BATIC 2026: How Global Tech Giants are Shaping the Future of Asia-Pacific AI Infrastructure

BATIC 2026 Unites Global Digital Leaders to Accelerate AI-Driven Growth Across Asia-Pacific

That same concentration makes the Bali International Convention Centre a convenient reconnaissance target for anyone mapping Asia-Pacific's submarine cable and AI infrastructure deals. Telkom Indonesia's wholesale arm is selling the future of regional connectivity — bandwidth for hyperscalers, cross-border routes for the next wave of data centers. Threat actors already know who is signing what.

The pitch

Telkom's wholesale and international director used his press remarks to frame submarine cable expansion as the backbone of AI growth. More bandwidth for data centers. More cross-border routes for hyperscalers. Telin is positioning itself as the regional B2B extension of TelkomGroup, courting international operators with promises of a "digital foundation of the future."

President Director Dian Siswarini delivered the expected liturgy: collaboration, resilient digital ecosystems, Indonesia as the next digital economy growth center. The conference, now in its eleventh year, has grown past telecom into a strategic platform for regulators, technology providers, investors, and hyperscalers. Standard expansion of scope. Standard expansion of attack surface.

The threat model

A conference that compresses regulators, telecom operators, hyperscalers, and infrastructure vendors into one venue is also a single point of intelligence collection. The submarine cable routes being marketed as strategic assets this week are the same routes an adversary would need to map for disruption.

CrowdStrike's reporting, highlighted this month, describes AI accelerating ransomware operations across Europe. Supply Chain Digital tracks capacity gaps pushing operators toward AI agents with minimal human oversight. Michigan Farm News documents ransomware campaigns against food and agriculture — industries once considered beneath the radar.

The convergence is the point. AI compresses reconnaissance. Automated agents handle lateral movement. The infrastructure deals signed in Bali will define the dependency graph attackers exploit next quarter.

What to watch

Delegates leaving Bali with new cable consortium memberships and cloud interconnect agreements should treat those partnerships as supply chain risk, not just revenue. The vendor ecosystem convening in Nusa Dua is the same ecosystem being probed by AI-assisted ransomware crews.

Telkom's positioning as a regional submarine cable hub makes its B2B customer base a high-value target set. Any breach at the carrier layer cascades downstream — into the AI workloads now leaning on that bandwidth, into the enterprise customers, into the critical infrastructure quietly depending on cross-border routes.

The conference will publish its post-event press releases. Read the partnership announcements. Then ask which one you would least like to see in a threat intelligence brief six months from now.