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The numbers from the World Economic Forum’s Executive Opinion Survey 2025 are striking, and they deserve far more attention than they have received.

Key Takeaways

• Business leaders in Southeast Asia are significantly more concerned about AI risks than their global counterparts (ranking them fourth worldwide), fearing the technology will widen existing regional fault lines like inequality, informality, and institutional fragility.
• The AI boom threatens to increase inequality by outpacing the readiness of small-to-medium enterprises and institutions, potentially impacting up to 164 million employees, with women and youth in service and entry-level roles expected to be the most affected by automation.
• The expansion of data centers—essential for AI—poses an environmental risk by driving up power demand in a region heavily dependent on fossil fuels, creating a contradiction to Southeast Asia’s climate transition pledges.

While business leaders and executives worldwide rank the risks from artificial intelligence in tenth place, their counterparts in Southeast Asia place them in fourth. Six ranks higher. That is not a marginal discrepancy; it is a flashing warning light from the people closest to the ground.

To be clear, the executives surveyed are not AI skeptics or technophobes. These are the same leaders overseeing key cloud and AI investment programmes from Microsoft in Indonesia and Malaysia, Singapore’s Green Data Centre Roadmap, and an AI research and development centre from Qualcomm in Vietnam. They are beneficiaries of the boom. And yet, they are more worried than anyone else on earth.

A Region Racing Ahead of Its Own Readiness

The WEF acknowledged that while the AI boom in Southeast Asia has brought about myriad opportunities, it has also caused fault lines to widen. This is not an abstract concern. The fault lines run along the most familiar fractures in the region: inequality, informality, and institutional fragility.

Consider the employment picture. While just under half of firms in the region are beginning to scale AI, this is not the case for small and medium-sized enterprises, where most workers are employed. Even in Singapore, the most digitally advanced economy in the bloc, AI adoption sits at just 15%. 

The technology is advancing at one speed; the institutions and businesses expected to absorb it are moving at another. That gap is where inequality is manufactured.

The WEF report frames the stakes with unusual directness: if large companies capture most of the productivity gains while workers across the labour market face job losses, AI could increase inequality, especially when unemployment already ranks as the second greatest perceived risk in the survey. The respondents are not describing a distant dystopia. They are describing a trajectory already in motion.

Women and Youth Will Bear the Brunt

Perhaps the most sobering finding in the data concerns who stands to lose the most. AI could affect as many as 164 million employees across the region, with women and younger workers expected to be the most impacted.

This is not a coincidence of demographics. It reflects the concentration of women and young people in service, administrative, and entry-level roles, precisely the categories most susceptible to automation. 

In a region where youth unemployment is already a political flashpoint and gender economic participation remains uneven, AI risks amplifying existing disadvantages rather than dissolving them.

The Carbon Cost No One Wants to Acknowledge

The productivity debate dominates headlines, but there is a second, quieter crisis embedded in the region’s AI expansion. 

The WEF warned of the high power demand of data centres in a region where electrical grids are still largely dependent on fossil fuels, a trajectory likely to produce exponentially greater emissions, particularly in Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia.

Southeast Asia has committed, at least rhetorically, to the climate transition. Turbocharging a data centre build-out powered by coal and gas is not a footnote to that commitment. It is a contradiction at its heart. Governments cannot credibly pursue green pledges while subsidizing the infrastructure of an AI economy that runs on fossil fuels.

Governance cannot Keep Waiting

The Brookings Institution has previously noted that Southeast Asia faces significant disparities in AI readiness, governance capacity, and technical expertise, and that uneven institutional capacity and fragmented governance frameworks increase exposure to AI-related risks.

That assessment is not a critique of any single government. It is a structural observation about a region of extraordinary diversity, in language, legal tradition, development level, and institutional strength. ASEAN’s consensus-based architecture, valuable in so many diplomatic contexts, is poorly suited to the pace of technological change. By the time ten nations agree on an AI governance framework, the technology will have moved on twice.

The Region Cannot Afford Complacency

The WEF survey data does not suggest Southeast Asia should slow its AI ambitions. The opportunity cost of falling behind is real, and the region’s young, digitally engaged population is genuinely one of its greatest assets in this transition.

But opportunity and risk are not opposites. They are companions. The business leaders surveyed understand this, which is why their concern levels outpace the rest of the world by such a significant margin. They are watching an enormously powerful technology land in a landscape that is, by any honest measure, not yet ready to manage its consequences.

The question for governments, regulators, and civil society is not whether AI will reshape Southeast Asia. It will. The question is whether the region will shape that transformation deliberately, or simply absorb it.

The survey suggests the people closest to these decisions are already nervous. Policymakers would do well to listen.

Other People are Reading

Costco is betting big on a massive global expansion strategy, aiming to open 30 new warehouses annually over the next decade.

Driven by a combined goal to fix overcrowded stores and record-breaking demand, the retail giant is moving into new territories like Port St. Lucie, Florida, while eyeing a 50-50 split between U.S. and international growth. For the American consumer, this could mean shorter lines, better parking and more access to bulk savings as the company tackles “overburdened” locations.

“We tend to look five to 10 years out in terms of our real estate plans, and we would still see a really good roadmap for 30-plus warehouses a year, which is the goal that we have at least achieving 30 new warehouses a year. The goal that we set for ourselves,” Costco CFO Gary Millerchip said during the company’s second-quarter earnings call.

COSTCO SAYS YOUR NEXT CHECKOUT COULD TAKE UNDER 10 SECONDS THANKS TO NEW AUTOMATED PAY SYSTEMS

“If we want to get into some of these inner cities, you’re not going to find 25 acres available for us to go into. So how can we infill in some of these very strong markets, like Los Angeles, New York, different places, with a unique model for Costco that is going to allow us to continue to expand?” CEO Ron Vachris said.

Customers walk in the parking lot outside a Costco store on Dec. 2, 2025, in Chicago. (Getty Images)

“We’re not only expanding buildings, we’re relocating and we’re also upgrading the insides of a lot of our older warehouses too,” Vachris added. “So we continue to put the money back into the company to drive top-line sales and grow our business globally.”

One of the more notable upcoming expansions is in Port St. Lucie, where years of speculation and endless message board requests have officially resulted in a deal for a brand-new 170,000-square-foot Costco warehouse and gas station, with the city selling the land for the site at $6 million.

While roughly half of the expansion will remain focused on the U.S. market to meet soaring demand, the long-term vision is aggressive for store expansions abroad in countries such as Spain.

“We’re expecting around half, maybe slightly over half, to be in the U.S., and then just around half to slightly under a half to be in the rest of the markets that we operate in. So think of that being Canada, Mexico, Europe, Asia, Australia,” Millerchip said.

With many Costco locations exceeding $300 million to $400 million in annual sales — as noted by former CFO Ron Galanti — the wholesaler is intentionally building new stores near existing high-traffic ones to redirect sales and improve the member experience.

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And to move faster, Costco is no longer just building from the ground up, but also refurbishing old structures, including former home improvement stores and international grocers.

“We tend to focus on being our own toughest competitor or finding ways of how can we lower prices and continue to deliver more value,” Millerchip added. “So generally speaking, there’s nothing I would call out that we see an impact to our membership base when we’re competing against different operators in each market.”

READ MORE FROM FOX BUSINESS

The Justice Department is reportedly pursuing a criminal antitrust investigation of large meatpacking companies after President Donald Trump called for them to face a probe over the higher prices facing consumers.

The Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources familiar with the matter, that while the DOJ indicated it was investigating beef companies following the president’s request, the criminal nature of the probe hasn’t been disclosed previously.

Trump claimed in November that beef companies were manipulating the purchase price of cattle they bought from ranchers while raising prices on consumers. The report noted that criminal antitrust cases typically focus on allegations related to market collusion or price fixing.

The Journal reported that although Trump’s comments placed blame on “majority foreign owned meatpackers,” the investigation is looking at four major companies that sell beef in the U.S. 

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President Donald Trump called for meatpacking companies to be investigated over beef prices last year. (Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle/Getty Images)

The report noted that Tyson Foods, Cargill, JBS and National Beef are the four leading companies operating in that portion of the U.S. market, with Tyson and Cargill both U.S.-headquartered firms, while JBS and National Beef are from Brazil.

Antitrust regulators have looked into the contracts used by beef companies to acquire cattle from ranchers which reference a pricing benchmark that some ranchers have claimed is manipulated, one of the Journal’s sources told the outlet.

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The Justice Department is reportedly investigating meatpacking companies over their dealings with ranchers. (Samuel Corum/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Additionally, the Journal reported that leading beef processors were the subject of an investigation that began in Trump’s first term and continued through Biden’s term, but was closed by the Justice Department weeks before it launched its most recent probe on similar grounds.

Beef prices have surged over the last year amid strong demand from consumers while the U.S. cattle industry is facing a shortage with the cattle supply at its lowest level in over 70 years.

BEEF PRICES IN FOCUS AS TRUMP SIGNS ORDER AIMED AT CONSUMER RELIEF

Beef prices have surged over the last year amid the national cattle shortage. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Drought contributed to the decline in the cattle supply, as it impacted grasslands in states like Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and parts of the Southeast that were used by cattle ranchers’ herds. The loss of those foraging areas caused ranches to liquidate cows and shrink their herds.

Ranchers are also facing rising overhead costs, as items like feed, labor, fuel and equipment expenses have trended higher.

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The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ data from the March release of the consumer price index (CPI) showed that beef and veal prices were up 12.1% over the last year. Within that category, ground beef prices are up 11% while prices for beef steaks have risen 15.2% over that period.

Rising beef prices are drawing renewed scrutiny as federal investigators examine whether market dynamics or potential misconduct, are driving costs higher for American consumers.

FOX Business’ Jeff Flock joined FOX Business’ Stuart Varney on “Varney & Co.” to report on a new Justice Department criminal investigation tied to the surge in beef prices as households continue to feel the strain at grocery stores.

Beef on display at a grocery store in Chicago. (John Gress/Corbis / Getty Images)

POPULAR BABY FOOD BRAND HIT BY ‘CRIMINAL ACT’ AS RAT POISON FOUND IN SEIZED JAR

Government data shows ground beef prices have surged, with the Consumer Price Index putting a pound at $6.86 in March, up from $4.64 in 2021, an increase of roughly 50%. Prices are also about $1 higher than a year ago. Steak has climbed as well, reaching about $12.73 per pound.

These concerns have reached Washington. President Donald Trump, in November, called for action on rising prices and industry practices in a post on Truth Social.

“Action must be taken immediately to protect consumers, combat illegal monopolies, and ensure these corporations are not criminally profiting at the expense of the American People,” he said.

At Lombardi’s Prime Meats in Philadelphia, butcher Rob Passio said customers are adjusting their spending habits as prices rise.

“It is what it is. We gotta eat… Maybe they’re saving on other aspects… Maybe they are not going out to dinner as much. Maybe they’re… saving on their utilities,” Passio said.

PEPSICO REVENUES SOAR AFTER SLASHING PRICES ON LAY’S, DORITOS AMID ‘HOLISTIC’ COMPANY TRANSFORMATION

Industry pressures extend beyond the checkout counter. Passio pointed to rising operational costs affecting businesses across the supply chain.

“Having two businesses, everything’s high. Insurances went up, payrolls up, utilities are up. So could the meat packers at this time be like, you know what, we have to make some extra money. We have to raise the prices to cover these added expenses,” he said.

The investigation comes as the U.S. cattle herd remains at historically low levels and drought conditions continue to impact key livestock regions, factors that have contributed to tighter supply and elevated prices.

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