Muscle over money

Calculating defence spending as a percentage of GDP offers a simple and comparable measure of relative effort in peacetime but it’s a poor guide to whether the country can sustain and win a war.

Rethinking human security

What if the greatest threats to national security weren’t missiles or cyberattacks, but loneliness, misinformation and eroding trust?

Losing the quiet war

China’s greatest success in its decades-long quiet war is its systematic erosion of the ability of US allies and partners to defend themselves and its aim of ‘winning without fighting’ is now within sight.

Special forces

Observers and practitioners of intelligence and special operations would do well to study the activities of Israel’s clandestine services and elite military units since 7 October 2023. They demonstrate the potency of creative clandestine operations, strategic patience and operational aggression.

Through a glass, darkly

NATO forecaster Florence Gaub says that strategic foresight isn’t about guessing the future, it’s about equipping leaders to face it with agility, humility and imagination. The more you think about the future in a structured way, the more optimistic you become.

Eternal vigilance

Our open free society is vulnerable to exploitation by hostile, authoritarian foreign powers such as China, Russia and Iran, and security is required to preserve our freedoms, rather than constrain them.

Australia expels Iranian ambassador over antisemetic attacks

Australia has expelled Iranian diplomats in protest against the antisemetic attacks on a Jewish synagogue and other sites in 2024.

Spies like us

ASIO boss Mike Burgess estimates that commercial and state espionage cost Australia $12.5 billion in 2023-24, with hackers stealing a slew of defence and commercial intellectual property.

Strategy needs empathy

If we want to avoid mistakes in strategic policy, we need to understand how others see the world. We need strategic empathy—the ability to step into the minds of other actors and grasp their motivations, fears and goals.

Strengthening supply chain security

Australia must strike a better balance between independent control over its defence-industrial supply chains and staying open to global innovation, particularly in dual-use technologies

A mandate for innovation

Sovereign capability is no longer just a function of industry planning or academic excellence; it is a national security requirement.

Paying the price of freedom

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese should put down his glass and make a formal statement to the Australian Parliament addressing Australia’s place in a changing world and unambiguously asking the Australian public to pay the price required to defend the nation’s basic freedoms.