China’s Uyghurs face an Orwellian future

China’s treatment of its Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang autonomous region has garnered increased attention in recent months, due to Beijing’s policy of mass arbitrary detention of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in ‘political re-education …

Whither human rights under Trump?

US President Donald Trump’s Helsinki press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin casts in stark relief his striking regard for authoritarian leaders. It is consistent with his systematic downgrading of the promotion of human rights …

Trump tramples Europe

After a week of hosting US President Donald Trump for a variety of visits and summits, Europe’s leaders may be excused for paraphrasing Charles Dickens’s summary of another tumultuous time in their continent’s history: ‘It …

The trouble with Telegram (part 2)

Last Friday, the Turnbull government announced that it’s planning to introduce new laws that will compel international technology companies to cooperate with intelligence agencies. But the legislation will be no panacea. Although it demonstrates a …

Only Poles can save Polish democracy

Massive protests in Warsaw have made headlines around the world in recent weeks. Poles are demonstrating against legislation enacted by the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party that would lower the retirement age of Supreme …

ASPI suggests

The world Fasten your seatbelts, dear readers, and get ready for a bumpy ride through transatlantic and European security. The NATO summit in Brussels is over already, and we haven’t seen a Trump tweet backpedalling …

Post-Frisco: misshapen deterrence

A fractious NATO summit—including, apparently, an implied threat by President Donald Trump to leave the alliance—shows it’s not too early to be thinking about a post-alliance future. So in this post, I intend to unpack …

Rethinking our approach to open-source data

Open-source data is built on the foundation of long-term useability, authenticity and reliability. Its public nature means that it can be accessible anywhere with an internet connection. Yet when we talk about the government data …

Aum Shinrikyo’s legacy of toxic terror

The execution of Shoko Asahara, the former leader of the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo, is a reminder of one of the most unsettling chapters in modern terrorism. Asahara, who was hanged last Friday alongside …

China, the US and the race for space

The head of the Chinese lunar exploration program, Ye Peijian, has remarked that: the universe is an ocean, the moon is the Diaoyu Islands, Mars is Huangyan Island. If we don’t go there now even …