Indonesia is racing to become Asia’s next AI data center powerhouse, but without strict resource safeguards, the boom risks draining the nation’s power grid, water supply and local communities.

As high-cost borrowing collides with ambitious state spending, Indonesia must master smarter debt management and innovative finance before fiscal pressure catches up with its national ambitions.

Indonesia's illegal cigarette trade has long deprived the state of revenue and undermined formal producers. Recent allegations that people linked to a House of Representatives legislator sold counterfeit excise stamps, however, suggest that illicit trade may also involve those with access to formal institutions. The case raises questions about how illegal cigarettes keep circulating through counterfeit branding, informal distribution and alleged collusion, even as authorities tighten enforcement and regulation.

As a battered rupiah, soaring oil prices, and global turmoil test the country's new economic chiefs, their trial by fire will determine whether technocratic discipline can hold against mounting political pressure.

Anxiety has recently taken an existential turn, as the industry’s leaders have begun warning that AI could very well end humanity.

Asian economies are likely to see deepening diversion between countries with low inflation and those with spiraling inflation alongside heavy deficits amid headwinds from US monetary tightening.

Beneath the machinery of state security and industrial extraction, Papua’s deepest resistance lives in what cannot be cleared: Its people’s ancestral bond to the land.

People's diplomacy is valuable because it acknowledges competition while setting boundaries, fostering cooperation and providing buffers for tensions.

Behind the reformist rhetoric of Indonesia’s new Agrarian Law lies a dangerous corporate loophole: a legal apparatus designed not to return land to the people, but to legitimize its capture by the powerful.

Indonesia’s monuments remember the generals slain in 1965, but true democratic strength lies in finally carving out stone for the hundreds of thousands murdered in the purge that followed.

Indonesia has barely had time to digest one high-profile corruption scandal before another has breached the surface, this time striking at the heart of the country's land administration. The latest case centers on the Agrarian and Spatial Planning Ministry/National Land Agency (BPN). A sweeping bribery probe by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has ensnared senior bureaucrats, a prominent property developer and multiple operatives identified as close associates of minister Nusron Wahid, a Golkar politician.

Jakarta can take a critical page out of Beijing's playbook, the outcome of which was proven at last week's Washington summit: Hold vital assets hostage to extract a pragmatic deal.

A nation cannot build a democratic future on sanitized myths: until Indonesia confronts the violent truths of its past, its history remains an instrument of power rather than a measure of civilization.

More than six decades after the bloodshed of 1965-1966, President Prabowo has a historic window to finally bury the red phantom and lead the nation into a future free from manufactured fear.

As concurrent crises collide ahead of Bangkok’s IMF-World Bank meetings, small and emerging economies are left footing the bill for a fractured global order they did not create.

As President Prabowo marks two years in office, the true test of his administration is not the tally of his policies but whether it is forging the intellectual and moral backbone required to govern a great republic like Indonesia.

Indonesia’s economy has recently received a welcome piece of good news, with the latest state budget figures showing a sharp increase in tax revenue. Net tax revenue rose by a remarkable 24.1 percent year-on-year as of August 2026, reaching Rp 1.409 quadrillion (US$79 billion), or 59.8 percent of the full-year target. Finance Minister Suahasil Nazara attributed the increase to higher global oil and gas prices, strong domestic consumption and improvements in the Coretax system.

By trading raw mineral wealth for technology transfers and seizing the neutral ground in the chip war, Indonesia can turn a high-stakes geopolitical scramble into its greatest industrial leap.

To win the WHO's top post, Jakarta must stop treating multilateral diplomacy as an afterthought and let the President lead the charge for Indonesia’s nominee, Budi Gunadi Sadikin.

China and ASEAN are well-poised to turn the call of the Global Governance Initiative into concrete results that benefit the region and beyond.

AI, social media and universal connectivity are making corporate behavior radically more transparent.

A decades-long insurgency in the Indonesian province ended after 2004’s devastating tsunami. But pro-independence talk is on the rise again.

Rushed through the House, Indonesia’s new agrarian reform law will either secure the future of the nation’s multi-billion-dollar palm oil sector or paralyze it with unprecedented legal uncertainty.

With the UN about to choose a new secretary-general and United States President Donald Trump’s administration openly hostile to multilateralism, it is unclear how much longer the system can stagger on.

When an AI agent mistakes a government firewall for an ordinary puzzle, it is a warning shot Indonesia cannot afford to ignore as it writes its cybersecurity laws.

When AI outthinks the world’s elite mathematicians in under four days, it shatters the myth that human expertise is untouchable, at the same time warning policymakers that regulating machines can no longer wait until tomorrow.

Bank Indonesia (BI) opted to keep monetary policy supportive of growth on Sept. 23, holding its benchmark rate at 5.75 percent despite the United States Federal Reserve’s rate hike a week earlier. The decision, Governor Destry Damayanti’s second consecutive hold, reflects BI’s expanded mandate to support economic growth and job creation. Rather than raising rates to defend the rupiah, BI strengthened incentives for investors to hedge their currency exposure, seeking to balance growth with exchange-rate stability.