Neither Builder Nor Bystander: Sovereign AI Capability for Southeast Asian Middle Powers, Learning from Vietnam

This is an impressive , think-tank level report. The two-track framework and inverted displacement sequence are real conceptual contributions.

Truly ambitious work. The selectorate-theory argument that safety must be sold to a developmental state in the vocabulary of information sovereignty rather than AI ethics is hard-nosed and original. My main reservation is that this is a synthesis-and-argument paper whose urgency rests on a contested premise it adopts, using the most aggressive forecasting of 2031 as a baseline while the slower camp gets one paragraph, and although you cleverly hedge the strategy to pay off under every scenario, a skeptical policymaker could push on whether the framing is calibrated to a forecast the field doesn't share. Two governance points I'd press. First, the dual-use shadow of Track B: pitching safety infrastructure to a single-party regime's stability and information-control interests is shrewd, but the same deepfake-detection and "social order" tooling is an instrument of state censorship, and the authoritarian-empowerment risk deserves more than the one line it gets. Second, close this gap: it's strong on what and thin on the political economy of execution: which ministry owns each piece, who loses budget, and what gets killed first in an interagency fight; your own "politically saleable" section invites exactly that scrutiny, and naming the veto points and sequencing would move this from a brilliant diagnosis to an implementable plan. The breadth of the research is also a weakness, several recommendations are asserted at paragraph length where each needs its own feasibility case. But this is genuinely impressive, and the core reframing is something other middle-power strategists could build on.

This paper offers a well-defended position with a very clear opinion. The author really captured a critical shift in how middle powers in Southeast Asia can harness their power within the regulatory ecosystem, and offers a well-researched and brilliantly presented state of play using Vietnam as the case study. It offers recommendations that are immediately useful for policymakers. Great title!

A paper of this length would benefit from a table of contents. It’s not clear if the full text was developed during the hackathon, or is building on previous research.

The submission requirements stated authors must include a section called "Limitations and Dual-Use Considerations" that addresses limitations of your approach, potential misuse risks, and suggestions for future improvements. This was not included and an LLM statement was also omitted. For example, what are the limitations of each country sticking to a prescribed specialization in the AI stack instead of diversifying?