WTC Wrap: 29 August 2026

I had quite a lot of plans for how I would be a very productive bee today, and then I woke up and... I think writing this newsletter (plus a few admin bits and bobs) will be good enough. That said, I've updated the book adoption page with more titles, so make sure you check that out to see if there's anything that catches your fancy.

(1)

As always, the Singapore government really wants people to have babies. During this year's National Day Rally, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong announced up to $70,000 for each Singaporean child by the time they turn 17, in the form of cash gifts, grants, credits, etc. The government is also increasing the amount of childcare leave that parents can get each year, and bringing down the price of childcare at government-supported preschools.

Will this improve Singapore's miserable birthrate? I don't know. Those who don't want kids aren't likely to be moved, but perhaps this might be the final nudge needed for people who've been wanting kids but haven't had any yet? What's being offered is nothing to sniff at, even if it's still far from covering the full cost of bringing up children. Still, there are other stressors and pressures when it comes to raising kids in Singapore—something brought into really sharp relief in Teo You Yenn's Unease: Life in Singapore Families, which I reviewed for the August issue of Mekong Review.

Among the announcements was also the introduction of a Committee of Economic Resilience that will focus on engaging the Malay/Muslim community to upskill and "seize economic opportunities". It sounds nice, but what lens does this racialised approach encourage us to adopt? If the Malay/Muslim community in particular seems to need help with "economic opportunities", what does this tell us about the intersections of class and race, and are there other ways to improve conditions that don't require this racialisation?

One thing that I do agree with, though, is the value of learning Malay. The older I get, the more I feel like it's something that I'm missing. I've made some attempts to learn it—as well as Indonesian, which, to be honest, is not the best idea I've ever had, because now I know tiny bits of Malay and tiny bits of Indonesian, but just about enough to confuse myself over which is which. Super smart of me, I know.

(2)

Grrr, generative AI companies, grrr. At the beginning of this month, Anthropic (developer of Claude) was reported to have "destructively scanned" a ton of books to train its model. From the Guardian:

Under US copyright law, the “fair use” doctrine allows you to make “transformative” use of copyrighted works without the owner’s permission. Anthropic took printed books and scanned them, “transforming” or remediating them into a new, electronic format. They then disposed of the original printed copy: the “destructive” part of destructive scanning. Along the way, Anthropic’s vendors had already sliced the spines and edges of the books, to scan them more easily before destroying them. “One replaced the other,” as Judge William Alsup wrote, noting: “There is no evidence that the new, digital copy was shown, shared, or sold outside the company.”

This practice, while horrific to book lovers everywhere, apparently falls under "fair use" in the US. What about in Singapore? According to the people quoted in this Straits Times story, there's no need for destructive scanning here because our laws clearly allow the use of legally acquired material to train AI. So, if a book was legally purchased in a bookstore, it can be used to train AI.

I'm not sure how I feel about this as a writer. Someone buying a copy of my book and lending it to a friend, or even photocopying a chapter or two to share with a buddy, is not the same as a commercial tech company being able to use my writing—the result of years of hard work doing research, gaining experience, honing my craft—to train a model that generates massive amounts of profit while also having significant negative impacts on the environment and undermining the livelihoods of the very creatives whose work they hoover up for training purposes. There is, at this point in time, no clear, binding way (as far as I know) for writers and artists to opt out of their work being used for AI training, and measures to prevent our work from being sucked into this AI machine tends to require measures that limit our own reach (such as putting things behind paywalls or restricting access in other ways). It just doesn't seem fair that the tech industry can take and take and it's so often the creatives who are expected to pivot and evolve and change to survive.

(3)

Have you heard of "Singapore washing"? It's when companies or organisations from elsewhere—often China—present themselves as entities registered or based in Singapore to leverage Singapore's positive reputation. It's something that's happened for years. This is from a Voice of America article from 2024:

Hundreds of Chinese companies are estimated by business insiders to have quietly re-domiciled or registered themselves in Singapore between November 2021 and November 2022, reports the Financial Times, which notes the exact number of Chinese companies set up is unclear because Singapore does not disclose origin country in its public statistics.

A growing list of Chinese tech companies such as Alibaba, ByteDance, Huawei, Kuaishou, China Telecom and China Mobile have directed their investments to Singapore for data centers and labs. Singapore is ranked as the top innovation hub outside of Silicon Valley, housing 80 out of the world’s 100 tech firms, says Guide Me Singapore, a Hawksford company entity offering business set-up and support services.

In a piece on Academia SG, political scientist Chong Ja Ian argues that more attention needs to be paid to this—we can't just pretend it's not happening or that we can avoid addressing this head-on:

Sometimes euphemistically termed “Singapore pivoting” and cast as a means to help firms and individuals get around restrictions from across jurisdictions, cross-border legal brokerage comes increasingly with reputation and governance risks for Singapore. Much of this has to do with more intense major power competition. Compounding matters is the fact that “Singapore washing” now seems to be caught in espionage and elite capture—on top of possibly money laundering and the circumvention of technological controls. Regardless of their origins, this recent series of events demonstrate that Singapore is a target in a more tumultuous and more competitive international context. A desire to stay out of the fray notwithstanding, Singapore would do well to better protect itself, including by informing the public about risks.

Got some more...

👷🏾‍♂️ From 1 December onwards guidelines for construction work are going to become mandatory to reduce the risk of heat injuries. This includes making cool drinking water available, having emergency ice packs on hand, and introducing a heat stress training programme.

🚑 Singapore has sent a team to Nepal to support Singaporeans who've been affected by the devastating floods. At the time of writing, nine Singaporeans are among those missing after floods on the Nepal–Tibet border. More than 480 people are reported to have perished. The Singapore Red Cross has launched a fundraising appeal—details here.

Music for the weekend! I love the original version of this song, and this ballad version is beautiful, too.