Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr Vivian Balakrishnan’s Opening Address at the High-Level Plenary Session on Diplomacy, Singapore International Cyber Week, Singapore, 15 October 2026

Ms Izumi Nakamitsu, the UN Under-Secretary General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs

Ms Gwenda Fong, Chief Executive, the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen

Thirty years ago, in 1996, two apparently unrelated but nevertheless significant events occurred. The UN General Assembly adopted the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and it was also the same year that IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer won a chess game against world champion Garry Kasparov.

These two events in fact are punctuation marks for two different trajectories: on one hand, global governance, quite frankly, has declined; but technology has advanced – and advanced exponentially.

We have come a long way from the victory of Deep Blue. Frontier models today breach new levels of performance almost on a weekly basis.

Quantum technologies are making steady progress. We have not quite reached the threshold of quantum computers capable of breaking all of today's public-key cryptography, but that day will come.

We are also witnessing revolutions in biotechnology and in energy, which will fuel breakthroughs in medicine and industry more generally.

On the other hand, global governance has not kept pace. The multilateral rules-based international order is being eroded at a very fundamental level. And quite frankly, major powers have displayed greater willingness to disregard international law and norms whilst they pursue their strategic objectives defined in a more narrow and transactional way.

What this means is that strategic competition now extends beyond geopolitics – beyond the military dimension. It enters into the fields of economics, science, and technology.

Interdependence, which used to be the formula for peace and prosperity, has now been weaponised. In fact, we are witnessing the age of the weaponisation of everything.

Consequently, our collective ability to address the challenges of the global commons – climate change, pandemics, outer space, emerging technologies, and even cybersecurity – our ability to deal with these issues has also been eroded significantly.

In short, technology is advancing exponentially, and far faster than our ability to govern these technologies. And so we live in an age of great opportunity and risk.

Technology is Changing the Nature of Power and Governance

The question then is that whilst technology is transforming the nature of power, what happens to governance? Who is responsible for governance? How will governance be executed?

The immediate response, usually, is to say it is the responsibility of nation-states.

After all, the traditional Westphalian model of international relations is grounded on the concepts of sovereign equality, territorial integrity, and political independence of all nation-states.

States are supposed to hold a monopoly on the use of force, both for law enforcement domestically and to wage war across borders.

And diplomacy has traditionally and principally been conducted between sovereign nation-states.

Today, I want you to think about whether these presumptions still hold true. Because technology has changed both who wields the power, including coercive power, and how that power is exercised.

Today, some of the most consequential actors in our international system are not nation-states. In fact, some of them are the big technology titans.

If you look at the market capitalisation, the annual revenues, and the profits of some of the biggest digital companies today, it is measured in trillions of dollars. And in fact, some of these companies are worth more than the majority of member states of the UN.

Beyond just money, they control critical technologies on which modern life depends. They control our digital platforms, and more recently, as is clearly evident, they control the pace and the frontier of artificial intelligence.

The decisions made in the boardrooms or by the CEOs of these companies – on access, on deployment, on safeguards – have consequences far beyond national borders. And these decisions affect our economies, our societies, and our national security.

Now actually, there is an uncomfortable historical parallel to this situation – when technological power supplants state power.

During the era of the great chartered trading companies, we had the British East India Company, the Dutch East India Company. What were these companies doing? They were trading. They needed resources from the East, and they were making profits in the West.

The East companies accumulated enormous economic and political power. These companies could raise armies, navies, negotiate treaties, even conquer and administer territories. And in case you have forgotten, the British East India Company played a central role in the colonisation of India – even the founding of Singapore as a free port – and played a central role in the Opium Wars in China. And in fact, the first unequal treaty was signed in 1842 during the Qing Dynasty: the Treaty of Nanking.

Now, I’m not saying that today's Internet titans are the same – I hope they’re not the same. But again, it is worth remembering that we are now at a moment in which private companies possess capabilities and resources that exceed that of most nation-states.

Therefore, think of the question: beyond wielding technological prowess and economic power, who wields influence? Who wields power in the emerging geopolitical stage?

I say this because there has been a lot of focus on superpowers, and the resultant questions on middle powers and on small states. But I’m saying there is another class of actors on the global stage.

Think about the question of war and peace. We already live in an age of lethal autonomous weapons. However the militaries reassure us, the fact is when you’ve got hundreds of incoming missiles, no military has the time to have a human finger on every single trigger.

And we know that AI is already involved in identifying and engaging targets. In fact, we witnessed these systems in Ukraine and in the Middle East.

Just as the industrial revolution and steel transformed warfare during the first two World Wars, I think we can all acknowledge that AI is fundamentally changing, in front of our own eyes today, the operational delivery of warfare.

But there is an even more profound strategic question, beyond the conduct of war. And that is the question of: what happens to the concept of deterrence when artificial intelligence increasingly plays a larger role in decision-making?

Let me give you an example to think through: nuclear deterrence and the concept of mutually assured destruction. That concept actually depends on the presumption that there is a human being on the other side exercising judgment, with human inhibitions, and hopefully, some valuation placed on human life.

You need to understand your adversary's intentions, hopes, and anxieties; make some assessment of your own strategic calculations and your adversary’s calculations; and you also presume an instinct for self-preservation. These are human dimensions to the equation of deterrence and mutually assured destruction.

Now, if AI systems increasingly – and for quite understandable, necessary reasons – play a bigger role in advising, in mediating, making strategic and operational decisions, making decisions to fire or not to fire, can we continue to blithely rely on the presumptions of human agency?

How do you deter an algorithm? I think there’s a panel discussion after this. How do you assess the intentions of the algorithm, both implicit and explicit? How do you anticipate the reaction of algorithms under pressure?

Miscalculations and escalations can occur at machine speed. And frankly, what that means is that it leaves precious little time for human judgment and intervention in these crucial decisions of life and death.

So these questions actually go to the heart of war and peace, and the stability of our international order. Yet, as I started off today’s discussion, the capacity for our international institutions and the processes for dealing with disagreements – much less our ability to even govern these new emerging technologies effectively on the global stage – have all not kept pace.

Diplomacy Must Adapt and Involve All

Where does that leave diplomacy? I think our starting point is that governments still remain ultimately responsible for national security, for international law, and for the decisions on the use of force.

But increasingly, the technologies that shape these decisions – these dilemmas – are in fact developed and controlled by private companies.

Diplomacy can no longer be conducted solely between nation-states at the UN, because somehow or the other, we need to engage the major technology companies – collectively and across national boundaries.

And this is especially important for frontier AI, where a small number of companies are developing capabilities with far-reaching impacts on international security.

And yet, the fundamental challenge is: how do we manage these risks without stifling innovation?

We all know there are three principal types of risk to confront.

First, the risk of losing human control over increasingly autonomous systems. And any programmer or any CEO who sits here and tells you they have absolute control over their autonomous agents is either being economical with the truth or doesn’t understand his or her domain. I am being very candid here.

The second cluster of risk is that these same technologies are quite likely, or almost certainly, going to be misused by malicious non-state actors, because – and certainly in cybersecurity, in scams, in ransomware – they have been turbocharged. The opportunities for criminal activities have increased exponentially. So the threat from non-state actors has expanded.

The third set of risk is the disruptive impact of these technologies on our economies, societies, our political systems; their potential to increase inequality, divisions and polarisation within our societies; and in fact the paralysis of the body politic to make decisions, to agree on facts, to make compromises, and to look out for the collective good for the long term.

And my point today is that actually these are fundamental challenges that no government, no matter how powerful, and no technology company, no matter how innovative, can solve on their own.

We need a new compact between governments, technology companies, and the wider international community.

We need a shared, unvarnished, bald assessment of the risks. We need to develop common norms and guardrails so that we can accelerate the pace of technology and reap its benefits, but also deal with the risks.

So remember: the objective of all this is not to stop technological progress. That’s not possible. But what we are trying to do in a human dimension is to increase trust, safety, and assurance so that innovation can flourish.

Finding the consensus for these fundamental dilemmas will not be easy, especially in our current geopolitical environment.

But we must not be paralysed. We actually have made some progress in building international consensus on norms of behaviour.

Singapore chaired the UN Open-Ended Working Group on ICT Security, and Under-Secretary General Izumi played a crucial role in this group too. And it showed that even in this current fractured world, it is possible to find consensus; it is possible to arrive at tentative conclusions; it is possible to establish norms.

So working with other countries, we have helped to reaffirm the framework for responsible State behaviour in cyberspace, and to establish a permanent Global Mechanism on ICTs Security.

Norms and principles are important, but you can’t stop there. It has to translate into practical cooperation. And this requires trust, expertise, and the ability to develop confidence-building measures, even when we know that consensus remains difficult.

And crucially, speaking as a small state, we believe that these consensus-developing projects on the global stage must include all nation-states. It must include small states and developing countries. The rules and guardrails governing the technologies that affect everyone cannot be the monopoly of a handful of powerful states and big tech companies.

Most of us – in fact, even the superpowers – will not have a monopoly on the complete technology stack. There will always be some level of interdependence.

But there are still many parts of the world which have not even caught up with the last industrial revolution, and they need – all of us need – to get to the frontiers of the next digital AI revolution.

Otherwise, the digital divide will widen, the disparity in economies and military power will also become more entrenched, and we will set ourselves up for a new stage of neo-colonisation.

Beyond the technological frontier, we must also make sure that no one is excluded from the benefits, and no one pays the price of facing externalities whilst profit is privatised.

So we may not all be at the frontier of developing new models.

But we can and should aspire to be at the forefront of deploying these technologies effectively, fairly, comprehensively, to improve lives and to transform our economies.

And to participate meaningfully, it means countries need capabilities. And I will list three capabilities that all countries need.

First, we all need to support foundational research, and we must make sure that there is access to these technologies. Countries need access to research, the tools, the models; the ability to understand emerging technologies, particularly AI and quantum, and the threats and the potential that they represent.

Second, talent. A limited pool of human expertise is increasingly being sought after by all the frontier AI labs, and technology and cybersecurity companies. And if they don’t get into these, they also have a real great market in the illegal and non-state actor market. We must invest in education and training to ensure that all countries maximise their human talent in these emerging digital technologies.

The third area is on infrastructure. All countries need secure and resilient digital systems, reliable connectivity, and access to computing resources.

But not every country – even a superpower – can build this entire stack on its own. And that’s why we continue to believe that international capacity-building is still essential.

Singapore, in our own small way, has sought to contribute.

We conduct joint cyber exercises with our partners – that’s why you’re all here this week. We collaborate on the development of emerging technical standards and emerging technologies.

Regionally, we worked with our ASEAN neighbours to establish the ASEAN Cyber Capacity Programme and the ASEAN-Singapore Cybersecurity Centre of Excellence, and these are aimed at strengthening cybersecurity capabilities and the development and training of our officials and human talent.

Globally, we partner with the UN Office of Disarmament Affairs through the UN-Singapore Cyber Programme. I believe we have trained participants from over 90 countries so far.

Ultimately, no one is safe until everyone is secure.

Cyber threats do not recognise national borders; they do not require passports. A vulnerability in any part of our digital global system will have consequences far beyond it.

Capacity-building is not simply assistance to developing countries. It is an investment in our collective security.

Conclusion: Diplomacy in the Age of AI

So let me conclude. The major point is: where does diplomacy, and how does diplomacy work in this age of artificial intelligence?

If you go back to 1996, where I started: that year, John Perry Barlow issued his Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. He addressed governments, and he said: "You have no sovereignty where we gather."

The Internet pioneers wrongly believed that cyberspace could exist beyond national borders and govern itself. And the Internet companies said, “Don’t worry, trust us”.

Well, I think now, thirty years later, we know that those presumptions are not true. Thirty years later, we know that cyberspace cannot be left to govern itself. We know that all governments everywhere have a responsibility to their domestic population. All governments have sovereign responsibilities to protect their citizens; to safeguard national interests.

But the traditional model of diplomacy between sovereign states must evolve to take into account the changing nature and distribution of power.

In this increasingly interconnected world, no country, no matter how powerful, can secure its digital future on its own.

And as technology becomes more powerful and more pervasive, governments, industry, and the international community must work together to establish shared norms, build capabilities, shape a secure and trusted digital future for all of us.

So I thank you all for being here and making the long journey to Singapore. I wish you another most productive day of discussions. Thank you all very much.