Japan’s Golden Girl visits the White House

Insight: Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is visiting the White House on March 19, with the aim of building on President Donald Trump’s October 2025 trip to Tokyo, where the two leaders signed a framework agreement aimed at ushering in a “New Golden Age” for the US-Japan alliance. Central to this is the implementation of Japan’s massive $550 billion investment into the US — a deal that was struck in exchange for a reduction in US tariffs on Japanese imports from 25% to 15%. Takaichi is expected to emphasize Japan’s commitment to fulfilling its investment promises and announcements on several large new projects that are planned for next week. Beyond that, she will talk about reinforcing Japan’s defense posture along with expected discussion on trade, national security, and cooperation on critical minerals and rare earths.

Impact: Japan’s new prime minister has a chance to raise US-Japan relations back to levels last seen when the ‘bromance’ between Trump and Shinzo Abe was at its peak. Geopolitical developments are in her favor: right now, the US needs all the friends it can get and Takaichi can use the meeting to emphasize Japan’s reliability as a partner and to reaffirm her government’s commitment to increased defense spending. Just as important will be her assurances that Japan is not backing out of its $550 billion investment pledge, even though the lower tariffs this achieved have since been deemed illegal by the US Supreme Court. Trump is counting on Japan to help him spur significant US job creation and industrial revitalization. But questions remain about how Japan will fund it all and the potential burden on its taxpayers; and also, about Japanese companies’ willingness to commit amid uncertainties over US red tape and labor shortages. Ultimately, the success of the summit will hinge on the ability to translate headline commitments into concrete projects.

Surging oil prices triggered by the war in Iran are forcing governments across Asia — from Pakistan to the Philippines — to introduce four-day work weeks to cut fuel and electricity consumption.

Insight: The decision by Deliveroo to exit Singapore underscores just how unforgiving the economics of food delivery can be — even in a dense, tech-savvy city that should theoretically favor the model. Despite strong adoption during the pandemic, Singapore’s tightly packed geography and price-sensitive consumers have produced relentless competition between Grab, Foodpanda, and smaller rivals, squeezing profitability in a business already known for thin margins. Deliveroo’s modest 7% market share, compared to Grab’s dominant 69%, left it struggling to achieve the scale it needed to survive.

Impact: The exit also fits into a broader pattern across Asia. Deliveroo withdrew from Hong Kong last year and Taiwan earlier, reflecting a deeper structural reality: in dense urban markets with high delivery overlap, the sector tends to consolidate around just one or two dominant platforms with the scale and ecosystem advantages to endure price wars. In Southeast Asia, that edge increasingly belongs to super-apps like Grab, whose ride-hailing, payments, and loyalty offerings help reinforce delivery economics. The result is a useful reminder that while the region’s digital economy is still expanding quickly, many of its most visible consumer platforms are starting to look less like open growth stories and more like winner-takes-most networks.

Insight: OpenClaw, an open-source AI agent built by an Austrian computer nerd that does everything from reading emails and booking travel to drafting reports and even placing trades, has gone viral in China. It runs on your local computer on top of Large Language Models (LLMs) and can carry out multi-step tasks automatically, without needing handholding at every click. “Raising a lobster,” a phrase inspired by the agent’s red lobster mascot, has become everyday slang, with people of all ages and professions jumping in – from office workers posting demos, to forums trading prompt hacks, to queues forming for installation help. Big tech is rushing in as well: Tencent, Alibaba and ByteDance now offer one-click OpenClaw setups on their clouds, with more integrations on the way. For many users, it marks a first step away from simple chatbots and into the world of AI agents that can actually click, execute, and automate on their behalf.

Impact: With OpenClaw’s rapid rise, AI agents have hit the mass market in China. And social media is turbocharging the transformation of a niche developer tool into a mainstream craze. Its spread over just a few weeks is already testing regulators’ comfort levels. Cybersecurity authorities warn that fragile default settings and high system privileges could let attackers seize full control of a user’s computer, while Beijing has moved to curb use at state-owned banks and government agencies. Tech giants are racing to respond with their own tuned versions and rival agent platforms, hoping to keep users – and their data – inside domestic ecosystems. With authorities already on alert, the question now is how far China, and the rest of Asia, will let autonomous software run before they decide it is time to pull back the claws.

As AI adoption accelerates across Asia, the continent has emerged as a primary target for increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. According to our 2026 Cyber Incident Insights Report, developed in collaboration between S-RM and FGS Global, Asia Pacific saw a 59 per cent surge in ransomware attacks, which was the largest increase globally.

AI now features prominently as both a weapon for attackers and a systemic organizational risk. The proliferation of autonomous AI agents is creating new expansive attack surfaces that many businesses are ill-equipped to defend. In this volatile landscape, the decision to pay a ransom remains a fraught calculation, balanced between legal jeopardy and the growing risk of public disclosure. As scrutiny from regulators and stakeholders intensifies, the premium on governance and strategic resilience has never been higher.

Read our 2026 Cyber Incident Insights Report here.