Australian Strategic Policy Institute

From Wednesday, work undertaken lawfully in Australia by journalists, think tank analysts, academics and others may be characterised as criminal under Chinese law. China’s new Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law claims legal authority to pursue people beyond the People’s Republic of China who, in the Communist Party’s view, undermine ethnic unity or promote ethnic division. Beijing has not simply enacted another domestic law.

Northern Australia has become Australia’s principal strategic operating base. As the nation’s forward line of deterrence and power projection, its ability to support sustained military operations will be critical in any future crisis or conflict. If deterrence fails, Australia’s capacity to generate, sustain and recover combat power will depend not simply on individual bases or capabilities, but on the resilience of the interconnected systems that underpin northern defence.

How should middle powers such as Australia and Canada maximise their strategic clout in an age of increasingly assertive great powers? Raquel Garbers spent nearly three decades in Canadian defence, security and intelligence, including a stint as Director General for Strategic Defence Policy at the Canadian Department of National Defence, where she served as the principal architect of Canada’s defence policy.

Australian security in an era of uncertainty: Views from the Defence Strategy Program in The Strategist: 2025-26 edition brings together articles published in ASPI’s The Strategist over the past 12 months, examining the most significant strategic, operational, technological and economic challenges facing Australia at a consequential moment in its history.

Australia and Japan are both targets of state-linked disinformation designed to exploit historical grievances, domestic political divisions and alliance anxieties. Beijing’s reaction to Japan’s May 2026 intelligence reforms demonstrates that even legitimate democratic measures will be contested in the information domain. The two countries bring complementary strengths to this challenge.

Australia and the Republic of Korea face an increasingly complex Indo-Pacific security environment in which technological competition, industrial resilience and the ability to sustain advanced military capability have become central to national security.

Pressure Points Part 3: China in the Pacific and Indian oceans examines China’s expanding defence and security presence beyond the First Island Chain and across the Southwest Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and Australia’s maritime approaches over the last decade.

China’s defence and security presence beyond the First Island Chain is no longer an abstract concern; it’s now a defining feature of the Indo-Pacific strategic environment. Across the Southwest Pacific, Indian Ocean and Australia’s maritime approaches, Beijing is steadily building a pattern of access, presence and influence that’s reshaping regional security dynamics.

Do intelligence agencies need to rethink how they deliver assessments to political leaders in the AI age? That’s the question at the heart of a new ASPI report, ‘Reading the Room: Redesigning Intelligence Product for the AI Age’. Today STW sits down with its author to dig into the issue. ASPI senior fellow Chris Taylor joins FiveCast co-founder Duane Rivett—whose firm provides open-source intelligence to the security community—to talk through what needs to change and why.

Reading the room argues that Australia’s National Intelligence Community faces a growing mismatch between how intelligence is produced and how it is now consumed in an AI-shaped information environment. While intelligence collection and analysis have advanced significantly, the formats, delivery methods and user experience of intelligence products have changed far less.