As digital infrastructure becomes central to managing national systems and services, resilient cybersecurity has emerged as a foundational requirement for modern states. Iraq, a developing country, is undergoing a digital expansion to modernize its technological capabilities to align with international standards, yet faces significant cybersecurity challenges resulting from decades of political instability and underfunded infrastructure. These problems are further driven by fragmented governance, limited coordination between sectors, and outdated legal frameworks that are insufficient in tackling modern cybercrimes. With comparatively limited national cybersecurity capacity, Iraq serves as a critical case study in examining how governance deficiencies can create exposed cyber environments relative to regional peers. This paper analyzes these structural challenges and proposes Project GAIA (Governance Architecture for Information Assurance), a conceptual AI-supported governance framework designed to strengthen national coordination and oversight across critical sectors. The proposed framework integrates established AI Trust, Risk, and Security Management (TRiSM) principles and NIST standards to support structured and accountable decision-making under human supervision.