On 14 May, the Australian parliament passed legislation setting out the framework for the collection and use of data from the COVIDSafe contact-tracing app. The law amended the Privacy Act 1988 ‘to support the COVIDSafe …
The global backlash against China over its culpability for the international spread of the deadly coronavirus from Wuhan has gained momentum in recent weeks. And China itself has added fuel to the fire, as exemplified …
Australia has a split policy ticket on Donald Trump—quietly horrified at his multilateral impact, yet quite satisfied with the bilateral relationship. Multilateral smash-up contrasts with relative bilateral smoothness. Canberra clings to the Trump administration while …
In this episode, ASPI Executive Director Peter Jennings speaks with Kenya’s high commissioner to Australia, Isaiya Kabira, about the significance of Africa Day (coming up on 25 May) and the continent’s progress since the establishment …
The Victorian government’s Belt and Road Initiative program is a zombie project that has its own inertia and is proceeding despite the world changing around it. It needs to be halted and comprehensively reassessed. The …
Today is an age of acceleration, a time when Moore’s Law is creating profound changes at diminishing intervals, making it difficult to anticipate strategic, social and technological developments. Some organisations facing these cascades of change, …
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s penchant for theatrics has had deadly consequences for India’s poor. That was certainly the case with his disastrous demonetisation policy in 2016 and his government’s rushed implementation of a national …
Australia’s ‘black summer’ of bushfires and the Covid-19 pandemic caught authorities and citizens off guard, but they shouldn’t have. Experts were warning about catastrophic fires from mid-2019, while national security agencies have worried about a …
Most cultures—especially, perhaps, those in Asia—regard cycles as one of the basic rhythms of life, including international life. Great Britain was recognised as the leading world power for more than a century from 1815. The …
The beat Pandemic creating new opportunities for organised crime Organised crime groups have been capitalising on the Covid-19 pandemic to boost their images and their businesses. In Italy, the mafia has been delivering food packages …
How will the Covid-19 mega-crisis end? I don’t know, and nor does anyone else. So, perhaps it would be more productive to reflect on how it started. By addressing that issue, we might be able …
On 24 February, a 17-year-old boy stabbed a young woman to death at the Crown Spa massage parlour in North York, Canada, and left two other people with serious injuries. The alleged perpetrator (who cannot …
Bad assumptions make for bad policies and poor investment decisions. One big one we need to test is the notion that China’s post-pandemic economy is going to rescue the world. That assumption is flavouring much …
After the Covid-19 pandemic is over, we are likely to face a world in which the nations with strong foundations are stronger and the weak are further weakened. The World Bank has already predicted that …
The Covid-19 crisis has become the latest front in the escalating clash of ideologies that has become a central feature of geopolitics in recent years. Representing authoritarianism is China, which has touted the success of …
There’s a popular perception that cybercrime is an anonymous activity. With seemingly faceless attackers and ‘darknet’ sites, a picture emerges of a threat unlike anything we’ve seen before. But cybercrime shouldn’t generate this kind of …
The formation of the US Space Force has raised inevitable questions about its purpose and role and about how it will fit in with broader US space policy and activities in the civil and commercial …
Sea state Nineteen Iranian sailors have died in a friendly fire incident, after a missile hit a support vessel during a training exercise in the Gulf of Oman. Iran regularly runs exercises in the gulf, …
An international terrorism specialist has found an ‘eerie similarity’ between the manifesto released by right-wing terrorist Brenton Tarrant, who murdered 50 people and injured dozens more in New Zealand last year, and jihadist propaganda issued …
China’s longstanding campaign to isolate Taiwan has intensified since Xi Jinping took power in 2012. However, as Beijing has been upping the ante against Taipei, the United States has worked hard to create more space …