How Australia got badly out in front on China
Since 2016, Australia has embarked on a policy U-turn, adopting a strategy to push back, call out and be out in front in needling and confronting China.
Australia is increasingly committed to the idea that a new Cold War is developing between the US and China.
Illustration: David Rowe
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Seventy years ago when
The Australian Financial Review launched, Australian armed forces were embroiled in the Korean War and were still, in a minor way, part of the armed forces that occupied Japan.
Australia, deeply traumatised by the Pacific war, was painfully negotiating an unsatisfyingly limited security assurance to protect us from Japanese resurgence. That became the ANZUS treaty. The paper’s modest voice reflected those uneasy times.
The world has embarked on another massive technological and social surge the quantum revolution. The countries that master quantum technology will dominate the information-processing space for decades and perhaps centuries to come, giving them control and influence over sectors such as advanced manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, the digital economy, logistics, national security and intelligence.
Our new report,
Without this coordinated effort, Australia will be left behind.
Our report focuses on analysis and building policy recommendations to help Australia better leverage the quantum revolution. The report also recognises that quantum is just one among a number of critical technologies.
A step change is needed in Australia’s policy settings related to critical and emerging technologies generally.
An unorganized, ad hoc approach to domestic security is not good.
Much of this can be improved with a simple fix: Create a Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Domestic Coordination to bring order to this government effort, which a former senior official described as “like grade school soccer…everybody running to the ball … no game plan … no coach.” This is no spymaster; instead, the job would simply be as a manager who can perform the essential bureaucratic tasks needed to bring order to this well-intentioned but disordered effort.
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A DNI deputy could manage an annual assessment of all domestic national security threats built on information synthesized from the more than 20 entities already at work. No new information collections, just a top-down view of the whole field. Today, the FBI does its own assessment, as do DHS, DEA and some of the other entities, but there is no genuine integration of those efforts and so nobody has the full picture.
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You Don’t Have to be Young to be an Astronaut
Many little girls and boys dream of becoming a spaceman when they grow up. However, these days, being an astronaut is a job for middle aged men and women.
The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), has an upper age limit of 60 years old for its astronauts. Akihiko Hoshide, 53, of
Crew Dragon Endeavor is currently aboard the international space station, having joined his colleague, Soichi Noguchi, 56, for a brief overlap of their assignments. Former space station commander Koichi Wakata was 57.
A generation ago, Neil Armstrong was 39 when he became the first man on the Moon in 1969.
It has been said that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” The border crisis endangers national security, public health and public safety, yet for the Biden administration, the border crisis that creates consternation for most Americans, incredibly, is viewed as a success story by Biden and the radicalized Democrat Party. As you will see shortly, Biden immigration policies are also important to human traffickers, drug smugglers, terrorist groups and American companies that move the money of all of the above and, incredibly, even the “fees” and ransom money paid to the human traffickers by aliens’ family members. As I noted in my recent article, Biden Amps Up The Immigration Delivery System, the Biden administration’s refusal to declare a border crisis is more than a matter of semantics.