While Heisenberg proclaims the uncertainty principle, a public service inquiry operates on the certainty principle. Not for government, Heisenberg’s quantum insight about the impossibility of simultaneously measuring position and momentum; nor the observer effect—that to …
The world Is the Caspian Sea a lake or a sea? For decades this question caused dispute and deadlock between the countries on its shores. On Sunday, Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan signed an …
There’s been a lot of focus on the security arrangements for the My Health Record system. Most of the commentary has been about protecting the data, how secure the platform is for storing the data, …
For a long time, I thought that nuclear weapons were a tolerable evil. I bought into the argument that they played a positive role in some circumstances by deterring nations from going to war because …
In this podcast, we discuss Australia’s reset with China, the true cost of our new submarine fleet, big tech companies and online censorship, and Madeleine Nyst interviews Indonesia expert Natalie Sambhi.
Now that Turkey is at loggerheads with its erstwhile ally, the United States, the country’s currency crisis has morphed into a political problem of the first order. The immediate issue is Turkey’s refusal to release …
The beat Former president pleads guilty in El Salvador Former El Salvadorian president Antonio Saca has pleaded guilty to money-laundering and embezzlement charges. He and six other former public officials are accused of having diverted …
On 10 August, Movement for Democratic Change Alliance President Nelson Chamisa made it to the courts 30 minutes before the deadline to lodge his application challenging the results of Zimbabwe’s presidential election. The electoral commission …
There’s broad agreement among defence thinkers and academics that the international security environment is on the cusp of significant change. Dominating the commentary are analyses of the consequences of a risen China, a resurgent Russia …
The announcement earlier this month that ASEAN and China had agreed on a single draft code of conduct negotiating text over the South China Sea after years of talks has been hailed as a milestone. …
Sea state The US chief of naval operations, Admiral John Richardson, has sounded another warning about increased Russian and Chinese activity in the Atlantic Ocean. Russian submarines have been detected near crucial undersea communications cables …
There is no escaping history in Poland. At an abruptly convened session in late June, the Polish Sejm (the lower house of parliament) rushed through an amendment to the Act on the Institute of National …
In part 1, I considered the implications of sustaining and upgrading the RAAF’s F/A-18F Super Hornet fleet (alongside the E/A-18G Growler) as an alternative to buying an additional squadron of F-35s. It’s the next big …
Imran Khan, cricketer turned politician, will take the oath of office as prime minister of Pakistan on 18 August. Strategic analysts in South Asia and elsewhere have been busy speculating about what this means for the …
After a few false starts, the government has released its promised legislation to address the ‘going dark’ problem caused by encryption—something that affects more than 90% of the data lawfully intercepted by the Australian Federal …
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 …
Australia’s deteriorating security outlook, and what it means for our strategic relationships and our defence planning, has been a hot topic of late. Two key articles, by Paul Dibb and Peter Jennings, highlight the growing …
On 31 July, the minister for women, Kelly O’Dwyer, presented the third progress report to parliament on the Australian national action plan on women, peace and security 2012–2018 (NAP). As you’d expect, the government report …
Australia was grasping for soft power long before the term ‘soft power’ was invented. Here’s an official example from 32 years ago: Countries still achieve their international objectives by threat, bribe or persuasion. Australia has …
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 …
