Japan Courts India and Malaysia to Escape a US-China AI Duopoly

Japan is establishing artificial-intelligence dialogue frameworks with countries including India and Malaysia in an effort to reduce its dependence on the dominant firms in the United States and China, the South China Morning Post reported. The outreach is aimed at partners across the Global South and is intended to promote Japanese companies abroad while building shared standards outside the two leading spheres.

The move reflects a growing recognition among middle powers that the concentration of advanced AI in a handful of American and Chinese companies is a strategic vulnerability rather than a convenience. By assembling a network of like-minded states, Tokyo is trying to create a third pole with enough combined market weight to sustain its own suppliers.

That ambition runs directly into the reality that the underlying chips, models and computing capacity remain concentrated in the two leaders. Whether a coalition of middle powers can build genuine independence, or only a lighter dependence, is the question that will determine if a real third bloc emerges.