09-21-2026 
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TL;DR: AI is forcing Asia-Pacific to re-evaluate its digital infrastructure, but the region’s challenge goes beyond powering the technology. As governments grapple with AI’s environmental footprint, new initiatives are exploring how it can help tackle planetary challenges while building local expertise and digital independence.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is challenging Asia-Pacific’s digital infrastructure, prompting governments to rethink how the region will support AI’s growing demands and its increasing role in the digital economy in the years to come.
- AI pressures APAC’s digital backbone
- Malaysia’s Anwar urges AI expertise, openness
- AI turns to tackling environmental woes
In its Asia-Pacific Digital Transformation Report 2026, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) highlighted the broader integration of AI across the region, noting that APAC economies are facing growing demand for computing power, connectivity, and data capacity.
APAC is shaping up to be a hotbed for AI innovation in recent years, attracting numerous AI investments from tech giants, including Nvidia’s (NASDAQ: NVDA) $150 billion annual investment in Taiwan, Samsung’s planned $1.5 billion semiconductor testing plant in Vietnam, and Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) target $1.7 billion AI and cloud services development project in Indonesia.
While these are expected to bring massive benefits to the region and its people, including the potential to address issues that have long plagued nations, the UN’s regional arm claimed that economies across APAC are not equally equipped to meet AI’s increasing demands, with significant gaps in digital development and infrastructure capacity threatening to widen the region’s digital divide.
ESCAP warned that the digital gap could become more significant as AI takes on a larger role in the region’s digital economy, noting that this time around, the disparity is no longer limited to internet access. Differences in computing capacity, connectivity, data systems, and the ability to develop and implement new and more advanced technologies could increasingly determine how effectively economies use AI, the report stated.
Based on recent ESCAP assessments, digital development outcomes in high-income economies are nearly four times those recorded in low-income nations, underscoring the significant gaps in digital development as AI becomes more deeply embedded across the region.
This prompted ESCAP to call for greater regional cooperation and investment in digital infrastructure to keep pace with the region’s evolving digital needs.
“Ensuring that AI-native network infrastructure benefits all economies of the region, rather than deepening existing inequalities, will require deliberate and coordinated policy action by Governments individually and through regional cooperation,” said UN Under-Secretary-General and ESCAP Executive Secretary Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, as quoted by Eco-Business in its September 7 report.
The importance of creating policies to govern AI technologies amid risks associated with their utilization, including cybercrime, sustainability, job losses, digital inequality, and privacy, was also highlighted in the report, with ESCAP saying that collaboration among governments is needed to ensure a more secure digital economy.
“Regional cooperation will therefore play an increasingly important role in strengthening policy dialogue, facilitating the sharing of good practices and lessons learned, supporting capacity development and coordinating multistakeholder partnerships to accelerate the development of AI-native network infrastructure across Asia and the Pacific,” it said.
AI and colonization
While digital infrastructure holds the key to supporting AI applications, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said society should also work to understand the technology and build expertise, while remaining open to change to avoid the risk of colonization.
He was particularly referring to the Muslim community, whose faith, as well as cultural and religious values, are deeply rooted in its traditions, which can be challenged by the rapid development and adoption of AI.
Speaking at a ceremony at Markazu Saquafathi Sunniyya in the town of Karanthur in India on September 13, the premier highlighted AI’s capacity to transform industries, but stressed that the technology also comes with risks, especially in the wrong hands.Explaining his remark, Anwar said societies lacking understanding and expertise on AI are at risk of being dominated by those who control the technology, Anadolu Agency reported.
“Without knowledge, we will fail. Without understanding artificial intelligence, we will be colonized,” he said in a speech after receiving the inaugural Excellence Award instituted by the Sheikh Abubakr Foundation during his visit to India for the BRICS Leaders’ Summit. “We need the knowledge. We need the expertise.”
The Malaysian premier also warned of technology’s capability to influence beliefs and values, which could create conflict or weaken religious beliefs and ethical standards, noting that preserving these would require recognizing the “new realities and challenges of the present time.”
He went on to rally Muslim scholars and communities to assess AI’s implications and understand how the technology can improve their societies while ensuring it aligns with their religious and ethical values.
Building a greener future with AI
Despite the negative perception about AI, its influence, and demand for compute power and data capacity, which often raise questions about environmental implications, the technology is still recognized as one of the most powerful tools that humanity have in addressing issues, including problems tied to the environment, which Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) looks to highlight in its inaugural DeepMind Accelerator: AI for the Planet in Asia-Pacific.
The three-month regional accelerator program is comprised of 16 organizations, whose participants include startups, nonprofit organizations, and experts from Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, and Thailand, working on AI projects to support critical ecological problems that pose risks to the planet’s health, human survival, and sustainable development.
According to ESG News, six participants are developing AI-powered tools to improve conservation efforts and boost climate resilience; five projects are focused on agriculture to address communities’ limited access to agronomic services; and five organizations will apply AI to support emissions reduction and carbon removal, as well as to improve urban energy systems.
The development and testing of these initiatives will be guided by Google mentors, with participants provided access to Google’s latest AI stack.
“This is a unique opportunity that will help participants navigate technical complexities — and scale the next generation of solutions for our planet,” Google said in its official press statement.
The program, which kicked off in Singapore on September 7, is not only intended to build practical AI applications but also to give APAC economies a broader picture of where environmental AI is moving in the region.
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