Elina Noor is a senior fellow in the Asia Program at Carnegie where she focuses on developments in Southeast Asia, particularly the impact and implications of technology in reshaping power dynamics, governance, and nation-building in the region.
Previously, Elina was director of political-security affairs and deputy director of the Washington, D.C. office at the Asia Society Policy Institute. Prior to that, Elina was an associate professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu. She spent most of her career at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies Malaysia, where she last held the position of director, foreign policy and security studies. Elina was also formerly with the Brookings Institution’s Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World.
Between 2017 and 2019, Elina was part of the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace. From 2021 to 2023, she served on the International Committee of the Red Cross Global Advisory Board on digital threats during conflict. She currently serves on the United Nations Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters.
Elina read law at Oxford University. She obtained an LL.M (Public International Law) from the London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London, graduating with distinction at the top of her class. A recipient of the Perdana (Malaysian Prime Minister’s) Fellowship, she also holds an MA in security studies from Georgetown University, where she was a Women in International Security Scholar.
By treating undersea cables as critical infrastructure, Southeast Asian stakeholders can better manage geopolitical, environmental, and more conventional risks threatening cable resilience.
Beyond economic integration, which ASEAN already excels at relative to political-security and socio-cultural matters, Malaysia could build on ASEAN centrality and agency in the following mix of incremental and bold ways beginning next year.
Southeast Asia is bracing itself for the reinstatement of a more transactional and nationalist policy agenda in the White House.
Because strategic, economic, and ideological perceptions of China contain multiple, sometimes contradictory facets in Southeast Asia, receptions of and responses to Beijing diverge across and within state lines.
As Malaysia joins BRICS, a diverse and at times divided group, questions remain about what the country stands to gain—and what it risks.
For the complex network of unwitting suppliers, assemblers and distributors of these otherwise everyday devices, there are serious reputational, even legal, penalties of a different nature to now factor into their business risk management plans.
A conversation about how Malaysia’s foreign policy is shaping up under the Madani government.
The coordinated attack on communication devices used by Hezbollah members in Lebanon has drawn attention to the convergence of the digital and physical cybersecurity conflict. How prepared are countries and organisations to respond to rising cybersecurity risks?
For relatively smaller Southeast Asian nations, multilateralism is simply too important to fail. Done right, it provides a perch of equality and effective cooperation for complex challenges that no one country–even a small group of powerful countries–can handle alone.
A discussion on Malaysia’s approach to geopolitics and outlook for the future.
