AI, Security, and Strategic Competition in the Indo-Pacific

Nbr | Tulip Hori, Renan Araujo

Indo-Pacific governments navigate a binary artificial intelligence governance landscape dominated by the United States and China as advanced capabilities reshape regional security and economic competition. Renan Araujo outlines how regional states weigh security risks in sensitive domains like cyber, bio, and autonomous systems while managing regulatory divergences. Most Indo-Pacific countries favor U.S.-led initiatives such as the Network of AI Safety Institutes, whereas China's World AI Cooperation Organization has drawn members with limited AI supply chain competitiveness.

Washington maintains critical leverage through advanced AI models, semiconductors, and cloud computing access, while Beijing builds industrial capacity for embodied AI. Regional partners including Japan, Singapore, and South Korea balance economic integration with security alignment, though institutional capacity gaps hinder broader multilateral cooperation. Future security coordination depends on balancing export controls with cooperative frameworks to manage frontier risks.

Comment

Regulatory divergence across Indo-Pacific capitals creates acute friction for minilateral coalitions attempting to harmonize export controls and pre-deployment model testing. While agencies such as the Australian AI Safety Institute build technical evaluation capacity, disparate legislative approaches in states like South Korea and Japan complicate interoperability within minilateral architectures like AUKUS.

This fragmentation mirrors historical difficulties in establishing common technology security baselines during early semiconductor export control regimes, where disparate national enforcement mechanisms repeatedly undermined multilateral compliance.

Strategic Question for Discussion

How does the regulatory divide between light-touch national ecosystems in countries like South Korea and the more securitized oversight models of the United States affect operational intelligence sharing within minilateral frameworks like AUKUS?

The pattern suggests that disparate compliance standards will constrain real-time data exchanges between partner agencies. This points to persistent friction in aligning technical evaluations across different security jurisdictions.

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