy transmission infrastructure network, Infrastructure Australia has assessed the AAPL as a high-risk proposal. The AAPL’s success depends on confidently anticipated but not yet concretely realised factors. When they come off, projects like this are highly rewarded, and faith in bold and visionary projects is needed to catalyse the restructuring of Australia’s energy sector and economy.

Australians expect their government and bureaucracy to spend money carefully and many policy mechanisms, like grant programs, have very low risk thresholds. While there’s pressure to pick winners consistently, a risk-averse mindset sees many of Australia’s greatest ideas left unfunded or sent offshore. Great innovation requires engagement with and acceptance of risk. And, at times, failure. After all, the lesson from the world’s most innovative companies, from Apple to Amazon, is that success comes from failure, not despite it.

The AAPL is an example of what Australia is doing right. Backing our innovators and entrepreneurs, using our natural advantages, investing in our regions, taking charge of our energy transition, and facilitating more robust partnerships with our neighbours; these are all the best parts of what Australia has to offer.

Construction is expected to begin in 2024, and the project is intended to be fully operational in 2029. Last week, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency announced a grant of $45 million over eight years to the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics to develop cheaper, more efficient solar panels.

If Australia is to continue to be the lucky country in the 21st century, then it must engage with risk. It must dare to embrace new ways of thinking. And when it stumbles, it must learn from the setbacks, not shy away from them.

Policy, Guns and Money: Offensive cyber, Singapore’s election and Pacific disaster resilience

In this episode, ASPI’s John Coyne and Tom Uren discuss the legal dilemmas posed by Australia conducting offensive cyber operations.

Next, senior analyst Huong Le Thu speaks about Singapore’s election with the National University of Singapore’s Ja Ian Chong, including why the results were a surprise for some and what they mean for the country’s foreign policy in the years ahead.

And the head of ASPI’s resilience program, Paul Barnes, speaks to Mavis and Monte Depaune, who are environmental experts and PhD candidates at the University of Wollongong, about disaster prevention and resilience in the Pacific and the implementation of the Sendai Framework in Nauru, which they wrote about in A Pacific disaster prevention review.

Why Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam have been effective in fighting Covid-19

As nations around the world struggle to deal with Covid-19, some of the most effective responses may be found in the least expected corners.

Singapore’s foreign minister, Vivian Balakrishnan, says that an effective response to the pandemic must stand on a tripod of national characteristics: quality of healthcare, standard of governance and social capital. ‘If any one of those tripod legs is weak, it will be exposed and exposed quite unmercifully by this epidemic’, he says.

There’s been debate on whether democracies or autocracies are dealing more effectively with the crisis.

But a more likely explanation may be that countries that are equipped with these three key elements and a living memory of previous outbreaks, including SARS, H1N1 and H5N1, have been better prepared in their systematic responses and have had higher levels of compliance from their citizens. That’s why I add a fourth leg to Balakrishnan’s tripod: experience dealing with a public health epidemic.

None of the other three legs can be built overnight.

That may explain why Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam, all dissimilar in size, political systems and levels of economic development, have thus far most efficiently handled the new pandemic.

Their healthcare systems and public responses have been built on the lessons learned from the 2003 SARS outbreak. Their populations experienced the epidemic and understand the impact it had on society.

Trajectories of infection and current numbers vary across the three countries, but they all reacted fast and so managed to flatten the curve and minimise the economic and social costs. All of them are increasingly imposing tighter restrictions on movement and social interactions as they face the second wave of infections, some of which of which were imported from Western countries before they closed their borders to all.

Soon after the outbreak in Wuhan, neighbouring countries that receive many visitors from China watched what was happening there carefully to learn what approaches to avoid and how best to tailor their responses. Their governments didn’t spend time blaming Chinese authorities or coming up with nicknames for the virus, but focused their efforts on protecting their own societies. By late January, they’d opted to close their borders with China despite the economic damage that would cause.

The smallest of them, the wealthy and technologically enabled city-state of Singapore arguably has it easiest, but it is a regional hub, which adds a level of difficulty. After initial success, Singapore is now facing a new surge in cases stemming from visitors, from the UK in particular, and from domestic clusters. Singapore acted fast in rolling out economic stimulus packages and other plans to fight Covid-19, and the cabinet demonstrated its collective commitment with ministerial pay cuts.

Taiwan boasts one of the best healthcare systems in the world and, while it’s not a member of the World Health Organization, it has developed remarkably effective processes. They include establishing a national health command centre to assess and expand quarantine criteria and to act early and quickly. Like Singapore, Taiwan has been able to integrate large-scale data to identify suspected cases and effectively isolate them.

Vietnam, with its much larger population of nearly 100 million, and its comparatively modest budget, has nevertheless been able to keep case numbers low. In January, when the nation was preparing for Tet celebrations, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc declared war on the virus to demonstrate the seriousness of the threat and the determination of Vietnam’s leaders to deal with it. He harnessed the civic duty of patriotism to mobilise the nation.

Not many from the developed world are easily convinced that a populous, still relatively poor and unequally developed one-party state like Vietnam can have responded so well to a pandemic that is tormenting the wealthiest and most technologically advanced countries.

But few remember that Vietnam was the first country to contain the SARS outbreak—in just 20 days.

Vietnam’s astonishingly low number of cases (around 267) and no deaths, as of 15 April, is a result of rigorous and large-scale monitoring, widespread testing, and regular temperature scans at airports and public venues. Vietnam has also displayed leadership in innovation, not something that many countries can boast of, by inventing and exporting affordable rapid-testing kits and by installing disinfection chambers to eliminate community transmission in clinics and other places where people queue. Now, like Taiwan, it is sending masks to Western countries, including the US and Europe.

Instead of telling those who may have Covid-19 to self-isolate, Vietnam and Singapore are isolating these people in facilities such as hotels and resorts. Such ‘central isolation’ protects families, friends, housemates and, given how densely built housing is in those countries, neighbours.

The key strategy for Vietnam, Singapore and Taiwan was to act immediately to keep the number of infections low and to avoid flooding the nations’ medical capability. Staying ahead of the curve demanded meticulous and uncompromising tracing of the contacts of those infected. Singapore leads in this aspect with its advanced digitalised society by using that technology to monitor the movements of those infected.

Western democracies initially voiced aversion to such an intrusion on privacy grounds. Some are, after much stress on their healthcare systems, and after many lives lost, also considering such measures for the greater public good.

While Taiwan, Singapore and Vietnam have passed the first ‘tripod test’, none of them considers itself safe yet. They also cannot afford to allow their initial effectiveness make them complacent and are constantly looking for innovation in their response strategies.

What the coronavirus response tells us about Singapore and its neighbours

It was an image that launched a thousand angry tweets.

On 7 February, Singapore’s government raised its coronavirus threat level to ‘orange’ (the second highest) after four people with no links to previous cases were struck down by the disease.

The decision confirmed what many suspected—despite sweeping quarantine measures, the coronavirus was no longer confined to known clusters linked to people who flew to Singapore from China. It was out in the community.

The news sparked a flurry of panic-buying as locals swarmed into supermarkets, filling their shopping trolleys with staples like canned food, rice and toilet paper. Social media lit up with pictures of huge queues, worried shoppers and empty shelves.

But the anxiety didn’t grip the whole island; most Singaporeans stayed at home, and many of them took to WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter to scold their anxious compatriots.

One image seemed to stoke particular fury. It showed a middle-aged lady with a face mask on, pushing a teetering mountain of instant noodle packets in a trolley. Singaporeans pilloried her mercilessly online, calling the anonymous hoarder greedy, stupid, badly educated and gullible.

The contempt has deep roots. Singapore views itself as a small oasis of calm prosperity in a turbulent and chaotic region. The picture struck a nerve because it undermined Singapore’s image of itself as an ordered and cohesive society, populated by resilient and self-disciplined citizens.

The trade and industry minister, Chan Chun Sing, warned that panic-buying not only damaged social cohesion but might also draw international contempt. If Singaporeans were not calm and rational, he said, they could ‘undermine the international confidence in our system, in our society, and that will have long-term implications on us’.

This warning might seem melodramatic to anyone who has witnessed Singapore’s immense and sophisticated campaign to contain the coronavirus—particularly when you look at how some other Southeast Asian nations have struggled to handle the threat.

The disease has exposed holes in health systems across the region. When the coronavirus first started to spread, Indonesian medical laboratories lacked the testing kits needed to quickly detect the disease. Screening in Indonesia remains lax and there’s already a shortage of face masks and other medical supplies. The government claims it has no confirmed cases of coronavirus so far, but experts are sceptical.

Meanwhile, the Philippines has struggled to track down potential carriers of the virus, and is also facing a shortfall in face masks. Earlier this month, it became entangled in a geopolitical spat after it extended its ban on travellers from mainland China to include visitors from Taiwan, possibly because it wanted to avoid irritating Beijing.

Some other ASEAN nations also seem more intent on keeping China happy than keeping their citizens safe. Cambodian strongman Hun Sen declared he would neither evacuate Cambodian citizens in Wuhan nor ban Chinese nationals from entering his country because doing so would damage the economy and ‘strain’ relations with Beijing. Bizarrely, he also offered to visit Wuhan, and lashed out at reporters who were wearing face masks at the press conference, accusing them of stoking anxiety.

ASEAN foreign ministers will meet with their Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on Thursday this week to discuss the fight against the virus. But efforts to coordinate an effective regional response could be derailed if Wang instead uses the gathering to demand that ASEAN nations lift flight restrictions on Chinese visitors.

In contrast, when the epidemic first hit, the vast machine of Singapore’s public service roared smoothly into life, and it’s still running at full throttle.

After the first cases emerged, more than 1,500 Singaporean military personnel crammed into halls to pack 5.2 million face masks, which were swiftly trucked to households across the island. Since then,  coronavirus victims (as well as hundreds of people potentially infected by them) have been painstakingly tracked down and quarantined using an advanced tracing system, limiting the epidemic’s spread.

That’s not all. Visitors from China have been temporarily banned, despite Beijing’s displeasure. Schools and universities have enforced strict new rules to minimise crowds. Banks of thermal scanners greet new arrivals at Changi Airport and office workers entering buildings across the city-state. Hospitals and medical clinics (many battle-hardened from Singapore’s fight with SARS in 2003) have expanded isolation wards for patients. Victims of the disease receive subsidised health care. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong also won praise from public health communications experts for releasing a nine-minute-long video address explaining what the government was doing to combat the epidemic.

Even if the bout of panic-buying suggests the city-state is slightly more brittle than portrayed in national mythologies, this crisis has still been a powerful reminder of Singapore’s formidable capacities.

Of course, the stakes could not be higher for Singapore. As of the time of writing, there have been 75 confirmed coronavirus cases in the city-state, putting it behind only China and Japan. Five people remain in a critical condition.

As a global aviation and trade hub, it is hugely exposed not just to coronavirus itself, but also to the shocks it has dealt to both local economies and global supply chains.

Singapore has already been forced to scale down several major events, and tourist numbers for the year are expected to plummet by nearly a third. There’s every chance the virus could push Singapore’s economy into recession.

Unsurprisingly, Singapore’s government is trying to mobilise its citizens as foot soldiers in its battle against coronavirus. It’s even rolled out a rap-style video encouraging Singaporean kids to wash their hands, and a website to coordinate donations and volunteers who want to help. The message is bright, determined and optimistic—the banner headline reads ‘Together we can overcome!’

This is the Singapore of the popular national imagination: efficient, capable and brimming with community spirit. Or as Lee put it in his video, ‘This is what it means to be Singaporean. This is who we are!’

At least that’s what Singaporeans want to believe.

A year of living stressfully: Singapore’s 2018 ASEAN chairmanship

As I noted in April, this year’s ASEAN chairmanship wasn’t going to be an easy one. Singapore’s prime minister Lee Hsien Loong used every opportunity to remind people of ASEAN’s purpose and its fragile beginnings in 1967:

Southeast Asia at that time … was a troubled and unstable region, rife with hostilities and confrontation. The five [founding] nations wanted to build a regional platform that could build trust and cooperation, and put away old suspicion and rivalries. In order to create a stable external environment, and to allow each country to focus on its own nation-building.

He stated candidly at the opening of the 51st ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting:

We can all see the growing geopolitical uncertainties. At the same time, each ASEAN Member State is subject to different pulls and pressures from different powers. In these circumstances, all the more we must stay united and strive to maintain our cohesion and effectiveness. That is the only way for ASEAN to remain relevant and to be of value to our members as well as to our external partners.

Singapore’s aim was to strengthen ASEAN’s unity, centrality and diplomatic relevance by investing in integration through trade and technology. Resilience and innovation—the two main themes of its chairmanship—were also a bid to enhance its member economies. Singapore was keen on preparing the region for the ‘fourth industrial revolution’, improving digital connectivity and cyber literacy and forming the flagship ASEAN Smart Cities Network program.

But 2018 hasn’t provided conditions in which ASEAN states could focus solely on growth. China began using its militarised features in the South China Sea, including landing nuclear-strike-capable bombers and deploying anti-ship cruise-missile-carrying bombers, and was disinvited from RIMPAC by the Americans as a result. More recently, one of its Luyang-class destroyers nearly collided with USS Decatur.

In the ASEAN summit statement, the emphasis was on progress towards a code of conduct for the South China Sea and the need to ensure a conducive environment to finalise it.

We welcomed practical measures that could reduce tensions, and the risk of accidents, misunderstandings and miscalculation …

We … took note of the concerns expressed by some leaders on the land reclamations and activities in the area, which have eroded trust and confidence, increased tensions and may undermine peace, security and stability in the region.

The statements from the ASEAN–Australia, ASEAN–India, ASEAN–Japan and ASEAN–US meetings at the summit made much of ‘non-militarisation and self-restraint in the conduct of all activities by claimants and all other states’, ‘the importance of maintaining and promoting peace, security, stability, safety and freedom of navigation in and overflight above the South China Sea’, and ‘the importance of … refraining from … activities that could further complicate the situation’.

Yet the statement from the ASEAN–China meeting made no direct reference to militarisation. It included the usual phrases about adherence to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the need to strengthen ‘mutual trust and confidence’.

We also warmly welcomed the continued improving cooperation between ASEAN and China and were encouraged by the progress of the substantive negotiations towards the early conclusion of an effective Code of Conduct in the South China Sea …

The statement noted with satisfaction that China remained ASEAN’s largest trading partner in 2017 (total merchandise trade was US$441.6 billion). China also rose from being ASEAN’s fourth largest source of foreign direct investment to third largest (investment flows totalled US$11.3 billion in 2017).

Given the seriousness of developments in the region, such language seems muted. But the disparities between these statements showcase ASEAN’s drive to manage its relationships with all major powers. There’s an unspoken assumption that the region’s wellbeing goes beyond just the South China Sea crisis.

The importance of 2018 lies in the shift in US–China relations. Towards the end of the year, America’s adversarial posture towards China became even clearer, starting from US vice president Mike Pence’s speech to a domestic audience at the Hudson Institute and continuing at the ASEAN-led summits in Singapore and later at the APEC meeting in Port Moresby. To the ASEAN member states, the message sounded like pressure to choose between the increasingly distant and competitive great powers, which isn’t a comfortable prospect for the neutrality-loving Southeast Asians.

Trump’s tariff war with China, and with a number of allies across North America and Europe, put Singapore’s second goal—economic integration—into a much more complicated context. While ASEAN members certainly understand that the tariffs on China are more about US–China competition than broader global trade mechanisms, the US president’s disdain for the multilateral trading system, which has benefited ASEAN’s growth, hasn’t been well received.

Given the other significant distractions, Singapore’s chairmanship can be considered fairly productive. It was busy demonstrating the value of its neutrality and centrality by hosting the first-of-its-kind meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un soon after the largest defence ministers’ meeting at the Shangri-La Dialogue in June.

During the year, Malaysia experienced a political tsunami in which the UMNO (the United Malays National Organisation, which had ruled since independence) lost power and Mahathir bin Mohamad was re-elected. But his return to power means that some old animosities are back and existing agreements face scrutiny.

Since May, Malaysia has tried to scrap the Kuala Lumpur – Singapore high-speed railway, revisit its water supply deal with Singapore, and fire up the maritime dispute over access to the port at Johor Bahru. Mahathir’s assertion that Malaysia is Singapore’s older and bigger ‘twin’ coincided with what will be one of most important political transitions in next-generation Singapore: the announcement of the future successor to Lee Hsien Loong—Heng Swee Keat.

Thailand, the ASEAN chair for 2019, is gearing up for elections. Member states will hope that it continues to emphasise intra-ASEAN unity.

Malaysia and Singapore: dreams and nightmares

The joke of the week in Singapore:

A Singapore man goes to bed in May 1988 and sleeps for three decades. In May 2018, he awakes to be astonished by the length of his beard and the age of his wife. His grown children are called and the grandchildren introduced. Then he asks, ‘Who is Singapore’s leader now?’

When told that it’s Prime Minister Lee, he muses: ‘I knew LKY would never go away. What about Malaysia?’

Malaysia’s leader is Dr Mahathir.

The awakened one shakes his head: ‘Still Lee and Mahathir! I’m going back to sleep. Wake me up when something changes around here!’

In one version of the joke, the punch line has a coda:

The eldest son steps forward and says, ‘Don’t go back to sleep Dad, everybody else has just woken up too!’

Singapore ‘looks like a major metropolis, but remains a small island at heart’ and the small island is agog and agape at the stunning events across the causeway.

Malaysia’s political tsunami on 9 May isn’t just making history, but is rearranging how history is understood.

Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s place in history is being re-made at speed. Malaysia’s fourth and longest-serving prime minister (1981–2003) is now its seventh PM. And the seventh PM has pledged to undo much of the fourth PM’s institutional legacy while trying simultaneously to defend his personal legacy.

The sleeper joke chimes with me because when I arrived in Singapore as the ABC’s Southeast Asia correspondent in January 1989, there was a lot of speculation about the leadership succession timetables for those two entrenched leaders, Mahathir and Lee Kuan Yew.

In 1989, Dr M had just had a heart-bypass operation. Leaving aside wry surprise in KL that Mahathir actually had a heart, how much longer could he go? Well, that bypass lasted 18 years before Dr M had another bypass. He’s also had a few heart attacks. Whatever the state of his heart, the defining feature of the oldest national leader in the world is his will to power.

Back in 1989, Lee Kuan Yew had a succession plan for his son, Lee Hsien Loong, just as he had a success scheme for Singapore. LKY stepped down as leader in 1990, handing the prime ministership to Goh Chok Tong. But Lee stayed in cabinet—and stayed as the power monitoring the power. In 1990, LKY’s agonising choice between beloved country and beloved son was made in favour of the beloved country. The beloved son had to wait a further 14 years before he became the third prime minister of the beloved country.

Today Prime Minister Lee, like his father, is edging slowly towards that moment when he hands control of the family business to someone who isn’t a family member. The choice of Singapore’s fourth prime minister will be made, as always, by a Lee. Dynasties and democracies, though, are a volatile mix.

Asia well understands that dynasties in business or politics can be a major force multiplier—until that moment when the dynastic line falters or overreaches.

The case in dramatic point today is Najib Razak, the defeated Malaysian prime minister. Najib, too, is the son of a prime minister, so the born-to-rule sensibility of dynastic inheritance was added to the hubris of leading the party in power for 61 years.

In taking up the reins again, Mahathir is giving Singapore some characteristic flicks. The biggest lash of the whip is Dr M’s decision to scrap the deal to build a high-speed railway between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.

The sharpest reminder of Mahathir’s sardonic force, delivered via a Financial Times interview, was his taunt about what Malaysia’s revolution will mean in Singapore: ‘I think the people of Singapore, like the people in Malaysia, must be tired of having the same government, the same party since independence.’

Discard the old memories of Mahathir as the champion of distinctive Asian values, of strong government based on hierarchy and respect. That’s all so last century. Meet today’s Mahathir, the champion of democracy in all its glorious unpredictability.

Singapore has a long history of dealing with Mahathir, and his character certainly hasn’t changed. But this is Mahathir intent on dismantling much of the history he created.

Part of the strange symbiosis of Malaysia and Singapore was that neither democracy ever voted to change its soft-authoritarian government. That mirror image of a party holding permanent power has shattered.

Mahathir is back. How much longer can Lee stay?

Singapore’s ASEAN chairmanship: high expectations for a high achiever

Singapore, this year’s ASEAN chair, faces some tough tasks. It must lift confidence in the organisation and inject the inspiration it needs to overcome a ‘midlife crisis’ while encouraging favourable conditions for continued economic growth. And it must do this in a time of geopolitical turbulence while trying to balance relations with the great powers.

If anyone in the region can handle such pressure, it’s Singapore.

One of the smallest countries in the world, Singapore is also one of the best governed. In the region, it has a reputation as a sophisticated diplomat, able to advise and explain the area’s complexities to more powerful nations. While not impervious to pressure, Singapore has earned the right to be treated as an equal in the international arena despite its size. The debate on how small states should behave has been defining Singaporean strategic choices and reflecting its national identity in recent months. Singapore’s success has been based precisely on the fact that it has always ‘thought big’ and that’s how it has gained respect and recognition in the international arena.

The rise of China has had a bigger effect on Southeast Asia than any other factor during the time that Singapore has been playing the challenging role as the China–ASEAN coordinator since 2015. While its relationship with China is not without hurdles, Singapore’s neutrality and strong insistence on the rules-based-order remain important pillars for sustaining the norms and rules of regional engagement. Singapore is also considered America’s most reliable ASEAN partner (particularly given the recent deterioration in ties with US treaty allies Thailand and the Philippines). Singaporean diplomacy remains one of the region’s most effective.

And it’s not only contacts with external partners that are performing well, but intra-ASEAN diplomacy too. Within the association, Singapore’s position has been consistently significant. In recent years, a new generation of democratically elected leaders has taken power in Indonesia and the Philippines, while Thailand and Myanmar have experienced more complex and volatile transitions between civil and military rule.

The most drastic change within ASEAN has been most apparent in the region’s largest democracies, Indonesia and the Philippines, whose regional influence, including within ASEAN, has dropped significantly compared with their roles and engagement under past leaders. Both Joko Widodo and Rodrigo Duterte were mayors before becoming presidents, and both tend to still think more locally.

Singapore is the only original ASEAN member state (Vietnam joined ASEAN in 1995) that has had leadership continuity since the association was created. With that succession of power within the People’s Action Party, its leaders’ strategic outlook, including on the role of ASEAN, have remained comparatively consistent. Notwithstanding internal anxieties about the fourth generation of leadership, Singaporean politics remain relatively more stable than those of its fellow ASEAN members. This year’s chairmanship provides a good opportunity for Singapore to remind the others of the importance of hanging together, rather than hanging separately—the reason ASEAN came into existence in the first place.

Beyond its connection to ASEAN’s core original values, Singapore can be a link to the future. One of the biggest shared challenges for the region is how to remain economically vibrant and overcome the ‘middle income trap’. Singapore has been a role model for economic development, urban planning and technological advancement. And so far, it’s the only one to invest significantly in creating its own intellectual property. The rest still largely depend on external investment, capital, management, technology and innovation to keep their economies competitive.

Economic strength will also contribute to political resilience and reduce reliance on external inputs, and to economic coercion as a result. It’s also in Singapore’s interests to be surrounded by stable politics and robust economies. Given the challenges of sustaining the pace of economic growth, and as pragmatic as the Lion City is, the innovation agenda in ASEAN dovetails with its national and regional interests. It’s no coincidence that this year’s theme is ‘Resilience and Innovation’.

The pressure is high and Singaporean leaders have been working hard to deliver concrete outcomes on one hand, and to manage expectations on the other. As the 32th ASEAN Summit approaches, the range of issues for discussion is abundant and expectations are mounting.

While a year is hardly enough time to change an organisation, this year is critical to set a tone for ASEAN’s self-confidence and remind its fellow members about the importance of long-term self-investment. In one of his last public speeches, Thailand’s former foreign minister and former ASEAN secretary-general, Surin Pitsuwan—one of the association’s strongest promoters and self-claimed cheerleaders—recalled Singapore’s previous chairmanship in 2008 and the leadership it provided in opting to help a Myanmar struck by Cyclone Nargis while also pushing to realise the ASEAN Charter. Dr Surin observed, ‘We can’t expect to have Singapore as the chair every year.’

In this special year then, Singapore has a packed agenda to prioritise, ranging from responding to new looming challenges, including the tariff war, through strengthening cooperation in the digital economy, cybersecurity and counterterrorism, to mediating resolutions of lasting disputes, bringing the conversation back to the rule of law, supporting the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s rulings on South China Sea issues and making progress in the negotiation for the planned code of conduct there.

While a chairman alone cannot overcome all institutional limitations, it can display the missing value of leadership in ASEAN—the ability to inspire.

Cyber wrap

Image courtesy of Pixabay user Riedelmeier.

Telstra released its 2017 Cyber Security Report this week, and it seems that cyber threats are continuing to grow at a considerable clip. The report, based on Telstra’s own data and results from 360 business surveys conducted across Australia and Asia, notes that 59% of businesses detected a serious cyber incident in 2016, more than double the 2015 figure of 24%. Ransomware was the most common type of malware, with 60% of respondents admitting it has affected them at least once in 2016, of which 57% paid the ransom. Of that 57%, one third didn’t receive their files after making the deal. Promisingly, research found that C-suite executives are apparently taking greater responsibility for cyber incidents, and IT security spending increased in 95% of responding organisations.

In a new step to address cybercrime, ANZ has announced a pilot of voice biometrics to authorise high value payments through the bank’s mobile app. ANZ has worked with Nuance to introduce the technology, building on that company’s work with Domino’s Pizza, which in a further indication of civilizational decay has enabled customers to order pizza through voice commands. ANZ also offers customers the option of using Apple Pay, the only Big Four bank to do so.

This week the other three big banks lost their bid to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to allow collective negotiations with Apple on Apple Pay. Commonwealth Bank, NAB and Westpac, along with Bendigo and Adelaide banks, wanted access to the near-field communication chips (NFC) in iPhones, with a deal they already have in place with Android. They were also hoping to use their collective bargaining power to overcome Apple’s restriction on banks passing on Apple Pay fees to customers. The ACCC listed negative implications for how Apple competes with Google, and that open NFC access may inhibit innovation as reasons for rejecting the application.

Germany announced the establishment of a new Cyber and Information Space Command within the Bundeswehr. The new command, to be based in Bonn, will employ 13,500 personnel by July this year, before reaching 14,500 by 2021. The command will be responsible for the security of Bundeswehr networks, cyber threat intelligence and the development of offensive cyber capabilities which can only be used with parliamentary approval. The Command’s announcement comes at the same time as increasing concerns in Germany about Russian cyber interference in German critical infrastructure and democratic processes, with the defence ministry citing the 284,000 complex cyber incidents recorded in 2017 so far on Bundeswehr networks.

Singapore’s Ministry of Defence has admitted that a cyber security breach on its network, which was noticed earlier this year, lasted several weeks before it was detected. The breach, which previous reporting has suggested was probably state sponsored, affected the Ministry’s personnel system, stealing the personal information of 850 military and civilian employees. And the US Department of Defense has been slammed by Democrat Senator Ron Wyden for failing to implement STARTTLS encryption for email. STARTTLS has been adopted by the FBI, NSA, CIA and Director of National Intelligence, but it’s only effective when both recipients use the technology.

Also in the US, the Department of Commerce has removed Chinese IT company ZTE from an export blacklist after it admitted to violating sanctions on Iran. Commerce has been investigating ZTE for five years, threatening the company’s access to US supply chains, after it discovered an elaborate scheme to evade sanctions. The company’s former CEO was accused of using shell companies to import US made equipment, integrate it with ZTE products and sell it to Iran in direct violation of US sanctions on technology transfer. ZTE agreed to pay US$900 million in fines and to a three year probation period. If you’re after a bit of additional reading on China, The CipherBrief has a great series this week on Chinese cyber capability, including pieces from RAND’s Martin Libicki and FireEye’s Christopher Porter.

In brief news this week, Kaspersky Lab has added to the growing suspicion of North Korea’s role in last year’s SWIFT cyber heist, releasing a new report on the Lazarus group. The report directly links the group to an IP address in North Korea, noting that it’s the most direct evidence they’ve seen of the link between Lazarus and the DPRK. Singapore updated its cybercrime legislation on Monday, adding new offences for dealing in personal information gained through hacking and dealing in hacking tools, while the New Zealand government has been criticised for withdrawing the sole NZ Police representative from Interpol’s Global Complex for Innovation in the city-state. And finally the IAAF has pointed the finger at Russian hacking group Fancy Bear for the theft of athlete information in February, however Reuters noted that ‘Fancy Bear could not be immediately reached for comment.’