In October, a confrontation erupted between one of the leading Democratic candidates for the US presidency, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Warren had called for a breakup of Facebook, which Zuckerberg said …
The re-election of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been described by some of his critics as a blow to democracy, or as evidence of Israel’s progression towards becoming an ‘illiberal democracy’. However, several democracy …
When you type a website address into your browser, you expect that it will take you to the site you’re trying to visit. Increasingly, however, criminals and even state-backed hackers are using a technique known …
An odd element of Australia–India relations for two decades has been Canberra’s reluctance to push for India to join Asia’s most important economic group, APEC. The strangeness is heightened by the obvious synergy between Australia’s …
When the Australian polity talks about relations with India, there’s always a wistful bit about the great possibilities and how little has been achieved. The sense of regret requires ignoring a lot of history. It’s …
Each year the World Bank tackles critical development issues in its world development report. For 2016, it chose the topic of ‘digital dividends’. The researchers concluded that digital technologies have spread rapidly in much of …
East Timor held its fourth parliamentary election in May 2018. Kay Rala ‘Xanana’ Gusmão’s newly minted coalition, the Change for Progress Alliance (AMP), comfortably defeated the Revolutionary Front of Independent East Timor (FRETILIN), ending months …
Last month, Chinese state media published articles commemorating the 30th anniversary of China’s first-ever email: ‘Across the Great Wall, we can reach every corner in the world.’ The email was sent from a research institute under …
The internet of things (IoT) is a network of everyday items, such as fridges, washing machines and even automobiles, that connect to the internet to share and exchange information. Kevin Ashton, who coined the term …
As long-term readers will know, we keep a watching brief on American aircraft development and production programs that are relevant to Australia. The two most significant ones are the RAAF’s current and future first line …
A debate over the future of US naval fighter jets has been on a slow burn for months, but it’s starting to heat up. There are reports that Boeing is surreptitiously marketing the F/A-18XT or …
Who owns the Internet? The answer is no one and everyone. The Internet is a network of networks. Each of the separate networks belongs to different companies and organisations, and they rely on physical servers …