This year’s G20 summit in Hamburg promises to be among the more interesting in recent years. For one thing, US President Donald Trump, who treats multilateralism and international cooperation with cherished disdain, will be attending …
The Abbott era ‘mega department’ thinking might be passé, but there are still more than a few bureaucrats and politicians advocating the creation of an Australian department of homeland security. While Peter Jennings and I …
Professionals and experts are often heard with dissonance today. Two contrasting recent studies concerning European views on Russia shine a partial light on why that’s so. They also may point to future issues of strategic …
The 1987 defence white paper, The defence of Australia, didn’t represent new thinking. Some observers may have thought that was the case, given the anxious critiques of it by advocates of ‘forward defence’, particularly those …
The Beat The riot will be tweeted It has long been held that social media can be used to detect disruptive events—like riots—before more conventional reportage. While companies like Dataminr have sold that idea to …
National election campaigns remain vulnerable to cyber threats in two main areas, as ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre noted in its recent publication, Securing democracy in the digital age. Political elections consist of the procedural …
North Korea’s latest provocation—a successful test of an intercontinental-range ballistic missile (ICBM)—brings the long-building crisis on the Korean peninsula to a dangerous flashpoint. For one thing, it’s clear evidence that North Korea aspires not merely …
How natural gas is bought and sold in the world’s scattered regional markets for the fuel is changing rapidly. A single global market for natural gas has finally arrived. Behind the evolution is improving technology …
On Wednesday evening, US President Donald Trump will arrive in Poland, where he will meet with Central and Eastern European leaders on Thursday at a summit of the Three Seas Initiative. Also on Thursday, before …
Confidence has returned to Europe’s chancelleries just in the nick of time, what with US President Donald Trump due in Europe in a few days. During the annus horribilis of 2016, many feared for the European Union’s …
What’s old is new again this week, with ransomware from 2016, ‘Petya’, again taking the world by storm, infecting machines across 65 countries. Except that’s not really the case, as Janus Cybercrime Solutions, the original …
There are two principal foreign actors operating in the Sahel: the EU and the United States. President Obama took considerable interest in Africa, just like his predecessor George W. Bush who allocated billions of dollars …
Synthetic biology is the stuff of dreams and nightmares. Oil-producing algae? Synthetic biology can help. Artificial life? Ask Craig Venter; he’s building his own. Poliovirus cooked up in a test tube? That’s nasty—but too late, …
I recently argued that Asia is becoming a coherent strategic system. This system is centred on the gravitational force of China’s growing geo-economic and strategic weight but also bound together by growing trade and investment …
Sea state After a tricky few weeks, HMS Queen Elizabeth’s cyber security resilience has been called into question after photos taken during a tour of the ship appeared to show computer screens running the out-dated …
The wave of terrorist attacks in Europe, North America and Australia in the last two years brought to the open many intelligence and operational shortcomings of the local and international response to it. Among …
Anti-submarine warfare (ASW) is an arcane science (and perhaps its practitioners prefer it that way), but it’s an incredibly important part of naval warfare. It’s also notoriously difficult—like trying to find the needle in a …
In New York, negotiations towards a nuclear weapons ban treaty—involving approximately 130 countries plus sundry civil society groups—are drawing rapidly to a close. A second draft (PDF) of the text is already under discussion. In …
A new triangle of geopolitical emotion has emerged in Europe: Great Britain has ceased feeling superior to France, and France has stopped feeling inferior to Germany. The question is whether this sentimental transformation will ultimately …
Women as ‘partners for change’ On 9 June, Canada’s International Development Minister, Marie-Claude Bibeau, launched the country’s new Feminist International Assistance Policy, which puts gender equality at the centre of aid programming. It argues that …