During a pandemic, some in Australia may argue that any excess defence funding should be allocated to rapid antigen tests and a creaking hospital system. But there’s good reason to ensure funding is held to …
Articles by: "Lesley Seebeck"
Having a coherent strategy matters. It allows the effective allocation of scarce resources. It provides a framework against which events and trends can be assessed, helping to guide bureaucratic action, diplomatic activity and military posture. …
So we’ve gone all in. The trend lines have been there for a while, but as several commentators have pointed out already, the awkwardly named AUKUS is a step change in the level of commitment …
Ten years ago, in September 2011, Australia and the US stretched ANZUS to cover cyberspace. That year’s AUSMIN communiqué addressed the challenges posed by growing cyber threats, specifically endorsing a joint statement on cyberspace. The …
Canberra, we have a problem. The collapse of the Afghan government and security forces; the victory of the Taliban; the abandonment of Afghans, particularly women; the unruly scramble to evacuate; and the apparently limited consultation …
The Indo-Pacific looms large as an arena of intensifying geopolitical competition. Typically, governments look to their militaries to balance competitors in such circumstances. But the great-power competition we’re seeing now is not merely military—it’s political, …
In the modern economy, all companies are software organisations, whether they realise it or not. So too Australia’s federal government. But how the government works, how it accounts for money and allocates funds, have not …
An evergreen question posed by ministers and commentators in Australia is why we haven’t seen government operations and service delivery shift to a more agile, cloud-based system. Late last year, Matt Yannopolous, head of the …
At the recent Australian e-commerce summit, Prime Minister Scott Morrison praised technology adoption as a means of driving economic returns. Australia doesn’t need to be a Silicon Valley, he said, it just needs to be …
Discussions on technology and strategy in Canberra typically lead down one of three paths. The first is military implications and applications, usually in the context of our relations with the United States. The second is …
Originally published 11 July 2019. This year is proving to be something of a watershed in technology. Government and professional bodies are considering or acting on controls around technologies such as artificial intelligence and encryption. The United States, like Australia and New Zealand, banned …
Making judgements about the state of cybersecurity isn’t easy. Much depends on the metrics we use to measure success and failure, where it’s all too easy to fall into the trap of doing things right …