Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Southeast Asia Brief.
The highlights this week: Indonesia’s Prabowo grabs control of resource exports, the Philippines and Japan build defense ties, Malaysia demands missile refund from Norway, and Singapore hearts AI.
Indonesia to Nationalize Resource Exports
Indonesia will force all exports of selected raw materials to be conducted via a single state-owned enterprise. President Prabowo Subianto made the shock announcement last week in a speech to parliament.
The announcement left not just companies but Prabowo’s own government scrambling. It was reportedly kept under such tight wraps that key officials supposed to implement the policy were only informed of it the day before.
