Stop the World

Group Captain Ross Rice heads the Rapid Capability Office under Plan Jericho, the Royal Australian Air Force's effort to integrate technology and innovation, and to get new capabilities into the hands of its people quickly. He joins STW at the ADSTAR Summit, where we were hosted by the Defence Science and Technology Group.Ross draws lessons from Ukraine—including brilliant operations such as Operation Spiderweb—on what drones have done to the battlefield and how uncrewed doctrine is evolving, from the risk calculations militaries can now make through to the question of where humans sit in the loop. He is thoughtful on automation and the laws of armed conflict, on trust in the technology, on the role of AI in making sense of the flood of data coming off modern sensors, and on how to avoid a race to the ethical bottom—a subject on which he has a nice quote from history.The conversation also covers continuous modernisation and how industry is adapting. Ross describes innovation running in both directions between Defence and industry, driven by military need and by ideas emerging from the private sector. And he closes on the idea of sovereign industry as a key part of Australia’s strategic depth.

Retired Major-General Roger Noble AO, DSC, CSC joins STW to talk about his new book, My Long War, covering his remarkable career over six operational deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan and East Timor. The book is part memoir, part reflection on warfare and humanity, part critique of conventional military and strategic thinking. It pulls no punches while honouring the people he served with, and it's packed with cracking anecdotes from an extraordinary life.As Roger puts it, some people simply can't be reasoned with—so however horrible it is, sometimes it has to be fought. His memorable analogy of one of the most famous fictional villains of recent decades is a stand out for fans of American author Cormac McCarthy. Roger talks about leadership, about understanding one’s enemy, and about working with coalition partners from the Americans to the Iraqis. He shares his criticisms of the disconnect between strategy and tactics in Afghanistan, his thoughts on the war crimes allegations stemming from Australia's involvement there and his views on the question of accountability. And he discusses what six deployments taught him about the science of warfare and the need for rational analysis.Roger spent time with an international team destroying Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons stockpiles in 1992, returned to Iran in 2005 during the second Gulf War, and went back a third time in 2016 to help liberate Mosul from ISIS. He also served in East Timor in 2000-01 and twice in Afghanistan. He retired in 2021, and went on to become Australia’s Counter-Terrorism Ambassador.Roger Noble, My Long War: https://www.simonandschuster.com.au/books/My-Long-War/Roger-Noble/9781923720046

On the sidelines of the ADSTAR Summit, STW speaks with Paul Robards, Defence's Chief Data Integration Officer, who also has responsibility for the Defence Artificial Intelligence Centre. Paul spent 30 years in the Australian Army before taking on the task of turning Defence's vast data holdings into genuine capability.The conversation covers Defence's current AI use, the perils of risk-aversion, minimum viable capability, data and AI literacy among senior leaders, and where a middle power like Australia can meaningfully contribute alongside allies and partners.Paul draws a sharp distinction between bolting AI onto existing processes and redesigning those processes around it. He makes the case that data is where a large part the advantage lies, and that siloed data stops a commander seeing across people, materiel, logistics and intelligence at once. He walks through the OODA loop in a modern battlespace saturated with sensors, and where AI can help at each stage while humans stay firmly at the point of decision.The conversation closes on how fast the future is arriving, and why agility matters more than perfection.Paul will also be joining STW's AI Masterclass in Canberra on 14 September.For more information check out the website.

This Saturday marks ASPI's 25th birthday – the date the institute began operations in 2001. To mark it, STW is joined by Hugh White, ASPI's founding executive director, and Justin Bassi, its current executive director, for an in-depth conversation about how the institute came to be and what it's for.Hugh recalls the establishment of ASPI by the Howard government – including a fateful plane trip with Howard's first defence minister Ian McLachlan – and a first few weeks that turned out rather differently from what he was expecting. He discusses ASPI's early impact and the experience of publicly challenging the 2003 Iraq invasion to which Howard had committed Australian troops.Hugh and Justin discuss how a think tank should balance the issues of the day against the over-the-horizon questions no one is asking yet, in traditional defence and in emerging areas such as critical technologies. They talk about how deep into the fundamentals of strategic policy a think tank should probe, the importance of challenging orthodoxy, and the US alliance, AUKUS and the state of Australia's strategic policy debate. Despite their different views of the world, their evident respect for one another shows that healthy, robust debate is very much possible in 2026.For more on the bipartisan commitment to contestability, look out for a piece this weekend jointly authored by John Howard and Kim Beazley.

Australia’s new Chief of the Defence Force, Admiral Mark Hammond, joins STW on the sidelines of the ADSTAR Summit in Adelaide to share his thoughts on the integration of advanced technology into defence. It’s a quickie but a goodie, with the CDF packing plenty of insights into a few minutes. We cover the key areas where technology is making a difference, especially improving the survivability of Australian personnel; long-range fires; the value of nuclear powered submarines; the close tech relationship with the US; artificial intelligence; the relationship with industry and why warfare will necessarily remain a human affair. This is a great episode while you make your morning coffee or your commute to work.

STW speaks with Anton Leicht, one of the most compelling voices on the geopolitics and economics of artificial intelligence. Anton has become a leading authority on how middle powers such as Australia can carve out a role in the global AI value chain and avoid being pushed to the periphery as the technology advances. Anton is the author of the influential Substack Threading the Needle and a fellow with the Technology and International Affairs Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He discusses Australia’s opportunity to build data centres to train and run AI, how that would help guarantee future access to advanced American models such as Claude and GPT, the prospects for sovereign models built here, and how Australia can sustain a cooperative relationship with the US built on mutual dependence.The conversation then turns to AI and security: keeping models safe while avoiding a concentration of power in government hands, the responsibilities of the AI labs themselves, and compromise proposals such as third-party experts acting as safety watchdogs.Anton closes with his views on the likely economic impacts of AI and the big questions around the future of work. He’s a frontier thinker on the political economy of AI, and is closely watched by policymakers, fellow experts and industry leaders alike.

As a relatively small military, the Australian Defence Force needs to fight and win through advantages such as superior technology. Chief Defence Scientist Professor Tanya Monro, AC, is in charge of figuring out smart ways to do that. Tanya kicks off our short series recorded at the ADSTAR Summit in Adelaide, Australia's premier defence science and technology gathering. ASPI joined the summit as podcast partner alongside organisers the Defence Science and Technology Group. Tanya talks about the newly launched Defence Innovation, Science and Technology Strategy and its three core objectives: generating asymmetric advantage, accelerating innovative solutions into capability, and reinforcing an integrated ecosystem through closer work with industry and international partners. She gives her perspective on how to harness the remarkable innovation happening across technology fields, including AI, and channel it into a stronger defence force. She walks through the six priority areas Defence is focusing on, and the balance between work that delivers immediate new capabilities and longer-term fundamental research that may not pay dividends for years but is nonetheless vital. A note that this was recorded on the sidelines of an event with more than 2000 guests, so there's some background noise. We’ll roll out further ADSTAR episodes over the next few weeks. Links: https://www.defence.gov.au/about/strategic-planning/2026-defence-innovation-science-technology-strategy

As foreign minister of Lithuania from 2020 to 2024, few people had the front row seat of Gabrielius Landsbergis to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Trump’s return to the White House and Europe’s response to both. Since leaving office, he has become one of Europe’s clearest and most forceful champions for democratic values, for support for Ukraine, and for resisting the aggression of Russia and the risks posed by other authoritarian nations, including China. This interview comes at a time that Ukraine is showing signs of regaining the upper hand on the battlefield and increasing discussions about the possibility of the US administration providing patriot system licenses to Ukraine. Gabrielius talks to Dave about whether Putin’s grip on power is as secure as it appears. Gabrielius is not for waiting though, assessing that it is too risky for Europe to rely on Russia losing, the US making the decisive difference or NATO 3.0 taking shape. Instead, Gabrielius has an innovative solution that would create a genuine coalition of the ‘willing-and-able’. Gabrielius also talks about why China has largely escaped meaningful consequences for backing Russia’s war effort. He discusses the implications of the Iran war on US credibility as a global leader for the world order that Gabrielius believes must be defended by all those who believe in democratic values and principles.

Janet Egan is a senior fellow and deputy director of the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, and one of the most respected thinkers on AI and national security — globally and from an Australian perspective. She joins STW at the perfect moment after PM Anthony Albanese’s AI speech and the big news about OpenAI’s agents going rogue.The conversation opens with the OpenAI hack of online AI repository Hugging Face—which Janet calls a very big deal—and works through the implications for cybersecurity attackers and defenders. She addresses the argument that safeguards on frontier models are restricting their use and handing an advantage to China, weighs the merits of open source and open weight models, and reads the clues in Xi Jinping's recent AI speech about China's current strategy.The conversation then turns to Australia. Janet offers her assessment of Albanese's AI speech and examines the case for Australia to build data centres capable of training frontier models like Claude, GPT and Gemini. She covers the fraught AI copyright debate before finishing with thoughts on global AI governance and the prospects for US-China cooperation to reduce the most catastrophic risks.

Taiwan is the target of more information operation attacks than anywhere else on earth, most of them originating in mainland China and aimed at dividing Taiwanese society and eroding the resolve to resist Beijing. AI is supercharging that barrage. And to tell us about the impact and how Taiwan is fighting back, we’ve spoken with You-Hao Lai, a researcher at Taiwan's Research Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology.You-Hao starts by giving us his takeaways on Chinese leader Xi Jinping's keynote at China's global AI conference, including on Beijing's push to ensure that the world embeds Chinese technology, with Chinese standards, into its systems rather than American alternatives.He then covers the ways that AI is transforming China's information operations: the scale, speed and sophistication of the attacks, the narratives deployed, the strategic purpose behind them, and documented cases that illustrate how rapidly things are evolving. You-Hao then walks through Taiwan's whole-of-nation response, organised around “four Cs”—cutting, clarifying, curbing and cultivating—a framework that reflects years of hard-won experience building national resilience against a relentless and well-resourced adversary. There are real lessons here for the rest of us.

Leading artificial intelligence company OpenAI prompted commentators to dig deep into their bag of Hollywood sci-fi dystopia comparisons this week when it announced a pair of its frontier models had broken out of a secure test environment and hacked into online AI library Hugging Face. Today, David Wroe and Justin Bassi pick out two of this week’s dizzying array of events that stretch from the Saudi-US nuclear deal to the South China Sea, and dissect in detail the stunning OpenAI revelation and the pressure that China faced during the ASEAN foreign ministers’ meeting in Manila, Philippines. No one got hurt when the AI models went marauding in the real world, but the episode has jolted the tech industry, governments and the public. Questions are now flying about regulation, safety and global governance as leading AI labs in the United States and China race to get ahead with the most powerful models. The twist in the tale is that Hugging Face had to use an open-source Chinese model to defend itself against the rogue AI agent attack, prompting opponents of AI regulation in the US to demand fewer restrictions on their own models, and AI safety experts to sharpen their calls for the two tech superpowers to talk earnestly about common safeguards. Meanwhile, Australia announced it would provide drones to the Philippines for maritime security amid China’s latest efforts to squeeze the Southeast Asian nation in the South China Sea. Foreign Minister Penny Wong visited the Philippines Coast Guard headquarters where she blasted China’s “destabilising and dangerous conduct” at sea.

Can Australia count on continued access to the most advanced frontier AI models from the US? And if not, what should it do about it? That’s the starting point for a wide-ranging conversation with three American guests who bring deep expertise across cyber, AI and strategic competition. Michael Sulmeyer is Professor of the Practice at Georgetown University and until recently was Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy. Mike Kuiken is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Vice Chair of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Sophie Mayo is a non-resident fellow at the United States Studies Centre and a research assistant at Georgetown’s Centre for Security and Emerging Technology. Together they cover Australia’s push to build large-scale AI data centres and whether that could generate real leverage in the global technology race; the cyber implications of powerful AI models and why old software, unpatched systems and critical infrastructure remain stubborn vulnerabilities even as AI gives defenders new tools; and China — whether the US still has a coherent strategy for competing with Beijing, and how AI is converging with biotech, quantum and other emerging technologies. The conversation also takes in AUKUS, the Australia-US alliance, export controls, venture capital and talent flows. These can sound like separate issues. STW’s guests make clear they’re really all part of the same question: how does Australia make itself useful, ambitious and strategically relevant in a much tougher technological era?

Dean Ball is one of the most influential thinkers in AI policy right now — principal author of the Trump administration’s AI Action Plan, author of the widely-read Substack Hyperdimensional, and until very recently a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation. STW grabbed him just before he started a new role at OpenAI, which made for some propitious timing. The conversation covers a lot of ground. Dean gives his views on two ideas floated by his new boss Sam Altman in the hours before recording: a global governance body for AI standards, and reports that Altman has been in talks with the Trump administration about giving the US government a stake in OpenAI. He also talks about his broader outlook on AI and power — including the argument that the level of AI capability in government hands shouldn’t get too far out of proportion to what’s available to everyone else. Dean discusses the role of safeguards on frontier models, and makes the case for independent third-party auditors sitting between governments and AI companies as a check on both risk and excessive concentrations of power. He covers the opportunities for middle powers like Australia in data centres and rare earths, the realities of US incentives to withhold its most powerful capabilities even from trusted allies, and the evolution of institutions in an AI age — a topic he’s writing a book on. He finishes on a note of cautious optimism. It’ll be worth watching how his thinking evolves from inside OpenAI. Hyperdimensional: Hyperdimensional | Dean W. Ball | SubstackFT Op-Ed by Sam Altman

How should middle powers such as Australia and Canada maximise their strategic clout in an age of increasingly assertive great powers?Raquel Garbers spent nearly three decades in Canadian defence, security and intelligence, including a stint as Director General for Strategic Defence Policy at the Canadian Department of National Defence, where she served as the principal architect of Canada’s defence policy. As an ASPI Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Raquel brought that experience to last week’s ASPI Defence Conference, where she made a memorable contribution on the role of middle powers in an age of uncertainty.Raquel has watched up close what Donald Trump has meant for the US-Canada relationship. But she's clear-eyed about the limits of what democratic middle powers can achieve without US alignment, and unsentimental about the fact that great powers are great powers. Her answer to that challenge is what she calls "coalitions of the capable": flexible, fast and fierce groupings of like-minded states that can maximise their collective agency.It's a realistic and pragmatic framework for navigating a world that looks very different from the one the post-war order was built for—and a conversation that reflects the enormous importance of these questions for the fates of middle powers such as Australia.

Do intelligence agencies need to rethink how they deliver assessments to political leaders in the AI age? That's the question at the heart of a new ASPI report, ‘Reading the Room: Redesigning Intelligence Product for the AI Age’. Today STW sits down with its author to dig into the issue. ASPI senior fellow Chris Taylor joins FiveCast co-founder Duane Rivett—whose firm provides open-source intelligence to the security community—to talk through what needs to change and why. The report argues that while Australia's intelligence community has invested heavily in collection with strong results, the way assessments are delivered to decision-makers hasn't kept pace.The conversation covers changing information consumption habits across generations; how AI can adapt and even personalise intelligence products for different leaders and officials; the prospect of intelligence chatbots that can answer policymakers' questions in real time; and the enduring importance of human expert judgement. They also address the risks: losing nuance in a business defined by uncertainty, and the accountability gap when a machine — like a self-driving car — can't be held liable for getting it wrong. Read the report, ‘Reading the Room: Redesigning Intelligence Product for the AI Age’.

Nicole Giles is Deputy Director of Policy and Partnerships at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service—and she visited ASPI in Canberra to talk through what she calls the three Vs: the velocity, variety, and volume of threats facing Canada and its allies right now. AI-accelerated disinformation that once took weeks to develop can now be deployed in seconds. Violent extremism investigations that once unfolded over months now move from online radicalisation to potential threat action in days. And the sheer number of actors and threat types is growing.Nicole covers foreign interference and election meddling, economic security and IP theft, the rise of youth involvement in extremism, and a disturbing new category CSIS has had to formally define, nihilistic violent extremism—groups like the Maniac Murder Cult and 764, whose goal is simply violent chaos. She also talks about the “swords and shields” of AI for intelligence agencies, and why Five Eyes cooperation—including a specific Australia-Canada collaboration on over-the-horizon radar—is more important than ever. CSIS's annual report is, as STW notes, a good read, and Nicole is a compelling example of why public engagement has become a national security strategy in itself.Read the CSIS annual Public Report 2025 here.

This week, ASPI hosted a fireside conversation with Anne Neuberger, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Strategic Advisor to Cisco. Anne was Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor from 2021 to 2025.The conversation focused on cyber security and the impact of AI on geopolitics and cyber resilience. Coming off the back of President Trump’s Executive Order on AI and reports that Australia had been given access to Anthropic’s Mythos model, we decided the conversation was an important one to share with our Stop the World listeners.Hosted by ASPI’s Executive Director, Justin Bassi, he and Anne canvassed the game changing role of artificial intelligence for cyber offence and defence, why democracies need to be the ones to set AI standards, and the lessons that can be learned from our 5G and TikTok experiences when it comes to global AI adoption.This event was held in partnership with Cisco.

Artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly central to warfighting. And the firms that build it are critical partners to militaries around the world. Once such company is Britain’s Faculty AI, whose head of defence Andrew van der Lem joins us this week.The conversation covers electronic warfare and the competition to dominate the electromagnetic spectrum; how AI can identify, classify, and act on signals no human could process in time; and the acceleration of military decision-making—a factor in US operational superiority during the recent war in the Middle East. Andrew also draws on lessons from Ukraine, where new technology hits the battlefield every few weeks and doctrine has to adapt in real time. And he describes a major NATO exercise Faculty took part in — preparing allied forces for a potential Russian invasion of Estonia, run out of a disused London tube station. Finally, Andrew addresses the values question: why Faculty believes tech companies have a responsibility to engage with defence AI rather than leave it to others.

Today we’re joined by Kanishka Narayan, Britain’s Minister for AI and Online Safety, who visited Australia last week to sign an MOU on cooperation between Britain’s illustrious AI Security Institute and Australia’s new AI Safety Institute. Kanishka, whose previous roles include a stint in tech investment, was described in a recent British tech publication as a minister who “really gets AI”—and it shows. He discusses his strong view on the need to put democratic values into the development of AI and to ensure it preserves human agency and trust. He discusses Pope Leo XIV’s recent encyclical on AI, the need for middle powers to establish places for themselves in the global AI industry, and his conviction that AI is going to transform all aspects of life, notably our economies and particularly employment—all for the better if we get the policies right.

ASPI this week released our Cost of Defence report which, as always, has taken a thorough and rigorous look at every dollar spent on defence in the budget. And to help us make sense of the $66.4 billion that Australia will be spending, we’re joined by our director of defence strategy, Mike Hughes. Mike is one of the report’s main authors along with Marc Ablong, Courtney Stewart and Linus Cohen. Their conclusion, in sum, is that Australia is “buying a future and is doing so by accepting that the ADF will be able to do less today”. Mike puts the dollars in context, welcoming the lift in spending but describing a program of approvals and spending that remains too slow. He explains the mismatch between rhetoric that the strategic environment is dire and getting worse, and reality is that the corresponding urgency isn’t there in the investment. He talks about Australia’s recent spending growth compared with other countries in the region including China, and the welcome boost to workforce but the decline in acquisition and sustainment spending, which will be an issue for the current force. He also walks us through the byzantine ways of calculating spending as a percentage of GDP and, most importantly, what actually needs to be done now, such as approving money for integrated air and missile defence and the so-called connective tissue that ensures readiness. Links:Read the cost of Defence: ASPI Defence budget brief 2026-2027 here

Yalkun Uluyol, China researcher at Human Rights Watch, joins us to discuss the repression of Uyghurs and other minority groups in China — and why human rights abuses are struggling to stay on the global agenda.Yalkun has spent years documenting abuses in Xinjiang, including mass surveillance, arbitrary detention, forced labour and the suppression of Uyghur identity and culture. He also brings a deeply personal perspective: his own father has been arbitrarily jailed.The conversation explores how the Chinese government is trying to reshape China’s global image, portraying Xinjiang as stable and harmonious despite extensive reporting by Human Rights Watch and others. Yalkun also discusses Beijing’s influence in international institutions, the intimidation of other countries, and the growing difficulty of conducting China research.At a time when wars, economic shocks, great-power competition and artificial intelligence dominate global attention, Yalkun makes the case for why human rights advocacy still matters — and how governments, researchers and citizens can keep these issues in view.The episode also looks at forced labour in Xinjiang and its links to global supply chains, from batteries to Labubu dolls.

Benedikta von Seherr-Thoß is Managing Director for Peace, Security and Defence at the European External Action Service—the European Commission’s diplomatic arm. As the EEAS official responsible for bringing to life the recently signed EU-Australia Strategic and Defence Partnership, Benedikta visited Canberra and Sydney this week for talks with Australian officials. Benedikta joined us to talk about the partnership, about why Europe and Australia need to work more closely together given the very global nature and impact of security threats, and about the US-Europe relationship, the war in Ukraine and the implications of it all the Indo-Pacific, notably Taiwan. Europe is embarked on a generational project to rearm, with big increases to defence budgets and an outreach to likeminded parts around the world in the face of the threat from Russia and Donald Trump’s scepticism about helping with European security. Benedikta shares her views on Australian companies’ access to the large buckets of funding such as the Security Action for Europe or SAFE mechanism, and the reforms underway for a more coordinated European defence industry and better procurement processes. Links:The Australia-European Union Security and Defence Partnership Read Bart Hogeveen’s explainer on the EU–Australia Security and Defence Partnership

Last week saw the summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing. It was dominated by trade and investment.Ahead of the summit we spoke to Matt Turpin, who was director for China in the White House National Security Council during Trump’s first term.Matt, a former Army officer and now a senior advisor at Palantir Technologies and visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, talked about what to expect from the visit but, more importantly, provided his perspective on the underlying shifts in the US-China economic relationship and the long-term trends that will dominate international trade for the years to come.Washington’s move away from pushing Beijing to adhere to fair and rules-based trade, towards what’s known as “managed trade”, is exemplified by a proposal for a Board of Trade which Matt explains. He lays out a way forward for rule-abiding countries to trade with one another while diversifying away from China.Matt discusses the debate about whether to decouple or derisk and explains his idea of disentanglement between the US and China for sensitive materials and technologies. This interview is a must-listen for anyone interested in economic security, global trade and the impact of great power competition on all nations.Check out Matt’s Substack at https://chinaarticles.substack.com/

Today on Stop the World, ASPI executive director Justin Bassi and David Wroe talk about Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s visit to Australia and the latest news in artificial intelligence.Japan is one of Australia’s closest friends—and the friendship is deepening. Justin and David talk about the significance of the relationships amid global geopolitical turmoil. Takaichi is leading her country through the next phase in its strategic renewal, with big plans to grow Japan’s critical technology and defence industries, and a more muscular posture in the region as it faces Chinese assertiveness.They discuss the economic security declaration signed by Takaichi and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese; ASPI’s new report calling for a look at Japanese submarines to fill any potential capability gap in the AUKUS optimal pathway; and the significance of the Mogami frigate agreement.Finally they discuss the news that the Trump administration is considering reviewing new AI models before they can be released in a major reversal of its low-regulation stance. That move follows the revelation that leading AI company Anthropic withheld its latest model Mythos because it is such a powerful tool for hackers.

Why should we care about the Indo-Pacific? It’s a question sufficiently packed with vitality that Ray Powell and Jim Carouso have for the past two years devoted a weekly podcast to finding the answers. Ray, a former US Air Force Colonel posted as Defence Attache in Canberra, and Jim, longtime diplomat who served as Charge d’Affaires to Australia, join STW this week to unravel all the ways the Indo-Pacific region remains the strategic keystone that is likely to shape the course of the 21st century. We cover a lot of ground—the future of US strategy in the Indo-Pacific and what that means for America’s friends and allies; Donald Trump’s upcoming meeting with Xi Jinping; China’s project to become the regional hegemon and what that means for the many other countries that call the Indo-Pacific home. Ray and Jim also share their thoughts on Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s visit to Australia next week, opportunities for economic security cooperation, deepening partnerships with other key Indo-Pacific nations such as the Philippines; the ongoing risks in the South China Sea and the nomination of former Congressman David Brat as US Ambassador to Australia. Ray and Jim have spent most of their careers focussed on the Indo-Pacific region. And their level headed, calm, excellent judgement comes through in this conversation. Watch Ray and Jim’s podcast here: https://www.youtube.com/@IPPodcast

Critical minerals and rare earths are atomic marvels — and geopolitical nightmares. They’re vital in high-end technologies including defence equipment but are traded in markets that are all but broken, with China dominating overwhelming shares of production. This week, Madeleine King, Minister for Resources and Minister for Northern Australia, joins Stop the World to talk about the challenges Australia and its international friends face in building some kind of functioning market to ensure we don’t face supply crises that could threaten our economies or security. Speaking from the sidelines of ASPI’s third annual Darwin Dialogue on critical minerals, Madeleine talks about the failure of the market, the need for intervention, what connected supply chains will look like in the future, the kinds of cooperation Australia is pursuing with Japan, the United States, Korea, Canada and Europe, and the vital importance of trust. She discusses China’s own highly interventionist approach that enabled it to dominate the market, Australia’s own strengths, global trends towards resource and economic nationalism, and the wake up call last year when China forced a partial tariffs backdown from the US by threatening to cut off vital critical minerals supplies.

ASPI’s head and deputy head of defence strategy, Mike Hughes and Courtney Stewart, join us to dissect Australia’s new National Defence Strategy and Integrated Investment Plan.It’s the right strategy, but is there enough money, even with the welcome boost? And how does Australia become operationally self-reliant without chasing the fool’s dream of self-sufficiency?Mike and Courtney share their views on the changing strategic environment, the US alliance, the state of the region, and new capability priorities such as drones and integrated air and missile defence. We also discuss the lessons from Ukraine and Iran, the importance of defending our interests well beyond our shores, and the all-important question of AUKUS.These are among the biggest questions facing Australia, and Mike and Courtney are among the best brains around to help you digest this busy week.Read more analysis on the NDS by ASPI staff: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/2026-national-defence-strategy-views-from-aspi-analysts/Read a new report 'Light speed weapons? Directed energy and the future of the ADF': https://www.aspi.org.au/report/light-speed-weapons-directed-energy-and-the-future-of-the-adf/For regular updates on defence and security across the Indo-Pacific, subscribe to ASPI's Fault Lines digest on Substack: https://aspidefence.substack.com/

Want 20 episodes of Black Mirror in a one hour podcast? You’ve come to the right place. After a big week in artificial intelligence—including news of Anthropic’s secret supercyberweapon—we’re joined by ASPI’s Fergus Ryan and Bethany Allen to talk about AI in China. Fergus and Bethany explain the findings of their recent report, The party’s AI: How China’s new AI systems are reshaping human rights. For the Chinese government, AI governance is regime governance. The team explain automation of the Chinese justice system and the implications for the rights of defendants; predictive law enforcement; “ambient censorship” which creates an immersive information environment tailored to party ideology; and surveillance using AI that enables authorities to track people’s momentary emotional reactions. They discuss embedding authoritarian values into the technology; the implications for countries importing those AI models—which are attractive because they are open source and therefore cheaper—and China’s determination to shape global AI standards in line with its non-democratic interests.Read the report 'The party's AI': https://www.aspi.org.au/report/the-partys-ai-how-chinas-new-ai-systems-are-reshaping-human-rights/ To stay across developments in AI, technology and security, subscribe to ASPI's Cyber & Tech Digest: https://aspicts.substack.com/

Back by popular demand, Florence Gaub joins David Wroe to dissect the latest global developments. Florence is Director of Research at the NATO Defense College and an expert in strategic foresight. She shares her key takeaways on Iran and views on the state of NATO, and offers frank criticism of Europe’s underspending on defence and infrastructure. She discusses how the Iran conflict, following Ukraine and Covid, has underscored the interconnectedness of security, economics, geography, energy and politics. And she talks about interpreting weak signals, the idea of polycrisis, and the impact of fragile dependencies and choke points. Florence and Dave discuss Donald Trump and the challenges of forecasting when individuals as opposed to systems are the prevailing influence over policy. And they also have fun discussing the speculative newspaper ‘North Star’ that Florence and her colleagues released earlier this year for the Munich Security Conference - listen out for the elephants! You can find that newspaper here

The Iran war is shaping as an historic geopolitical moment. Regime change looks increasingly unlikely, with the United States—and possibly Israel—preparing to settle for grinding down Iran’s ability to pose an external threat. The majority of Iranian people who loathe the regime and advocates around the world pushing for freedom are preparing for disappointment. To talk through these perspectives, STW is joined today by Nos Hosseini, spokeswoman for the Iranian Women’s Association in Australia. Nos’s parents fled Iran when she was a small child. She now advocates for the rights of the Iranian people from Australia. Nos explains how she and most of the Iranian community see external pressure including military action as the most realistic way to bring down the regime, given the brutal crackdowns we’ve seen in the past against any uprising. She describes the horrors inflicted upon Iranians who stand up to the theocracy, the current political dynamics, and the options for countries like Australia to expand pressure through measures such as Magnitsky sanctions against human rights abusers. Nos also speaks frankly about her own family’s journey, the threats and intimidation they’ve endured, and the particular dehumanisation that is felt by Iranian women.

Donald Trump’s threats against Greenland spurred Europe to assert itself in ways it has never done before, says former Danish diplomat, national security adviser and top newspaper editor Bo Lidegaard. Six European NATO members went so far as to send troops to the autonomous island territory. Hot on the heels of European President Ursula von der Leyen’s visit to Australia to sign trade and security agreements, Bo joins Stop the World to talk about the parlous state of global affairs and how Australia and Europe can work together to shape events for the better. Europe lacks the defence industrial base, the energy security and the technology to truly back up its strong diplomatic posture, Bo says—at least for now. Closer cooperation with countries such as Australia are one way that Europe is expanding its strategic options. Pulling together the many strategic threads dominating global headlines, Bo talks discusses Russia’s war against Ukraine, global supply chain fragility, energy and climate change, European innovation and self reliance, and the Iran war’s turbocharging effect on other geostrategic trends.For more on the EU-Australia security and defence agreement, read ASPI's latest Explainer by Bart Hogeveen:https://www.aspi.org.au/report/the-eu-australia-security-and-defence-agreement-not-a-pact-but-a-partnership/

David Wroe and ASPI executive director Justin Bassi discuss the prospects for steering the Iran war towards a tolerable end that means neither a years-long quagmire nor an abrupt closure that hands Tehran a tacit win.Three weeks in, the Strait of Hormuz is the keystone. How do the US and other countries reopen the key energy route and stop Tehran from holding it in perpetuity as leverage over an anxious world? What are the thresholds the US and Israel need to reach on destroying Iran’s military capacity, killing its leadership and curbing its nuclear program in order to declare mission accomplished?And whatever frustrations US partners might be feeling about Donald Trump’s “excursion”, how do we muster some semblance of democratic cooperation to signal to the world’s autocrats that the West can come together to confront global challenges?

Three weeks into Donald Trump’s “Epic Fury” operation in Iran, STW speaks with Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear strategy and non-proliferation expert who runs the Arms Control Wonk blog and directs the East Asia Nonproliferation Project at the Middlebury Institute in California. Jeffrey and David discuss the difficulty of ending Iran’s nuclear program, the United States’ strategy, the hovering spectre of regime change, and the degrading of Iran’s missile capabilities and possibility of their reconstitution. Jeffrey explains the challenge of locking down proliferation of an 80-year-old technology and his view that diplomacy and deterrence need to play hefty roles. And he discusses the culture and psychology of risk in nuclear deterrence in the 21st century. Finally Jeffrey gives his views on China’s nuclear expansion and the dangers that follow the end of the US-Russia New START arms control pact last month. Jeffrey has clear views that don’t always chase convention but are based on his own legwork analysing open source research such as images from commercial satellite pictures. Links: https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/

The war in Iran is being talked about as the first AI war. Every military on the planet is looking at how they adopt artificial intelligence at all levels from decision-making to controlling drones on the battlefield. Today, Michael Irwin, co-CEO of the Australian defence technology start-up Breaker, joins STW to explain where autonomous military technology is headed. Breaker makes software that allows military operators to coordinate teams of autonomous systems across air, land and sea by talking to them over a radio just like they’d talk to a human team. This enables one operator to control whole swarms of robots, even while he or she is flying a helicopter or assaulting a position. Michael explains how Breaker is applying its technology to intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance, freeing up personnel to concentrate on higher level tasks. And he shares his views on the philosophy, principles and ethics of automation on the battlefield, arguing that while our adversaries such as China might have lower thresholds for automating the use of force, we can deploy automation wisely while keeping our moral principles.

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna joins Stop the World for a conversation about Russia, Iran, the United States and the imperative for smaller countries such as Estonia and Australia to work together. Minister Tsahkna shares frank views from the perspective of his 1.3 million-strong NATO member nation, which borders Russia and is on track to spend 5 percent of its GDP on defence this year. “We’ll bring the war to Russia,” he says, as he calls for countries like Ukraine and Georgia to be embraced more fully into Europe lest they remain targets of Russian predation. He expresses support for the US campaign against Iran but also has some concerns about the signals being sent and the lack of clarity about objectives. He believes Trump is committed to European security if Europe accepts its share of the heavy lifting, and that Putin is ultimately more afraid of Donald Trump than he was of former Presidents Biden or Obama, but that Putin right now is “just playing with Trump” on Ukraine peace talks—indicating untapped potential in Trump’s leverage. As the world’s second largest processor of many rare earths and rare-earth batteries, Estonia can work with Australia to break China’s near-monopoly over these critical resources, he says. And seeking Australian support for a Nuremberg-style tribunal to bring accountability for Russian war crimes in Ukraine, he says shared values are central to closer cooperation.

Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine recently entered its fifth year—longer than the Soviet Union fought in World War Two. To discuss the state of the war and the peace negotiations we’re joined by Ukrainian MP Galyna Mykhailiuk, who headed a delegation of MPs last week to Australia.Galyna talks about Ukraine’s current position in negotiations, the outstanding differences over Russia’s excessive demand for territory and the vexed position for Kyiv of needing a referendum to make territorial concessions but the practical difficulty of holding such a referendum during war time. She discusses her own role as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s representative to the Parliament, political dynamics in Ukraine, the scope to increase sanctions and seize frozen assets in order to pressure Putin, and of course about the impact of the Iran conflict on Ukraine and its security.With Iran seizing current global headlines at the moment, we’ll keep covering global security broadly including Ukraine.

Today we speak about artificial intelligence and security with Lindsay Gorman, managing director and senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund’s Technology program, and a former senior tech and security adviser in the White House under President Joe Biden. Lindsay and David discuss the fight between the Pentagon and AI company Anthropic, the legitimate concerns of the military, and the Trump Administration’s terrible signal to tech companies that want to support national security. They talk about who should control this megapowerful technology in the future—the state or the private sector? They also cover the US-China tech race, Chinese innovation, authoritarian versus democratic governance of AI, disinformation and deepfakes, and the need for democracies to steer AI towards applications that value freedom and human agency.Mentioned in this episodeDavid Wroe's article on the Pentagon-Anthropic saga and who should control AI: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/pentagon-anthropic-brawl-demands-rethink-of-ai-industry/Looking to keep up with developments in AI and cyber? Subscribe to ASPI's Cyber and Tech Digest: https://aspicts.substack.com/subscribe

It’s a double-segment episode of STW today. Fresh from last week’s India AI Impact Summit in Delhi, Australia’s Assistant Minister for Science, Technology and the Digital Economy, Dr Andrew Charlton, speaks with us about artificial intelligence, the future of the Australian economy—including the future of work—and progress on international cooperation on AI.Then we hear from Maxwell Scott, co-founder and CTO of Strat Alliance Global, which helps companies and organisations integrate AI safely and lawfully. Max continues the conversation on the prospects for rising productivity, how AI might complement, enhance or replace certain human tasks, the near term limitations of AI models, comparisons to the Industrial Revolution, and the worry that keeps Max awake at night: the risk of deliberate misuse by rogue humans.Max, who recently visited Australia, also talks about AI opportunities and risks here, prospects for global cooperation and governance, and competing models for national regulation.Speech by Dr Andrew CharltonDave’s piece in the Australian Financial Review

Luke de Pulford is executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China – a cross-party network of parliamentarians from more than 40 countries who share concerns about Beijing’s behaviour at home and abroad. Luke, a human rights activist and anti-slavery advocate, recounts how the group came together in 2020, the challenges it faces and how it works to shift the centre of gravity on debates relating to Beijing’s punishment of critics and defiance of international norms. He talks about the challenges of holding China to account even as many countries drift away from taking principled stands, the impact of the United States’ retreat from leadership of the liberal order, and the need to be the squeakiest wheel when pushing human rights cases. He discusses the recent conviction and sentencing of businessman and democracy activist Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong, Britain’s shifting position on China relations, and the dilemma for Australia—which counts 20 parliamentarians from the major parties as members of IPAC—in having an economy heavily invested in China and a security strategy invested in the US.

It’s STW’s 100th episode, so we had to make it a good one! Enter former Biden White House adviser Mira Rapp-Hooper, one of the sharpest minds around on Indo-Pacific Strategy. Mira served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for East Asia and Oceania in Joe Biden’s National Security Council. She’s the author of two books and is now a visiting fellow at Brookings. She gives her thoughts on Donald Trump’s China strategy and the unlikely prospects for a grand bargain; the strategic options for US allies such as Australia and Japan; the fallacy of seeing Washington’s unreliability as a reason to move closer to China; Xi Jinping’s plans for Taiwan and the dependability of US support to the democratic island. And the big question: what happens to US grand strategy after Donald Trump? Can the US start afresh and help build a new international order that serves the interests of all nations?

Shashank Joshi is the Economist’s revered Defence Editor. He has deep strategic understanding combined with a rare gift for explaining things clearly. In today’s snappy half-hour episode of STW, Shashank shares his concerns about the future of democracy in the United States, the implications for the rest of the world, and the question of any emerging “Trump doctrine” from the US President’s international interventions. He talks about the impact of Trump’s short and sharp military operations without lengthy entanglements, his options on Iran, the significance of Europe’s firm stand against Trump over Greenland at Davos—which Shashank attended—the deep uncertainty as to Donald Trump’s overarching strategy towards China and the latest military purge by Xi Jinping. A key takeaway is the notion of derisking, which has traditionally applied to countries’ relationships with China but now is being discussed with respect to the US. As Shashank puts it, countries are having to think about a “ruthless purging of the sentimentality” in their US relationships

It’s been a hectic start to the year in international affairs: Greenland, Davos, Minnesota and more. Canada’s Mark Carney has delivered the last rites to the international rules-based order. NATO has settled back into a nervous simmer after Donald Trump escalated his demands to own Greenland only to back off. Again the question arises: can Europe strengthen itself to a point of security self-reliance and perhaps even form the foundation for a new liberal world order? For our first episode for 2026, David Wroe caught up with Constanze Stelzenmueller, expert on trans-Atlantic security, Fritz Stern Chair and a senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, to discuss these questions and more. Constanze gives her thoughts on Carney’s Davos speech as well as NATO head Mark Rutte’s dismissal that Europe can defend itself without the US. She talks about the difficulties with an independent nuclear deterrent, political dynamics in Europe — including with the far right — and ways for Europe to work around Brussels bureaucracy. Constanze finishes with some reflections from a brilliant short piece she wrote about Germany’s lessons on three-way dependencies on Russia, China and the US, as part of a series about Vladimir Putin’s notorious 2007 speech to the Munich Security Conference.Links:The Munich Security Conference’s volume on Putin’s 2007 speech: https://securityconference.org/en/news/full/out-now-selected-key-speeches-volume-iii/The Steady State’s paper, “Accelerating Authoritarian Dynamics: Assessment of Democratic Decline,” https://substack.com/home/post/p-176315953

The Bondi massacre of Jews celebrating the first night of Hanukkah on Sunday was the worst terrorist attack Australia has suffered on home soil and its first mass shooting in nearly three decades. With 15 innocent people murdered, Australia’s Jewish community is in deep mourning, while the nation and the world have been jolted into a stark conversation about antisemitism.In the final Stop the World episode for 2025, David Wroe speaks with John Coyne, Director of ASPI’s National Security Program and Chris Taylor, Head of ASPI’s Statecraft and Intelligence Policy Centre about the shockwaves the attacks has prompted—and the equal sense of inevitability to which many Jewish leaders are pointing, citing their insistent warnings over the past two years that antisemitic hatred was growing in intensity.David, John and Chris discuss the Albanese government’s response—and responsibility—the pathway from unchecked antisemitic rhetoric to violence, the idea of “moral” versus practical political leadership, the need for greater civic respect and virtue beyond daily politics, and the national security and social lessons Australia must learn, including Chris’s early call—since echoed by others—for a Royal Commission into the circumstances of the terrorist attack.

Today we continue the AI theme with a TSD Summit Sessions conversation on China and AI with Selina Xu, who leads China and AI research and strategic initiatives in the Office of Eric Schmidt. Who is winning the AI race between the US and China? Are they focusing on the same things? Where do China’s capabilities stand today? How is AI being adopted and integrated into economies? What are the benefits of China’s open-source approach? Where does the US maintain a strategic advantage?  These are just some of the questions David Wroe tackles with Selina in today’s interview. This podcast really covers a lot of ground, and is a must listen for anyone interested in the development of artificial intelligence and why it matters who is leading the development. It is also timely given the US Administration’s decision this week to allow Nvidia to sell more powerful chips to China, which will likely impact key areas in which Selina says the US has a current advantage, in particular in the field of compute.  If you want more regular updates on cyber and tech issues, subscribe to ASPI’s Daily Cyber and Tech Digest via https://aspicts.substack.com/

In the first Summit Sessions interview post-Sydney Dialogue, David Wroe speaks with leading global AI safety expert, Dr Roman Yampolskiy. Roman is founding director of the Cyber Security Lab at the University of Louisville, and author of many books including “AI: Unexplainable, Unpredictable, Uncontrollable”.This week, ASPI convened the fourth Sydney Dialogue summit on critical technologies and security, and AI featured heavily across the two days. So we’re bringing some of that discussion to the pod this week. The conversation covers many aspects of AI safety and risks, including the issue of control, and whether we should be continuing apace in our pursuit of superintelligence if we don’t know how to control the technology. They also discuss the recent Genesis Mission announcement coming out of the US, the opportunities that AI presents and how they can be leveraged safely and the big questions on everyone’s minds - will AI make us happy? Or will it control us?

One of the hottest topics in the world is data centres. Demand for the computing power needed to drive modern economies and societies, especially with artificial intelligence, is climbing steeply. Cloud computing services, often provided by big tech firms known as hyperscalers, supply a lot of this power.In today’s episode, Microsoft’s regional vice president for corporate external and legal affairs in Asia, Mike Yeh, talks about the strategic importance of cloud computing and of turning critical data into national assets. Increasingly, the ability to access and process data effectively is a significant strategic commodity that will help determine the strength of nations.Mike discusses the meaning of digital “sovereignty”, the use of spreading risk so that a country doesn’t find itself cut off from computing power or from its own data. He talks about the energy demands of computing, the value of digitising and structuring data, the security considerations of cloud computing, Ukraine’s experience with data, and the relationship between strategic competition and rival cloud services in the Indo-Pacific region. He also covers the cybersecurity challenges of cooperation between China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, and levels of social trust in AI in the Indo-Pacific. Once you’re done listening folks, don’t forget to check out the Sydney Dialogue website.

The Sydney Dialogue (TSD) is just weeks away! If you haven't yet registered, head on over and do so now: https://tsd.aspi.org.au/enquire In the second episode of TSD Summit Sessions, David Wroe speaks to Anduril co-founder and CEO Brian Schimpf. This is an episode for our defence wonks - Brian talks about the need to build capabilities quickly, affordably and in ways that mean it can be built using a country's existing industrial capacity for years to come. He also talks about deterrence, using Ukraine and Taiwan as real time examples, and the need for companies to be on the side of liberal democracies, and to be thinking about the long-term strategic needs of liberal democracies.And, of course, the conversation also covers autonomy and artificial intelligence, the need to keep human decision making in the loop and what human-machine teaming looks like. It's a great conversation that covers a lot of ground, and provides an excellent lead-in to the discussions that will be had at TSD on 4-5 December in Sydney.

Last month, some of the world’s leading artificial intelligence experts signed a petition calling for a prohibition on developing superintelligent AI until it is safe. One of those experts was Dan Hendrycks, director for the Center for AI Safety and an adviser to Elon Musk’s xAI and leading firm Scale AI. Dan has led original and thought-provoking research including into the risk of rogue AIs escaping human control, the deliberate misuse of the technology by malign actors, and the emergence of dangerous strategic dynamics if one nation creates superintelligence, prompting fears among rival nations. In the lead-up to ASPI’s Sydney Dialogue tech and security conference in December, Dan talks about the different risks AI poses, the possibility that AI develops its own goals and values, the concept of recursion in which machines build smarter machines, definitions of artificial “general” intelligence, the shortcomings of current AIs and the inadequacy of historical analogies such as nuclear weapons in understanding risks from superintelligence. To see some of the research discussed in today’s episode, visit the Center for AI Safety’s website here.

Russia has more than 100 times the population of its neighbour Estonia, yet the small Baltic nation has played a clever strategic hand, wedding itself closely to NATO and the European Union, and investing in sovereign tech and security capabilities. But with Moscow pressing and testing Europe, Estonia and its neighbours are under pressure.Veteran Estonian MP and chair of the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee Marko Mihkelson argues democracies became too relaxed in the decades after the Cold War, with Europe disarming and the US and others assuming trade would dissuade authoritarian nations such as China from conflict. Democracies today need to stick together, he says in this wide-ranging conversation, especially by supporting Ukraine. Marko talks about the ways authoritarians are exploiting polarisation in democracies and seeking to end the western-led liberal order. He explains why he believes imperialism has become ingrained in Russia over centuries. And if the likes of Estonia are to avoid a repeat of the half-century of occupation of Russian occupation they experienced during the Cold War, Russia must be utterly defeated.

What a week! And some of it was actually good news! Justin and Dave pull apart the latest events, starting with PM Anthony Albanese’s all-consuming meeting with US President Donald Trump at the White House. After all the jangled nerves, it went rather well, but what does the critical minerals deal mean in geopolitical terms? Is AUKUS really safe? And just what did Navy Secretary John Phelan mean about clarifying ambiguities in the trilateral agreement? Justin and Dave discuss Trump’s confidence that Chinese leader Xi Jinping won’t move against Taiwan any time soon, the upcoming meeting between the two leaders on the side of APEC in Seoul, and the much-welcomed new sanctions an increasingly impatient Trump has slapped on an infuriatingly recalcitrant Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Finally, they discuss Dave’s favourite story of the week: an open letter calling for a pause on the development of superintelligent AI, the pros and cons of the movement, and the surprising signatories.