In a brief by the Asia Society Policy Institute, Bryanna Entwistle and Shay Wester cover President Trump’s first stop on his Asia tour: the ASEAN Leaders' Summit in Kuala Lumpur. On the sidelines, he presided over the signing of a number of deals, including a ceasefire deal between Thailand and Cambodia, and “reciprocal trade” deals with Malaysia and Cambodia, respectively.

In a report for the Early Warning Project, Made Supriatma discusses the risk of mass atrocities against Indigenous Papuans in Papua, Indonesia. Despite developments in the region's administrative structure, increased military presence, and revived transmigration and food estate development programs, marginalization still fuels Papuan nationalism.

Nicholas Kuipers discusses his new book, States Against Nations (Cambridge University Press, 2025), specifically how Indonesia's civil service examination is a method of bureaucratic selection. Despite its meritocratic measures, Kuipers asserts that these exams can reinforce existing inequalities within society. Drawing on large-scale surveys, experiments, and archival documents, States Against Nations provides a thought-provoking perspective on the challenges of bureaucratic recruitment and unearths the tension between state- and nation-building goals.

Nationalism is an inherently unifying and totalizing force. But what happens when other identities begin to encroach on certain visions of what it means to be Indonesian? Deconstructing Indonesia, a student-run seminar, pays special attention to Chinese Indonesians, one of the minority groups in Indonesia.

In this episode of Talking Indonesia, Clara Siagian and Tito Ambyo speak with Dian Tri Irawaty, Program Director at the University of Melbourne’s Rujak Center for Urban Studies, about the ongoing struggle for housing rights in Jakarta’s kampung communities.

In this episode of Southeast Asia Radio, produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Gregory B. Poling and Elina Noor discuss Greg’s section of the recent CSIS compendium, “Navigating Disruption: Ally and Partner Responses to U.S. Foreign Policy.” The podcast also covers the latest from Southeast Asia, from protests to contaminated shrimp.

In an article for East Asia Forum, Shiro Armstrong discusses Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs and ASEAN’s response, where the latter avoided retaliation, which would worsen economic consequences, and instead communicated a coordinated, non-retaliatory response to the tariffs.

In an article for Lighthouse Reports, researchers investigate a vast archive of data on the deep web, from a surveillance company called First Wap. Investigation shows how phone network collections can be leveraged to allow tracking all over the world, without authorization from the targeted networks.

Haakon Huynh (Columbia University) is seeking collaborators for ongoing research on artificial intelligence (AI) governance in Southeast Asia. His recent working paper, “Digital Sovereignty or Dependency? The Political Economy of AI Infrastructure in Vietnam,” examines how Vietnam governs AI infrastructure amid growing foreign investment from firms like NVIDIA.

Haakon welcomes contact from scholars, practitioners, and students interested in AI policy, digital infrastructure, or the political economy of technology in the region.