Warning Time

Two claims dominated the week, and both are about time. China says it has flown a stealth combat drone off the deck of the Type 076 Sichuan. Taiwan says it coun…

A listening device turned up on a Royal Australian Navy ship. Chinese intelligence officers were working former premiers and an AFP commander through LinkedIn.…

Two things happened this week. Australia went shopping for Tomahawks, loitering munitions and Japanese frigates. And China quietly squeezed the two export earne…

Two weeks ago the worry was whether the Americans would show up. This week it's whether the British can build the boat. The AUKUS risk has quietly migrated from…

Australia spent this week losing pieces of its most sensitive aircraft to China, watching the US shipyard bill for AUKUS blow out tenfold, and discovering that…

AUKUS turned five this week, and the commentariat marked the anniversary the way Australians mark most things: by arguing about whether we should have bothered.…

Iran spent this week attacking shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Oil went through US$109. Commodity prices are near an 18-year high. And Australia spent the wee…

Four stories this week told us AUKUS is unstoppable. Two told us nobody wants to pay for it. Both are true, and only one of them involves steel. Meanwhile a Pac…

Two things happened this week that should be read together. Washington's own auditors put a number on how badly the US submarine enterprise is choking, and Aust…

The week's most important story didn't happen in the Taiwan Strait. It happened in Jakarta, where Indonesia and China agreed to expand joint military exercises,…

Two stories dominated the week, and they point in opposite directions. Washington told us AUKUS is fine while sailing through the Taiwan Strait 56 per cent less…

A big week for hardware and a bad week for everything hardware depends on. Australia got cleared to buy a missile no other country outside the United States is…

Five years into AUKUS, the Defence Minister told the country the American submarine rotations will "fade away" from 2032, his boss spent the rest of the week wa…

I'm still trying to get into the habit of things, and still fine tuning here and there. I'm posting this late without much finesse, just so I can be held there…

Two things happened this week that tell you everything about where Australia actually stands. Our closest ally in the Pacific folded to Beijing over Taiwan with…

I wasn't quite ready to go with the first newsletter yet, but this was one of the most significant weeks in Australian geopolitical news in recent months, and f…