Cyber wrap

Last week news broke that an international alliance of business groups had penned a letter to Chinese Premier, Li Keqiang, imploring him to change China’s draft cybersecurity law, which many fear will significantly hamper free …

Reform or divorce in Europe

To say that the eurozone has not been performing well since the 2008 crisis is an understatement. Its member countries have done more poorly than the European Union countries outside the eurozone, and much more …

Electronic warfare in the South China Sea

‘An information technology-based war at sea is sudden, cruel and short…’ was how the Chinese military characterised a peer-to-peer naval conflict at sea in a public statement at the beginning of the month during PLAN …

Who wins a war in East Asia?

Under what circumstances would Australia join in a war against China? RAND’s report War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable (WwC) illuminates the gravity of that decision. WwC explores ‘two variables: intensity (from mild to …

ASPI at 15: conception

In mid-March 1996, about two weeks after the federal election that brought John Howard’s Coalition to power, the new defence minister Ian McLachlan set off in a RAAF VIP plane to visit some of the …

ASPI-Education: what do you need?

Regular readers of The Strategist might note that I’ve been absent from its pages for a while. That’s because I’ve been focusing on a new initiative, ASPI-Education. We’ve started ASPI-Ed for two reasons. First, because …

ASPI suggests

It has been a big week in the Middle East, as Russia became the first foreign military to operate from Iranian soil since at least World War 2. Russian Tu-22M3 bombers and Su-34 fighters took …

National security wrap

The Beat Feds seek to police the police The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has concluded a 14-month investigation into the Baltimore City Police Department (BPD) and its findings are damning. The investigation was launched …

The roar of the paper kitten

Australian governments generally like to be front of mind in Beijing. But the heightened level of Chinese government awareness of things Australian, as evidenced by the editorial run by The Global Times on 30 July …

Cyber wrap

The banking world is usually a pretty cutthroat place, but the shared issue of cyber security has prompted eight major US banks to form a new alliance. J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America …

Walking with the Diggers

The Centenary Commemoration of the Great War continues to unearth real treasures from our military history, none more mesmerising than this Exhibition of photographs taken by Australian Diggers, Sailors and Airmen in most theatres of …