Scholars named in public for entanglement with a foreign regime, international research collaborations quietly binned, and institutional partnerships needing to be torn up by the government – such events are increasingly frequent. The external risks …
A weekend report in The Australian has raised questions about whether the foreign university affiliations of an interpreter for successive Australian prime ministers are a national security issue. The fact that successive Australian leaders – …
The problem with legacy technology is not that organisations do not know the risks. It is that no mechanism forces a decision. Ownership is distributed across operators, boards, procurement teams, regulators and ministers until responsibility effectively disappears and unsupported …
Australians received two security assessments on separate days this week but need to see them as directly related. The first was a rare joint statement from the Five Eyes cybersecurity agency heads on digital threats …
Canberra’s Horizon 2 Action Plan, released on 11 June, and the Department of Home Affairs’ March acceptance of Jill Slay’s independent review of the Security of Critical Infrastructure (SOCI) Act are both serious attempts to …
The UN General Assembly has just strengthened the case for minilateralism, the gathering of small coalitions to act when international institutions fail. On 3 June it had a chance to do what we argued for …
On 3 June in New York, the UN General Assembly faces a choice: will the institution charged with enforcing international rules include a voice that’s prepared to call out their breaches? The General Assembly will …
Governments still organise around discrete shocks, yet the operating environment increasingly delivers continuous, concurrent and cascading pressures across economic, social, technological and environmental systems. Australia needs to shift from managing shocks to managing interacting risks, …
Microsoft’s A$25 billion investment in Australian AI and cloud infrastructure positions the country as a significant node in the Indo-Pacific’s trusted digital architecture. That creates a strategic opportunity – one Australia is well placed to …
The most consequential line in Washington’s new Cyber Strategy isn’t about defence. Released in early March 2026, the document makes clear that the United States intends to use offensive cyber operations as a routine instrument …
The widening conflict involving Iran is causing shipping disruptions that are threatening global fuel supplies. But this is only the latest reminder that economic vulnerability is strategic vulnerability. It reinforces that markets are now arenas …
Australia is experiencing a once-in-a-generation energy build-out. Offshore wind and distributed energy systems are being deployed at speed, reshaping how electricity is generated, coordinated and controlled. The urgency—driven by decarbonisation, reliability and resilience—is exposing a …
