So, 71 years after its creation, the Australian Signals Directorate has stepped out of the shadows. Last night ASD Director-General Mike Burgess gave probably the most broad-ranging public outline of the work of a modern, …
Articles by: "Michael Shoebridge"
The alleged murder of Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of Saudi Arabia is one of four big events in our world this year showing that human rights and hard-edged national security have converged. It’s not …
Populists get a bad name. They are accused of riding the wave of public sentiment to disrupt and overturn good, sensible things. Populists can, however, sometimes spot changes before others do—and there are times when …
I remember a fear strategic thinkers had less than a decade ago was that the US and China would agree between themselves how they would share power and influence, and that they would govern the …
The relationship between the Australian and Chinese governments would benefit from a clearer declaration from Australia about what is and is not in our national interest in engaging with the Chinese state and economy. This …
When governments send their militaries into conflicts, the forces usually suffer combat losses—deaths of people and destruction of machines. Between East Timor in 1999 and now, though, there have been (only) 60 deaths as a …
Scott Morrison is on his first overseas trip as prime minister—and it’s to Indonesia. The immediate purpose is for Morrison and Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo to announce their two countries’ assent to a free trade …
Scott Morrison took a step last week that will define him as prime minister, but it wasn’t about getting party room numbers. It was his announcement as acting minister for home affairs that effectively banned two big …
The Turnbull government’s latest announcement on how its new telecommunications sector security reforms will apply to 5G in Australia has effectively excluded Huawei (and ZTE, the other Chinese large telecoms provider) as vendors of 5G …
Australia can base its engagement with the South Pacific on strategic, economic, environmental and resource issues, but we’d be much better off building our relationships on something that is both deeper and more appealing: we …
So, the Australian government has a big decision to make about whether it will allow Huawei to be a provider of Australia’s 5G communications network that will power the internet of things for us. The …
Warning: This post contains specialist language. For a glossary of terms, see here. The Tour de France might be one of the best ways of understanding shifts in global security and the implications of those …