Technological constitutionalism in the quantum-AI era: ASEAN's post-sovereign response

Abstract

ASEAN, home to almost 700 million people and a mosaic of legal traditions, now faces growing cybersecurity risks as quantum computing and autonomous AI unsettle encryption standards and regulatory frameworks. This paper argues that law in the region cannot simply adapt reactively to these disruptions. Instead, we advance Post-Sovereign Cybersecurity Constitutionalism (PSCC), a model that treats sovereignty not as fixed territorial authority but as a capacity that can be multiplied through networked cooperation, offering a Southeast Asian counterpart to Europe's sovereignty pooling. PSCC takes practical shape in the Coordinated Adaptive Response Architecture (CARA), which provides legal mechanisms for 24-hour regional incident response, quantum-secure data corridors, and interoperable sovereignty tools. CARA builds on familiar ASEAN practices of musyawarah mufakat (deliberative consensus) and gotong royong (mutual cooperation), embedding them into compliance pathways and adaptive decision protocols designed to preserve autonomy at machine speed. Our contribution is twofold: first, a theoretical lens (PSCC); second, an operational tool (CARA). Taken together, these demonstrate how Southeast Asian jurisprudence can translate local normative traditions into enforceable governance for the quantum-AI era. The article situates this framework within broader debates on technological constitutionalism, showing how non-Western approaches may sustain law's authority even as technological change accelerates.