Stop the World
Everything seems to be accelerating: geopolitics, technology, security threats, the dispersal of information. At times, it feels like a blur. But beneath the dizzying proliferation of events, discoveries, there are deeper trends that can be grasped and understood through conversation and debate. That’s the idea behind Stop the World, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s podcast on international affairs and security. Each week, we cast a freeze-frame around the blur of events and bring some clarity and insight on defence, technology, cyber, geopolitics and foreign policy.
Episodes
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...
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 M...
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 Bro...
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 idea...
In the next episode of our TSD Artificial Intelligence Masterclass series, Justin Bassi speaks to Abi Bradshaw, Director-General of the Australian Signals Directorate.
The discussion explores how the capabilities of AI models have evolved over the past six months and how frontier models can be used to protect Australia’s national security, including in cyber defence.
Abi shared her views on the need for governments to grapple w...
On 14 September, ASPI hosted its Sydney Dialogue Artificial Intelligence Masterclass in Canberra. We’re bringing some of the sessions to Stop the World listeners in the coming weeks.
In this episode, David Wroe speaks with Ann O’Leary, Vice President of Global Policy at OpenAI. They discuss AI safety, the impact of the Hugging Face hack and the role of third-party evaluators. They also discuss Anthropic CEO Dario ...
On 14 September, ASPI hosted its Sydney Dialogue Artificial Intelligence Masterclass in Canberra, and in the coming weeks, we're bringing some of the sessions to Stop the World listeners.
In this episode, David Wroe sits down with Australia’s Assistant Minister for Science, Technology and the Digital Economy, the Hon Dr Andrew Charlton MP. Their conversation reflects on the pace of AI development, whether Australia is prepared...
AI safety and security is now one of the global stories of the year. This week it landed with a thud on Australia’s doorstep with the news that AI agents being tested by OpenAI breached a closed area of a Medicare website and accessed non-public health Australian statistics, though not personal data.
Justin Bassi speaks with David Wroe on the implications of the breach, the wider issue of AI risk and safety, the knotty problem...
The AI news is coming thick and fast. OpenAI and Anthropic have called for the industry to pace its development, and to slow down if necessary so safety research can catch up, amid warnings from frontier researchers about the risks posed by increasingly powerful systems. But US President Donald Trump and his allies have ridiculed the idea that AI could threaten humanity, arguing the priority is staying ahead of China. With Beijing ...
David Galligan is Chief Defence Scientist and head of Defence Science & Technology with the New Zealand Defence Force. He was a keynote speaker at the recent ADSTAR Summit, held by the Defence Science and Technology Group, which hosted STW as podcast partner.
David explains how his team sits between military operators and the technology creators in industry, universities and research institutes, acting as a bridge with ideas flo...
Group Captain Ross Rice heads the Rapid Capability Office under Plan Jericho, the Royal Australian Air Force's effort to integrate technology and innovation, and to get new capabilities into the hands of its people quickly. He joins STW at the ADSTAR Summit, where we were hosted by the Defence Science and Technology Group.
Ross draws lessons from Ukraine—including brilliant operations such as Operation Spiderweb—on what ...
Retired Major-General Roger Noble AO, DSC, CSC joins STW to talk about his new book, My Long War, covering his remarkable career over six operational deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan and East Timor. The book is part memoir, part reflection on warfare and humanity, part critique of conventional military and strategic thinking. It pulls no punches while honouring the people he served with, and it's packed with cracking anecdotes from...
On the sidelines of the ADSTAR Summit, STW speaks with Paul Robards, Defence's Chief Data Integration Officer, who also has responsibility for the Defence Artificial Intelligence Centre. Paul spent 30 years in the Australian Army before taking on the task of turning Defence's vast data holdings into genuine capability.
The conversation covers Defence's current AI use, the perils of risk-aversion, minimum viable capability, data and ...
This Saturday marks ASPI's 25th birthday – the date the institute began operations in 2001. To mark it, STW is joined by Hugh White, ASPI's founding executive director, and Justin Bassi, its current executive director, for an in-depth conversation about how the institute came to be and what it's for.
Hugh recalls the establishment of ASPI by the Howard government – including a fateful plane trip with Howard's first defen...
Australia’s new Chief of the Defence Force, Admiral Mark Hammond, joins STW on the sidelines of the ADSTAR Summit in Adelaide to share his thoughts on the integration of advanced technology into defence. It’s a quickie but a goodie, with the CDF packing plenty of insights into a few minutes.
We cover the key areas where technology is making a difference, especially improving the survivability of Australian personnel; lon...
STW speaks with Anton Leicht, one of the most compelling voices on the geopolitics and economics of artificial intelligence. Anton has become a leading authority on how middle powers such as Australia can carve out a role in the global AI value chain and avoid being pushed to the periphery as the technology advances.
Anton is the author of the influential Substack Threading the Needle and a fellow with the Technology and Internatio...
As a relatively small military, the Australian Defence Force needs to fight and win through advantages such as superior technology. Chief Defence Scientist Professor Tanya Monro, AC, is in charge of figuring out smart ways to do that.
Tanya kicks off our short series recorded at the ADSTAR Summit in Adelaide, Australia's premier defence science and technology gathering. ASPI joined the summit as podcast partner alongside organisers ...
As foreign minister of Lithuania from 2020 to 2024, few people had the front row seat of Gabrielius Landsbergis to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Trump’s return to the White House and Europe’s response to both.
Since leaving office, he has become one of Europe’s clearest and most forceful champions for democratic values, for support for Ukraine, and for resisting the aggression of Russia and the risks ...
Janet Egan is a senior fellow and deputy director of the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, and one of the most respected thinkers on AI and national security — globally and from an Australian perspective. She joins STW at the perfect moment after PM Anthony Albanese’s AI speech and the big news about OpenAI’s agents going rogue.
The conversation opens with the OpenA...
Taiwan is the target of more information operation attacks than anywhere else on earth, most of them originating in mainland China and aimed at dividing Taiwanese society and eroding the resolve to resist Beijing. AI is supercharging that barrage. And to tell us about the impact and how Taiwan is fighting back, we’ve spoken with You-Hao Lai, a researcher at Taiwan's Research Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Techn...
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