In this packed episode, Marcus Hellyer and Michael Shoebridge discuss the key findings of this year’s The cost of defence report. The massive data breach at the Australian National University is covered by Tom Uren …
Discussions of burden-sharing among allies typically focus on the amount of money spent. Yet there is also an intellectual burden that needs to be distributed. In April 2017, two relatively new leaders of global superpowers, …
The beat Queensland stadiums implement facial recognition system As the match that stops (part of) a nation kicked off last night, attendees at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium may not have been aware of the new facial …
Shortly after midnight on 6 June 1944, Allied forces commenced landing airborne troops in Normandy, France. At dawn, naval vessels would begin landing troops on beaches codenamed Utah and Omaha for the American forces, and …
When about 100 Russian servicemen and military equipment were reportedly flown into Venezuela in late March, US President Donald Trump’s response was to declare that ‘Russia has to get out’. Moscow refused, saying that the …
Perhaps the most difficult decision of World War II was made 75 years ago this week—and it was all about the weather. By early 1944, well over a million men had been assembled in southern …
The South Pacific calls global warming its top security threat. And China’s arrival is warming discussion of island security. Both trends explain why, for the first time in its 18-year history, Singapore’s Shangri-La Dialogue had …
Security Council resolution a step forward for survivors Following the UN Security Council’s adoption of the ninth resolution on women, peace and security—resolution 2467, which focuses on conflict-related sexual violence—and much discussion about its implications, …
A few weeks ago, the Royal Australian Air Force took delivery of two new-build F-35A joint strike fighters—the third and fourth such aircraft to fly in Australian skies. They arrived a full seven years after …
The first question that people ask me about the defence budget is, ‘Will it reach 2% by 2020–21 as the government promised?’ The short answer is yes. According to the budget papers, the consolidated defence …
Anniversaries invite us to put contemporary events into perspective. The 30th anniversary of the crushing of the popular movement in and around Tiananmen Square on 3–4 June 1989 drives home a simple and obvious fact: …
The Shangri-La Dialogue is speed dating for defence ministers. Singapore has just hosted the 18th annual version of this defence dance done with summit trappings. The 22 ministers were a sizeable grouping of stars. Then …
Sea state China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy has successfully tested its next generation of submarine-launched ballistic missile in Bohai Bay in northeastern China. The Julang-3 will be added to the future Type 096 submarine and …
The 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre of at least 10,000 people is significant for several reasons. For one thing, the deadly assault on student-led demonstrators remains a dark and hidden chapter in China’s …
In the immediate aftermath, I was unwilling to speak about my experience of Tiananmen. In Beijing, where I stayed until the end of 1990, there was no need to talk about it. Everyone knew what …
We live in an era that lionises a love of beginnings. It is what the media—and through it, imagination—strive for. But discovery, no matter how novel, is never original. It draws on the past. The …
Italy faces a double economic crisis in which two recessions and a banking crisis over the past decade have come on top of a slow structural decline in growth over a far longer period. And …
Elizabeth II may have had her annus horribilis in the early 1990s, but she would—in the minds of many South Africans, at least—be thought to have escaped lightly. The ‘rainbow nation’ went to the polls …
China’s progress towards an open society ended when the People’s Liberation Army slaughtered at least hundreds, if not thousands, of peaceful demonstrators in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on 3-4 June 1989. The crackdown left …
The defence supremos of the US and China had a face-off in Singapore at the weekend. Both sides came for a compare-and-contrast contest conducted as a rhetorical rumble. The two biggest players in the game …