Australia needs Australian AI

Australia must do more to shape its artificial intelligence future. The release of DeepSeek is a stark reminder that if Australia does not invest in its own AI solutions, it will remain reliant on foreign technology—technology that may not align with its values and often carries the imprints of its country of origin.

This reliance means that Australian user data and the economic benefits derived from it will continue to flow offshore, subject to foreign legal jurisdictions and foreign corporate priorities.

When people engage with AI chatbot assistant-type services from platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot or DeepSeek—via web interfaces, mobile apps, or application programming interfaces (or APIs)—they are sharing their data with these services as well as receiving AI-generated responses. The market entry of DeepSeek, which stores its data in China and moderates its responses to align with Chinese Communist Party narratives, raises two critical concerns: the exploitation of data for foreign interests and the ability of AI-generated content to shape public discourse.

AI platforms not based in Australia operate under the legal frameworks of their home countries. In the case of DeepSeek, this means compliance with China’s national intelligence laws, which require firms to provide data to the government on request. User inputs including text, audio and uploaded files, and user information such as registration details, unique device identifiers, IP address and even behavioural inputs like keystroke patterns, could be accessed by Chinese authorities. The flow of Australian data into China’s data ecosystem poses a long-term risk that should not be overlooked.

While individual data points may seem insignificant on their own, in aggregate they provide valuable insights that could be leveraged in ways contrary to Australian interests. As a 2024 ASPI report found, the CCP seeks to harvest user data from globally popular Chinese apps, games and online platforms, to ‘gauge the pulse of public opinion’, gain insight into societal trends and preferences, and thereby improve its propaganda.

This may be even more powerful for chatbots, which can collect data for aggregation to understand audience sentiment in particular countries, and also be used as a tool for influence in those countries. AI models are shaped by the priorities of their developers, the datasets they are trained on, and the fine-tuning processes that refine their outputs. This means AI does not just provide information, it can be trained to reinforce particular narratives while omitting others.

Many chatbots include a safety layer to filter harmful content such as instructions for making drugs or weapons. In the case of DeepSeek, this moderation extends to political censorship. The model refuses to discuss politically sensitive topics such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and aligns with official CCP positions on topics such as Taiwan and territorial disputes in the South China Sea. AI-generated narratives influence public perception, which can pose risks to the democratic process and social cohesion, especially as these tools become more commonly embedded in search engines, education and customer service.

Australia’s response should be about having the right safeguards in place to mitigate known risks. It needs to ensure that AI systems used in the country reflect its values, security interests, and regulatory standards. This challenge demands that Australia play an active role in AI development and implement regulatory frameworks that protect against harms and foster domestic innovation.

DeepSeek challenges the idea that only tech giants with massive resources can develop competitive AI models. With a team of just 300, DeepSeek reportedly developed its model for less than US$6 million, far less than the $40 million training cost of OpenAI’s GPT-4, or the $22 million cost for training Mistral’s Mistral Large. While some experts argue this figure may not reflect the full cost—including potential access to restricted advanced processors before US export controls took effect—the broader lesson is clear: significant AI advances are possible without vast financial backing.

DeepSeek has proven that having talent is even more important than having tech giants, which highlights an opportunity for Australia to participate meaningfully in AI development.

To harness its potential, Australia must foster an environment that nurtures homegrown talent and innovation. The announcement last week of the $32 million investment by Australian AI healthtech firm Harrison.ai by the National Reconstruction Fund is a step in the right direction, but investment in a single company is not enough.

Australia needs increased investment in education and research, strengthening existing developer communities—particularly open-source initiatives—supporting commercialisation efforts, and promoting success stories to build momentum. A well-supported AI sector would allow Australia to harness the benefits of AI without attempting to match the spending power of global tech giants. The focus should be on fostering an environment where AI talent can thrive and ethical AI can flourish, ensuring that Australia reaps both the economic and societal benefits.

Without strategic investment in domestic AI capabilities, Australia risks ceding influence over critical technologies that will shape its economy, security and society in the years ahead. The challenge is not just technological—it is strategic. Without decisive action, Australia will remain a passive consumer of AI technologies shaped by foreign priorities and foreign commercial interests, with long-term consequences for democratic integrity, economic security and public trust in AI-driven systems.

Meeting this challenge requires more than just regulatory safeguards; it demands sustained support for a strong domestic tech ecosystem.

Something old, something new: the very practical rules of Chinese aircraft development

Year-end revelations of two new Chinese combat aircraft designs, the Chengdu J-36 and the Shenyang J-XX, should have put an end to the idea that China’s aerospace and defense industry just copies the West.

Yet sometimes China does produce copies, for good practical reasons. At other times it just does its best with the technology it happens to have available.

Here are some principles that Chinese military aeronautics development follows.

Copy if possible and necessary. The Xi’an KJ-600 configuration copies the Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye’s, down to details. As on the E-2, one of the inboard fins of the four-fin tail has a moving rudder and the other doesn’t. That works on the Hawkeye, so why do it any other way? There’s a reason that the Hawkeye is still in production after 66 years.

KJ-600. Original image source unknown.

Good enough. The Xi’an H-6 bomber is the Soviet Tu-16, 12 days younger than the B-52. But at the age of 55, the design got a complete makeover from the Chinese industry: a new forward fuselage housing a three-member crew, all with ejection seats and glass displays, and a multi-mode radar. 1970s Russian engines replaced the 1950s originals.

The H-6K update and later versions provide the Chinese air force and naval aviation force with a heavy weapons platform with some features that even the forthcoming B-52J (a B-52 update with new engines) cannot match: the Chinese bomber has six wing pylons and an ability to carry an outsize store on its centerline.

Innovate to meet urgent needs. Those stores include not only an air-launched boost-glide weapon but the AVIC WZ-8, one of a group of very innovative Chinese military drones that represent a much more creative culture than what we see in Western aerospace.

WZ-8. Image: Wikipedia.

The WZ-8 is an air-launched, runway-recoverable drone with a blended-delta shape and rocket propulsion. It has (by US intelligence estimates) a speed of Mach 3 at 30,000 metres altitude and a range around 500 nautical miles (900km) including a long gliding descent.

In most respects, it could have been designed and built in the 1950s. But a remarkable feature of the WZ-8, visible on the website of a company specialising in additive manufacturing, is that the entire center-section box, the structural heart of the aircraft, is 3D printed in titanium.

The WZ-8 is the definition of a point design—an inflexible one intended for a single purpose. China regards the ability to attack US aircraft carriers as a strategic goal. And it’s well known that the US Navy relies on its carriers’ ability to move fast and far in the time between when they’re detected and when an attack on them arrives. Jamming and decoys help. The WZ-8’s job is a last-minute reconnaissance sortie to locate the carrier.

Borrowing technology that the West has ignored. The Guizhou WZ-7 Soaring Dragon drone, in service in small numbers, resembles a Northrop Grumman Global Hawk in size and body shape. But it has a four-surface joined wing.

Advantages claimed for the joined wing include combining a skinny wing shape (high aspect ratio, to the aerodynamicists), thinness and sweep. The result is an unusual combination of high speed and low drag.

The joined wing was invented in the US and has been studied by NASA several times, but the space-fixated agency never found budget to demonstrate it in flight. The Chinese designers would have found plenty of open-source data to work from.

 

WZ-7. Image: Wikipedia.

But another drone, Shenyang’s WZ-9 Divine Eagle, has no parallel. It is a high-altitude carrier for two large-aperture radar arrays. Its status is uncertain. It was first seen in 2015 and reappeared on video in late December. The two radar antennas occupy separate fuselages, connected at their front and rear extremities by a wing and canard, with a single engine above the wing. With no crew and high-aspect-ratio wings, the drone can fly higher than a big-cabin crewed platform and has a longer radar horizon.

The WZ-9’s unique shape indicates something about China’s electronics technology. The designers must believe that their radars are so efficient that the cost in weight of carrying two separate units, each with its own power supply, is acceptable. The concept also shows that China can rely on using datalinks alone to operate a complex radar system.

The WZ-9 and WZ-8 typify another trend in China’s technology: firing weapons from one platform (a ship, submarine, aircraft or ground vehicle) by using targeting data from another source. Western experts already believe that China’s growing, diverse fleet of airborne radar systems can be used for direct weapon guidance. The WZ-9 allows weapon-quality guidance to be extended farther without endangering a large crew on an aircraft that cannot defend itself.

Viewed as a group, alongside new combat aircraft like the J-36 and J-XX (J-XDS, according to some sources), these programs also illustrate another, hugely important feature of Chinese aerospace development: the sheer number of new and unique projects.

An engineer who started at Chinese fighter specialist Chengdu Aircraft in the late 1990s could have successively joined new development programs for four combat-aircraft types—the JF-17, J-10, J-20 and J-36. That engineer could also have worked on major upgrades and engine changes for the first three of those. All have entered service or are on track to do so. Working at rival Shenyang Aircraft would provide a similar experience level, with Xi’an Aircraft not far behind.

That engineer’s US counterpart might have worked on one new program from inception to service entry—if he or she had chosen the right company to start with.

It is that growing experience gap, rather than individual systems, that should worry us more than it does.

Air and maritime defence, not ground combat, should be Indonesia’s priorities

Indonesia isn’t doing enough in acquiring advanced naval and air systems. Too much money and focus are still being spent on the army, the traditionally dominant service—yet the country hardly faces a risk of a ground war.

The greater concern would be a threat from China, which can only come by sea and air. This is seen in Beijing’s increasing provocations against its neighbours, particularly Taiwan and the Philippines.

Indonesia’s main military shortcomings are its lack of airborne-early-warning, land-based anti-ship and surface-to-air capabilities. Establishing or strengthening them would mean reallocating funds from the army.

The risk of military escalation between Indonesia and China cannot be taken lightly despite their close diplomatic and economic relations. One of the main reasons for taking it seriously is that China already has ongoing territorial disputes in the South China Sea with some other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, particularly Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia.

While Jakarta is not a claimant in the territorial disputes, Chinese incursions into Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone have become increasingly frequent. In October and November 2024 alone, the China Coast Guard made multiple infringements in the North Natuna Sea, off Borneo, prompting Indonesia’s Maritime Security Agency to dispatch vessels in response.

Yet, the head of the agency, Vice Admiral Irvansyah, has highlighted the stark inadequacy of Indonesia’s maritime patrol capabilities. With only 10 ships distributed across three operational areas, the agency falls far short of its ideal fleet of 90 ships needed to patrol Indonesian waters effectively. This inadequacy reflects the broader imbalance in Indonesia’s defence priorities.

Jakarta continues to favour the modernisation of the army, while the navy and air force fall behind.

Of the approved 155 trillion rupiah ($15.1 billion) for the 2025 defence budget, 54 trillion rupiah ($5.3 billion) is allocated to the army, while the navy and air force receive just 20 trillion ($1.9 billion) rupiah and 18 trillion rupiah ($1.8 billion), respectively.

As an archipelagic nation, Indonesia’s security depends on a strong navy to protect its vast waters and a capable air force to secure its skies.

History has shown the importance of maritime power, as demonstrated by the might of the Srivijaya and Majapahit empires, which both originated from Indonesia. Today, Indonesia must adopt a similarly maritime-focused strategy, supported by modern technology.

Airborne early warning aircraft, coastal-defence batteries and air-defence missile systems are particularly needed for monitoring and deterring potential threats.

Indonesia has only a weak ability to see what is going on in its own airspace. Foreign aircraft or even cruise missiles may fly into that airspace without the armed forces knowing, or if they are discovered the Indonesian response could be far too late. A group of airborne early warning aircraft would go a long way towards remedying the problem. Options are the SAAB GlobalEye and Boeing E-7.

Lack of a coastal-defence missile batteries leaves Indonesia vulnerable to maritime incursions. The government has made progress in modernising the navy through the procurement of Scorpene submarines, FREMM frigates and indigenous patrol vessels. But these efforts must be complemented by anti-ship missile systems on shore, which would be easy to hide and hard for an enemy to deal with.

Options include the BrahMos missile developed and manufactured by Russia and India, the US Harpoon, the French Exocet, the Turkish Atmaca and even the Chinese YJ-12E. Media last year reported plans to buy YJ-12Es, but Jakarta should carefully consider geopolitical implications of such a deal and whether weapons that China offers for export would be as effective as competitors’.

Indonesia has also shown interest in acquire the BrahMos missiles. This would make Indonesia the second ASEAN country to acquire such technology after the Philippines. The deal would include versions for launch from ships and the shore.

Buying BrahMos missiles would help diversify Indonesia’s sources of weapons and make it less vulnerable to arms embargoes or other interruptions of supply. The French and Turkish missiles would still be good alternatives, however.

Such weapons might be operated by the army, but the navy is the service that has expressed interest in acquiring them.

Finally, Indonesia’s spending on modern air-defence systems must also be expanded. While the acquisition of Turkish Hisar batteries, firing anti-aircraft missiles of short to medium range, is a step in the right direction, more systems are needed to cover key strategic areas. Only with a robust air-defence network can Jakarta counter potential sorties and incursions by adversaries.

Since the Ministry of Defence allocated the NASAMs surface-to-air batteries to the air force, that service would be the likely operator of any air-defence systems of medium or long range from future acquisitions.

Indonesia’s defence strategy must evolve to reflect changing geopolitical circumstances. As a maritime nation, its security depends on a strong navy and air force equipped with modern technology. It needs to reallocate defence spending before it is too late.

Stopping anti-Semitic terrorism in Australia

In the next six months there is a greater than 50 per cent chance of a terrorist attack being planned and possibly carried out in Australia. The Director-General of Security told us so on August 5, 2024, when the terrorist threat level was raised to “probable”. The Jewish Australian community has every right to be gravely concerned that Jewish people and places, such as synagogues, might be the targets of such an attack. That this is even a possibility should shock all Australians.

We can be very confident that ASIO, the AFP, state and territory police and other agencies will do everything in their power to stop such an attack. However, history shows that while many terrorist attacks are stopped, some attempts succeed. Afterwards, commissions of inquiry typically find that governmental structures and processes were deficient, responsibilities were not clearly assigned, and information flows had broken down. Those were the lessons, for instance, of the institutional failures that occurred in the lead-up to the 9/11 attacks.

We must not minimise the gravity of this situation by thinking that this threat has little to do with the lives of Australians generally. Were a mass casualty terrorist attack to occur, perhaps on the scale of the bombing of the Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires in July 1994, which killed 85 people, Australia would never be the same again afterwards. Our idea of Australia as being a peaceful and cohesive society would be transformed overnight, for the worst.

The federal government is charged with the defence of the nation, the protection of its sovereignty, and the maintenance of the “peace, order, and good government” of the commonwealth, the latter phrase being contained in the Constitution. If the government fails in any of these first duties of state, no amount of success in other fields will protect it from condemnation, today and in history’s enduring judgment.

While police and security intelligence officers, and other officials, have to grapple at the operational coalface with the complex challenge of counter-terrorism work, it is the government that has the higher and prior responsibility to prevent matters developing to the point where the nation is being riven by polarisation and social fractures, and where there is a risk that hateful beliefs might be acted upon through terroristic violence.

As in war, countering terrorism requires active and involved ministerial leadership, and the wielding of the power of ministerial office to ensure that institutional failures are remedied before tragedy strikes, and not in the aftermath.

In counter-terrorism work, it is vitally important that the architecture of roles and responsibilities is clear, especially in a federation, that governmental structures reflect this clarity, that functions are distributed accordingly, and that there is integration and unity of effort across agencies and jurisdictions. Institutional failures are more likely to occur when the assignment of roles and responsibilities lacks clarity. Reporting lines become tangled. Information flows are impaired. Coherence of effort breaks down.

At the most foundational level, it is not even clear who is the lead federal minister of the government. Under the current Administrative Arrangements Order, the document that sets out the responsibilities of ministerial departments of state, the responsibility for “law enforcement policy and operations” is vested with the Attorney-General, while the responsibility for “national security policy and operations” is vested with the Minister for Home Affairs. So, who is the minister for counter-terrorism?

This blurring of responsibilities, and the associated transfer since May 2022 of the AFP, other law enforcement agencies, and then ASIO from the Home Affairs ministry to the Attorney-General’s, were retrograde steps. They unravelled the clarity and unification of effort that had been put in place by the Turnbull government in December 2017, when the Department of Home Affairs was established in its modern form. Were there to be a major terrorist attack, this blurring of responsibilities, and the consequential weakening of the nation’s counter-terrorism machinery, would be key exhibits in any resultant commission of inquiry.

In the same way that the Minister for Defence would be expected to take the day-to-day lead in matters of war – and we would not have separate ministers for the navy, the army, and the air force pulling in different directions – the Minister for Home Affairs should lead in all matters of domestic security and federal law enforcement. The minister should have “authority over the whole scene”, as Winston Churchill used to say.

Sound arrangements were in place during the period December 2017 to May 2022, when the minister, the department, and ASIO, the AFP, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission and AUSTRAC were able to work together as a cohesive team, with the minister having “authority over the whole scene”.

This is not a theoretical claim. It was our lived experience. The relevant machinery of government was integrated. Information flows were seamless. Effort was unified. Australia was safer.

In the absence of a senior minister having such authority, and the information, so that they are able to set strategic directions and to give lawful directions as might be necessary, too much of the burden of accountability in counter-terrorism is being borne by officers who, while being highly diligent and resolutely determined in their work, are not charged with being accountable to the parliament, and the people.

Only an empowered minister who has full command of all of the facts of an evolving situation can probe, question, nudge and – at times – overrule, subject to having the legal authority to do so.

This is the basis for the successful governance of Operation Sovereign Borders. It is how we would fight a war. Why is counter-terrorism being treated differently? It should not be.

Here is what needs to be done, without delay. These measures might strike the reader as being concerned with technical matters of governmental machinery. They are. Getting the machinery and processes of counter-terrorism right keeps us safe, and it is precisely these matters that any future commission of inquiry into a major terrorist attack would have to examine in painstaking detail.

First, the AAO should be amended this afternoon, assigning explicit ministerial responsibility for counter-terrorism to the Minister for Home Affairs. Accompanying instructions should be issued, also this afternoon, to the Director-General of Security and the AFP Commissioner directing them to report to the minister with immediate effect. In due course, the Department of Home Affairs should be reconstituted fully.

Second, the Prime Minister, consulting with first ministers, should declare the existence of a National Terrorist Situation, under the provisions of the National Counter-Terrorism Plan. That plan is the agreed national arrangement for dealing with terrorism, and it should be fully activated, without the government waiting for an attack to succeed. Some might quibble that a “terrorist incident” has not yet occurred. Let them. They can answer before the judgment of history.

The declaration of an NTS would open the way for the commonwealth to assume full strategic leadership of the overall anti-Semitism effort.

The states and territories have vital supporting roles to play in this regard, as they would in any national crisis. However, the severity of the situation has reached a point where the commonwealth now has to lead. Imagine no one bothering to tell Churchill in 1940 that German-speaking parachutists had landed in Sussex, because detective chief superintendent Foyle had the matter in hand!

Had the recent caravan bomb plot succeeded, it would have been an attack on Australia, not an attack on an individual state.

Accordingly, and third, the government should immediately establish a multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional taskforce within the Centre for Counter-Terrorism Co-ordination in the Department of Home Affairs. This should include state and territory officials. The taskforce should be led by the commonwealth Counter-Terrorism Co-ordinator within Home Affairs. The office of Co-ordinator was established in the wake of the Martin Place siege of December 2014, and the subsequent review that was undertaken of Australia’s counter-terrorism machinery.

The taskforce should be built around these three missions: “prevent and protect” (led by Home ­Affairs); “intelligence” (led by ASIO, working with the AFP, ACIC, AUSTRAC, and other intelligence agencies); and “disruption” (led by the AFP, working with ASIO and state and territory police). This model would mirror the successful Operation Sovereign Borders model that has been in place since late 2013, with a key additional element being the integration of state and territory police, who would retain primacy for the investigation of offending that was related to state and territory laws, under the umbrella of the disruption mission.

The “battle rhythm” of the taskforce should be driven by the provision by the co-ordinator of a daily situation report to the minister, which would provide him with the latest information regarding the threat picture and the operational situation. Nothing more focuses the mind of officers than the need to work to the steady beat of ministerial oversight. This is what happens in war, and in other domestic security crises such as dealing with illegal boat arrivals. It should drive action here too. The report should be suitably classified and constructed such that those few with a comprehensive need to know everything would be able to be fully informed, while those with a lesser need to know would be informed of only those matters that fell within their responsibility. On advice, but in the end exercising his own judgment, the minister should decide what should be said publicly, and when – always balancing the obligation to inform and reassure the public with the imperative to protect operations.

Fourth, national cabinet should agree to the establishment of a national crisis committee of relevant state and territory ministers, to be led by the Minister for Home Affairs. This committee should meet weekly, or more frequently as might be necessary. It would provide a regular opportunity for the co-ordinator and others to brief ministers, and to act as required on any collective decisions that they might take. National cabinet should be primed to meet urgently, as circumstances require it.

Fifth, the co-ordinator should develop a strategy for a national community engagement campaign, in consultation with commonwealth departments and agencies, the first secretaries of the states and territories, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, and others with particular expertise in the field. Special Anti-Semitism Envoy Jillian Segal should be appointed to be the principal strategic adviser to the co-ordinator and the taskforce in this and all other regards, while retaining her direct reporting line to the Prime Minister and the Home Affairs Minister. She should be given special intelligence and other briefings so she can better perform her functions.

Drawing on the best practice in countering violent extremism, and combatinganti-Semitism, including by way of better Holocaust education, the aim of the campaign would be to counter the very particular and pernicious narratives and ideologies that underpin and sustain anti-Jewish hatred.

Success in this regard will not be achieved by generalised anti-racism and anti-discrimination efforts, and well-meaning pleas for the maintenance of social cohesion, as important as these are. Anti-Semitism has to be countered specifically at the level of narrative and ideology, having regard to the particulars of this ancient hatred. Such a campaign should expose and challenge anti-Jewish tropes, memes, conspiracy narratives, signifiers, and so on. It would have to be mounted across a wide array of social media platforms, and it would ideally involve prominent Australians, including faith leaders, calling out this hatred, and standing with Jewish Australians.

Sixth, the taskforce should work with technology companies and other data providers to generate a better online “dragnet” of anti-­Semitic content, built on more powerful, lawful AI-assisted searches for such material, to address the data problems that were recently identified by Mike Kelly in these pages.

A better “dragnet” would generate more leads for intelligence and investigative work, support takedown efforts by the eSafety Commissioner, and assist in the shaping and targeting of the community engagement campaign.

Seventh, the co-ordinator, working in conjunction with the commonwealth Department of Education and the vice-chancellors of universities, should prepare a plan for the minister’s consideration on making our universities safe for Jewish staff and students. Some universities have become hotbeds of hatred. This should not be tolerated. Perpetrators should be dealt with decisively. Sit-ins and encampments should be shut down. This is not an issue of free speech. It is intimidation that has no place in civil discourse.

Eighth, the minister should convene an urgent meeting of the Five Country Ministerial grouping, which brings together the security ministers of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Britain and the US. This forum has worked very effectively to crack tough domestic security and public safety issues, doing so on the basis of the very highly classified intelligence that is shared among the Five Eyes partners. The Five Country Ministerial group should focus especially on the foreign state and other actors who are almost certainly operating in the shadows to seed and amplify anti-Jewish hatred. Special attention should be paid to Iran, which has a record of sponsoring attacks against Jewish people and places around the world. The FBI and MI5 warned of the threat of Iranian-backed terrorism in the immediate wake of the October 7 attack on Israel.

Ninth, the minister should reassure himself that effective plans are in place to deal with mass casualty bombing attacks, active shooter contingencies, siege/hostage recovery situations, and car-ramming attacks. With the Minister for Defence, he should satisfy himself that the call-out arrangements under Part IIIAAA of the Defence Act are in order, and that the ADF’s Tactical Assault Groups can be quickly deployed.

He should also instruct the co-ordinator to ensure that the guidance for the protection of crowded places, schools and places of worship is current, and has been promulgated effectively to the Jewish community, and to the owners and controllers of relevant physical places. Similarly, access to dangerous chemicals and explosives should be reviewed and tightened as required, and preparations made for the lawful deployment of counter-drone capabilities at certain locations, to defend against drone-mounted attacks.

Finally, the minister should direct Home Affairs to expedite the cancellation on character grounds of the visas of any non-citizens who espouse extremist anti-Semitic viewpoints. A new ministerial direction to decision-makers should be promulgated to ensure that consistently decisive decisions are being taken in this regard.

These measures have a single theme. We know, from the findings of commissions of inquiry, terrorist attacks are more likely to occur where there has been a failure of central co-ordination and direction, a fragmentation of effort, and a breakdown in information flows.

What is suggested here could be set in motion this afternoon. Doing so would not reflect any criticism of officials, and certainly not of the operational teams who are doing their job. However, they do not bear the onerous burden of being responsible for “the whole scene”. That charge falls to the government, which also needs to do its job.

On the value of military service

In January, I crossed the milestone of 24 years of service in two militaries—the British and Australian armies. It is fair to say that I am a professional soldier. Soldiering has consumed the whole of my adult life. Indeed, it has been a focus since I first put on an army cadet uniform at the age of twelve.

It is also fair to say that the reputation of my profession is under pressure, particularly since the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those wars have challenged the moral foundation of modern soldiering, combining with a sense that the military suffers from a toxic culture, a moral vacuum and poor leadership.

A belief has developed from those campaigns that military service is inherently damaging. This is not unique in history. A similar perspective grew during and after the Vietnam War, one that took a generation to work through.

There is some truth to this negative image of service. I fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan and have written of my own concerns about the morality of the two campaigns. I have seen toxicity in culture and have experienced poor leadership. I have also, at times, likely been guilty of being a poor leader myself.

But this hard truth can exist at the same time as another truth: that I am undoubtedly a better person for my military service. Soldiering has not somehow suppressed my compassion and humanity; it has sharpened them. It has not diluted my values; it has constructed them. It has not fractured my family; it has strengthened us.

Put simply, I wouldn’t be the human I am today without the British and Australian armies.

So, I believe there is deep value in military service. Sometimes this gets lost. My aim in this article is to reflect on and remind of this value. This is not an article about certainty of employment, subsidised housing, or money (although all those certainly helped my family and me to weather wars, the global financial crisis and a pandemic). Instead, I want to talk about the intangibles. The things that really matter. The things that have made me who I am today.

A life of service and purpose

The name ‘military service’ is the right one. ‘Service’ has a dictionary definition of ‘the action of helping or doing work for someone’, and, in military terms, that ‘someone’ is the nation.

The idea of service as being at the core of the military profession is well embedded in history and culture. The rank of sergeant, for example, dates to the 13th century and is traced back to the Latin word serviens, meaning the ‘one who serves’. The motto of the Australian Army is ‘Serving the nation’. The idea of service is at the core of the oath of allegiance of the Australian Army. The mantra of Britain’s Royal Military Academy is famously ‘Serve to lead’.

This is no minor commitment. In 1962, the Australian-born General Sir John Hackett introduced the idea that military service involves a ‘contract of unlimited liability’. Soldiers agree to commit everything to the nation, up to and including sacrificing their own lives and deliberately taking the lives of others. Arguably, there is no profession that matches such a level of commitment. Few soldiers realise the scale of this when they join: it takes a few years, and often a few operations, for it to sink in.

That contract, however, is not a one-way street. You get something remarkable in return: a sense of purpose. There is something special in waking up each morning knowing that my work that day—however hard—will support the defence of the nation and the future security of my children. I have always been paid well as a soldier, but that has never been the point. And I have certainly never worked to make someone else money. I may only nudge the defence of the nation forward an inch on a given day, adding only one more brick to the ramparts, but I will have served, and that has purpose.

Is this worth my death? That is a good question. I have had to ask it several times. So far, the answer has always been ‘yes’. But I am clear that the day it is not, the day I am not willing to accept unlimited liability, is the day I should hang up the uniform. But such a day seems a very long way off, given how much the military has given me so far in terms of service and purpose.

Australian soldiers establish a position after disembarking from a US Army Chinook with Afghan National Security Force partners in Afghanistan, 2012: Department of Defence.

A life guided by values

The second gift of my service has been a life guided by values. Armies have now shaped my values and behaviour for more than 30 years, without doubt the biggest influence on my sense of morality other than my parents. The language used has been pretty consistent. Service. Courage. Excellence. Compassion. Loyalty. Integrity.

None of this has been performative. Far from these ideas being some sort of corporate banner, I have understood from day one that both armies have expected me to live and display the values, tangibly, every day. Nor has this ever been a matter of being in or out of uniform; it is with me 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Perhaps not everyone sees it that way, but I always have.

Aristotle once said, ‘we are what we repeatedly do’—that we are our habits. So, it’s not surprising that those values are now deeply set. In fact, they reflect from top to bottom, most noticeably in the small things. I find myself being unfailingly polite. I open doors and always let others go first. I find it exceptionally difficult to lie or deceive, at least outside of very necessary deception in combat. I tend to look after others. Leaders eat last, always. Some might consider this all to be just old-fashioned. It certainly makes me a terrible businessman. But I am far happier this way, guided as I am by a clear set of values.

How does this work with violence, which sits at the centre of my profession? It helps square the circle. I have always been scared of becoming inured or desensitised to the violence, comfortable with killing. The values reinforced into me by the army have made sure that never happens.

Yes, it is my job to take life if required, in defence of the nation. But every life has value, and the cost of taking it must always be recognised. As Nietzsche wrote, ‘he who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.’ The British and Australian armies taught me this. It is not something I can forget.

The camaraderie of leading and following

Armies are hierarchical creatures, so for the past 24 years I have led, and I have followed, in many teams. Being part of this relationship is the best day-to-day aspect of the profession. I have followed some remarkable people. Tank officers and cavalrymen who took me to war with style. Special forces officers who dared, and won. Fiery frigate captains bringing force from the sea. And, most recently, remarkable senior leaders who have given as much as four decades of their lives to service: almost a third of the history of the Commonwealth of Australia.

I have also led soldiers, sailors and aviators, in both war and peace: teams from as small as 11 to as large as 400. Leading has been the greatest privilege of my life. In his excellent book War in Human Civilisation, Azar Gat describes military groups as primary or fraternal groups. They are as close to family as you can get, without being biological family. Gat is entirely right; my service has allowed me to be part of many families, all of them rich and full of characters.

It is true that military command can be a lonely task. One of the joys, however, is that you never do it alone. As an officer you always do it as a team, paired with a senior soldier of suitable experience and character. The accountabilities of command are rightly all yours, but the burdens of command are shared. This is a wonderful model, born of hundreds of years of tradition and experience: one that also leads to lifelong relationships.

Those connections of leading and following go deep. In September last year, I travelled more than 26,000 kilometres from Australia back to Britain for a 10-year reunion of a particularly lively tour of Afghanistan, where I had been the officer in charge of a 130-strong unit for a nine-month stint. I was in Britain for less than 50 hours. I landed, borrowed my father’s car and by lunchtime was hugging and swapping stories in Warwickshire with the best of men and women.

Sitting in the late autumn sunshine, in a 16th-century English pub in Shakespeare’s county, I couldn’t help but think of how well the Bard captured the feeling of military camaraderie in Henry V; a bond born of shared hardship. Life somehow shone brighter in those nine months in Helmand Province, surrounded by violence and death. As King Henry put it in the play, those days would ‘na’er go by from this day to the ending of the world’ without us remembering them, or each other. We truly were a ‘band of brothers’—and sisters. And, as Shakespeare’s Henry said, ‘He who fought with me that day shall be my brother.’ This was my brotherhood—my family—of Afghanistan veterans.

Three of the family are no longer with us. One was lost on the tour, two in the decade since. But they were there at the reunion, in spirit if not in body. Their photos were carefully laid out on a pub table, resting on our squadron flag. Drinks were bought for them, and glasses raised throughout. Ours is a family for which the phrase ‘we will remember them’ is a promise, not a slogan. Such camaraderie is hard-earned. To be part of it is a privilege.

Tom McDermott in Afghanistan: British Ministry of Defence via author.

Visceral emotions and a true sense of perspective

Over the years, I have thought a lot about visceral emotions, the deep-set, intuitive and powerful ones that strike to your very core. Everyone experiences them at some time: the dual feeling of joy and terror at the birth of your first child, or the feeling of uncertainty and grief when you find that a loved one has died. But true visceral emotions are much rarer than people think.

My service has led to me experiencing many visceral emotions. You might think those were bad, and some were. The terror of hearing a burst of enemy machine-gun fire, followed by a ‘Man down!’ call on the radio. The eviscerating grief of hearing that a comrade is dead. Over the years, I have come to accept those moments as a reality of the profession, just as a doctor must learn to manage death. General William Sherman once said that ‘War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.’ He is right. One thing I have learned is that two emotions are more dangerous than others: hatred, and disgust. Those are the gateways to revenge, an urge that must be guarded against at all costs.

But those difficult visceral emotions are genuinely offset by the positive ones. The first hug from my wife and then four-year-old daughter after nine months fighting in Afghanistan reached a scale of joy that is difficult to express. The feeling of collective achievement walking out of the back of a Chinook helicopter after a successful operation, the heat of the engines singeing the hairs on the back of my neck. The surge of pride watching one of my brother officers receive a medal from the Queen. Perhaps oddly, those positive emotions include the affirmation of actual combat. Winston Churchill once wrote, ‘nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.’ That is true. The battlefield is the most challenging of human arenas. My experience is that one values life more having endured it.

Those emotions—the good, the bad and the ugly—have had an overall net positive effect. Above all, they have given me perspective. I tend to view life differently now. I have less interest in material things, in the trappings of wealth or success. I am not bothered by the small problems: the traffic, not being able to find a parking space, a lack of phone signal. I am very slow to anger. I am not religious, but I am more spiritual … as the saying goes, ‘There are no atheists in foxholes.’ My use of language has changed. I very rarely use the word ‘hate’; I have felt the glimmers of true hatred, and I know what it really means.

Overall, the idea of a bad day has different context, when you’ve experienced days that are really bad. War has taught me that the Stoics were right, there really are only two things in your control: your thoughts and your actions. War asks you to have the serenity to accept the things you cannot change, the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference. These are lessons you carry for life.

Service, identity and citizenship

The passages above outline (however inadequately) what I have gained from service. The obvious final question though is, ‘Why do you still do it?’ Surely after 24 years, you’ve paid your dues and could do something a little more relaxing? Something a little less burdensome? A little easier on the family?

The simplest answer is that military service is my identity, and has been for more than half my life. I’m not sure how I would go without it. Writing in a different age, Samuel Johnson said, ‘Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier.’ I don’t think that is the case today, but I know I certainly feel better for being one. I think identity is the reason why many soldiers find life hard after they leave the military: the niggling loss of the service motive that has underpinned each day in uniform.

But that simple answer isn’t enough. The second and better answer is because I am needed. The world is clearly a more dangerous place than at any time since I started serving in 2001—indeed, perhaps since my grandfather was in uniform in the Second World War. The return of great-power competition heralds a period of tension that could well lead to armed confrontation or war in the Indo-Pacific.

History tells us that we must prepare for the worst, and that a strong and capable military is a vital part of that preparation. I migrated to Australia to secure a better future for my children, and I believe that future is now under threat. My service in 2025 has more meaning than it did when I arrived in 2015. It is my contribution to securing my children’s future.

This brings me to my final answer: ‘I serve because I am Australian.’ This is a fine place to finish. Migrating to another nation in mid-life has been hard—a core change in identity that led me from being British to becoming Australian. I often reflect that, while I originally served to gain Australian citizenship, I have now become truly Australian due to my service.

My time in the Australian Army has fundamentally connected me to the nation. It has shown me all the different Australias: from Whyalla in the south to the red desert in the Northern Territory, from the beauty of Perth to the Atherton Tableland. I have been privileged to lead the oldest cavalry regiment in the Australian Army, with a history dating back to 1860. I have worn the Australian national flag on my sleeve every day for nearly a decade, a constant reminder of what the country has given my family and me. I would not be the Australian I am today without the Australian Army.

For me, this is one of the most under-recognised benefits of service: an appreciation of and connection to nation. The idea of patriotism is struggling in the modern age, but the definition remains clear: ‘the quality of being devoted to one’s country.’ I am far more devoted to Australia than I expected to be, just 10 years ago. Because I am an Australian soldier. Always.

The crisis in Western AI is real

The release of the Chinese DeepSeek-R1 large language model, with its impressive capabilities and low development cost, shocked financial markets and led to claims of a ‘Sputnik moment’ in artificial intelligence. But a powerful, innovative Chinese model achieving parity with US products should come as no surprise. It is the predictable result of a major US and Western policy failure, for which the AI industry itself bears much of the blame.

China’s growing AI capabilities were well known to the AI research community, and even to the interested public. After all, Chinese AI researchers and companies have been remarkably open about their progress, publishing papers, open-sourcing their software and speaking with US researchers and journalists. A New York Times article from last July was headlined, ‘China Is Closing the AI Gap with the United States’.

Two factors explain China’s achievement of near parity. First, China has an aggressive, coherent national policy to reach self-sufficiency and technical superiority across the entire digital technology stack, from semiconductor capital equipment and AI processors to hardware products and AI models—and in both commercial and military applications. Second, US (and EU) government policies and industry behavior have exhibited a depressing combination of complacency, incompetence and greed.

It should be obvious that Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin are no friends of the West and that AI will drive enormously consequential economic and military transformations. Given the stakes involved, maintaining AI leadership within democratic advanced economies justifies, and even demands, an enormous public-private strategic mobilisation on the scale of the Manhattan Project, NATO, various energy-independence efforts, or nuclear-weapons policies. Yet the West is doing the opposite.

In the US, government and academic research in AI are falling behind both China and the private sector. Owing to inadequate funding, neither government agencies nor universities can compete with the salaries and computing facilities offered by the likes of Google, Meta, OpenAI, or their Chinese counterparts. Moreover, US immigration policy toward graduate students and researchers is self-defeating and nonsensical, because it forces highly talented people to leave the country at the end of their studies.

Then there is the US policy on regulating Chinese access to AI-related technology. Export controls have been slow to appear, wholly inadequate, poorly staffed, easily evaded, and under-enforced. Chinese access to US AI technologies through services and licensing agreements has remained nearly unregulated, even when the underlying technologies, such as Nvidia processors, are themselves subject to export controls. The US announced stricter licensing rules just a week before former President Joe Biden left office.

Finally, US policy ignores the fact that AI R&D must be strongly supported, used, and, where necessary, regulated throughout the private sector, the government, and the military. The US still has no AI or IT equivalent of the Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, NASA, or the national laboratories that conduct (and tightly control) US nuclear-weapons R&D.

This situation is partly the result of sclerotic government bureaucracies in both the European Union and the US. The EU technology sector is severely overregulated, and the US Departments of Defense and Commerce, among other agencies, need reform.

Here, the tech industry is somewhat justified in criticising their governments. But the industry itself is not blameless: over time, lobbying efforts and revolving-door personnel appointments have weakened the capabilities of critically important public institutions. Many of the problems with US policy reflect the industry’s own resistance or neglect. In critical ways, it has been its own worst enemy, as well as the enemy of the West’s long-term security.

For example, ASML (the Dutch maker of state-of-the-art lithography machines used in chip manufacturing) and the US-based semiconductor-equipment supplier Applied Materials both lobbied to weaken export controls on semiconductor capital equipment, thus assisting China in its effort to displace TSMC, Nvidia and Intel. Not to be outdone, Nvidia designed special chips for the Chinese market that performed just slightly below the threshold set by export restrictions; these were then used to train DeepSeek-R1. And at the level of AI models, Meta and the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz have lobbied fiercely to prevent any limits on open-source products.

At least in public, the industry’s line has been: ‘the government is hopeless, but if you leave us alone, everything will be fine’. Yet things are not fine. China has nearly caught up with the US, and it is already ahead of Europe. Moreover, the US government is not hopeless, and must be enlisted to help. Historically, federal and academic research and development compare very favourably with private-sector efforts.

The internet, after all, was pioneered by the US Advanced Research Projects Agency (now DARPA), and the World Wide Web emerged from the European Organisation for Nuclear Research. Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen created the first web browser at a federally funded supercomputer center within a public university. Meanwhile, private industry gave us online services such as CompuServe, Prodigy and AOL—centralised, closed, mutually incompatible walled gardens that were justly obliterated when the internet was opened to commercial use.

The challenges of AI research and development and China’s rise require a forceful, serious response. Where government capacity falls short, we need to bolster it; not destroy it. We need to pay competitive salaries for government and academic work; modernise US (and EU) technology infrastructure and procedures; create robust research and development capacity within the government, particularly for military applications; strengthen academic research; and implement rational policies for immigration, AI research and development funding, safety testing and export controls.

The one truly difficult policy problem is openness, particularly open-source licensing. We cannot let everyone have access to models optimised for hunter-killer drone attacks; nor, however, can we stamp ‘top secret’ on every model. We need to find a pragmatic middle ground, perhaps relying on national defence research laboratories and carefully crafted export controls for intermediate cases. Above all, we need the AI industry to realise that if we don’t hang together, we will hang separately.

Spyware is spreading far beyond its national-security role

Spyware is increasingly exploited by criminals or used to suppress civil liberties, and this proliferation is in part due to weak regulation.

Politicians, diplomats, human rights activists and journalists have been targeted by malicious software worldwide. Just last week, former Polish justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro was arrested for allegedly approving use of spyware on 600 people, including opposition leaders.

Spyware is increasingly exploited by private actors, often criminal, for international crime, corruption, transnational repression and weapons smuggling. For instance, Mexican criminal organisations have tapped into Titan, security software used by law enforcement and intelligence agencies, to geolocate their rivals and conceal criminal activity. What’s more concerning is that some of these spyware products are being procured by government officials informally, without bureaucratic checks and balances.

The opacity of the spyware trade can make it difficult for governments to develop effective policies and regulatory controls. While commercial spyware giants such as the NSO Group, Intellex Consortium, NoviSpy and Cellebrite have become well known and increasingly scrutinised, hundreds of smaller firms have attracted little attention and oversight. They also provide hackers-for-hire services and such products as economical intrusion software. They are often set up by larger entities as a means of evading export controls, and they offer a more discreet way for governments and private actors to procure spyware, including illicit services and products.

The Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative found connections between 435 entities across 42 countries in the spyware market. This revealed a web of investors, vendors, holding companies, subsidiaries, suppliers and individuals in the exploitation supply chain that contribute to spyware development, proliferation and misuse.

Misuse of spyware by malign actors can threaten national security and undermine civil liberties. This is a challenge for democracies and authoritarian regimes alike.

Between 2011 and 2023, at least 74 governments contracted commercial firms to obtain spyware or digital forensics technology. Of these, 44 were autocratic regimes, and 56 procured such technologies from firms based in or connected to Israel, the leading exporter of spyware.

The commercial spyware market is characterised by convoluted corporate structures and obscure supply chains, underscoring the need for collective efforts to increase transparency. The international community will need to cooperate and align their spyware regulations and approaches to address shared risks.

On 31 January, WhatsApp revealed it had detected spyware attacks targeting users across multiple countries. The software had come from Israeli company Paragon Solutions, but WhatsApp was unable to identify the user.

The international community is making some moves to counter misuse of commercial spyware. In January, Australia released a statement at the United Nations calling out the practice. Australia is also one of 23 signatories of the US-initiated joint statement on countering spyware proliferation and misuse.

Britain and France have also established the Pall Mall Process, which involves industry, governments and civil society committing to developing comprehensive guiding principles on the proliferation of commercial spyware.

These measures are major developments in the multilateral commitment to develop stricter safeguards, bringing states closer to alignment on spyware regulation policies.

However, too few countries and entities remain involved in the global effort to counter the proliferation and misuse of spyware. Stakeholder participation within existing mechanisms remains limited. This participation is concentrated in a small number of countries, mainly in Europe and North America, as well as Australia and a few Northeast and Southeast Asian states. This is despite a history of major emerging economies, such as Brazil, advocating against mass surveillance.

Countries need to develop more stringent regulations to prevent the proliferation and misuse of spyware. Nations should establish clear guidelines for nations’ preparedness and pathways to improvement, as well as transparency around what proliferation means to each state. This will help partners to understand and communicate their biggest hurdles, and what is needed to drive reforms.

Identifying and improving domestic commercial spyware landscapes is a good starting point for multilateral initiatives, but bringing the technology into international discussions would also help to mobilise the international community to respond. Australia should work together with partners in the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to incorporate the issue into regional organisations. Both the EU and ASEAN are home to an increasing number of commercial spyware entities, even though its member-states also have a vested interest in preventing misuse of the technology.

Inaction or complacency by democracies risks the legitimisation of a largely unregulated industry. This reduces the impact and likelihood of developing meaningful policies to curtail the industry, further enabling spyware misuse.

With US funding freeze, China nonprofits are facing extinction. They need emergency assistance

An entire ecosystem of vital China-related work is now in crisis. When the Trump administration froze foreign funding and USAID programs last week, dozens of scrappy nonprofits in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the United States were immediately affected. Staff are losing their jobs; some organisations face imminent closure due to lack of funding; others are paring back their programming.

In many cases, these organisations provide our last window into what is actually happening in China. They do the painstaking and often personally risky work of tracking Chinese media censorship, tallying local protests, uncovering human rights violations, documenting the Uyghur genocide, and supporting what remains of civil society in China. They provide platforms for Chinese people to speak freely; they help keep the dream of democracy in China alive. I’m not listing the names of any specific organisations at this time, because some prefer not to disclose that they receive foreign funding. Beijing believes funding that supports free speech and human rights is interference by ‘hostile foreign forces’.

As China’s President Xi Jinping has squeezed Chinese civil society and expelled journalists, information from inside China has gotten harder and harder to access. The 2017 Chinese foreign NGO law crushed US and other foreign nonprofits based in China. Some moved to Hong Kong or elsewhere. The spending freeze may deal them a death blow.

The research and other work done by these nonprofits is invaluable. It largely isn’t replicated by think tanks, universities, private firms, or journalists. If it disappears, nothing will replace it, and Beijing’s work to crush it will be complete.

As a journalist who covered China for more than 10 years, I took for granted the numerous organisations I could turn to when I needed certain kinds of information. But Donald Trump’s foreign spending freeze has revealed how dependent these organisations are on a single government for their survival—and, by extension, how fragile our sources of information about China really are.

The US must immediately grant emergency waivers to China-focussed nonprofits. If the US is not able to do this, governments around the world that value democracy, human rights and truth must step in and find a way to restore funding to these organisations now. It wouldn’t take much; a few million dollars spread across a handful of donor nations would be enough to preserve the research, expertise and networks these organisations represent.

Regardless of whether the US continues funding this work, this crisis should serve as a wake-up call for democracies everywhere. Funding from a single government should not be the only thing standing between us and an information blackout on Chinese civil society. That is not a model of international democratic resilience.

Providing funding for China nonprofits operating outside of China is directly aligned with the core interests of democratic nations. We base our security on the idea that democratic systems are the best way to guarantee the long-term stability, prosperity and wellbeing of citizens. Government budgets exist to preserve the democratic systems that make these goals possible; we don’t sacrifice these ideals to shave off a few numbers on a budget.

A key part of China’s agenda is to persuade its own citizens and the world, falsely and through deception and coercion, that democratic systems are not better. Beijing claims its system is the best way to guarantee economic prosperity and stability. It claims its one-party system is a meritocracy.

It is difficult and time-consuming—though not particularly expensive—to do the work that proves Beijing is lying, and that what it offers is smoke and mirrors. Tools that allow us to uncover the flaws of China’s own system and the actual struggles Chinese people face, directly support the goals, security and resilience of democratic governments.

Without the work that China nonprofits do, it will be much harder to show that China’s domestic model of economic and political governance is deeply flawed. If we can no longer prove that, it becomes much harder to understand why democracies are worth fighting for in the first place.

North Korea is the big beneficiary in its military partnership with Russia

North Korea is getting more out of its engagement in Russia’s war than Russia is getting from North Korea.

The forces that Pyongyang has sent to fight Ukraine are poorly equipped and are not performing well. Yet, the military-technological help that Russia is sending to North Korea in return is highly valuable.

Moscow’s assistance to Pyongyang is somewhat destabilising for East Asia, since any increase in North Korean military strength heightens the risk of war on the Korean Peninsula. South Korea should respond by helping Ukraine.

The growing military cooperation between North Korea and Russia is substantial. Among other reasons for this military-cum-strategic partnership, North Korea eyes several strategic and tactical goals. These include the modernisation of its military capabilities, access to Russian military technologies, combat experience, help in launching spy satellites into space, bolstering its air-defence networks and possible diplomatic cover at the United Nations from international sanctions.

The troops provided by North Korea lack battlefield expertise despite some reportedly being part of North Korea’s special forces. They’re also unfamiliar with the terrain of Russia and Ukraine. Two South Korean lawmakers, Lee Sung-kwon and Park Sun-won have said that North Korean troops deployed in Russia suffer from a ‘poor understanding of modern warfare tactics’. Recently, Ukrainian defence forces wiped out an entire battalion of North Korean troops in Makhnovka, a village in Kursk.

The artillery ammunition, rockets and missiles imported from North Korea have proliferated across Russian defences in large volumes, outdoing EU production lines. Their poor quality translates to low accuracy. While such low-tech weaponry might frustrate Russian soldiers, without it the Russian war machine would slacken.

Consider, however, what North Korea is getting in return. First, Russia sends oil from Vostochny, a port east of Vladivostok, to the North Korean city of Chongjin. But its aid to Pyongyang beyond oil is more important because North Korea is technologically starved.

Russia has already responded to North Korea’s help by sending it air defence systems. According to South Korean intelligence reports, North Korea’s air defences have been outdated and need great improvement to combat South Korean and US air power.

Although North Korean soldiers in the Russia-Ukraine war have not been highly effective, they are learning. Moreover, the war has introduced them to drone warfare. Pyongyang can look forward to this experience improving the combat power of its forces in its own theatre of potential conflict, the peninsula.

The big concern is that Russia may help improve North Korea’s nuclear forces, which in some respects remain somewhat limited. For example, Pyongyang would probably want help in improving its ballistic missile technology, particularly for intercontinental strikes. It must also want nuclear weapons—or better nuclear weapons—for submarines.

Jenny Town of the Stimson Centre, argues that if Russia’s dependence on North Korea expands, the deeper cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang is likely to intensify, and may facilitate the development of nuclear technologies in North Korea.

Earlier this year, the deputy US representative to the UN, Dorothy Camille Shea, warned the Security Council that North Korea might be gaining an upper hand in its military relationship with Moscow, which could strengthen it and make it more capable of destabilising its neighbours.

Scholar Robert Carlin argues that North Korea previously built and tested advanced weapons systems as leverage in negotiations with South Korea and the United States. However, North Korea may now be less interested such negotiations.

Although South Korea’s correct response should be to help Ukraine more, it is still debating whether to send lethal weapons. They could include the Cheonmu multiple rocket launcher, K9 self-propelled howitzer and 155 mm shells.

The South Korean public does not support arms transfers to Ukraine. Indeed, all non-lethal aid from Seoul is routed through the US, since direct supply could create unnecessary friction with Moscow.

In response to the growing relationship between Moscow and Pyongyang, Seoul is at least increasing cooperation with democratic partners.  For example, upon NATO’s request, the South Korean government sent a delegation to Brussels to discuss possibilities for intelligence sharing. And in 2022, South Korea opened its diplomatic mission to NATO.

Will DeepSeek upend US tech dominance?

In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite into orbit, sparking fears in the United States that, unless it took radical action to accelerate innovation, its Cold War adversary would leave it in the technological dust. Now, the Chinese startup DeepSeek has built an artificial intelligence model that it claims can outperform industry-leading US competitors, at a fraction of the cost, leading some commentators to proclaim that another ‘Sputnik moment’ has arrived.

But the focus on the US-China geopolitical rivalry misses the point. Rather than viewing DeepSeek as a stand-in for China, and established industry leaders (such as OpenAI, Meta and Anthropic) as representatives of the US, we should see this as a case of an ingenious startup emerging to challenge oligopolistic incumbents—a dynamic that is typically welcomed in open markets.

DeepSeek has proved that software ingenuity can compensate, at least partly, for hardware deficiencies. Its achievement raises an uncomfortable question: why haven’t leading US industry leaders achieved similar breakthroughs? Nobel laureate economist Daron Acemoglu points the finger at groupthink, which he says prevented Silicon Valley incumbents from adequately considering alternative approaches. He might have a point, but it is only half the story.

DeepSeek’s success didn’t happen overnight. In May 2024, the firm launched its V2 model, which boasted an exceptional cost-to-performance ratio and sparked a fierce price war among Chinese AI providers. Moreover, over the last year or so, Chinese firms—both giants (including Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance) and startups (such as Moonshot AI, Zhipu AI, Baichuan AI, MiniMax and 01.AI)—have all developed cutting-edge AI models with remarkable cost efficiency.

Even within the US, researchers have long explored ways to improve the efficiency—and thus lower the costs—of AI training. For example, in 2022, former Meta researcher Tim Dettmers, now at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, and his co-authors published research on optimising AI models to run on less computing power. DeepSeek cited their research in the technical paper it released along with its V3 model.

Put simply, it would have been impossible for any AI firm—especially an industry leader—not to realise that lower-cost models were feasible. But US AI developers showed much less interest than their Chinese counterparts in pursuing this line of innovation. This was not a matter only of insularity or hubris; it appears to be a deliberate business choice.

AI development has so far been defined by the scaling law, which predicts that more computing power leads to more powerful models. This has fuelled demand for high-performance semiconductor chips, with more than 80 percent of the funds raised by many AI companies going toward computing resources.

That is why the biggest winner has been the advanced chipmaker Nvidia, which claimed 90 percent of the market for AI graphics processing units by the end of last year. Thanks to this virtual monopoly in the hardware layer, Nvidia could control the foundations of generative AI. The cloud-computing sector, which provides the on-demand computing power AI models require, is similarly concentrated, with Amazon, Google and Microsoft dominating the market.

But these upstream players aren’t just passive suppliers. They have strategically positioned themselves across the AI value chain by acquiring, investing in, or forming alliances with leading AI model developers. Nvidia has invested in OpenAI, Mistral, Perplexity and others. Google not only develops its own AI models, but also holds a stake in Anthropic, OpenAI’s main competitor. And Microsoft, an early OpenAI investor, recently backed Inflection AI in the US and expanded overseas, with investments in France’s Mistral and the United Arab Emirates’ G42.

Taking this approach has ensured that the entire AI industry depends on a few giant firms and entrenched a dynamic whereby rising demand for computing power across the sector increases these firms’ profits. As dominant players, they had less incentive to improve cost efficiency downstream, which could cut into their upstream profits.

Chinese AI firms have been operating within an entirely different reality, as US-led trade restrictions have prevented them from purchasing the most advanced chips. The goal of US export controls has always been to cripple China’s AI sector. But, as DeepSeek has shown, they have had the opposite effect, spurring precisely the innovations that will enable Chinese firms to challenge American AI oligopolies. Already, DeepSeek’s rise triggered a stock-market selloff of AI-related US companies, not least Nvidia.

This is surely unwelcome news for US President Donald Trump’s administration. Trump has made no secret of his determination to contain China, including by fulfilling his promise to impose a 10 percent across-the-board import tariff on Chinese goods. And he has heavily courted Silicon Valley bosses—once aligned with the Democratic Party—who have eagerly embraced the prospect of lax regulation.

But that does not mean that DeepSeek’s rise is bad news for the US or the AI industry more broadly. Over the past five years, calls to rein in the US’s tech giants have been growing louder. Despite the best efforts of former President Joe Biden’s administration, however, the US Congress has failed to introduce any meaningful legislation on this front. Ironically, thanks to US policies designed to constrain China’s AI ambitions, the US AI sector seems set to get some of the market competition that it so badly needs.

Geopolitics might have contributed to DeepSeek’s rise. But the firm’s disruption of the AI industry is about market—not great-power—competition.