Intelligence and security

Spy novels and unicorn hunting
Spy novels and unicorn hunting
“I wasted time and now time doth waste me.” Shakespeare’s rueful admonition (from Richard II) should nag at all of us who have expended energy on dead ends, red herrings or lost…
ASIO versus the A-team
ASIO versus the A-team
ASIO Director General Mike Burgess began his 2024 Annual Threat Assessment by heralding the end of business as usual – or “BAU” as he put it. “If terrorists and spies don’t do…
Decoding good intelligence
Decoding good intelligence
For an enterprise funded by the state, the public knows surprisingly little about intelligence activities. This goes far beyond the necessary secrecy of the work involved – but…
Australia needs an open-source intelligence agency
Australia needs an open-source intelligence agency
Because people have been spying for most of history, it’s easy to forget that our intelligence bureaucracy was developed primarily to fight the Cold War. After the Cold War the…
Espionage top ten
Espionage top ten
Australian spooks are not a literary lot. The secret services of Britain and the United States have spawned many spy fiction authors, but we are still waiting for a domestic John…
Contract cheating: How academic dishonesty could endanger national security
Contract cheating: How academic dishonesty could endanger national security
Contract cheating – where a third party completes work for a student who then passes it off as their own – poses clear risks to academic integrity worldwide. But there is another…
The Director’s Chair: Penny Wong on politics, China, and the job of Foreign Minister
Podcasts
The Director’s Chair: Penny Wong on politics, China, and the job of Foreign Minister
In this episode of The Director’s Chair, Michael Fullilove speaks with Senator Penny Wong, the Shadow Foreign Minister and Leader of the Opposition in the Senate.
Bringing the grey zone into focus
Bringing the grey zone into focus
Australia’s 2020 Defence Strategic Update was, by the standards of such publications, a hard-hitting document. It had a particularly strong focus on grey zone activities, seen as…
Don’t panic — Xi doesn’t hold all the aces in the great game of trade
Commentary
Don’t panic — Xi doesn’t hold all the aces in the great game of trade
Originally published in The Sunday Times.
Taiwan Flashpoint: What Australia Can Do to Stop the Coming Taiwan Crisis
Policy Briefs
Taiwan Flashpoint: What Australia Can Do to Stop the Coming Taiwan Crisis
Australian diplomacy could ease rising tensions across the Taiwan Strait, if Australian policymakers rediscovered an appetite for involvement in the flashpoint.