Join us on Thursday, May 21st, from 14-16 hrs (German time) for the second RUSTLab lecture of this summer term. Tobias Burgers will present his work on “Vietnam’s Quest for Technological Autonomy and How It Seeks to Navigate Between US, Sino and EU Dominance in the AI era”.
As the American-Sino technological “G2” competition is now reaching the shores of Southeast Asia, these nations are increasingly becoming subject to pressures to adopt either American or Chinese technology stacks. Building on John Lee’s (2025) analysis of the “embodied AI G2,” this talk examines how leading regional actors are exploring a “third pathway” of possible technological independence that builds further on the Cold War strategy of hedging which was prevalent in the Southeast Asian region.
The talk will highlight how these “technological hedging” strategies are pursued through three leading cases that demonstrate the diverse approaches: first, new governance frameworks which are paired with regional language models, second, preservation of linguistic diversity through open-source initiatives; and third and finally, strategic infrastructure balancing sovereign cloud capacity with external chip dependencies. These efforts illustrate how regional actors are seeking to avoid choosing sides in this G2 tech competition, but it also raises the question of whether Southeast Asian nations can successfully navigate between becoming mere consumers of foreign AI and achieving meaningful technological sovereignty?
Tobias Burgers is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Social Scienes, Fulbright and a CCRC fellow, Keio University.
Location: on campus (MB 4/165) and Zoom
Zoom Link
PW: RUSTlab
You will find additional resources and information on this term’s guiding theme Scattered Grounds here on our website.