Stop the World

Nuclear doctrine is once again back on the agenda, with Russian sabre-rattling and questions being asked about the US nuclear umbrella.This week, ASPI Senior Analyst Dr Alex Bristow interviews Heloise Fayet, senior research fellow at the French Institute of International Relations (Ifri) and the head of its research program on Deterrence and Proliferation.Heloise is an expert in nuclear doctrine and proliferation in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. They drill into nuclear topics, including what France is doing to strengthen deterrence in Europe through the Forward Deterrence Initiative and what France is doing in this region as a Pacific power. Alex and Heloise also discuss what China's nuclear expansion means for deterrence, including the nuclear strategy review underway at the Pentagon.From an Australian perspective, Alex and Heloise look at whether Australia's broad concept of deterrence means it risks talking past countries such as France, which have tended to consider deterrence through a nuclear lens.

In this episode of our TSD Artificial Intelligence Masterclass series, the United States Studies Centre's Olivia Shen leads a panel discussion with Andrew Hastie, Shadow Minister for Industry and Sovereign Capability, Louise Stigwood, Managing Director of Public Sector for ANZ at Amazon Web Services and Nicholas Davis, Industry Professor of Emerging Technology at the Human Technology Institute at the University of Technology Sydney.AI sovereignty was a dominant feature of the conference and remains highly contested in the context of how Australia and other nations can retain a level of control over their technology and future without having a frontier company of their own.There is no uniform agreement on what AI sovereignty means — does it require designing, building, training and maintaining AI entirely in Australia, or can it be achieved through collaboration with allies and partners?The panel discusses what they mean when talking about sovereignty, Australia’s interests in the US winning the frontier race against China and how much Australia should invest in AI, including data centres. They also consider what level of regulation is required and why resilience is essential to prepare for a future AI-related crisis.

Global shipping is vital to economics and security. We have seen it in relation to Russia’s war on Ukraine and we have felt it globally with the disruption to the Hormuz Strait.With years of sanctions and international condemnation, it should have people asking how these nations have continued to get so much money through oil production.In this episode of Stop the World, David Wroe interviews Michelle Wiese Bockmann, Senior Maritime Intelligence Analyst at Windward, a maritime AI company.Michelle is an expert in what is commonly known as the shadow fleet – the use of networks of vessels to circumvent sanctions. Michelle has been tracking the global shadow fleet since 2019 and its rise from only a few vessels to thousands.As Michelle sets out, clearly efforts to deal with the shadow fleet have not been effective and there are impacts on global shipping, consumer costs and security.Michelle and Dave also discuss the more effective measures the US and its partners in the Gulf are taking to overcome Iran’s closure of the Hormuz Strait. That success, notes Michelle, is the cause of Iran increasing its attacks on vessels, fearing that it is losing what has been such significant leverage over the US and globe. Interestingly, Michelle’s best case scenario for the next year is that Hormuz ends up like the Red Sea, where you only get through if you’re willing to take the risk or have a deal with Iran.Michelle and Dave also talk about the potential for other shipping routes, Ukraine’s success in targeting Russian refineries and how the nations which believe in freedom of navigation and international rules can work together to make sure the chokehold Iran has had over the world doesn’t happen again.

Europe is rearming, but can it build the defence industrial capacity it needs to stand on its own two feet?In this episode of Stop the World, David Wroe speaks with Kristijonas Vizbaras, co-founder of Lithuanian defence technology company Brolis, about Europe's changing security landscape and the lessons of Russia's war on Ukraine.Kristijonas explains why Lithuania and its neighbours are preparing for war without panic, and how Brolis has built a defence technology business with supply chains designed to avoid dependencies outside Europe.They discuss China's dominance of the drone supply chain, what the war in Ukraine is teaching Europe's defence industry, why Kristijonas believes Europe has the industrial strength to become far more self-reliant – and lessons for Australia.It's a conversation about resilience, innovation and what it really takes to prepare for an increasingly dangerous world.

In this episode of our TSD Artificial Intelligence Masterclass, Politico Australia's Ryan Heath interviews Anthropic International Special Envoy, Jeff Bleich.AI safety was a key theme of the interview. And continued a common theme from the frontier labs of proactively seeking government intervention into the sector, vastly different to the social media pioneers who demanded government stay out of their business. Jeff says that ideally pacing frontier AI doesn’t just mean preventing the AI capability from getting too far ahead of safety but not ahead at all.  Jeff and Ryan talk about recent AI cyber incidents, which Jeff says should be acted upon quickly but not through an alarmed panic, and rather as a healthy wake up call.Jeff talks about the need to have the frontier companies and governments working closely to work out what reasonable regulation is, including published safety plans and independent evaluators.Jeff also talks about the importance of developing AI consistent with democratic principles, and that means not only examining our own settings but needing to work out what our adversaries would seek to do with AI to harm us.