Strategic NewsTo secure frontier AI access, Australia’s best bet is a coalition of the dependent
Toward Programme

To secure frontier AI access, Australia’s best bet is a coalition of the dependent

ASPI The Strategist Institutional·2026-09-25TechnologyP5: Strategic DecouplingP7: Alliance Architecture
Why it matters

The article directly addresses Australia's structural dependence on US frontier AI and proposes a strategic coalition approach to secure ongoing access—a critical technology underpinning future military capability and industrial competitiveness. By advocating managed dependence within the US orbit and supply-chain diversification with allied middle powers, the strategy aims to insulate Australia from unilateral US access restrictions and reduce vulnerability to tech decoupling, bearing on both Alliance resilience and Decoupling risk.

Read the original report at ASPI The Strategist

Pillar tags and the significance note are AI-classified (Claude) and human-curated. The platform's own preparedness scores never move on a single story without a separate human approval.

From the series
The Unprepared series · Part IV

Xi Jinping and the Purge That Built an Army

The PLA that Xi Jinping inherited in 2012 was modernising, and the one he commands in 2026 is transformed. Part IV of the Unprepared series.

Read the essay 4 min read

Get the weekly brief.

One email a week: what changed, why it matters, and the next essay in the series.

Free every week on Substack. Unsubscribe anytime.

This week's Warning Time

This was AUKUS week, and not in the way its architects would have liked. An independent inquiry recommended scrapping the submarine pact outright, a parliamenta…

Read the issue
Where this sits in the model

This development bears on 2 of the eight pillars of Australian preparedness — the overall picture right now is 5/100.

Go deeper · Threat Tracker
How does the military balance actually stack up?

Read next

All news
The bigger picture

One signal in a live tracker of Australia's preparedness.

Every story here is scored against eight pillars — defence, energy, industry, fiscal reform, alliances and more — companion to the book Unprepared: Australia in an Age of Chinese Power.

Back to all intelligence