How Arc Brief Works

What Arc Brief Is

Arc Brief is an independent APAC-focused technology and infrastructure intelligence publication. We publish one curated intelligence briefing per category per day — six categories in total — covering data centres, AI adoption, technology policy, investment, and the impact of technology on society across Australia, Singapore, India, Malaysia, Japan, and Southeast Asia.

Arc Brief is written for executives, investors, and policy professionals who need to understand what is happening in APAC technology without reading twelve newsletters a day.

How Stories Are Generated

Each daily briefing is generated using Gemini 2.5 Flash (Google DeepMind), with live Google Search grounding enabled. The model is instructed to find one real, current, significant news story per category, prioritising stories that are primarily about or directly relevant to APAC markets.

The generation prompt includes:

• A requirement to lead with APAC consequences, not global context — US or European stories appear only when they carry direct, named consequences for the region
• Category-specific search guidance and story-size hierarchy (e.g. hyperscaler capital commitments above $1B take priority over smaller announcements in the Data Centers category)
• A live deduplication check: each category reads the titles already published today by other categories and is instructed to cover a different story
• An instruction to prefer open-question framing for contested or emerging topics, and declarative framing for straight announcements

Each story is returned as structured JSON including a headline, subtitle, body (three paragraphs), and an APAC-specific analysis block that addresses the regional significance directly. The APAC perspective is not added as a footnote — it is built into the brief from the first paragraph. Each story also includes tailored country-level angles for Australia, Singapore, and India: not generic summaries, but specific analysis of what the story means for executives, investors, and policymakers in each jurisdiction. A second model — Gemini 2.0 Flash — handles entity extraction, tagging each article with the named locations, companies, and technologies it covers.

Editorial Standards

Stories must be about a real, verifiable event. The model is instructed to search for current news and cite sources. Stories that cannot be grounded in a real, recent event should not be generated — the model is penalised in its instructions for fabricating events.

We apply the following editorial standards to every briefing:

• APAC primacy. US and European stories appear only when they carry direct, named consequences for APAC markets. Even then, the APAC angle must be the lead.
• Significance hierarchy. Within each category, we apply a story-size hierarchy. In Data Centers, for example, hyperscaler capital commitments above $1B always take priority over smaller announcements.
• No wire copy framing. Headlines must lead with the most interesting consequence, tension, or number in the story — not with the company name or the action verb. Banned words in headlines include “announces,” “unveils,” “reveals,” and “launches.”
• Question framing for contested topics. If a story involves an open question, a contested claim, or an emerging trend, the headline is written as a question. Straight announcements use declarative headlines.

Significance Scoring

Every generated article receives a significance score (0–10) computed at generation time based on the content of the article. The scoring criteria are:

• +3 if the story involves an investment or deal value above $1B
• +2 if the story involves a named hyperscaler or major operator (Microsoft, Amazon, AWS, Google, Meta, Blackstone, AirTrunk)
• +2 if the story directly involves Australia or Singapore
• +1 if the story involves India or another APAC market (Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand)
• +1 if the story involves a policy decision or regulatory action affecting multiple markets

On the homepage, the article with the highest significance score is promoted to the lead position when viewing all categories. Within a single-category view, the most recent article leads.

Editorial Content

The long-form editorial series — Issues 001 through 010 and counting — is written and researched by S J Okafor. These are not AI-generated. They represent original analysis of data infrastructure, technology governance, and the forces shaping digital Asia, drawing on primary data, industry reports, and independent reporting.

Corrections

If you identify an error in a daily briefing or editorial, please contact us at the address listed below. AI-generated briefings may contain factual errors despite the safeguards above. We take corrections seriously and will update content where errors are confirmed.

Contact: hello@arcbrief.news