Technology
Towards meaningful Quad cooperation on intelligence
The Quad has a lot on its plate. The informal grouping of Australia, India, Japan and the United States began modestly, but stepped up its ambition two years ago, with regular…
Allies, algorithms and safety online
Alan Turing’s pioneering work with algorithms in 1941 led to the cracking of the Nazi Enigma code, shortening the Second World War by years and saving millions of lives. He…
Economic diplomacy: From pollie crises to polycrisis
Words of the year are already flowing freely with teal taking the prize at the Macquarie Dictionary to reflect the challenge being posed to Australia’s major political parties by…
Why the cryptocurrency ecosystem is a house of cards
2022 started with a free fall in major cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin and Ethereum. At that time, it was seen as just part of the ebb and flow of financial speculations. But…
Economic diplomacy: Charging up old ties with Jakarta
Mining mates
The lexicon of strained language to accommodate the endlessly complicated relationship between Indonesia and Australia is coalescing around a new phrase for…
Where the chips fall: in containing China, the US can leave Australia out
Earlier this month, Australia’s security ally, the United States, launched a policy of containment towards China, Australia’s largest trading partner and the country that has…
A neck-and-neck election for the future of the internet
The campaign to elect the next Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union has entered the final stretch, with UN member states assembling in Bucharest, Romania…
Computational diplomacy - the science of an art?
Digital disinformation, cyberwarfare and AI-driven military campaigns have changed the face of geopolitics and raised the stakes for diplomatic negotiations. In a complex and…
Web3 is coming – with national security implications, too
One of the messiest and thorniest national security challenges is how to keep Australians safe from manipulative online content – now, and into the future. The matter cuts across…
Should democracies ever lie?
Should liberal democracies ever tell lies?
That’s one of the questions raised by reports that Facebook and Twitter have recently taken down a web of accounts, originating in…