Southeast Asia Tech Stack Sovereignty Paper 1: An Analytical Framework for Understanding Technology Sovereignty

SEA Tech Stack Sovereignty: An Analytical Framework for Understanding Technology Sovereignty is the opening paper in a series exploring technology sovereignty in Southeast Asia, developed by the Southeast Asia Public Policy Institute. This paper establishes the conceptual foundation for the series, introducing a framework that subsequent papers apply to specific technology stacks — beginning with critical minerals, and extending to electric technology stacks and artificial intelligence.

The paper sets out what technology sovereignty means in a region that is neither a frontier producer nor a passive consumer of technology and offers policymakers a structured way to diagnose where sovereignty is strong, where it is constrained, and where coordinated action could support security, stability and growth.

Download the full report here.

Key Takeaways

• Technology sovereignty is not the same as technological self-sufficiency. For most Southeast Asian economies, producing every layer of a technology stack domestically is neither feasible nor desirable. Technology sovereignty is better understood as the ability to exercise meaningful control over technologies a country depends on — through a combination of access, capability, and governance.
• The framework disaggregates sovereignty into three interconnected components, each of which can be assessed independently and in combination. A country may have strong access to inputs but weak capability to process them; strong capability in one layer of a stack but limited governance reach; or strong governance instruments that are undermined by dependence on foreign technology. Understanding which combination applies is essential to designing effective strategy.
• A consistent asymmetry runs through the region. Southeast Asia generates substantial value at the upstream and data-producing ends of technology stacks but captures comparatively little at the capability-intensive layers, where capital, compute, and specialized talent remain concentrated elsewhere. This pattern shapes both the constraints and the opportunities that individual countries face.
• Regional coordination is a distinct lever of sovereignty in its own right. Acting collectively, Southeast Asia represents a market large enough to set baseline standards, demand interoperability, and negotiate terms that individual states cannot secure on their own. Coordination does not require uniformity of strategy; it requires alignment on a minimum common denominator.

Executive Summary

Technology has become a defining arena of geopolitical competition. As major powers compete to control the technologies that will shape the coming decades — from semiconductors and artificial intelligence to clean energy systems and critical minerals — smaller and middle economies are being asked to navigate an increasingly contested landscape. Southeast Asia sits at the centre of many of these supply chains, but its position is not automatically translated into strategic leverage.

This paper introduces a framework for thinking about technology sovereignty that moves beyond binary questions of ownership or self-sufficiency. It proposes that sovereignty in any technology stack can be assessed through three interconnected components.

Access sovereignty concerns a country’s effective and lawful control over the inputs — physical, digital, or human — that a technology stack depends on. Access is not merely availability; it is the ability to secure and govern inputs on terms that serve national objectives.

Capability sovereignty refers to the technological, industrial, and human capacity to transform inputs into higher-value outputs. Capability can be narrow or broad, concentrated in specific layers of a stack, or distributed across them.

Governance sovereignty concerns the ability to set, implement, and enforce credible rules and standards that shape how technologies are developed, deployed, and used — both domestically and in engagement with external actors.

These three components interact. Access without capability leaves a country as a raw-material supplier. Capability without governance leaves it exposed to external rule-setting. Governance without either access or capability produces rules that cannot be credibly enforced. Sovereignty is the product of how the three components combine across the layers of a given stack.

The framework is intended to be applied, not only described. Subsequent papers in the series use this framework to examine specific technology stacks in depth, including the critical minerals value chain, the electric technology stack, in particular electric vehicles, and the artificial intelligence stack.

Each stack presents a different configuration of access, capability, and governance, and therefore calls for a different response. Read together, the series argues that Southeast Asia’s position in the global technology landscape will be determined less by any single national effort than by whether the region can coordinate across these stacks to convert dispersed strengths into collective leverage.

About the Southeast Asia Public Policy Institute

The Southeast Asia Public Policy Institute is a research institute based in Bangkok and Singapore, working across the region. The Institute’s mission is to support the development of solutions to the most pressing public policy challenges facing Southeast Asia in the 21st century. The Institute works on a range of issues across sustainability, technology, public health, trade, and governance. It convenes dialogues with stakeholders and decision makers to drive discussion on the challenges and opportunities facing markets in the region. The Institute draws on a network of in-market researchers, advisors, and partners to provide insights and recommendations for governments, policymakers, and businesses.