ASPI’s head and deputy head of defence strategy, Mike Hughes and Courtney Stewart, join us to dissect Australia’s new National Defence Strategy and Integrated Investment Plan.

It’s the right strategy, but is there enough money, even with the welcome boost? And how does Australia become operationally self-reliant without chasing the fool’s dream of self-sufficiency?

Mike and Courtney share their views on the changing strategic environment, the US alliance, the state of the region, and new capability priorities such as drones and integrated air and missile defence. We also discuss the lessons from Ukraine and Iran, the importance of defending our interests well beyond our shores, and the all-important question of AUKUS.

These are among the biggest questions facing Australia, and Mike and Courtney are among the best brains around to help you digest this busy week.

Read more analysis on the NDS by ASPI staff: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/2026-national-defence-strategy-views-from-aspi-analysts/

Read a new report 'Light speed weapons? Directed energy and the future of the ADF': https://www.aspi.org.au/report/light-speed-weapons-directed-energy-and-the-future-of-the-adf/

For regular updates on defence and security across the Indo-Pacific, subscribe to ASPI's Fault Lines digest on Substack: https://aspidefence.substack.com/

Want 20 episodes of Black Mirror in a one hour podcast? You’ve come to the right place. After a big week in artificial intelligence—including news of Anthropic’s secret supercyberweapon—we’re joined by ASPI’s Fergus Ryan and Bethany Allen to talk about AI in China.

Fergus and Bethany explain the findings of their recent report, The party’s AI: How China’s new AI systems are reshaping human rights. For the Chinese government, AI governance is regime governance. The team explain automation of the Chinese justice system and the implications for the rights of defendants; predictive law enforcement; “ambient censorship” which creates an immersive information environment tailored to party ideology; and surveillance using AI that enables authorities to track people’s momentary emotional reactions.

They discuss embedding authoritarian values into the technology; the implications for countries importing those AI models—which are attractive because they are open source and therefore cheaper—and China’s determination to shape global AI standards in line with its non-democratic interests.

Read the report 'The party's AI': https://www.aspi.org.au/report/the-partys-ai-how-chinas-new-ai-systems-are-reshaping-human-rights/

To stay across developments in AI, technology and security, subscribe to ASPI's Cyber & Tech Digest: https://aspicts.substack.com/

Back by popular demand, Florence Gaub joins David Wroe to dissect the latest global developments.

Florence is Director of Research at the NATO Defense College and an expert in strategic foresight. She shares her key takeaways on Iran and views on the state of NATO, and offers frank criticism of Europe’s underspending on defence and infrastructure.

She discusses how the Iran conflict, following Ukraine and Covid, has underscored the interconnectedness of security, economics, geography, energy and politics. And she talks about interpreting weak signals, the idea of polycrisis, and the impact of fragile dependencies and choke points.

Florence and Dave discuss Donald Trump and the challenges of forecasting when individuals as opposed to systems are the prevailing influence over policy. And they also have fun discussing the speculative newspaper ‘North Star’ that Florence and her colleagues released earlier this year for the Munich Security Conference - listen out for the elephants!

You can find that newspaper here

The Iran war is shaping as an historic geopolitical moment. Regime change looks increasingly unlikely, with the United States—and possibly Israel—preparing to settle for grinding down Iran’s ability to pose an external threat. The majority of Iranian people who loathe the regime and advocates around the world pushing for freedom are preparing for disappointment.

To talk through these perspectives, STW is joined today by Nos Hosseini, spokeswoman for the Iranian Women’s Association in Australia.

Nos’s parents fled Iran when she was a small child. She now advocates for the rights of the Iranian people from Australia. Nos explains how she and most of the Iranian community see external pressure including military action as the most realistic way to bring down the regime, given the brutal crackdowns we’ve seen in the past against any uprising. She describes the horrors inflicted upon Iranians who stand up to the theocracy, the current political dynamics, and the options for countries like Australia to expand pressure through measures such as Magnitsky sanctions against human rights abusers.

Nos also speaks frankly about her own family’s journey, the threats and intimidation they’ve endured, and the particular dehumanisation that is felt by Iranian women.

Donald Trump’s threats against Greenland spurred Europe to assert itself in ways it has never done before, says former Danish diplomat, national security adviser and top newspaper editor Bo Lidegaard. Six European NATO members went so far as to send troops to the autonomous island territory.

Hot on the heels of European President Ursula von der Leyen’s visit to Australia to sign trade and security agreements, Bo joins Stop the World to talk about the parlous state of global affairs and how Australia and Europe can work together to shape events for the better.

Europe lacks the defence industrial base, the energy security and the technology to truly back up its strong diplomatic posture, Bo says—at least for now. Closer cooperation with countries such as Australia are one way that Europe is expanding its strategic options.

Pulling together the many strategic threads dominating global headlines, Bo talks discusses Russia’s war against Ukraine, global supply chain fragility, energy and climate change, European innovation and self reliance, and the Iran war’s turbocharging effect on other geostrategic trends.

For more on the EU-Australia security and defence agreement, read ASPI's latest Explainer by Bart Hogeveen:https://www.aspi.org.au/report/the-eu-australia-security-and-defence-agreement-not-a-pact-but-a-partnership/

David Wroe and ASPI executive director Justin Bassi discuss the prospects for steering the Iran war towards a tolerable end that means neither a years-long quagmire nor an abrupt closure that hands Tehran a tacit win.

Three weeks in, the Strait of Hormuz is the keystone. How do the US and other countries reopen the key energy route and stop Tehran from holding it in perpetuity as leverage over an anxious world? What are the thresholds the US and Israel need to reach on destroying Iran’s military capacity, killing its leadership and curbing its nuclear program in order to declare mission accomplished?

And whatever frustrations US partners might be feeling about Donald Trump’s “excursion”, how do we muster some semblance of democratic cooperation to signal to the world’s autocrats that the West can come together to confront global challenges?

Three weeks into Donald Trump’s “Epic Fury” operation in Iran, STW speaks with Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear strategy and non-proliferation expert who runs the Arms Control Wonk blog and directs the East Asia Nonproliferation Project at the Middlebury Institute in California.

Jeffrey and David discuss the difficulty of ending Iran’s nuclear program, the United States’ strategy, the hovering spectre of regime change, and the degrading of Iran’s missile capabilities and possibility of their reconstitution.

Jeffrey explains the challenge of locking down proliferation of an 80-year-old technology and his view that diplomacy and deterrence need to play hefty roles. And he discusses the culture and psychology of risk in nuclear deterrence in the 21st century. Finally Jeffrey gives his views on China’s nuclear expansion and the dangers that follow the end of the US-Russia New START arms control pact last month.

Jeffrey has clear views that don’t always chase convention but are based on his own legwork analysing open source research such as images from commercial satellite pictures.

Links: https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/

The war in Iran is being talked about as the first AI war. Every military on the planet is looking at how they adopt artificial intelligence at all levels from decision-making to controlling drones on the battlefield.

Today, Michael Irwin, co-CEO of the Australian defence technology start-up Breaker, joins STW to explain where autonomous military technology is headed.

Breaker makes software that allows military operators to coordinate teams of autonomous systems across air, land and sea by talking to them over a radio just like they’d talk to a human team. This enables one operator to control whole swarms of robots, even while he or she is flying a helicopter or assaulting a position.

Michael explains how Breaker is applying its technology to intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance, freeing up personnel to concentrate on higher level tasks. And he shares his views on the philosophy, principles and ethics of automation on the battlefield, arguing that while our adversaries such as China might have lower thresholds for automating the use of force, we can deploy automation wisely while keeping our moral principles.

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna joins Stop the World for a conversation about Russia, Iran, the United States and the imperative for smaller countries such as Estonia and Australia to work together.

Minister Tsahkna shares frank views from the perspective of his 1.3 million-strong NATO member nation, which borders Russia and is on track to spend 5 percent of its GDP on defence this year. “We’ll bring the war to Russia,” he says, as he calls for countries like Ukraine and Georgia to be embraced more fully into Europe lest they remain targets of Russian predation.

He expresses support for the US campaign against Iran but also has some concerns about the signals being sent and the lack of clarity about objectives. He believes Trump is committed to European security if Europe accepts its share of the heavy lifting, and that Putin is ultimately more afraid of Donald Trump than he was of former Presidents Biden or Obama, but that Putin right now is “just playing with Trump” on Ukraine peace talks—indicating untapped potential in Trump’s leverage.

As the world’s second largest processor of many rare earths and rare-earth batteries, Estonia can work with Australia to break China’s near-monopoly over these critical resources, he says. And seeking Australian support for a Nuremberg-style tribunal to bring accountability for Russian war crimes in Ukraine, he says shared values are central to closer cooperation.

Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine recently entered its fifth year—longer than the Soviet Union fought in World War Two. To discuss the state of the war and the peace negotiations we’re joined by Ukrainian MP Galyna Mykhailiuk, who headed a delegation of MPs last week to Australia.

Galyna talks about Ukraine’s current position in negotiations, the outstanding differences over Russia’s excessive demand for territory and the vexed position for Kyiv of needing a referendum to make territorial concessions but the practical difficulty of holding such a referendum during war time. She discusses her own role as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s representative to the Parliament, political dynamics in Ukraine, the scope to increase sanctions and seize frozen assets in order to pressure Putin, and of course about the impact of the Iran conflict on Ukraine and its security.

With Iran seizing current global headlines at the moment, we’ll keep covering global security broadly including Ukraine.