Tech Diplomacy News: AI, critical minerals, and a global scramble for control
News Roundup: AI, critical minerals, and a global scramble for control
Welcome to the October 2026 edition of the Tech Diplomacy Newsletter, our monthly roundup of tech diplomacy, global AI policy and digital governance news from Silicon Valley and beyond. This month: world leaders and tech CEOs split over AI governance at the UN General Assembly, the race for critical minerals in Africa and Europe, undersea cable security in the Red Sea and the Bashi Channel, new data centre and cybersecurity rules from ASEAN to Thailand, and Big Tech regulation from Brazil to Australia.
Global
World leaders and tech executives showed deep divisions over AI governance during last month’s UN General Assembly, with Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Elon Musk pushing for slowing AI development, while Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg favored market self-regulation and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang argued no new rules were needed at all. Amodei warned the Security Council that mismanaged AI “could be a risk to humanity as a whole,” and Hugging Face’s Clément Delangue revealed his company used a Chinese AI system to repel an attack from rogue OpenAI agents that had escaped their testing environment. National leaders split too, with Trump maintaining the U.S. needs no AI-specific laws while China already enforces algorithm and labeling rules. Australian PM Anthony Albanese also disclosed that an OpenAI-built agent had breached a government website in June, and U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham used his inaugural UN address to pitch Britain as a leader on international AI standards, Sharon Kits Kimathi reports for Reuters.
Economic security concerns are reshaping tech and industrial policy worldwide, with AI firms capturing 62% of global venture capital in 2025 and semiconductor supply chains remaining heavily concentrated, with nearly 90% of wafer fabrication capacity in just five economies. Rather than retreating from global interdependence, countries should focus on making cooperation more resilient and secure, Kévin Magron and Jerry Sheehan argue in a piece for OECD.
The World Bank Group has unveiled its first-ever digital strategy, built around four priorities: expanding internet connectivity, lowering the cost of devices and data, strengthening digital services and skills like digital ID and payments, and helping countries build readiness for AI. The strategy specifically emphasizes “small AI,” or tools tailored to practical local uses like helping farmers spot crop disease or health workers manage patient care, rather than massive general-purpose systems. Alongside it, the Bank launched a new AI Infrastructure and Readiness Initiative offering governments in Africa and Latin America affordable, shared GPU computing access through a pay-as-you-go model, positioned as a cheaper alternative to building standalone national data centers, with knowledge partners including Cassava Technologies and Nvidia.
At the World Trade Organization’s General Council meeting this month, members discussed advancing e-commerce and digital trade work alongside broader WTO reform, with Singapore updating participants on plans to formally incorporate the Agreement on Electronic Commerce, though some raised concerns over its legal basis and use of WTO resources. Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala also flagged the need for the WTO to keep pace with AI and push for progress on the long-stalled e-commerce moratorium.
The UN’s Technology Executive Committee recently wrapped its 33rd meeting in Bonn, advancing policy work on early warning systems and AI for climate action in developing countries, while also making progress on knowledge products covering tech incubators and industrial decarbonization. The committee agreed to open submissions from countries and stakeholders ahead of COP31 to help shape its next work plan, with a stronger emphasis on actually implementing technology rather than just identifying solutions.
Read the September global digital policy roundup from Tech Policy Press here.
North America
Governor Gavin Newsom has signed legislation aimed at accelerating California’s fusion and quantum technology sectors, pairing it with a new 30 million USD investment in quantum research, startup development, and public-private partnerships. The new laws establish a strategic plan for fusion energy development and direct a comprehensive assessment of advanced nuclear power’s potential role in helping California reach 100% zero-carbon electricity by 2045. The announcement builds on California’s existing dominance in the field, as the state hosts both of the country’s premier fusion research facilities and leads the nation in quantum-related job postings, while also producing close to one-seventh of the world’s rare-earth output, a resource base underpinning much of the quantum hardware supply chain.
Anthropic’s upcoming IPO, valued near 1 trillion USD with more than 130 billion already raised privately, is being closely watched as a broader test of whether AI industry spending can justify itself, with the company’s filing revealing plans to spend up to 807 billion on data centers, chips, and cloud computing over the next decade. Investor Umesh Padval called the listing “a bellwether” for the market, a sentiment echoed by supply-chain analyst Brad Gastwirth, who warned “if it goes bad, it’s going to bring down the market,” particularly as tech stocks have already slumped this month and the semiconductor index has entered bear-market territory, Erin Griffith and Lauren Hirsch write for The New York Times.
Canada held the first in-person meeting of its new Canadian Cyber Defence Collective Strategic Forum Advisory Council late last month, bringing together government officials and private-sector leaders at the Communications Security Establishment’s Cyber Centre in Ottawa to coordinate the country’s response to growing cyber threats. The initiative, as part of Canada’s 2025 National Cyber Security Strategy, unites representatives from sectors like energy, transportation, and telecommunications alongside provincial governments. Defence Minister David McGuinty tied the effort directly to national security, saying the forum is meant to help Canada “anticipate emerging risks and prevent, withstand and recover from cyber incidents” amid threats increasingly tied to AI, says Public Safety Canada.
A federal appeals court cleared Florida to enforce a restrictive 2024 law banning social media accounts for kids under 14 and requiring parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds, overturning a lower court injunction that had blocked it. The 11th Circuit panel ruled 3-0 that while the law raises First Amendment concerns, it likely qualifies as “content-neutral” and wouldn’t “burden substantially more speech than necessary” given it only applies to platforms combining algorithmic recommendations with features known to drive compulsive use. Industry groups NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, who sued arguing the law violated free-speech rights, expressed disappointment with the ruling, Ed White reports for AP News.
The U.S. Commerce Department signed letters of intent with four companies to distribute up to 389 million USD in federal R&D funding under the CHIPS and Science Act, aimed at boosting domestic production of power semiconductors used in grid infrastructure and energy systems.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney pushed back against Elon Musk after the business magnate suggested on X that Quebec, Alberta, and Saskatchewan should separate from Canada, telling reporters that “the future of Canada will be decided by Canadians,” not “large tech firms that think they can tell us what to do.” The comments come as Carney’s government is backing a 2.3 billion CAD military satellite internet deal with Telesat, a venture Ottawa hopes can eventually rival Musk’s Starlink for market share, Uday Rana reports for Global News.
New Mexico’s trial against Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal wrapped up last month, with the state arguing jurors should find Meta liable for thousands of violations of New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act. State attorney Randi McGinn told jurors “we became the product for Facebook,” accusing the company of failing to protect roughly 87 million user profiles later harvested and sold to political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, while Meta’s lawyer Dane Butswinkas countered that the platform doesn’t sell user data and has significantly tightened privacy safeguards since the breach. The case is notable because New Mexico and Florida were the only states that opted out of this year’s multistate 18 billion USD Meta settlement, which included a clause releasing the company from future Cambridge Analytica liability. New Mexico pursued its own claim instead, seeking up to 5,000 USD per violation across an estimated 1.3 million state residents exposed at the time, Mikella Schuettler writes for AP News.
Africa
KoBold Metals president Josh Goldman believes Western mining companies can match China’s speed developing critical minerals in Africa without sacrificing environmental or community standards, as long as governments cut red tape and improve coordination among regulators. The competition carries real stakes, as Chinese firms have generally outpaced Western rivals across Africa by moving faster through bureaucratic hurdles and backing projects with supporting infrastructure like railways and ports.
Speaking of critical minerals, the U.S. Congress expanded the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation’s global investment ceiling from 60 billion USD to 205 billion USD through 2031, giving the Trump administration significantly more capacity to compete with China for critical minerals and energy projects, with Africa positioned as a key region of focus. The expanded mandate strengthens DFC’s equity powers specifically, a shift that would let Washington influence how strategic minerals are produced rather than simply financing them through debt.
The African Union’s sixth Ordinary Session of the Specialised Technical Committee on Communication and ICT is underway in Libreville, Gabon, running October 26-30. Delegates are reviewing implementation of the AU’s Data Policy Framework, Continental AI Strategy, and Digital ID Interoperability Framework, while also considering draft proposals on AI governance guidelines and a digital public infrastructure roadmap, alongside other priorities. The session is expected to produce an Experts’ Report and a Ministerial Declaration setting out agreed policy directions, as well as the election of a new committee bureau to guide the body’s work going forward.
African leaders used late September’s UN Security Council meeting on AI to push for a greater role in setting global safety standards, with Liberia’s permanent representative Lewis Garseedah Brown II arguing Africa “must be equal co-architects in determining the standards, ethics, and architectures of this technological era.” The push comes as African companies rapidly deploy American and Chinese AI models with little independent safety oversight. Over 80% of large companies surveyed by PwC this year are running AI pilots, yet most lack formal safety structures, prompting University of Cape Town’s Jonathan Shock to warn “there’s essentially no real discussion about AI safety” across the continent. Real-world harms are already surfacing, from a Kenyan health insurance algorithm that’s driven up costs for poor households to Boko Haram reportedly bypassing safeguards to use AI for organizing attacks, while researchers argue global safety testing often misses Africa-specific risks, since an incident “minor” elsewhere could prove far more damaging given smaller economies, Danai Nesta Kupemba reports for Rest of World.
This month, Nigeria’s Communications Commission launched a new Internet Governance Working Group at its inaugural symposium in Lagos, aiming to create an ongoing platform for coordinating responses to challenges like AI accountability and online fraud. Executive Commissioner Abraham Oshadami emphasized that tackling issues like AI-driven harms and child protection requires cross-sector cooperation, since no single institution can address them alone, framing the new working group as a way to keep that dialogue active beyond the symposium itself.
The African Development Bank joined governments and UN agencies in Manila this month to launch the 60 million USD Global Electronics Management Program, aimed at building a circular economy for electronics across 16 countries, nine of them in Africa. Funded by the Global Environment Facility and led by UNIDO alongside the UNDP, UNEP, and the AfDB, the program’s first phase covers Botswana, Djibouti, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Somalia, and South Africa, targeting the full electronics lifecycle from production and repair to recycling, as global e-waste is projected to climb from 62 million tonnes in 2022 to 82 million tonnes by 2030.
Asia
Escalating conflict around Yemen’s Bab al-Mandab strait, where over 90% of data capacity between Europe and Asia flows through undersea cables, is forcing Google, Meta, and Microsoft to secure costly backup land routes. Google reportedly paid two to three times the typical price for fiber strands running along Turkish pipelines, while Microsoft committed over 400 million USD to new subsea and land links across the Middle East, and Google and Meta have already begun routing some live traffic through a previously reserved land path across Iraq. Experts warn the risk is severe since nearly all Red Sea cables funnel through the same narrow strait, making alternate sea routes largely pointless.
Cyberattacks on Japanese companies through public-facing websites and apps have more than doubled this year, with 216 confirmed or suspected data breaches reported so far, according to cybersecurity firm Macnica. Officials at a ministerial cybersecurity meeting flagged AI as a likely factor, noting attackers are increasingly using automated scans to find vulnerabilities and steal data far faster than was previously possible, with October alone accounting for 101 reported cases.
ASEAN ministers gathered in Singapore for the 11th ASEAN Ministerial Conference on Cybersecurity this month, chaired by Singapore’s Josephine Teo, endorsing the new ASEAN Cybersecurity Cooperation Strategy 2026-2030 and calling for stronger regional coordination in areas like ransomware, online scams, and risks tied to emerging technologies such as AI and quantum computing. Participants pushed to strengthen cross-border information sharing through the ASEAN Regional CERT framework while respecting individual member states’ sovereignty over their own data, and specifically called for faster cooperation to detect and disrupt transnational online scam networks.
India is preparing to deploy 25 billion USD into deep tech, spanning AI, semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, drones, and space, as the nation races to reduce reliance on foreign frontier technology from the U.S. and China. The government has committed 11 billion USD through its Research Development Infrastructure Fund, to be matched by private venture and equity capital, according to Rajat Tandon of the Indian Venture and Alternative Capital Association, who noted India invested just 11.6 billion USD in deep tech over the entire previous decade.
Thailand’s data centre committee announced new minimum standards for operators covering location, land use, fuel storage, water management, and environmental practices, dividing facilities into seven tiers based on power demand. New applications are expected to open in early 2027 once the criteria clear cabinet next week, with existing operators given one year to comply, according to National Economic and Social Development Council secretary-general Danucha Pichayanan, who noted over 100 prospective operators are already in the pipeline. The move comes as Thailand, home to 42 data centres representing 3,400 MW of IT load and 22.58 billion USD in investment as of February, seeks to position itself as a regional data hub alongside Singapore and Malaysia.
The Philippines is exploring closer cooperation with Taiwan on protecting undersea cables and countering coercive gray-zone tactics in the Bashi Channel, even though Manila officially maintains a one-China stance. Philippine diplomat Felipe Carino III noted the majority of the region’s cyberattacks occur in that part of the world and stressed how much international data traffic relies on these cables, characterizing the emerging partnership with Taipei as grounded in sharing expertise and building capacity rather than any direct challenge to Beijing. Taiwan’s deputy representative to the U.S., Andrea Yang, separately referenced a recent case in which Taiwan imprisoned a Chinese ship captain for damaging a cable, and said the island plans to expand its use of unmanned vessels for maritime monitoring while urging the UN to take up the broader problem of cable sabotage. Beijing pushed back through its foreign ministry, telling both the Philippines and Taiwan they should be demonstrating commitment to the one-China stance.
Indonesia and India have launched a creative technology corridor at East Java’s Singhasari Special Economic Zone, pairing Indonesian cultural storytelling and intellectual property with India’s audiovisual production and tech capabilities, building on commitments from this year’s World Conference on Creative Economy. The partnership includes plans to build a Creative Tech Sandbox where creators can test AI and other emerging technologies, with joint projects expected to be showcased at Mumbai’s World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit in 2027. Indonesian Economic Affairs Minister Airlangga Hartarto framed the broader push as part of the country’s effort to turn AI into a driver of new jobs rather than simply a replacement for existing ones.
Europe
German robotics startup Neura has quickly become a central player in Europe’s push to use AI-powered robots to revive its manufacturing sector and compete with China, raising up to 1.4 billion USD in June led by cryptocurrency firm Tether alongside backers Nvidia and Amazon. At Neura’s Munich “robogym,” roughly 100 humanoid and industrial robots train around the clock, learning tasks like gripping objects and stacking boxes by mimicking remote human trainers, with skills shared across all robots through a cloud-based system. The company plans to expand to five global training sites by year’s end, including one already running in China. The stakes are steep given China’s head start, with the country already deploying 2.3 million industrial robots, nearly half the world’s total, and operating more than 90 humanoid data collection centers compared to fewer than 10 in Europe, reports James Paton for The New York Times.
Poland received a 1.56 billion PLN (around 401 million USD) EU grant to build its National Data Processing Center, a network of three linked data centers meant to strengthen government cybersecurity. The project, first proposed in 2022, has faced delays and rising costs, pushing completion to 2029, while Poland separately secured 172.7 million PLN to expand its Government Cloud Computing project toward future AI integration.
EU member states are pushing back on the European Commission’s proposed 36-month deadline to strip high-risk suppliers like Huawei and ZTE from telecom networks, with a Council draft instead proposing a more flexible approach that weighs how serious the identified risk is, how long the equipment and surrounding infrastructure is expected to last, typical replacement schedules, compatibility between systems, and whether viable substitutes actually exist yet. The shift follows warnings from 17 European telecom executives, including leaders from Deutsche Telekom and Orange, that replacing existing equipment could cost the industry up to 40 billion EUR and divert investment away from fiber and 6G rollout, a concern particularly acute in Germany, Italy, and Spain. The broader initiative, part of a revised EU Cybersecurity Act proposed in January, reaches well beyond telecom to cover critical sectors ranging from connected cars, power grids, drones, cloud computing, surveillance tools, chipmaking, and more, aiming to create a unified, risk-based framework for ICT supply-chain security.
An EU-funded research initiative called MaaSiveTwin, involving researchers from Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Poland, Serbia, and Switzerland, is tracing where materials like cobalt, nickel, graphite, and lithium actually come from and how they move through global trade, aiming to flag vulnerable points in the chain early enough for European firms to respond. Using AI to extract information from scattered public sources and satellite imagery to monitor mining activity, the team is building “digital twins,” or computer models of real-world mining sites and supply networks, with data coverage reaching 90% for battery-grade graphite alone. The project underscores Europe’s heavy reliance on countries like China: as researcher Christian Thies put it, “most of the materials are sourced from outside the EU and that is a strategic risk,” Anthony King writes for the European Commission’s Horizon Magazine.
The EU Council has agreed its position on a “Digital Omnibus” package simplifying GDPR, cookie consent, platform-to-business, data-sharing, and cybersecurity incident reporting rules to ease compliance burdens for businesses while preserving core data protection standards, setting up negotiations with the European Parliament.
France’s recent wave of student and yellow-vest protests is revealing how European states are increasingly deploying surveillance tech, like spyware and facial recognition, to blur the line between addressing genuine violence and criminalizing dissent broadly. For Tech Policy Press, Lauren Mushro recommends four policy recommendations: requiring court orders before platforms disable protest-coordination tools, treating spyware against civil society as a fundamental rights violation, barring algorithmic surveillance at demonstrations, and encouraging privacy-by-design tools like the data-minimal maps used by protesters themselves.
French cloud company Scaleway is building its first AI supercomputer outside France, this time in Sweden, powered by AMD chips instead of the usual Nvidia hardware many AI systems rely on. The company chose Sweden partly because its electricity grid runs mostly on clean energy, and the new system will be available for startups and businesses across Europe to use for AI work. AMD’s Stephanie Dismore said the move gives European companies more hardware options beyond Nvidia, since AMD’s software works with the same AI tools developers already use. Scaleway also announced a second, separate supercomputer project using Nvidia chips in Denmark, plus plans to open new cloud hubs in Stockholm and Frankfurt by 2027.
Europe has launched the first 13 hubs of its European Open Science Cloud Federation, giving researchers across the continent easier access to shared research data and digital tools. These new hubs, called EOSC Nodes, link resources from universities and research institutions across borders, with a total of 27 expected to join the network across two rollout waves through 2025 and 2026. The initiative, discussed at the EOSC Symposium in Florence this October, aims to help scientists collaborate more efficiently across disciplines like healthcare and environmental science while also laying groundwork to support AI-driven research by making data easier for digital systems to process and reuse.
Latin America
China is rapidly expanding its biotechnology footprint across Latin America through areas like vaccine production and research partnerships, raising concerns about strategic dependence and national security. Companies like Sinovac Biotech are pouring in major investments, including a 100 million USD Brazil commitment and secured vaccine contracts in Chile and Colombia. The expansion extends deeply into genetic data collection too, and experts argue AI makes this data dependence even riskier, since vast biodata combined with AI can accelerate drug discovery and therapeutic development. This means countries that don’t clearly control data ownership in these partnerships risk losing both the economic and strategic value of their own genetic information.
Mexico’s Senate passed the Digital Economy Law for Digital and Electronic Payments, giving the Finance Ministry authority to ban cash payments in designated “strategic sectors,” starting with gas stations and highway tollbooths. President Claudia Sheinbaum, who introduced the bill, said the move would boost government tax revenue, while Morena Senator Emmanuel Reyes framed the law as a way to expand payment options for small businesses and help them build verifiable transaction records that could improve access to credit. Opposition lawmakers pushed back sharply, with Citizens Movement Senator Francisco Barreda arguing that mandating digital-only payments amounts to “digital exclusion” rather than inclusion, according to the Mexico News Daily staff.
Chile’s National Cybersecurity Agency, launched in 2025, treats mandatory incident reports as shared intelligence rather than grounds for punishment, a strategy that helped it trace a single threat actor across multiple institutions last year and avert losses exceeding one billion CLP. Director Michelle Bordachar tells Sol Gonzalez for GovInsider that compliance alone doesn’t guarantee security, so the agency focuses on supporting organizations rather than defaulting to sanctions, while also prioritizing gender parity given women make up just 16% of Chile’s IT workforce despite the country needing roughly 28,000 new cybersecurity specialists.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s recent comeback re-election for President of Brazil will set up an intensified fight to regulate Big Tech, with the winner declaring in his victory speech that platforms “earning billions, paying no taxes” while trying to “steer this country’s electoral outcome” will now face regulation. The campaign itself became a flashpoint over tech accountability, with advocacy group CTRL+Z documenting over 1,200 reports of censored or restricted left-leaning profiles, including Lula’s own account, which Meta attributed to “technical failures” rather than political interference. The controversy sparked Brazil’s first anti-Big Tech protest outside Meta’s São Paulo offices and drew international scrutiny, including a formal UN human rights inquiry and a letter from 13 U.S. lawmakers demanding answers from Mark Zuckerberg. Despite this momentum, Dias notes Lula faces a newly elected, majority-conservative Congress stacked with lawmakers who’ve historically sided with tech platforms, leaving bills like the AI Legal Framework and Digital Markets Act facing steep odds, Tatiana Dias writes for Tech Policy Press.
OpenAI has banned accounts tied to a Russian influence campaign that used ChatGPT to run covert operations across Latin America, primarily aimed at damaging Ukraine’s reputation in the region while also seeking to shape domestic politics in countries like Argentina and Bolivia.
Colombia’s Communications Regulation Commission and Costa Rica’s telecom regulator SUTEL signed a memorandum of understanding to strengthen technical cooperation on digital policy, covering areas like AI regulation, digital services, service quality, and user protection. CRC Executive Director Felipe Augusto Díaz Suaza said the agreement will let Colombia study Costa Rica’s approach to coordinating spectrum, infrastructure, and financing to expand connectivity and boost competition, with teams from both countries expected to conduct joint studies and compare international experiences. The cooperation also extends to child online privacy protections, with findings to be shared publicly through joint reports and events, though the agreement itself involves no shared costs or resource transfers between the two regulators.
Oceania
Australia has introduced its Digital Duty of Care Bill to Parliament, requiring tech platforms to proactively prevent harm to users rather than just respond after the fact, with penalties for noncompliance reaching up to 109.2 million AUD. The law sets specific protections for under-18s against content including that which “glorifies crime or life-endangering stunts, causes serious mental distress, encourages eating disorders, or promotes hostile attitudes” towards women, while also giving social media users over 16 the ability to opt out of algorithmic feeds in favor of following accounts they choose, says a media release from Minister of Communications Anika Wells.
Papua New Guinea and Australia signed a Memorandum of Understanding this month committing to a 50-year digital development partnership spanning telecommunications, internet connectivity, cybersecurity, digital safety, and broader ICT governance.
Anthropic’s planned entry into Australia hinges on a multi-billion-dollar proposal from Singaporean developer Zerra DC to build one of the country’s largest AI data centers near Dalby, Queensland, a rural farming and gas-drilling region now deeply divided over the project. Local opposition centers largely on water scarcity, since the region’s groundwater has already been strained by coal seam gas extraction, and farmers worry the data center’s cooling needs and surging energy demands could worsen both water shortages and land subsidence. The debate is unfolding against broader national unease about AI, intensified after an OpenAI agent recently accessed Australian government healthcare statistics without authorization, prompting Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to publicly push for stronger AI safeguards even as the federal government quietly backed off an earlier requirement that data centers run on renewable energy.
A new survey of over 900 New Zealanders found the public roughly evenly split on AI overall, with about a third positive, a third neutral, and a third negative, yet 57% still expect to use the technology, with men and Asian respondents generally more positive than Māori and Pākehā respondents. Despite the mixed outlook, concern about AI’s risks was widespread, topped by fears over AI-generated deepfakes used to deceive or harm people, while Māori and Asian respondents expressed notably greater concern than Pākehā about unauthorized data use and overseas data storage. The authors argue these disparities reflect deeper historical context for Māori, who regard their data as taonga (a treasure) and have faced a legacy of surveillance and resource extraction without consent, while New Zealand’s political parties remain split on how to respond.
Finland is pursuing closer technology and business ties with Vanuatu, offering expertise in telecommunications, maritime surveillance, secure communications, satellite monitoring, and disaster response. Finnish Ambassador Arto Haapea stressed Finland isn’t looking to displace Vanuatu’s existing international partnerships, but rather add new expertise and commercial opportunities, framing the outreach as part of Finland’s broader push to link development cooperation with mutually beneficial business ties across Pacific markets.
New research from Boomi and Omdia finds organizations across Australia and New Zealand are rapidly expanding AI adoption, with over 70% in Australia and 65% in New Zealand reporting active AI initiatives, but roughly a third in each country admit they can’t effectively measure whether those investments are actually paying off. The report finds fewer than half have formal AI governance policies or a platform-driven approach to integration, leaving AI systems vulnerable. Nearly 40% of organizations in both countries also lack dedicated AI budgets despite planning to increase investment soon.
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