Autonomy will increasingly depend on whether societies can keep essential systems functioning, respond to disruption and create new capabilities when existing ones become obsolete.

Southeast Asia has mastered moving capital across borders. Now it must stop letting corporate responsibility stall at customs while millions breathe transboundary haze.

Indonesia’s increasingly centralized economic model promises greater protection against external shocks. Yet concentrating both authority and financial risk in the state may be eroding the many shock absorbers on which the country’s resilience has long depended.

PT Nations Petroleum, an oil and gas company linked to businessman Hashim Djojohadikusumo, President Prabowo Subianto’s younger brother and special climate and energy envoy, has committed US$103.3 million to three years of work on the Natuna D-Alpha block, prompting questions over why the relatively new player is willing to take on such an ambitious bet.

Scapegoating train drivers and ferry captains will not save lives, only radical, systemic reform can protect the millions who rely on Indonesia’s most affordable transit.

Sweden and Indonesia’s partnership is increasingly focused on the future: supporting Indonesia’s industrial transformation while accelerating digitalization and the green transition in a rapidly changing global economy.

Behind the promise of Southeast Asia’s AI revolution lies a destructive reality: an old-school scramble for power, land and minerals that is reviving fossil fuels and pushing fragile ecosystems to the brink.

Maritime cooperation with Beijing cannot come at the expense of sovereign rights: for Indonesia, the smart play is engagement backed by unyielding legal firewalls and a fortified presence in the North Natuna Sea.

From high-profile killings and protest crackdowns to election interference, a string of scandals has pushed public trust in the National Police to a breaking point.

In the decades of their work, various challenges have arisen in relation to negative impact on human rights, and social and environmental issues.

The government should put an end to the various rules that stifle investment and instead focus on building a healthy, competitive business climate that ensures legal certainty. 

Indonesia covers nearly its entire population under national health insurance, yet relying on imports for 90 percent of its active medicine ingredients leaves the country dangerously exposed to the next global shock.

The latest ruling by the Constitutional Court has raised far more questions than it has answered regarding the educational qualifications of Vice President Gibran Rakabuming Raka.

Almost half of US ambassadorships remain vacant while political appointees outnumber career diplomats being put forward, creating a perceived void in Washington's global presence.

As the IMF-World Bank meetings convene in Bangkok, frontline nations are calling for financial liberation from the debt traps and failed prescriptions of international financial institutions.

When foreign debt is celebrated as statesmanship but foreign grants to civic watchdogs are branded as treason, "national sovereignty" becomes a convenient weapon to silence dissent.

Southeast Asia’s latest haze crisis was entirely foreseeable. As millions choke beneath toxic skies, halting the blazes today must come before the inevitable, unsparing reckoning tomorrow.

The court saga surrounding Gibran's credentials has essentially spelled the end of the Widodo political dynasty, not by killing it outright but by ensuring that it fades away.

Can impeachment strengthen a democracy, or does it only wound it?

Bahlil Lahadalia’s latest appointment as coordinating downstream and energy transition minister gives him an unusually broad mandate, as he will also retain his position as energy and mineral resources minister, though the scope of the newly established coordinating ministerial post is yet to be clearly defined in terms of authority and jurisdiction. The arrangement seems to be in line with the government’s continuing prioritization of downstream industrial development, but raises a central question: Will the new post improve coordination on Indonesia’s downstream and energy transition agenda or simply add another layer of bureaucracy?

The government must recognize that economic growth should not be a choice between protecting workers and giving businesses room to grow; it must accommodate both.

Behind the sacred walls of Indonesia’s boarding schools, an insidious architecture of spiritual authority weaponizes devotion to silence victims of sexual abuse—and only collective resistance can tear it down.

Hanging elderly convicts and criminalizing peaceful vigils isn’t strong governance; it is a posture of institutional shame and insecurity.

Downstreaming raw minerals into high-purity metal is meaningless without the advanced industry to absorb it—and without aligned policy, resource nationalism risks freezing the very wealth it set out to unlock.

While megacities across Asia buckle under gridlock, pollution and unmanaged waste, Nagoya shows how disciplined urban planning and cultural wisdom can build an enduring model of sustainable living.

The country is racing to power the global AI boom, but the unquenchably thirsty data centers it needs are already draining the water that sustains millions of lives.

As ASEAN races to normalize ties with Myanmar's brutal military junta for geopolitical gain, its quiet betrayal of human rights and its own charter lays bare the hollow core of the "ASEAN way."