Cyber wrap

Big numbers splatter the headlines as cybercrime owns the front page for a third straight week. Estimates of the global losses attributable to cybercrime range between $575 billion and a more conservative $375 billion, while …

Shipbuilding—Australian style

Last Friday, the defence minister announced no fewer than three shipbuilding initiatives. First, to the dismay of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (PDF) and the indignation of the opposition, the government announced that it would …

We’ll be back tomorrow

It’s the Queen’s birthday public holiday here in Canberra so we’ll be back tomorrow with our usual considered analysis, stats and graphs for your reading pleasure. Meanwhile, if you’re looking for something to read, check out …

ASPI suggests: Asia Pacific edition

Welcome back for another instalment of ASPI suggests from Washington DC. I’ve found our region’s experts have a lot to offer our American colleagues when it comes to understanding the Asia Pacific, especially Southeast Asia. …

Modi’s triple bottom line

The growing India-chatter within foreign policy circles has recently intensified after the election of the most ‘Indian’ of Indian Prime Ministers in decades. Many have speculated whether Modi’s cultural-nationalist past will define his foreign policy. …

On the beach: Tony Abbott at Normandy

As memories are lost it becomes the role of commemorations to shape our view of history.  The 40th anniversary commemorations of the Normandy landings in 1984 brought Ronald Reagan to Pointe du Hoc, where US …

Athens and Sparta come to the South China Sea

A few millennia after recording the basic tenets of hard-edged power politics and creating the historian’s craft, Thucydides has popped up in the South China Sea. Malaysia’s Prime Minister has dipped into the historian, philosopher …

Cyber wrap

Cyber law enforcement has been on a roll as of late. After a busy May indicting Chinese hackers and combating the Blackshades Remote Access Tool, an international team including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Europol, …

Abbott in Washington: pep talk time

Barack Obama’s West Point speech shows a man tired of the presidency, weighed down by the war in Afghanistan and unsure of America’s role in the world. Obama is having his LBJ moment. Johnson fought …

Obama after West Point

President Obama’s explanation of his foreign policy has come and gone, but he has won few converts. True, he tells a credible story about continuing US leadership, exceptionalism, and the intermeshing of unilateral and multilateral …

Strategic deal or no deal?

I listened last week as my colleague Mark Thomson launched this year’s budget brief. One of Mark’s points was that spending on any defence related proposal should be weighed against the gains in security that’ll …