Indonesia telco chief warns of ‘digital colonisation’, backs China’s open-source AI

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Vikram Sinha, president director and CEO of Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, a major Indonesian telecom firm, has warned that "digital colonisation" is a significant threat to middle powers in the artificial intelligence era. He stated that expensive and proprietary AI stacks pose this risk, while China's open-source AI offerings provide better protection for local sovereignty. Sinha emphasized the importance of localization and digital sovereignty, particularly in developing countries like Indonesia. Chinese companies such as Huawei Technologies and Alibaba Cloud are competing with US rivals in Southeast Asia, offering cost-competitive AI services. Sinha joined a panel on China-Indonesia AI cooperation at the South China Morning Post's China Conference: Southeast Asia 2026 in Jakarta. He highlighted the need for customizing models to local conditions, which Chinese open-source models better address.
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This article was automatically classified using rule-based analysis. The political bias score ranges from -1 (far left) to +1 (far right).
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