Stop the World

It’s a double-segment episode of STW today. Fresh from last week’s India AI Impact Summit in Delhi, Australia’s Assistant Minister for Science, Technology and the Digital Economy, Dr Andrew Charlton, speaks with us about artificial intelligence, the future of the Australian economy—including the future of work—and progress on international cooperation on AI.Then we hear from Maxwell Scott, co-founder and CTO of Strat Alliance Global, which helps companies and organisations integrate AI safely and lawfully. Max continues the conversation on the prospects for rising productivity, how AI might complement, enhance or replace certain human tasks, the near term limitations of AI models, comparisons to the Industrial Revolution, and the worry that keeps Max awake at night: the risk of deliberate misuse by rogue humans.Max, who recently visited Australia, also talks about AI opportunities and risks here, prospects for global cooperation and governance, and competing models for national regulation.Speech by Dr Andrew CharltonDave’s piece in the Australian Financial Review

Luke de Pulford is executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China – a cross-party network of parliamentarians from more than 40 countries who share concerns about Beijing’s behaviour at home and abroad. Luke, a human rights activist and anti-slavery advocate, recounts how the group came together in 2020, the challenges it faces and how it works to shift the centre of gravity on debates relating to Beijing’s punishment of critics and defiance of international norms. He talks about the challenges of holding China to account even as many countries drift away from taking principled stands, the impact of the United States’ retreat from leadership of the liberal order, and the need to be the squeakiest wheel when pushing human rights cases. He discusses the recent conviction and sentencing of businessman and democracy activist Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong, Britain’s shifting position on China relations, and the dilemma for Australia—which counts 20 parliamentarians from the major parties as members of IPAC—in having an economy heavily invested in China and a security strategy invested in the US.

It’s STW’s 100th episode, so we had to make it a good one! Enter former Biden White House adviser Mira Rapp-Hooper, one of the sharpest minds around on Indo-Pacific Strategy. Mira served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for East Asia and Oceania in Joe Biden’s National Security Council. She’s the author of two books and is now a visiting fellow at Brookings. She gives her thoughts on Donald Trump’s China strategy and the unlikely prospects for a grand bargain; the strategic options for US allies such as Australia and Japan; the fallacy of seeing Washington’s unreliability as a reason to move closer to China; Xi Jinping’s plans for Taiwan and the dependability of US support to the democratic island. And the big question: what happens to US grand strategy after Donald Trump? Can the US start afresh and help build a new international order that serves the interests of all nations?

Shashank Joshi is the Economist’s revered Defence Editor. He has deep strategic understanding combined with a rare gift for explaining things clearly. In today’s snappy half-hour episode of STW, Shashank shares his concerns about the future of democracy in the United States, the implications for the rest of the world, and the question of any emerging “Trump doctrine” from the US President’s international interventions. He talks about the impact of Trump’s short and sharp military operations without lengthy entanglements, his options on Iran, the significance of Europe’s firm stand against Trump over Greenland at Davos—which Shashank attended—the deep uncertainty as to Donald Trump’s overarching strategy towards China and the latest military purge by Xi Jinping. A key takeaway is the notion of derisking, which has traditionally applied to countries’ relationships with China but now is being discussed with respect to the US. As Shashank puts it, countries are having to think about a “ruthless purging of the sentimentality” in their US relationships

It’s been a hectic start to the year in international affairs: Greenland, Davos, Minnesota and more. Canada’s Mark Carney has delivered the last rites to the international rules-based order. NATO has settled back into a nervous simmer after Donald Trump escalated his demands to own Greenland only to back off. Again the question arises: can Europe strengthen itself to a point of security self-reliance and perhaps even form the foundation for a new liberal world order? For our first episode for 2026, David Wroe caught up with Constanze Stelzenmueller, expert on trans-Atlantic security, Fritz Stern Chair and a senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, to discuss these questions and more. Constanze gives her thoughts on Carney’s Davos speech as well as NATO head Mark Rutte’s dismissal that Europe can defend itself without the US. She talks about the difficulties with an independent nuclear deterrent, political dynamics in Europe — including with the far right — and ways for Europe to work around Brussels bureaucracy. Constanze finishes with some reflections from a brilliant short piece she wrote about Germany’s lessons on three-way dependencies on Russia, China and the US, as part of a series about Vladimir Putin’s notorious 2007 speech to the Munich Security Conference.Links:The Munich Security Conference’s volume on Putin’s 2007 speech: https://securityconference.org/en/news/full/out-now-selected-key-speeches-volume-iii/The Steady State’s paper, “Accelerating Authoritarian Dynamics: Assessment of Democratic Decline,” https://substack.com/home/post/p-176315953

The Bondi massacre of Jews celebrating the first night of Hanukkah on Sunday was the worst terrorist attack Australia has suffered on home soil and its first mass shooting in nearly three decades. With 15 innocent people murdered, Australia’s Jewish community is in deep mourning, while the nation and the world have been jolted into a stark conversation about antisemitism.In the final Stop the World episode for 2025, David Wroe speaks with John Coyne, Director of ASPI’s National Security Program and Chris Taylor, Head of ASPI’s Statecraft and Intelligence Policy Centre about the shockwaves the attacks has prompted—and the equal sense of inevitability to which many Jewish leaders are pointing, citing their insistent warnings over the past two years that antisemitic hatred was growing in intensity.David, John and Chris discuss the Albanese government’s response—and responsibility—the pathway from unchecked antisemitic rhetoric to violence, the idea of “moral” versus practical political leadership, the need for greater civic respect and virtue beyond daily politics, and the national security and social lessons Australia must learn, including Chris’s early call—since echoed by others—for a Royal Commission into the circumstances of the terrorist attack.

Today we continue the AI theme with a TSD Summit Sessions conversation on China and AI with Selina Xu, who leads China and AI research and strategic initiatives in the Office of Eric Schmidt. Who is winning the AI race between the US and China? Are they focusing on the same things? Where do China’s capabilities stand today? How is AI being adopted and integrated into economies? What are the benefits of China’s open-source approach? Where does the US maintain a strategic advantage?  These are just some of the questions David Wroe tackles with Selina in today’s interview. This podcast really covers a lot of ground, and is a must listen for anyone interested in the development of artificial intelligence and why it matters who is leading the development. It is also timely given the US Administration’s decision this week to allow Nvidia to sell more powerful chips to China, which will likely impact key areas in which Selina says the US has a current advantage, in particular in the field of compute.  If you want more regular updates on cyber and tech issues, subscribe to ASPI’s Daily Cyber and Tech Digest via https://aspicts.substack.com/

In the first Summit Sessions interview post-Sydney Dialogue, David Wroe speaks with leading global AI safety expert, Dr Roman Yampolskiy. Roman is founding director of the Cyber Security Lab at the University of Louisville, and author of many books including “AI: Unexplainable, Unpredictable, Uncontrollable”.This week, ASPI convened the fourth Sydney Dialogue summit on critical technologies and security, and AI featured heavily across the two days. So we’re bringing some of that discussion to the pod this week. The conversation covers many aspects of AI safety and risks, including the issue of control, and whether we should be continuing apace in our pursuit of superintelligence if we don’t know how to control the technology. They also discuss the recent Genesis Mission announcement coming out of the US, the opportunities that AI presents and how they can be leveraged safely and the big questions on everyone’s minds - will AI make us happy? Or will it control us?

One of the hottest topics in the world is data centres. Demand for the computing power needed to drive modern economies and societies, especially with artificial intelligence, is climbing steeply. Cloud computing services, often provided by big tech firms known as hyperscalers, supply a lot of this power.In today’s episode, Microsoft’s regional vice president for corporate external and legal affairs in Asia, Mike Yeh, talks about the strategic importance of cloud computing and of turning critical data into national assets. Increasingly, the ability to access and process data effectively is a significant strategic commodity that will help determine the strength of nations.Mike discusses the meaning of digital “sovereignty”, the use of spreading risk so that a country doesn’t find itself cut off from computing power or from its own data. He talks about the energy demands of computing, the value of digitising and structuring data, the security considerations of cloud computing, Ukraine’s experience with data, and the relationship between strategic competition and rival cloud services in the Indo-Pacific region. He also covers the cybersecurity challenges of cooperation between China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, and levels of social trust in AI in the Indo-Pacific. Once you’re done listening folks, don’t forget to check out the Sydney Dialogue website.

The Sydney Dialogue (TSD) is just weeks away! If you haven't yet registered, head on over and do so now: https://tsd.aspi.org.au/enquire In the second episode of TSD Summit Sessions, David Wroe speaks to Anduril co-founder and CEO Brian Schimpf. This is an episode for our defence wonks - Brian talks about the need to build capabilities quickly, affordably and in ways that mean it can be built using a country's existing industrial capacity for years to come. He also talks about deterrence, using Ukraine and Taiwan as real time examples, and the need for companies to be on the side of liberal democracies, and to be thinking about the long-term strategic needs of liberal democracies.And, of course, the conversation also covers autonomy and artificial intelligence, the need to keep human decision making in the loop and what human-machine teaming looks like. It's a great conversation that covers a lot of ground, and provides an excellent lead-in to the discussions that will be had at TSD on 4-5 December in Sydney.

Last month, some of the world’s leading artificial intelligence experts signed a petition calling for a prohibition on developing superintelligent AI until it is safe. One of those experts was Dan Hendrycks, director for the Center for AI Safety and an adviser to Elon Musk’s xAI and leading firm Scale AI. Dan has led original and thought-provoking research including into the risk of rogue AIs escaping human control, the deliberate misuse of the technology by malign actors, and the emergence of dangerous strategic dynamics if one nation creates superintelligence, prompting fears among rival nations. In the lead-up to ASPI’s Sydney Dialogue tech and security conference in December, Dan talks about the different risks AI poses, the possibility that AI develops its own goals and values, the concept of recursion in which machines build smarter machines, definitions of artificial “general” intelligence, the shortcomings of current AIs and the inadequacy of historical analogies such as nuclear weapons in understanding risks from superintelligence. To see some of the research discussed in today’s episode, visit the Center for AI Safety’s website here.

Russia has more than 100 times the population of its neighbour Estonia, yet the small Baltic nation has played a clever strategic hand, wedding itself closely to NATO and the European Union, and investing in sovereign tech and security capabilities. But with Moscow pressing and testing Europe, Estonia and its neighbours are under pressure.Veteran Estonian MP and chair of the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee Marko Mihkelson argues democracies became too relaxed in the decades after the Cold War, with Europe disarming and the US and others assuming trade would dissuade authoritarian nations such as China from conflict. Democracies today need to stick together, he says in this wide-ranging conversation, especially by supporting Ukraine. Marko talks about the ways authoritarians are exploiting polarisation in democracies and seeking to end the western-led liberal order. He explains why he believes imperialism has become ingrained in Russia over centuries. And if the likes of Estonia are to avoid a repeat of the half-century of occupation of Russian occupation they experienced during the Cold War, Russia must be utterly defeated.

What a week! And some of it was actually good news! Justin and Dave pull apart the latest events, starting with PM Anthony Albanese’s all-consuming meeting with US President Donald Trump at the White House. After all the jangled nerves, it went rather well, but what does the critical minerals deal mean in geopolitical terms? Is AUKUS really safe? And just what did Navy Secretary John Phelan mean about clarifying ambiguities in the trilateral agreement? Justin and Dave discuss Trump’s confidence that Chinese leader Xi Jinping won’t move against Taiwan any time soon, the upcoming meeting between the two leaders on the side of APEC in Seoul, and the much-welcomed new sanctions an increasingly impatient Trump has slapped on an infuriatingly recalcitrant Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Finally, they discuss Dave’s favourite story of the week: an open letter calling for a pause on the development of superintelligent AI, the pros and cons of the movement, and the surprising signatories.

In today’s episode, Natalia Solieva, former spokesperson at Ukraine’s Embassy in Washington and an expert on Russian information operations, analyses Moscow’s wartime gaslighting (and not in the sense of its dwindling energy exports to Europe.)Natalia, now a resident in the United States, has studied extensively the battle of narratives over Moscow’s war against Ukraine. She explains the Ukrainian people’s hard-earned resilience to Russian disinformation, the weapons of influence Moscow has deployed against the US, the reassuring levels of American public support for Ukraine, Russia’s use of cognitive warfare and its attempts to intimidate Europe, the precarious state of the global information environment and the best ways to defend against disinformation.Natalia also shares with us her favourite Winston Churchill quote.

Though it’s on the opposite side of the world, Europe is vital to Australia’s security, not just because of our shared values but also because of the continent’s role in supporting Ukraine’s resistance against Russia’s aggression—arguably the test case for future global order. Today, senior European Union diplomat Paola Pampaloni tells Stop the World about progress on the EU’s Indo-Pacific strategy amid rapid shifts in geopolitics.Paola, who is the EU’s Special Envoy for the Indo-Pacific and Acting Managing Director of the European External Action Service for the Asia-Pacific, talks about the proposed Australia-EU defence and security agreement, difficulties with the free trade agreement and the strategic importance of rules-based trade. She discusses cooperation in strategic sectors such as critical minerals, the risks of dependency on China and the broader question of economic security.She addresses the reality that China is enabling Russia’s war against Ukraine, and also covers Taiwan, EU defence spending, the authoritarian axis, the US under Donald Trump and technology cooperation with the Indo-Pacific.

Is artificial intelligence a “normal” technology like electrification, computing and the internet, or is it a new entity unlike anything we’ve ever created? The question makes all the difference to how we approach AI policy.Today on Stop the World, David Wroe speaks to Alice Friend, the Global Head of AI and Emerging Tech Policy at Google. They tackle the big questions including the nature of AI, the meaning of “general” versus narrow intelligence, the role of embodiment and agency in the real world,  the best ways to encourage adoption and integration, and the best approaches to regulation so that countries—and the world—can reap the economic benefits while reducing the safety and security risks. They discuss how the technology is evolving, how it might diffuse through economies and societies, the importance of rules and standards, what it means to “win or lose” the global AI race and what might happen if or when we achieve artificial general intelligence. It’s a healthy discussion and debate on what AI means for humanity.

For some, Greenland might have only entered their consciousness when US President Trump offered to buy it. But there’s much more to the story, even beyond its history with the United States. In today’s episode, Liz Buchanan gives Stop the World listeners a useful crash course on Greenland, from the mysterious disappearance of the Vikings in the 1400s, to Greenland’s pivotal role in World War II and the Cold War, and its continued – and increasing – strategic importance today.Liz covers everything from Arctic shipping routes and how they impact Australia despite our geographical distance, Greenland’s ideal positioning for prospective polar space launches, to the Cold War's “Project Iceworm”, a US-built underground ice city complete with a barber shop and bowling alley.As Liz explains, Greenland is far from an Arctic afterthought, and if you’ve only ever considered it as a desolate blob on top of the Mercator map, this episode will be sure to change that.Images used in this episode are credited to So You Want to Own Greenland? Lessons from the Vikings to Trump by Elizabeth Buchanan.Find Elizabeth’s book here https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/so-you-want-to-own-greenland/.

The Indo-Pacific is a strategic theatre named after two oceans, but according to retired US four-star general Charles Flynn, land forces would be crucial in any conflict, including over Taiwan. In today’s episode, David Wroe speaks with Charles, who retired last year as commanding general of the US Army Pacific, about the often misunderstood and overlooked importance of land power. They consider scenarios including a Chinese full-scale invasion of Taiwan and the crucial hard power that only armies could deliver in such a conflict. Charles, who is also a senior advisor at Palantir explains the technology lessons that China and North Korea are learning from Russia’s war on Ukraine, and the challenges for large organisations including militaries to reorientate themselves around new and transformative technologies. And to those worried about US reliability in the Indo-Pacific, he has a message: don’t panic. Editor’s Note: In the introduction, Olivia mentions that ASPI last hosted General Flynn in 2021. ASPI hosted him in February 2022.

Stop the World is hosting a short series of conversations with Australian politicians that transcend daily politics and breaking news to get to the fundamental strategy and security challenges Australia faces. In the first of the series, we speak with Shadow Finance Minister, Senator James Paterson. James shares frank views on Australia’s strategic risks, the need to deter authoritarian powers, his advocacy for higher defence spending—despite his instinctive fiscal prudence—and the role technology can play in boosting the economy so Australia doesn't get left behind by the transformative power of artificial intelligence.  He talks about balancing his classical liberal support for an open economy with the need to safeguard strategic industries and technologies, the responsibilities of the tech industry, the maintenance of the Australia-US alliance under the unconventional Trump administration, and the need to prioritise future generations so young people don’t become disillusioned with politics. James has been a Senator for Victoria since 2016 and has previously served as Shadow Minister for Home Affairs and Cyber, and chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security.

In this special episode of Stop the World, David Wroe speaks with Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the Belarusian democracy advocate who leads a government-elect from exile. After dictator Alexander Lukashenka declared himself winner of the 2020 election despite sweeping evidence that the people had chosen Sviatlana, 1.5 million Belarusians took to the streets, sparking a brutal crackdown and Sviatlana’s deportation to neighbouring Lithuania.  Sviatlana says that the fight for freedom has made her more human, that it’s “not just about politics—it's about love. It's about dedication. It’s a fight not only for your family, but for your country.” She tells the story of how 2020 unfolded, the nature of the regime and its repression, Lukashenka’s deep dependence on Vladimir Putin—and the price that Putin extracts—the importance of Ukraine’s liberation, the role of the United States and the security of Europe. She also shares her own story, including the five-year imprisonment of her husband, Siarhei Tsikhanouski, an activist and blogger whom she replaced at the last moment as a 2020 candidate after Siarhei was abruptly detained on trumped-up charges. As the interview took place, news was breaking that Poland was forced to shoot down several Russian drones, at least some of which came from Belarus—a reminder of what’s at stake in both Belarus’ and Ukraine’s fights for freedom.