Following on from Xi Jinping’s September state visit, Chinese Minister of Public Security Guo Shengkun met with US Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, US Attorney General Loretta Lynch in Washington last week to discuss …
In his recent Strategist contribution, David Lang nailed a critical, but sadly missing, dimension of the counter terrorism intelligence debate regarding encryption. David put it perfectly when he argued that encryption is a ‘central contributor …
Public awareness of terrorism fluctuates depending on the proximity and level of terror threat. Terrorism came into sharp focus for Australians with incidents such the 2002 Bali bombings and last year’s Martin Place siege. The …
My last article concluded that one of the risks Australia might face in a more unpredictable future was ‘strike warfare’ by China to coerce Australia as part of intensified strategic competition with the US in …
Sea State Last week in Sydney, the Royal Australian Navy proudly commissioned HMAS Adelaide, second of the landing helicopter docks (LHDs) built by Spanish company Navantia based on the Spanish Armada’s ‘Juan Carlos I’. Permanently …
The launch of the 2015 SDSR provided evidence that UK Defence and Security agencies are being re-invigorated after a period of extensive cuts. Over the next ten years £178 billion will be spent on a …
The grand power shifts currently taking place in the Asia–Pacific are likely to gradually draw Indonesia and Australia closer together in order to face common strategic challenges. Elements of the bilateral relationship will probably remain …
The half-way mark in a marathon is always a testy time. So too is the mid-way point of the Paris climate negotiations. The speeches by 150 heads of state on the opening day of the …
Last week Prime Minister David Cameron unveiled the UK’s latest Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR). As usual it was numbers in terms of money and kit that caught the media’s attention. But the bigger …
The case for Australia joining ASEAN will have to be embraced by both sides. Here’s the ‘Yes’ case from ASEAN’s perspective. The first three columns in this series were Canberra-centric, establishing why Australia should seek …
The late edition of ASPI Suggests kicks off with US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter’s announcement on Thursday that all combat roles were now open to women. The US military has 30 days to enact the decision with no …
In his recent post on Australian policy towards acquisition of nuclear weapons, Rod Lyon responds to a thesis promoted by Christine Leah and Crispin Rovere that Australia should acquire its own independent nuclear deterrent capability. …
The refugee crisis currently confronting Europe is the harbinger of things to come. An unpredictable cocktail of prolonged drought and civil war in Syria has generated over six million internally displaced people, with another four …
In his recent post on The Strategist, Anthony Bergin makes many good points about the use of encryption by non-state actors like Daesh, the related challenges to intelligence collection, and the importance of balancing civil liberties and national security …
The Wednesday hacking of the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) by apparent ‘Chinese’ actors was another example, if one was needed, of the persistent threat to Australian computer networks, both government and private sector. It’s a …
From trying to install 21st century avionics on 1960s helicopters to buying landing craft that crack and can’t fit onto their motherships, defence procurement in Australia has been fraught. Within this context David Peever’s First …
The Beat Taskforce to combat welfare fraud A pilot project to target welfare fraud—colourfully and misleadingly described in the Sydney press this week—has now been converted to a new task force within the Department of Human Services. …
Graeme Dobell has written two posts (here and here) on what the government could have known and asked before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. I should start my response by clarifying that I’m not …
What happens in China is central to the global effort to limit the extent of future climate change. China is already the largest emitter of greenhouse gases by far, even as it continues its process …
This week marks the first anniversary of the Australian Cyber Security Centre. Launched by former prime minister Tony Abbott, the ACSC had a busy year. According to this Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet …