Singapore
The neutral node of the Pacific century.
Kernel
Singapore is the city-state that turned itself into infrastructure. Lee Kuan Yew's government took a swampy port at the Strait of Malacca and built, deliberately, a transit, finance, manufacturing, biotech, and now AI-cloud hub. By 2025 Singapore hosts the regional headquarters of every major U.S. tech company, the Asian back-office of every major bank, the world's third-largest currency-trading market, and (in NUS and NTU) two universities consistently in the global top 30.
What it is now becoming
The neutral cloud-and-AI hub of the U.S.-China bifurcation. Both sides operate substantial infrastructure here; neither side can credibly demand exclusion of the other. Sovereign-AI initiatives from across the region (Indonesia, Vietnam, Australia) often anchor in Singapore for diplomatic reasons. The city-state's role for the next twenty years may be the geopolitical analog of Switzerland's role in 20th-century banking.