‘Amusing ourselves to death’ in age of TikTok

Forty years ago, in a seminal masterpiece titled Amusing Ourselves to Death, American author Neil Postman warned that we had entered a brave new world in which people were enslaved by television and other technology-driven entertainment. The threat of subjugation comes not from the oppressive arm of authoritarian regimes and concentration camps but from our own willing submission and surrender.

“Big brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours,” Postman wrote in 1985.

“There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth. When a population becomes distract­ed by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”

Postman’s insight would have been spot-on had he written this today about TikTok. Postman was mostly thinking about mass media with a commercial imperative. People would be enslaved to superficial consumerism. But add a technologically advanced authoritarian power with platforms that – unlike terrestrial TV – are essentially borderless and can reach around the globe, and you have George Orwell’s Big Brother put together with Aldous Huxley’s cultural and spiritual entropy.

Addictive digital entertainment can be corrosive even without a malign puppeteer. But with an entity such as the Chinese Communist Party fiddling the algorithms, it could be catastrophic.

Just in 2025, we have seen much of the Western world so spellbound by TikTok that the thought of living without it brought on the anguish normally reserved for the impact of conflict. “TikTok refugees” became a description, as though they had been displaced like Jews fleeing Europe or Yazidis escaping Islamic State.

Postman noted that we were innately prepared to “resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us … But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements?”

The cries of anguish were depressingly muted as TikTok built up a following in Western countries that now means four in 10 Americans aged under 30 get their “news” from TikTok, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Centre.

When a ban was flagged, the cries came from those who couldn’t bear to give up the platform and from free speech absolutists who believed any rules amounted to government overreach. If our most popular radio stations had been based in Germany in the late 1930s, the Soviet Union during the Cold War or Syria during the ISIS caliphate, our leaders would have protected the public, regardless of popularity and notwithstanding that it would constitute government intervention in the so-called free market of ideas.

In fact, the market isn’t free because powerful actors can man­ipulate the information landscape.

Billionaire Elon Musk gives free-speech advocates a bad name by posting not just different opinions but promoting false content on issues such as Ukraine on his platform X. But more sinister is a platform such as TikTok, which is headquartered in authoritarian China and ultim­ately at the control of the CCP, with algorithms that have been demonstrated to manipulate audiences by privileging posts that serve Beijing’s strategic interests and downgrading content that does not.

Despite such threats, we have no clear framework to protect ourselves from powerful information platforms, including the newest generative artificial intelligence models such as DeepSeek, which will be increasingly available – and, thanks to their affordability, attractive – despite operating under Chinese government control. As a US court declared in upholding the congressional ban on TikTok, giving a foreign power a vector to shape and influence people’s thinking was a constraint on free speech, not an enabler of it.

Freedoms of speech and expression are core democratic principles but they need active protection. This means the involvement of governments.

US Vice-President JD Vance told the Munich Security Conference that Donald Trump represented a “new sheriff in town” who would defend free speech and “will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square, agree or disagree”. It was an admirable derivative of the quote attributed to Evelyn Beatrice Hall describing Voltaire’s principle of “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”. But just as we have regulators for financial and other markets, we need regulation of our information markets.

By all means, speech should be as free as possible. Awful mustn’t equal unlawful, to borrow ASIO boss Mike Burgess’s phrase. Speech that hurts the feelings of others or advocates unpopular views cannot be the threshold for censorship. Such lazy and faint-hearted policymaking creates only a more brittle society. But that doesn’t mean we should make ourselves fish in a barrel for malign foreign powers.

Anarchy is not freedom. Governments need to brave the minefield that is modern information technology. If a platform poses risks that cannot be avoided, as with TikTok, it should be banned.

Other platforms that sit within democratic nations’ jurisdictions should be subjected to risk mitigations such as content moderation to deter and punish criminal activity. X, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube can be used as avenues for information operations, as shown by Russia buying advertisements on Facebook or CCP-backed trolls posting on X and YouTube, or be used as vectors for organised crime. Even the most ardent free-speech advocates would agree that drug trafficking, child abuse or joining a terrorist group are illegal offline and therefore should be illegal online.

No marketplace remains free and fair when governments overregulate or abdicate responsibility.

The once-free markets of trade and investment have been eroded by China to such an extent that just this week Trump issued a foreign investment policy to protect American “critical technology, critical infrastructure, personal data, and other sensitive areas” from “foreign adversaries such as the PRC”, including by making “foreign investment subject to appropriate security provisions”.

A key principle of the new presidential policy is that “investment at all costs is not always in the national interest”.

In other words, security measures and rules keep American critical infrastructure free.

While it has not yet gained much media attention, it is among the most important economic security policies ever taken to counter Beijing’s objective to “systematically direct and facilitate investment in United States companies and assets to obtain cutting-edge technologies, intellectual property and leverage in strategic industries”, and all of America’s allies and democratic partners should publicly support it and implement it domestically.

We like to think that technologies are neutral mediums that are only vehicles for improvement. As Postman wrote, this belief often rises to the status of an ideology or faith.

“All that is required to make it stick is a population that devoutly believes in the inevitability of progress,” he wrote. “And in this sense … history is moving us toward some preordained paradise and that technology is the force behind that movement.”

Science and technology have of course delivered extraordinary improvements to our health, our economic productivity, our access to information and our ability to connect with other people regardless of geography – provided we engage with it wisely. We must not become cynical about technology entirely, which is why we must maintain control over it and ensure it serves our interests.

The ultimate solution is knowledge and participation. As Postman concluded, the answer must be found in “how we watch”. With no discussion on how to use technology, there has been no “public understanding of what information is and how it gives direction to a culture”.

Postman wrote that “no medium is excessively dangerous if its users understand what its dangers are”. He insisted we were “in a race between education and disaster”.

What Donald Trump Can Learn From Allies on Foreign Aid

There are smarter and more effective ways to streamline and re-strategize U.S. foreign aid.

The Trump administration is not the first Western government to envision a stronger, safer, and more prosperous country by integrating foreign aid with strategic objectives. The experiences of America’s Five Eyes partners, particularly Australia and the United Kingdom, offer encouraging evidence for reform, having achieved tightly targeted development programs supporting diplomatic and strategic priorities. They also offer sobering lessons about implementation pitfalls, including the abrupt disruption of established programs, especially those already aligned with strategic policy, loss of critical skills among government personnel, and heightened unease among international partners. 

The logic driving aid integration is compelling. In an era of great power competition, maintaining separate tracks for diplomacy and development is an unaffordable luxury. China has harnessed development, along with trade and financial investment, as an instrument of strategic influence through both soft and hard means. Both Australia and the UK recognized this reality, merging their aid agencies (AusAID and DFID, respectively) into their foreign ministries to create more strategically coherent development policies. Having made clear its intent to fundamentally reshape USAID, the Trump administration has the opportunity to learn from its allies in the pursuit of the American national interest. 

A Unified Strategy: Australia 

The Australian government integrated the Australian Aid Agency (AusAID) with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in 2013 with the stated goal of better aligning Australia’s development, foreign policy, trade priorities, strategies, and objectives while bringing an enhanced focus on the Indo-Pacific. The integration accompanied a reduction of Australia’s development funding. After reaching a peak of more than AUD $5 billion in 2013–14, or .33 percent of gross national income (GNI), Australia’s development budget has progressively declined, and in 2023–2024 was AUD$4.8 billion, or .29 percent of GNI. This change is also stark in terms of the slice of the Australian budget spent on foreign aid compared to defense expenditures. 

An independent review of the integration in 2019 found that 90 percent of the Australian government’s strategic targets for the integration had been met, driving development allocations towards infrastructure and the Pacific. The review also found “examples of development goals being more strongly advanced through joined-up, whole-of-department efforts.” 

These initial efforts—such as the Pacific Seasonal Worker Scheme and the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific—have since grown to enable more ambitious and innovative integrated development and strategic initiatives. Key among these are the Falepili Union with Tuvalu (which provides Australia with strategic denial rights and Tuvalu with climate resilience monies and opportunities for migration), the agreement between Australia and Papua New Guinea that encompasses development and security elements, and Telstra’s acquisition of Digicel Pacific, the largest mobile provider in the Pacific, with the Australian government’s support amid rumors of interest from China Mobile. While the review stepped carefully around the issue, it found integration had increased Australia’s ability to counter efforts to overshadow Australia’s influence, like China’s Belt and Road and Digital Silk Road initiatives.

However, the review also found several areas of concern. Early morale problems among staff arising from the abrupt way the integration was implemented had largely dissipated by 2019. However, a “pronounced deterioration in skills and systems” remained. The review found that “almost 1000 years of experience left [government service] shortly after integration.” Additionally, “estimates suggest another 1000 years of experience” left the department in the five years before 2019 due to the department underestimating the capability needed to design and deliver development programming. 

This loss of know-how continues to hamper effectiveness over a decade later. While development is now firmly accepted as a tool of statecraft, best wielded as part of a whole-of-government strategy, an article by the review’s author fifteen months ago suggests DFAT still has room to improve in terms of harnessing its development delivery to its full potential.

Strategic Prioritization: The UK

The merger between the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development occurred in 2021. The principal intention behind the merger was to better align the UK’s development activities with its wider diplomatic, trade, and geopolitical interests, both in strategic terms and in terms of in-country representation. The merger coincided with a decision to reduce the UK’s development funding commitment from the .7 percent of GDP enshrined in law to .5 percent of GDP. Notably, the integration occurred while the UK was experiencing the economic slowdown of the COVID-19 Pandemic, which resulted in a double blow to funding in absolute terms, constituting a 30 percent reduction overall.

Alongside the budget reductions, a strategic prioritization of development initiatives was pursued, in which the UK focused on bilateral funding to a smaller group of countries where measurement of effect is often easier to determine, but at the expense of some wider bilateral and multilateral commitments which were deemed to deliver less tangible value to the UK. 

In addition, the UK identified a select set of issues for its development focus, namely, climate investments, girls’ education, and global health—where the UK had demonstrated expertise and where funding would have constructive spillover effects. For example, improving girls’ education is found to reap positive dividends for local security, prosperity, and governance. These initiatives, concentrated in Africa, the Indo-Pacific, and South Asia, are all areas in which the UK’s adversaries were harnessing development as an instrument of influence, dependence, and coercion. 

The UK’s National Audit Office (NAO) review of the progress of the merger in 2024 found positive evidence “of where a more integrated approach has improved the organisation’s ability to respond to international crises and events, which has led to a better result.” 

Two such examples were the UK’s coherent humanitarian, diplomatic, and military response as the leading European power supporting Ukraine after Russia’s invasion and the joint humanitarian and political response to the Ebola crisis in Uganda. The findings supported the rationale for the merger and the modernization of the department as fit-for-purpose in sharpening the UK’s geopolitical interests. However, the NAO also noted that “the indirect costs” of the merger, “in terms of disruption, diverted effort and the impact on staff morale should not be underestimated.” 

The NAO also reviewed the effect of the overseas development aid reduction and found that while the prioritization compelled in the government’s activities had some positive dividends, “the speed and scale of the budget reduction, and the lack of long-term planning certainty, increased some risks to value for money.” 

What Can The U.S. Learn?

These cautionary tales suggest some considerations for the Trump administration:

First, pace matters more than might be immediately apparent. While decisive action has its advantages, too rapid a transformation risks institutional damage that could take years to repair. Recipient partners need to be assured about the value of the relationship, as reputation matters when development partners have the luxury of choice. A phased integration that maintains critical expertise while gradually aligning strategic direction would likely prove more effective in the long term.

Second, capability preservation requires active management. Both Australia and the UK learned the hard way that development expertise isn’t quickly or easily replaced. The technical knowledge required for effective commissioning, procuring, financing, and managing of development programs, while not unique to the aid world, is distinct from traditional diplomatic and geostrategic policy skills. Any American reforms must include concrete plans for retaining and developing each of these specialized capabilities and empowering them to work together to deliver coherent whole-of-government priorities.

Third, funding stability enables strategic coherence and builds influence with partners. The UK’s experience shows that simultaneous organizational and budgetary upheaval can undermine even well-conceived reforms. While efficiency gains are desirable, treating integration primarily as a cost-cutting exercise risks strategic self-harm. With strategic competitors snapping at our heels, such interruptions cannot always be remedied.

Fourth, clear metrics for success must encompass traditional development indicators and strategic effects. Australia’s focus on its immediate neighborhood and Indo-Pacific infrastructure and the UK’s emphasis on areas of demonstrated expertise and reputational value offer useful models for linking foreign aid and development assistance to broader national interests.

The stakes for getting this change right are immense. China has outflanked the West in harnessing foreign aid as a strategic tool of statecraft, having learned from the experiences of Western development agencies. America cannot afford to unilaterally disarm in this arena and sacrifice its many areas of retained advantage through poorly executed reforms.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s framework of strength, safety, and prosperity provides useful guideposts. Development programs should demonstrably enhance American security partnerships, expand trade relationships that benefit American workers, or strengthen allies facing authoritarian pressure. Programs that cannot should be reconsidered.

Achieving these goals requires maintaining America’s development capabilities even as they are more tightly aligned with strategic objectives. The experiences of Australia and the UK suggest this balance is achievable but demands careful attention to ensure areas of national strength and influence are strengthened, not squandered.

‘Evil’ silence from Canberra on threat to national security

They say silence breeds contempt but the reticence of the Australian government about national security threats is more akin to the quote attributed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer when resisting Nazi Germany: that “silence in the face of evil is itself evil”.

The government is not responsible for individual violent incidents across our cities, but it is responsible for informing, reassuring and protecting the public. Yet the current malaise of leadership is feeding anxiety and infecting the social cohesion that has stood Australia apart from much of the world despite decades of global terrorism and conflict.

Australia remained united in the face of terrorist plots from al-Qa’ida, attacks by ISIS, wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the malicious rise of China, and Russia’s war in Europe. But we are cracking; rising anti-Semitism and national fear shows domestic division is even more insidious than international incidents.

The government’s systemic abdication of responsibility, cloaked in silence and evasive justifications, is not a one-off relating to the caravan plot against Australia’s Jewish community but a troubling trend, exemplified by the tactic of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and ministers only commenting if asked by media and, even then, answering with non-statements.

Australians are not naive. We understand the need for operational secrecy in matters of national security and that classified intelligence should not be divulged lightly. But “operational details” cannot be a catch-all excuse to deflect legitimate scrutiny or hide truth.

Uncertainty breeds fear so governments must be on the front foot. Almost within the hour of Japan bombing Pearl Harbor, US president Franklin Roosevelt was instructing his press secretary to immediately inform the media. While not comparable events, the principle is key: keep the public informed and confident that its government is in control even in the most challenging times – even more important in the digital age.

Albanese’s refusal to address questions about the explosives-laden caravan, due to “ongoing investigations”, added to confusion, anxiety and speculation. A stonewalled public is not a secure one. Similarly, his reluctance to clarify whether he discussed China’s sonar pulse attack on Australian navy personnel in a meeting with Xi Jinping just days after the incident in November 2023, citing the confidentiality of diplomatic talks, simply resulted in doubt and more questions.

While discretion in diplomacy is essential, selective silence is inconsistent given the broad topics of leaders’ meetings, if not the exact words, are usually published, and suggested he just didn’t want to admit he had inexcusably failed to raise the matter.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s handling of the case of Yang Hengjun, the Australian arbitrarily detained in China, is equally disconcerting – failing to even acknowledge on January 19 Yang’s sixth year of detention, and previously insisting on being “constrained for privacy reasons”, despite Yang’s own desire for public advocacy. Hiding behind the veil of privacy appears less about protecting Yang’s interests and more about protecting the government’s.

This week marks one year since Beijing sentenced Yang to death so a comprehensive condemnation and demand for release is required. Similarly, Wong omitted to mention China in her readout of January’s discussions with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in contrast to Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya’s honesty that China was a central part of his meeting with Rubio.

Meanwhile, when asked about the US and European countries reviewing the security risk of Chinese-made smart cars, Energy Minister Chris Bowen said no such review would happen here as the priority was consumer choice. On that basis, we’d welcome Russian gas or perhaps Iranian nuclear know-how, not to mention that prioritising price now will mean consumers in the future will have few choices but Chinese-made smart cars.

The pattern of evading, ignoring or downplaying security threats is itself a security threat. It erodes public trust – and cynicism can quickly turn to conspiracy. It creates an information vacuum to be filled by conspiracy theories and speculation, leading not just to an uninformed but a misinformed public. And it has the potential to weaken Australia’s strategic position by reducing the confidence of our allies and increasing that of our rivals.

We’ve seen it before. The flood of illegal boats from 2008 and refusal to acknowledge pull factors created not only a backlash against illegal immigration but reduced confidence in legal immigration and emboldened criminal organisations. It was only by being upfront about the illegal immigration problem that confidence was restored in Australia’s strength as a migration nation.

Importantly, division is distinct from difference. Different opinions, including on world leaders or policies, are to be promoted as the basis of freedom of speech. But support for terrorist groups and acts of intimidation and violence are not free speech.

Our longstanding national resilience means the cracks can’t be papered over but can be resealed quickly by a government willing to lead, including with some good old-fashioned naked truth.

PM’s timid reply to antisemitic terror is dangerous. Silence is surrender

Australia’s national resilience and social cohesion are under strain, with the most visible cracks seen in the alarming rise of antisemitism. Governments, most particularly the federal government, whose responsibility it is to lead national debates, desperately need to engage more forthrightly with the Australian public.

The discovery in Dural of a caravan containing explosives and, reportedly, an antisemitic message and the addresses of a synagogue and other Jewish buildings, is the latest shock that will heighten anxiety in Australia’s Jewish community and further inflame public tension.

We can give police some benefit of the doubt that they had operational reasons for secrecy about the caravan, but these decisions must be balanced against the need to confront the underlying problems of extremism and hatred, and to reassure Australians that we have national leaders who are facing up to them. If our politicians had been leading the conversations that we need, there would be greater goodwill for understanding operational decisions, rather than the fraying patience that we are seeing.

Instead of confronting extremism, radicalisation and the growing influence of ideological violence, policymakers have retreated into reticence, offering platitudes that fail to give the public confidence or deter those who seek to cause harm. This absence of leadership is a communications failure and a strategic miscalculation that threatens social cohesion and national security.

The federal government’s reluctance to educate and inform the public about terrorism and extremism is fuelling uncertainty and fear. Security agencies such as ASIO and the Australian Federal Police play a vital role in countering threats, but their mandate is to act once the danger has escalated to the level of criminality and national security risk.

The broader responsibility – explaining the ideological drivers of extremism, reinforcing shared values, and setting clear boundaries of acceptable conduct – belongs to the government. Yet, time and again, the government has abdicated this duty, preferring to let ASIO’s annual threat assessment stand as the only authoritative voice on extremism in Australia. That is not enough. National security is not just about neutralising threats but about preventing them from taking root in the first place.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese hardly lifted anyone’s morale when speaking defensively about the discovery of the caravan during two radio interviews on Thursday morning. On ABC radio, he failed to mention antisemitism at all. He refused to say when he’d learnt about it, describing that as “operational details”, and refused to say whether the national cabinet had discussed the investigation. Most of his commentary was about what the police had said and done. The closest he gave to an expression of the government’s view was by saying: “We remain concerned about this escalation.”

It wasn’t until a press conference later in the day that Albanese said, unprompted, that there was “zero tolerance in Australia for hatred and for antisemitism” and that he wanted “any perpetrators to be hunted down and locked up”.

One of the core failures underpinning this crisis is a misinterpretation of tolerance. Australia prides itself on being an open and inclusive society, but inclusivity does not mean tolerating the intolerable. Support for terrorist leaders and groups is not free speech, nor is it a legitimate expression of diversity – it is a direct threat to social stability. When governments fail to call this out unequivocally, they enable a dangerous dynamic by which extremists feel emboldened, and the broader population grows resentful and anxious. An anxious public is not a resilient one.

While the rising cost of living is at the forefront of most Australians’ minds, physical and social security must remain the government’s highest priority. People need to feel safe, and that safety is reinforced not just by policing, but by clear, decisive leadership.

The government’s approach – avoiding public discussion for fear of inflaming tensions – belongs to a bygone era. Excessive reticence was a flawed strategy even before social media, but now, in an age in which digital communications dominate every aspect of our lives, it is a liability.

Government hesitancy leaves a vacuum that is filled by those who want society to break. Without direct and frequent public engagement, we give ground to those who distort facts, push dangerous ideologies and promote violence.

ASIO head Mike Burgess was left swinging in the breeze last September after he told the ABC that the organisation assessed entrants to Australia for any national security risk, which might not cover someone who had only expressed “rhetorical support” for Hamas. Amid the political controversy that followed, the government should have swung in quickly and stressed that the wider visa check would, of course, include rhetorical support for Hamas but that this wasn’t ASIO’s job. That failed to happen, leading to days of public anger and confusion.

Equally dangerous is the government’s willingness to indulge in false equivalencies. Responding to attacks on Jewish Australians by condemning “all forms of hate” or vaguely mentioning “antisemitism and Islamophobia” is both politically weak and strategically harmful. Each act of violence or intimidation should be condemned for what it is – without hedging, without lumping disparate issues together, and without fear of offending those who sympathise with extremists.

This failure of clarity extends to the review of Australia’s terrorism laws, where there is discussion about removing the requirement for an ideological motive. Instead of diluting definitions, the government should lead the discussion on what ideology is, why it matters, and how it fuels extremism.

The government’s refusal to deal with reality is at the heart of this crisis. There is no neutral ground when it comes to national security. Attempting to placate all sides by responding too slowly and downplaying threats only emboldens those who seek to justify intimidation and violence.

Everyone accepts that history and geopolitics are complex – not least in the Middle East – but there is no justification for bringing foreign conflicts onto Australian streets. Like it or not, the federal government’s faltering responses have facilitated a false equivalence between Israel and Islamist terrorist groups, emboldening extremists who now see Australia as a battleground for their ideological struggles.

Australians can see the world is unstable and don’t appreciate being dismissed or misled. The government’s failure to engage honestly is backfiring. Public trust erodes when people feel their concerns are ignored, and social cohesion weakens without leadership. To maintain our national resilience, the government must step up, speak clearly and reassert the values that make Australia a safe and united society. Silence is not a strategy – it’s a surrender.

DeepSeek is a modern ‘Sputnik’ moment for West

The release of China’s latest DeepSeek artificial intelligence model is a strategic and geopolitical shock as much as it is a shock to stockmarkets around the world.

This is a field into which US investors have been pumping hundreds of billions of dollars, and which many commentators predicted would be led by Silicon Valley for the foreseeable future.

That a little-known Chinese company appears to have leapfrogged into a neck-and-neck position with the US giants, while spending less money and with less computing power, underscores some sobering truths.

First, the West’s clearest strategic rival is a genuine peer competitor in the technologies that will decide who dominates the century and, second, we need to step up our efforts to become less not more reliant on Chinese technology.

More than any other single field, AI will unleash powerful forces from economic productivity through to military capabilities. As Vladimir Putin said in 2017, whoever leads in AI “will become the ruler of the world”.

Marc Andreessen, the influential Silicon Valley entrepreneur and venture capitalist, called the DeepSeek announcement a “Sputnik moment” and “one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs” in AI. The US was shocked into action by the Soviet satellite, Sputnik, investing billions into a public-private sector partnership model that helped win back and sustain tech dominance that would play a major role in winning the Cold War.

Andreessen is right but, in many ways, this breakthrough is even more consequential than Sputnik because the world’s consumers are increasingly reliant on China’s technology and economy in ways we never were with the Soviets.

So what does the West need to do now? Above all we need to stop underestimating our major strategic competitor. If hundreds of billions of dollars isn’t enough investment, we either need to redouble our efforts or work more smartly, bringing governments and the private sector together, and working across trusted nations, as we’re doing with AUKUS security technologies – one of which is of course AI.

We also need to dramatically step up so-called derisking of our economies with China’s in these critical technology fields.

When our leaders say they want us to have consumer choice including Chinese-made tech products, they are ignoring the considerable risks of future Chinese dominance, given we have seen the way Beijing is prepared to use its economic power for strategic purposes, whether through 5G or critical minerals.

As it stands, Beijing will have control over the majority of our smart cars, our batteries, the news our public gets through social media and, if models such as the open-source DeepSeek are adopted cheaply by Western companies, the supercharging power that AI will bring to every other sector.

DeepSeek’s breakthrough should actually come as less of a surprise than the stunned market reaction has shown.

In 2015, China told the world its aim was to supplant the US as the global tech superpower in its “Made in China 2025” plan.

At the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) our research in our Critical Technology Tracker has been showing for almost two years that Chinese published research is nipping at American heels.

It surely isn’t a coincidence that at the end of 2024 and the early weeks of 2025, Beijing has shown the world its advances in both military capability in the form of new combat aircraft, and now dual-use technology in AI. Simultaneously we see Beijing’s obsession with keeping Americans and all Westerners hooked on TikTok, which ensures its users see a Beijing-curated version of the world.

Some observers are arguing that the DeepSeek announcement shows the ineffectiveness of US restrictions on exports of advanced technology such as Nvidia’s advanced chips to China.

Far from backing away from such protective measures, the Trump administration should consider stepping them up, along with further investments in data centres – already under way through the Stargate project.

Restricting chips to China is still an important tool in the American toolkit – it’s just not a panacea.

As Donald Trump’s reportedly incoming tech security director, David Feith, argued last year, the US should also target older chips because “failing to do so would signal that US talk of derisking and supply chain resilience still far outpaces policy reality”.

It’s not certain how much direct support DeepSeek and its backers have received from the Chinese government but there are some clues in the way the company is behaving. The DeepSeek model is open-source and costs 30 times less for companies to integrate into than US competitors.

Founder Liang Wenfeng has been blunt that the company is not looking for profits from its AI research, at least in the short term – which would enable it to follow the Chinese playbook of undercutting competitors to create monopolies. And the firm had reportedly been stockpiling the most advanced Nvidia chips before the US restrictions, and has received allocations of chips apparently through the Chinese government.

These facts hint at the lopsided playing field China likes to create. As Edouard Harris, of Gladstone AI, told Time magazine: “There’s a good chance that DeepSeek and many of the other big Chinese companies are being supported by the (Chinese) government, in more than just a monetary way.”

While the West continues to debate the balance between fully open economies and national industrial and technology strategies with greater government involvement, China has already fused its industry with its government-led national strategy and is evidently stronger for it.

China sees the West’s open economies as a vulnerability through which it has an easy access to our markets that is not reciprocated.

DeepSeek is yet another reminder that China’s technology is a force to be reckoned with and one that its government will use strategically to make China more self-sufficient while making the rest of the world more dependent on China.

We must start recognising this era and responding decisively.

James Curran is wrong: ASPI is and will remain independent

James Curran gets a number of things wrong in his column on the Varghese Review and the work of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Above all, ASPI did not “work hand in glove with the Morrison government on how to play China as an issue in Australian domestic politics”. This is a baseless accusation, for which Curran provides zero evidence. One can only assume the intention is to make ASPI a political target in the aftermath of the review’s release. ASPI is a non-partisan institute that shouldn’t be painted as working or aligning with any side of politics.

Curran further alleges that ASPI has “strayed” from its founding charter, regarding itself as an “ideological font” for “calling out and confronting an assertive China”. ASPI is, and will remain, a non-partisan, independent think tank as stipulated in its charter, laid out in 2001.

He then avers that “some of its analysts created an atmosphere in which to question government policy settings on China was deemed unpatriotic”. These allegations are also completely unsubstantiated. Who is he talking about, exactly?

Varghese was indeed right to point out that Australia has failed to nurture academic expertise on China.

The only person at ASPI that Curran mentions by name is the executive director, Justin Bassi. He accuses Bassi of making a “reprehensible” and “juvenile” comparison between the 14 recommendations in former diplomat Peter Varghese’s report and the 14 grievances against the Australian government, aired by the Chinese embassy in 2020.

Bassi simply noted that there was a “grim irony” in the numerical coincidence, as one of the complaints was widely interpreted as a demand to defund ASPI because it has produced research and commentary critical of the Chinese Communist Party. How is this observation in any sense juvenile? Varghese did not recommend closing down ASPI, but he did recommend that direct government funding for ASPI’s office in Washington DC be discontinued, along with other moves designed to tighten government controls over the sector, including a role for ministers in setting research priorities and appointing government observers to ASPI’s board.

The fact that the government has agreed with most of Varghese’s recommendations is worrying in itself, but especially in light of the Chinese government’s long-running campaign to vilify ASPI. Regardless of the government’s or Varghese’s intentions, Beijing might be forgiven for leaping to the conclusion that ASPI has had its wings clipped in the diplomatic and economic cause of stabilisation – a policy that some ASPI analysts (myself included) have legitimately contested.

The fact that the government coincidentally celebrated the full resumption of the live lobster trade with China the same week it released the Varghese review and its official response can only have strengthened such associations, and perhaps even buoyed the belief in Beijing that its economic coercion of Australia was effective, after all. The timing of this statement, at a minimum, showed poor judgment.

ASPI continues to abide by the guidance in its charter that its main purpose is to provide “alternative sources of input to Government decision-making processes on major strategic and defence policy issues”. Also, that it should help to “nourish public debate and understanding”.

ASPI’s research output on China is an important part of what we do, though only one part. As an institution, ASPI is proud of the breadth of its China expertise and language skills, which is unsurpassed among think tanks in Australia. ASPI has also provided an outlet for prominent Australia-based academics to publish policy-relevant research on China. ASPI has contributed significantly to Australia’s stock of China expertise. Just this week, the US designated companies including battery maker CATL as Chinese military companies after years of research from institutions like ASPI about links to the Chinese government and military, and about human rights abuses.

Ministers from around the world seek out ASPI analysts for briefings on our research. Datasets we have built over the past decade as a public good have been used by governments and organisations worldwide.

Blind spot

In his report, Varghese was indeed right to point out that Australia has failed to nurture academic expertise on China. But universities, for their own reasons, have long since abandoned the field in the areas that matter most for Australia’s strategic policy – the external behaviours of China’s Communist Party, through its state security apparatus and the People’s Liberation Army. ASPI will continue to do what it can to nurture the talent required to fill that national blind spot and to publish ground-breaking research in these areas. ASPI’s researchers would collegially welcome a greater investment of resources by other think tanks, universities and the government in this regard.

Curran and others are free to criticise ASPI and other research institutes but should focus on evidence, not innuendo. I, for one, would much prefer to be writing about Australia’s regional security environment, defence capability and military strategy. A glance at the international headlines is sufficient to understand there is an urgent and growing appetite for expert analysis in these areas, to inform the general public, and provide alternative policy inputs for the Australian government.

Make no mistake, command and control will crush ASPI’s independence

For China watchers, there’s a grim irony contained in the 14 principles that former senior official Peter Varghese recommends in his long-awaited review into national security think tanks, released last week.

Fourteen was also the number of grievances the Chinese embassy notoriously unveiled in 2020 and that Beijing expected to be addressed if diplomatic relations were to improve – the 10th of which was defunding the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Beijing hasn’t quite got its way through the recommendations of Varghese, who is now chancellor of the University of Queensland. But the embassy’s champagne stocks may be a little depleted once its officials have measured his list against their own.

Beyond the impact on ASPI itself, there is a deeper danger in the principles, accepted by the Albanese government: the push to exercise more control over think tanks and to dampen the contestability that researchers provide.

ASPI was set up in 2001 precisely to contest the advice that the Howard government was receiving from the Department of Defence. We have since grown into a broader national security think tank that looks at modern threats ranging from cyber and disinformation to authoritarian abuses of power in places such as China’s Xinjiang.

We are recognised globally for our groundbreaking work on China – none of which is convenient to the government’s narrative of diplomatic stability with Beijing. The idea that the security issues ASPI has pursued independently – and often well ahead of national and global trends – may in future be given the thumbs up or down by ministers and bureaucrats is deeply unsettling. Yet the Varghese report recommends this command-and-control approach.

After delivering the 50-page report, Varghese then wrote an op-ed in these pages at the weekend responding to the responses to his report. This is ironic given his report’s criticism of “op-ed overreach”. The problem with Varghese’s insistence that we all just need a Bex and a good lie-down is that a veritable chasm exists between his rhetoric expressing support for think tank independence and the actions he’s actually recommending.

First, think tanks would have to bid against one another for operational funding. That sounds superficially appealing, but if two institutes are competing for a grant and one has been nicer to the sitting government, who is better placed? Not all think tanks will resist self-censorship when they know fearless critiques may jeopardise future funding.

Second, ministers and their departments would set priorities for research, meaning anything that didn’t match the government’s agenda or was sensitive could be discouraged.

If an organisation wanted to look at China’s political and hybrid warfare, or the rapid and opaque modernisation of the People’s Liberation Army, this might not go ahead if it didn’t suit the government. The government’s response here went further than Varghese by adding ministers, not just department heads, as gatekeepers.

Third, the government will require government officials to sit on think tank councils, making them at least an observer during think tanks’ internal deliberations and perhaps even a voice to influence meetings. Again, the government’s response went further than Varghese’s recommendations.

This is inconsistent with the many other organisations that receive federal funding.

And while Varghese points out some entities already have government officials on their boards, he leaves unanswered his own question of whether they have had independence compromised. The answer is yes, a government official sitting on a non-government board likely has impact, including to censor criticism.

Fourth, specific federally funded research projects would be “co-designed” by bureaucrats, potentially putting guardrails on the researchers’ instincts.

The government gives grant money to the arts but nobody expects a bureaucrat to stand over the artists telling them how to stage a performance of Hamlet or do an interpretative dance.

Finally, there is the shutting of support for ASPI’s Washington office. Here, Varghese appears simply not to understand the role of think tanks’ overseas offices – saying it’s a problem “having ASPI freelance”. Freelance is a synonym of independence and, to be clear, we are independent and not there to push the views of the government of the day.

We are there to foster debate on issues that are important to Australia and its people, such as Indo-Pacific security and global rules. This has long-term value.

ASPI is known and respected across the political aisle in Washington for its nonpartisan and hard-hitting work, with many in the US House of Representatives and the Senate, including incoming secretary of state Marco Rubio, citing our research numerous times.

So it makes zero sense that the Australian government would narrow rather than expand Australia’s options for engaging with Washington when the US is moving into a new Trump administration that will bring challenges for the Australian bureaucracy.

Varghese himself acknowledges that the kind of contestability ASPI was established to provide is essential and refers to our research as “groundbreaking”. Regrettably he also refers to our China research – on human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Beijing’s interference in Australia and other countries – as controversial. Let’s face it, it was controversial only in the sense that Beijing didn’t like it.

Some of this review’s recommendations are reasonable and welcome, but the problems at its heart represent an abandonment of principles that successive governments for more than 20 years have recognised and respected.

Still, ASPI believes in our mission to pour sunlight on security threats to Australia and to help improve understanding – whether among policymakers or the public – of the steps needed to keep ourselves safe. We will continue to build on our proud legacy – because this work has never been more vital.

How Labour should deal with China

Keir Starmer’s geopolitical in-tray will arguably be one of the most daunting in recent history. The Prime Minister faces a number of conflicts and hard choices – and a completely different geopolitical landscape to the last time Labour was in power.

Key among these challenges is China, which has risen in the past 14 years to become an economic and military superpower, and a disruptive antagonist to the liberal international order.

A relationship with China requires careful balance and an understanding of the unseen traps that might lie ahead

So far the new government’s position has been mixed. Work has begun on the promised China audit, which David Lammy described as ‘a full audit across Whitehall of our relationship with China so that we can set the direction and a course.’ A new review of the benefits of the Aukus security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States has also been announced. But a decision on China’s potential inclusion in the top tier of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, requiring all individuals engaged with the Chinese government to formally declare their activities, has been delayed. Meanwhile, Keir Starmer last week held the first call by a British Prime Minister with President Xi since March 2022, and a Beijing trip for the Foreign Secretary is being discussed for the autumn.

A relationship with China requires careful balance and an understanding of the unseen traps that might lie ahead. If Starmer and his team are looking for a practical example of what does and doesn’t work with China, they should study the experience of their Australian counterparts, who also came to power after a long period in opposition.

In its first year, Australian Labor held firm to the strong security position established by the previous government, and was able to secure some important wins.

But subsequent waves of coercion and aggression from China tested the practicality of the government’s cooperation doctrine. For UK Labour, the lesson must be that its ‘compete, challenge and cooperate’ slogan should be understood as a hierarchy – in which competition comes first and cooperation is contingent on China’s actions.

An incoming government cannot predict every new China challenge that will arise, but it can learn some other lessons from Australia.

First, fatalism and declinism towards Beijing are self-fulfilling prophecies, and must be overcome. Australian Labour acted deftly in the Pacific. It brokered meaningful new agreements with Pacific countries to counteract China’s increasing security presence, with tangible results. Britain too has instruments to deploy to make a difference.

Second, good faith compromises will not be reciprocated by China, and will only encourage more malign behaviour. Australia’s initial reluctance to speak up against China’s bullying of the Philippines in the South China Sea didn’t stop the Chinese military threatening Australian forces while they were on lawful patrols, putting Australian lives at risk. China’s breaches of international rules and bilateral agreements must be called out every time, not only when it’s convenient.

Third, no official visits should be made to Beijing before the completion of the China audit. China’s leaders will inevitably seek leverage in areas where sovereign decisions should lie with Britain. Labour should prioritise visits to core Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific allies first.

Fourth, a UK-China engagement strategy must not involve policy compromises, nor set a precedent of cowed silence. Canberra abandoned two World Trade Organization cases against China for its unfair trade practices. Only then did Beijing begin to remove some of the tariffs it had imposed against Australia. This allowed Beijing to mask its economic coercion as an act of magnanimity. Realpolitik has its place, but China should not be rewarded for things it should never have done in the first place.

Fifth, bipartisanship is essential for long-term resilience towards China. Labour should focus on constructively building on the work done by Conservative governments, while filling in any gaps and unfinished business. The new Defence Secretary’s intention to share intelligence briefings with the opposition, and the appointment of former National Security Adviser Stephen Lovegrove to the Aukus review, are welcome signs.

Sixth, be frank and transparent with the British people about the reality of the threats from China and the resources required to address them. Western governments have, at times, refrained from adequately highlighting Beijing’s malign behaviour, such as its support for Russian aggression against Ukraine. This squanders the opportunity to build public support for necessarydefence spending.

Finally, Labour should be aware that we are not simply bystanders in the US-China story. China retains a significant interest in the UK, and Britain holds a considerable degree of agency to effectively project deterrence.  This requires a coherent approach to both domestic and international policy, building on the UK’s strengths in innovation, technology, research, and policy.

In the coming weeks and months, there will be no shortage of voices in Westminster and Whitehall advocating for a fresh start with Beijing and a greater emphasis on dialogue. It is vital that the UK engages with China, but from a position of strength and confidence. The early decisions made by this government will be crucial if the UK wants to succeed against a global competitor more formidable than any we have faced in modern times.

How To Ensure AUKUS’ Success

AUKUS is a multigenerational project, and it’s time to admit that the trilateral effort between the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom to develop and share defense technology is still in its infancy. The enabling environment must be tended to before advanced capabilities can be developed and delivered. Progress has been made in this first phase, but concrete steps should be taken to realize the agreement’s potential concerning “AUKUS Pillar 2.”

The goal of AUKUS Pillar 2 is to accelerate the development and delivery of advanced military technology to the militaries of the member nations. To achieve this, it zeroes in on lowering barriers to information sharing and streamlining joint and cross-nation funding pathways while establishing reciprocal export controls. Underpinning these efforts are the continual efforts to strengthen and deepen the culture of trust among the participants. Significant work is underway already. Two new policy recommendations will add to this and help create the enabling environment required for AUKUS to truly thrive and for the successful creation of a more integrated defense industrial ecosystem.

First, independent AUKUS advisory boards should be created to improve institutional knowledge retention. Second, creating AUKUS business parks with shared labs and workspaces would foster closer collaboration between government and industry while lowering entry costs for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), who wouldn’t normally have access to classified networks and government experts. The name of the game is improving collaboration and efficiency to bolster innovation and deliver advanced capabilities.

Creating and Retaining Expertise

Given the sheer scope and complexity of AUKUS, there needs to be dedicated staff focused on implementation over the longer term. Currently, government officials within the partner nations are responsible for all aspects of AUKUS, from problem diagnosis and analysis to implementation. While these individuals are highly competent and driven to see AUKUS succeed, they often wear multiple hats and are tied to pushing official government positions. This does not enable the same freedom of inquiry and debate that an independent advisory board would provide. Additionally, ensconcing this staff exclusively within the government risks not only missing vital information from the industry but also exposing senior staff to electoral churn every few years. Even within the mid to lower levels of government, there is a culture of movement with talented individuals hopping between departments, often as a way to move up in the service. Losing expertise continuously will hamstring efforts at creating the enabling environment needed for AUKUS to succeed.

Thankfully, most of the work is done by career officials and attached military forces on orders or assignments for a few years, and they are, therefore, less exposed to political changes. This ensures some continuity and institutional knowledge retention within the organizations. However, this system can still be improved. Independent advisory boards would allow for institutional expertise to be cultivated and retained and policies pressure tested. Creating budgetary line items to fund these bodies would ensure proper staffing and resourcing of the organizations while avoiding the pitfalls of government agencies, such as bureaucratic bloat and changes due to political appointments or shifts. This should extend past the national level and take a two-tiered approach. A national body within each of the AUKUS partner nations should be complemented by a trilateral secretariat run by the heads of the national bodies.

At the national level, these advisory boards should be formed from a mix of trade and industry leaders, government officials, and military experts. The advisory board would then be ideally situated to capture lessons learned and feedback from all key stakeholders. These boards would examine the regulatory environment, proposed legislation, and obstacles to implementation within their respective country. They could give annual reports to the legislative and executive branches or the parliament. This ensures governmental oversight and would allow lawmakers to identify areas for improvement within their control.

The trilateral secretariat would be ideally placed to coordinate between the three advisory boards to identify obstacles and opportunities that cannot be solved within the national infrastructure of a single partner. Dual hatting the leaders of the national bodies as members of the secretariat would increase buy-in within the national advisory boards, improving their effectiveness and efficiency. This would also reward talented individuals within the organization and thus facilitate knowledge retention.

Aside from its engagement with the national advisory boards, the council should at least engage at the minister level across all three countries, providing briefings and soliciting inputs from the government. These engagements could take place every couple of years, limiting bureaucratic and political fatigue while maintaining momentum. Given the complexity and novelty of the endeavor, there are sure to be unforeseeable friction points and obstacles, so this coordination body would be pivotal in ensuring all partners operate from the same playbook as they are tackled.

Sharing Info by Sharing Spaces

As it stands, defense research and development is highly siloed and concentrated in the hands of a small number of “primes,” the biggest defense industrial companies, that have the institutional capacity and budget to manage the Byzantine legal requirements involved in defense manufacturing. The costs of building a classified workspace, known as a SCIF, can add up to hundreds or thousands of dollars to the cost per square foot, drastically increasing the upfront costs of competing in the classified space. Additionally, each organization manages its SCIF and pays for its employee’s clearances, which adds to the overhead.

This process becomes even more complex when dealing with geographically separated offices, and those within the AUKUS countries are no exception. Given the price and complexity of establishing even a single SCIF, many SMEs are precluded from operating in the classified space, a requirement for higher-level defense development and contracting. This limits the inflow of potentially disruptive technology into the procurement process and complicates collaborative development.

The government can dramatically lower these barriers by funding the creation of co-workspaces with certified SCIFs. Developing business parks that facilitate businesses with complementary capabilities operating in a shared area is nothing new, but applying this model to AUKUS endeavors could supercharge research and development. These AUKUS parks should be based around both classified and unclassified workspaces that companies can share, thereby maximizing utility while minimizing costs. This allows for synergistic collaborations within the industry and access to government expertise.

Governments could staff these parks with export control experts, rotate through military members to test prototypes early in development, provide feedback, and evaluate prospective projects for contracts. Leveraging their combined experience, these routine interactions among the researchers, government, and defense would propel innovation. Ideally, engaging with end users early in the process would allow minimum viable capabilities, or “problem sets” that need solutions, to be shared with the industry and minimum viable products to be developed rapidly.

Having government officials on site to continuously evaluate these developments would allow for built-in maturity paths. Rapid, responsive iteration with avenues to official contracts would supercharge the defense industry. AUKUS parks would have the additional advantage of capitalizing on economies of scale with respect to security. By centralizing these facilities, security protocols could be standardized, easier to manage, and ensure better safeguarding of critical technology from potential sabotage or theft from adversaries. Providing these services would offset the steep upfront costs associated with classified work, opening the door to SMEs that are usually excluded from competing and collaborating in the space.

Governments don’t have to construct and manage these spaces themselves. However, they could leverage the private sector to manage the construction and daily operations of the SCIFs. Within the United States, some movement exists within the private sector to establish shared and mobile SCIFs. Still, these efforts could be amplified across all three AUKUS partners to significant effect. If a public-private partnership is pursued, there could be a planned transition to fully privatized funding and operations of the business parks, further limiting government overheads in the future while enabling collaboration. This would help derisk the investments made by private industry and facilitate rapid expansion into the field.

And Now, for Something Completely Different

With AUKUS still in its initial phase of enabling environment creation, there is no better time than now to lay a foundation to ensure the greatest returns on investment. The feedback mechanisms provided by advisory councils and secretariats will be immensely valuable in refining processes and policies. AUKUS parks will facilitate greater collaboration during development and push the focus toward solution-based, minimum-viable product thinking and rapid iteration. Radical changes and thinking are what will ensure success. All three partner nations must push to create new systems and structures to create a truly integrated enabling environment.

Canberra has no excuses for failing to prepare for Trump 2.0

Donald Trump was already the frontrunner to win the presidential election, with the assassination attempt and his defiant response only increasing his chance of victory.

Global capitals, including Canberra, are abuzz with policymakers anticipating a predictably unpredictable second Trump term. But unpredictability doesn’t mean Trump is random or absent strategy.

Trump will be better prepared than his first time in office. Australia, therefore, has enough of a road map to use the next six months to plan for Trump 2.0, which will require Canberra to avoid any penchant for reactive thinking or falling into a flat-footed state of voyeurism.

Australia, and our partners in the Quad, fared well through the first Trump administration by anticipating those areas where we needed to defend ourselves and where we could co-operate.

Trump considers the actions of allies more important than words. That can help shape four main lessons to navigate potential sources of friction and opportunity over the next four years. First, Australia should showcase its national security credentials. Strategic rivalry with China, especially on technology, will be front and centre of a second Trump term. Restricting Beijing’s access to advanced technologies has been a bright light of American bipartisanship, with President Joe Biden expanding Trump-era policies.

Given Trump says he wants “total independence from China” and to “stop China owning America”, we can expect further expansion of the technology-driven economic security agenda.

Many of these measures are in Australia’s national interest, but Canberra will need to encourage protection of our respective and collective sovereignty, not mere protectionism. When Australia became the first country to exclude “high-risk” vendors – namely Huawei – from its 5G network in 2018 it was done to protect critical infrastructure. The decision gained respect within the Trump White House and across Washington, given the call was made without knowing the US decision.

Australia’s 5G decision helped rally a global coalition to mitigate Chinese technology risks and address the shifting technological balance away from the US and its allies. Meanwhile, Australia pursued broader reforms in areas such as foreign investment screening and countering foreign interference, in part to protect cutting-edge technologies.

Australia’s clear-eyed approach to China provides a strong track record for engaging Trump and his team. In doing so, it will be important to show how Australia’s recent diplomatic stabilisation with China has not changed Australia’s willingness to “disagree where we must”.

Second, Australia should share the burden of deterring aggression. Trump wants peace through strength. This includes countering adversaries as well as preventing allies from free-riding on US security guarantees.

Australia has shown a commitment to our own security and the alliance that should help avoid the “tough love” directed at the likes of NATO members and South Korea in Trump’s first term. Defence spending is set to increase to around 2.3 per cent of GDP within the decade. The 2024 National Defence Strategy sets out major strategy, force structure and capability reforms. Australia and the US have expanded collaboration on Australian soil. This includes rotations of US and British submarines through HMAS Stirling near Perth from 2027, enhancing nearer-term collective deterrence in the region.

Australia plans to pump around $6bn into US and British defence industrial capacity in the coming decade, a long-term play to support Australia’s acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines, under AUKUS Pillar I. Canberra should promote this investment to Trump every chance it gets. But history is short-lived and Trump’s White House will back in allies and partners who show an ongoing commitment to their own security.

Third, Australia should push AUKUS as a good deal.

Trump is transactional, a deal-maker. Even if he supports some or all AUKUS elements, the partnership will require long-term political, institutional and industrial effort across the US, UK and Australia to succeed.

For Trump and his closest advisers, Australia will need to sell the partnership’s advantages in making Australia a more capable and lethal ally, bolstering regional defence supply chains, and contributing to US-led deterrence of conflict in the Indo-Pacific. Australia will need to highlight AUKUS’s merits as a boon for US companies, rather than being a drain on their technology, industry capacity and workforce.

Trump has a history of tearing up or renegotiating agreements he judges as taking America for a ride. Australia should ensure Trump doesn’t see AUKUS as an American handout but a transaction that boosts US capability to muscle up to China.

Finally, Australia should be bold. Early in a second Trump term, the value of our partnerships should be reinforced, starting with Quad meetings that emphasise the grouping was revived in 2017 under his presidency.

If Trump is re-elected, the Albanese government and its representatives in Washington – starting with ambassador Kevin Rudd – will have a job ahead of them. But, unlike 2016, there are no excuses for being underprepared.