Rare, valuable and with unpronounceable names like praseodymium, critical minerals are the foundations of the technologies on which much modern life depends. Packed into the circuit boards of our smartphones and tablets are chemical elements …
China’s economic reality, until recently, was nothing short of extraordinary. The nation’s annual economic output soared from under US$500 billion to US$18 trillion between 1992 and 2022, with years of double-digit growth pushing annual GDP …
The development of artificial intelligence has progressed at an unprecedented pace over the past few months. While governments, industry, civil society and multilateral bodies alike deliberate how best to regulate it, nefarious non-state actors are …
The Chinese economy may be softening and commodity prices falling, but Australia’s exports to China hit a record $102.5 billion in the first half of this year thanks to massive shipments of lithium concentrate. Lithium …
With AUKUS and the defence strategic review, we now have some clarity on Australia’s defence capability needs, but the ‘how’ of delivery is to be determined. Defence industry is a key enabler, but Australia’s defence …
Thousands of tonnes of grain stored in the Ukrainian port of Odessa were destined for some of the world’s hungriest people. But on 17 July, Russian President Vladimir Putin nixed Russia’s participation in the Black …
Over the past two years, Germany’s largest far-right party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), has managed to consolidate the numerous splinter groups that comprise the country’s long-unsettled nationalist fringe. Defying its reputation for infighting and frequent …
Last week, the government reaffirmed that the executive decides when Australia goes to war. The government also outlined plans to strengthen oversight mechanisms, including through a new joint statutory committee on defence (JSCD) and a …
In July, I had the pleasure of visiting Darwin to speak at the 2023 Developing Northern Australia Conference. This was my first visit to Australia, and seeing Darwin firsthand reinforced for me the important role …
In the public mind, long-range strike options, such as land-based missiles and the AUKUS submarines, are ‘the deterrent’. If so, the Australian Defence Force is stuck in a holding pattern for many years to come. …
Paul Dibb’s critique of my Australian Foreign Affairs essay, ‘Target Australia: Is the alliance making us less safe?’, falls into three broad categories: the first is about China’s plans to strike Australia, the second about …
Sea state Australia is hosting Exercise Malabar, an Indo-Pacific military drill involving forces from India, Japan and the United States. This 27th iteration of Malabar aims to enhance interoperability among the regional partners. The Quad’s …
In recent years, domestic developments in Niger—indeed, across North Africa’s Sahel region—scarcely attracted attention from the wider world, except in Paris, where French policymakers still took an interest in Francophone Africa. But the military coup …
The 2023 defence strategic review has as its centrepiece the concept Defence Minister Richard Marles has defined as ‘impactful projection’. The goal is to defend Australia and its immediate region, and to ‘deter through denial’ …
The structure of the Royal Australian Navy since its inception has been determined by trading off capability, cost and workforce. Long lamented by naval historians and practitioners alike has been the view that Australia’s maritime …
Governments around the world have begun piloting central bank digital currencies. CBDCs are issued and backed by centralised financial authorities and have the potential to reshape the international financial system. Russia, China, Saudia Arabia and …
Australia and France have made significant strides towards repairing their diplomatic relationship in the nearly two years since Australia’s cancellation of its submarine contract with French company Naval Group. Technically, they are close neighbours, sharing …
The new military governments across Central and Western Africa enjoy a surprising strength of public support, according to research published by the United Nations Development Programme two weeks before the latest coup in Niger. The UNDP had …
The US and allied retreat from Afghanistan two years ago has left a seemingly indelible question mark over America’s ability to influence international events. This point is not lost on either those states that upheld …
Poor cybersecurity is a risk to the interconnected digital systems on which we all increasingly rely, while improved security is an opportunity to build trust and advantage by enabling further digital transformation. The Australian government …