Kuala Lampur, June 29 -- Have you ever ordered food using Grab, paid with Touch 'n Go, or watched a YouTube video? Malaysia has been great at using other people's digital tools. Now, we need to learn how to build some of our own. First, what actually makes up the digital economy? Think of it like a car. The hardware is the physical stuff you can touch - the engine, the wheels, the body. In the digital world, that means: Fibre optic cables that carry internet traffic, data centres, 5G towers, and the chips inside your phone or laptop The software is the brains - that tell the hardware what to do. That means: Apps like Grab, WhatsApp, or Netflix, Cloud platforms to store data, AI models (like ChatGPT), and payment systems.

The problem is m...