Signal Indonesia seeks AI sovereignty through local models, digital talent

Summary

Indonesian Deputy Minister of Communication and Digital Affairs Nezar Patria met Deputy Foreign Minister Arif Havas Oegroseno in Jakarta on July 22 2026 to lay out an AI sovereignty agenda. He said comprehensive AI sovereignty requires the entire stack of basic infrastructure, including electricity, water, GPUs, chips, platforms and applications. He framed building AI capability as a matter of the country's strategic position within global technology supply chains, warning that mastery of AI technology would become a choke point for major powers to maintain dominance. He also said Indonesia holds critical minerals used in AI and semiconductor manufacturing and views them as leverage within the supply chain, and that the government plans to give Indonesian talent access to AI infrastructure and technical knowledge. On infrastructure, a 360 megawatt data center is under construction in Batam, to be operated by Firmus, able to house up to 170000 Nvidia accelerators and targeted to begin operating in the first quarter of 2027. Separate reporting says Batam's data center industry has been growing about 22 percent a year.