Understanding Is Delegated

Dear Abbot,

Monk here.

Thursday, and the governments are back at their desks with exercise books.

SUVA. In Suva, opening a digital skills hub at the University of the South Pacific, Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica said digital literacy stood at 48 percent, while more than 85 percent of Fijians used the internet. The government aims to bring 5G to half the population by 2030.

By the government’s own count, 37 people in every hundred are using something they cannot use. In most capitals that is called the cabinet.

BAKU. In Baku, Azerbaijan’s Innovation and Digital Development Agency is raising the digital literacy of the people who run state bodies, from heads of sector up to deputy ministers. “Those responsible for making strategic decisions must understand how technologies function,” said Vusala Gurbanova of the agency. “Otherwise, managing this process will prove difficult for them.”

The course stops at deputy minister. Above that, understanding is delegated.

ASTANA. From Astana, Kazakhstan’s Minister of Science and Higher Education, Sayasat Nurbek, explained artificial intelligence in an interview through about a dozen films and books, from The Terminator to Dune. “We are the boy; AI is the dragon,” he said, of How to Train Your Dragon. He wants students “fully alive, not just fully efficient,” and notes that students who use AI to summarize or draft “score noticeably lower in science.”

Students who let a machine summarize fall behind. The minister has summarized the machine as a dragon.

The boy has been given the list.

“Must I watch all of them?”

“The minister would prefer it.”

“Could I read a summary?”

“Read Dune. It is long enough to count as a year of schooling.”

HANOI. In Hanoi, the Minister of Public Security has sent the National Assembly a draft law on electronic identification. It would reach beyond people and organisations to products, assets, databases, software, digital services, transactions and digital assets.

Soon a Vietnamese database will need identity papers. It will at least know where to find them.

VIENTIANE. In Vientiane, Laos’ Department 509 took applications for digital ID cards at Lao Digital Week 2026. Applicants bring their national ID card and family registration book, as the “original document or a colour photocopy.”

The new identity may be built from a copy of the old one, provided the copy is in colour. Black and white is for forgers.

Lord Wenhui once watched his cook, Ding, take apart an ox. An ordinary cook hacks, Ding told him, and needs a new knife every month; a good cook slices, and needs one every year. His own had lasted nineteen years and was as keen as the day it left the whetstone, because he had stopped looking at the ox and followed the spaces between its joints. This week every office wanted the knife. Baku is showing its deputy ministers where the joints might be. Astana drew the ox as a dragon. Hanoi will give the knife an identity card. Suva counted the hands on the handle, and found more than knew which end to hold.

Nobody’s knife needs to last nineteen years. Most of the plans end in 2030.

Homework set in five capitals. Collected in none.

Yours, with the blade still wrapped in its cloth,

The Monk