BAKU, Azerbaijan, October 3. Kazakhstan can serve as a bridge between East and West amid the global technology competition between the U.S. and China, former Austrian Chancellor and co-founder of AI cybersecurity company Dream, Sebastian Kurz, said at the AI & Digital Bridge 2026 forum in Astana.
“It's very positive for the world that in the race where we are between the US and China when it comes to technology, there are countries like Kazakhstan, which are at the forefront and at the same time can be a good bridge between the East and the West,” Kurz said.
He added that Kazakhstan is one of the frontrunners when it comes to digitalisation, IT and AI. He highlighted Kazakhstan’s AI infrastructure, including two supercomputers, a Kazakh large language model (LLM) and the Data Center Valley, as well as the country’s digitalization of public services.
“I'm deeply impressed by what's going on here in Kazakhstan,” Kurz said.
Speaking about the development of AI, Kurz also highlighted the growing cybersecurity risks associated with the technology.
“In my AI company, we focus on sovereign AI, and we build solutions to protect the digital infrastructure, because in the days of AI, with all the upsides that we see, there are also downsides,” he said.
According to Kurz, AI can be misused for cyberattacks, with hacker attacks increasingly relying on AI and being carried out on a different scale.
“We support governments all around the world to build their sovereign AI infrastructure, and we build solutions to protect them against very sophisticated cyberattacks,” he said.
