The 12 elements of cold war 2.0

The contours of a new and dangerous era are in place. The world has gone from a chilly peace to a new cold war. 

Cold war 2.0 has rhymes from version 1.0, yet the origin stories emphasise the differences. 

The 20th century cold war was bred by victory and failure, a child of war and depression; ideology was its heart as two secular religions—communism and democracy—fought Europe’s last ‘religious’ war. 

The new cold war carries less ideological baggage, born from decades of peace in Europe and Asia and a wonderful period of economic and scientific achievement. 

Version 2.0 draws on the successes of globalisation in the post-cold war space, a golden age. But that warmth has faded and turned icy as it veers away from borderless optimism to revive the contest of great powers. 

These are the elements of cold war 2.0: 

1. The United States versus China: the two superpowers face off in the contest of the century. The balance between cooperation and competition will keep them from crashing into conflict. 

2. Multipolarity: Cold war 1.0 saw the non-aligned nations standing as far as possible from the bipolar divide, seeking individual benefits from the Soviet Union and the US. Today, everyone must dance. The non-aligned option flowers as many shades of multi-alignment. Nations choose where they stand on each issue, and keep making fresh choices. In the multipolar dance, China and the US must court, not demand, commitment.

3. Indo-Pacific: The central balance of international power this century will be set in the Indo-Pacific. Australia’s Defence Strategic Review declares: ‘The Indo-Pacific is the most important geostrategic region in the world’. The National Defence Strategy judges that the global competition is ‘sharpest and most consequential in the Indo-Pacific’.

4. Economics: The world’s top two economies wrestle and wrangle, even as they work together in an economic relationship that is huge, entrenched and multifaceted. Washington says the main challenge it faces is ‘competition in an age of interdependence’. This economic intimacy is a vital difference between 1.0 and 2.0.

5. De-risking: The vogue word is ‘decoupling’, but that bumps hard against what globalisation delivers. Derisking is limited deglobalisation. Washington’s ‘small yard and high fence’ approach walls off vital industries, science and minerals to China. This will draw supply chains closer, applying the cold war test to trade policy and business regulation. Geoeconomics will turn mercantilist and protectionist.

6. Technology race: China has the foundations to be the world’s technology superpower in major and emerging technologies. ASPI’s critical technology tracker identified China as the leading country in 57 of 64 technologies, spanning defence, space, energy, the environment, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, robotics, cyber, computing, advanced materials and quantum. The US and its allies face an extraordinary tech challenge.

7. Cyber-attacks and artificial intelligence: The cyber domain is where the cold war rages every day. The grey zone battlefield is a constant, pervasive digital conflict of theft, espionage, malware, disinformation and fakes. Artificial intelligence is the revolution that will remake much. The realm ‘of minds and machines’ is the arms race of 2.0. The US aims to build norms on responsible military use of AI and autonomy, seeing control negotiations with Beijing on AI just as it does on nuclear weapons.

8. Nuclear: The nuclear threat is more complex and less predictable. Russia revives the nightmare, repeatedly threatening to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. The structural change is China’s build-up. Beijing is on track to amass 1,000 nuclear warheads, up from around 200 in 2019. The US Defence Department describes ‘a new nuclear age’ of rapidly modernizing and expanding nuclear arsenals, ‘an unprecedented mix of multiple revisionist nuclear challengers who are uninterested in arms control or risk reduction’, openly threatening to employ nuclear weapons to achieve their aims.

9. Space: Space is a military operational domain. Satellites revolutionised intelligence and warfighting, allowing every inch of earth to be watchable and targetable. The moon will matter in 2.0 just as it did in 1.0. The race is on between China, Russia and the US to put men and women on the moon.

10. Russia: Putin’s Russia is dangerous, yet dependent on China. The ‘vassal’ label has some truth. The ‘no limits partnership’ is just short of a conventional alliance—the limit is what China decides. Russia was a principal in 1.0; in 2.0 it is a partner.

11. Democracy versus autocracy: Ideology doesn’t drive 2.0 as it did 1.0, yet this is still a key division that defines the struggle over power and principles. China wants to make the world safe for autocracies, to privilege power over rules. US President Joe Biden says the world is at an ‘inflection point’ in a clash between democracy and autocracy.

12. War: In 1.0, the proxy wars were in Asia. Now the US-China proxy war is in Europe. 

Cold war 2.0 shares the same purpose as version 1.0: keep the superpower contest cool enough to avoid Armageddon. The new competition must seek balance, find understandings, build confidence and develop guardrails. 

The US presidential debate: ASPI responds

Overview—Justin Bassi, executive director. 

The debate was heavily focused on US domestic matters—even when questions were on international affairs, both candidates sought to bring the issues back to domestic politics and policies.  

Of most relevance to Australia was the lack of interest in this region. Other than passing references—in heavily political contexts—neither the media nor the candidates raised China in any meaningful way. Notwithstanding the conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, China is the most significant issue globally. 

Without China being prioritised by the two candidates or media today, we can only hope that the next administration will be struck by the realities of Beijing as the pacing military and technological threat to our livelihoods and way of life. Australia and partners like Japan, the Quad and NATO, will need to work together to ensure the next administration is focused on competing with and countering China, and does so by viewing China as a strategic rival first and not as an economic partner. 

Given the next president will immediately face a world in conflict, a further debate that is limited to foreign policy and held before the November election would be best for both US voters and America’s partners. 

 

On China—Bethany Allen, head of program for China investigations and analysis, and Daria Impiombato, analyst 

While the moderators never asked about China, the topic came up unprompted within the first few minutes of the debate with Harris accusing Trump of inviting ‘trade wars’ but then adding the former President ‘sold us out’ to China. In a sense this focus was not surprising because the Trump administration’s tough turn on China was one of the most significant and controversial foreign policy shifts of his term. The Biden-Harris administration has also made competition with Beijing a key platform. 

More surprising was that, other than brief references, the issue of how to manage China strategically and in the context of potential flashpoints such a Taiwan and the South China Sea did not come up at all. 

Harris and Trump went on to spar over tariffs, microchips and the pandemic response, with Harris accusing the Trump administration of allowing the sale of chips to China that served to modernise the People’s Liberation Army. Trump’s retort that the US ‘barely make any chips anymore’ and that it is Taiwan instead that’s selling them to China again demonstrated the economic lens with which he views these issues.  

This is in line with his latest stances on Taiwan, as he has repeatedly stated that the island should pay the US to defend it, and that they have ‘stolen’ the chip manufacturing business from American companies. Harris, instead, opted to focus on the CHIPS Act and her intention to win the competition with China especially on technology and artificial intelligence. 

 

On Alliances—Eric Lies, analyst 

What stood out, in particular for US allies the world over, was Trump’s refusal to answer the question as to whether he believes Ukraine should win in the war against Russia. Instead, he repeatedly stated that he would end the war as president-elect. A key element of deterrence is convincing potential adversaries that if they choose violence, they will be met with resolve. Responses like Trump’s, which put Ukraine and Russia on a false equivalence, corrode that confidence in US security promises and will likely make allies in the Indo-Pacific nervous, while emboldening China’s revanchist activities. 

In contrast, Harris unequivocally stated her support for allied efforts within Europe, and how she intends to continue those efforts should she be elected. It meant that a clear foreign policy difference came through between the two candidates—a more isolationist, transactional foreign policy on the one hand and an alliance-driven policy on the other.  

 

On Ukraine and China—Malcolm Davis, senior analyst 

On Ukraine, Harris clearly demonstrated that she understood the potential implications of a Russian victory in Ukraine. Noting that if such an outcome were realised, ‘Putin would have his eye on the rest of Europe’. This is an accurate interpretation of the stakes at play. In contrast, Trump failed to deliver a convincing response, simply saying ‘he’d get on the phone to Putin and Zelensky’. 

The risk is therefore that a second Trump Administration could reduce support for Ukraine and increase the likelihood of delivering Putin a decisive strategic victory. 

On China, both candidates avoided any real discussion of the defence and national security implications of a rising China. Instead, they focused on trade relations. Whichever candidate wins in November, however, there is a chance that they will be confronted with a major crisis with Beijing over Taiwan. This is an issue that is far more important to the United States than tariffs. 

Generally, the debate avoided any real discussion on critical and emerging technologies and the importance of maintaining US leadership. In fact, as the ASPI Critical Technology tracker shows, China now holds a dominance in high-impact research that was once held by the US. Both candidates should have dealt more with this important issue and will need to do so as president. 

 

On Disinformation and Migration—Mike Copage, head of the Climate and Security Policy Centre 

As the world grapples with the prospect of AI driving mis and dis-information in democracies, the debate highlighted how vulnerable American political discourse has become to the spread of disinformation without it. Pressed by moderators that there’s no evidence to back claims by vice-presidential candidate JD Vance that Haitian illegal immigrants are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, Trump responded that he knew it was true because he heard it from ‘people on television’. While ridiculous at face value, the real and serious consequences of a former President and current candidate repeating clearly false, racist and anti-immigrant claims cannot be ignored. The violence perpetuated following the spread of anti-immigrant misinformation in the United Kingdom demonstrates how far that can lead without responsible leadership. 

 

On the Media and China—Greg Brown, senior analyst, Washington DC 

Harris had a solid showing defined by poise without policy articulation. Her supporters will feel emboldened by the strategy to distance herself from the present Administration—noting during the debate that she was neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump. 

President Trump had a weaker night—notwithstanding his zingers like ‘wake the President (Biden) up at four o’clock in the afternoon’—and appeared rambling at times. He missed opportunities to attack Harris effectively. 

As usual, the debate moderators (in this case ABC News) and voters were the losers.   

The lone foreign policy issue mentioned with any repetition was migration though with a heavy domestic lens. And neither candidate provided any sense of the drivers of, let alone policy responses to, the weaponization of mass migration. The passing references by both candidates regarding Iran, Ukraine and Russia were pedestrian. 

China, the ​supposed pacing challenge and threat, received little attention. Nor did we have a discussion of the Pentagon’s budget priorities, tariffs as tools of economic warfare, how to revive the US defence industrial base, let alone to US interests across the Pacific. 

 

On Asia-Pacific—Raji Pillai Rajagopalan, resident senior fellow 

While understandably focused on domestic issues, it was still surprisingly how little interest there was on foreign policy in the presidential debate. Considering the growing chaos the next president will have to deal with, that was unfortunate. 

America’s China and Indo-Pacific policy was not mentioned, nor were any other aspects of foreign and security policy in any detail. We heard only some broad outlines to which we were already familiar, such as a Trump Administration that will be suspicious of its partners because of the worry that America is being exploited, that will be more open to deal-making with adversaries such as Russia, China and North Korea, irrespective of the character of their behaviour and that will potentially raise tariff barriers with wide-ranging economic effects globally. 

On the Democrat side, Vice President Harris reiterated she would strengthen partnerships and stand up to authoritarian leaders, which is a more positive starting point, but all said without much detail. 

From a foreign policy perspective, it was clearly not a substantive debate. It ignored everything from narrow issues of nuances to nuclear policy to broad issues such as relative commitment to different theatres like Europe, Middle East and Indo-Pacific.  

What of AUKUS submarines if Donald Trump is re-elected?

A former commander of Australia’s submarine fleet once described to me the advantage of nuclear-powered submarines over conventional boats using a vivid analogy of predators.  

‘If you are a Sydney householder, you probably have funnel web spiders in your backyard,’ the commander said. ‘A bite can make you very sick. However, you would fancy your chances and go out to pick up the kid’s toys at night.  

‘If you knew there was a hungry panther in your backyard, you wouldn’t go out at all.’ 

A conventional submarine is like a funnel web spider. A nuclear-powered submarine is like the panther—a very powerful deterrent.  

The importance of this advantage to Australia—and the way it serves United States interests—must be firmly in the minds of the Australian government if Donald Trump returns to the Oval Office. 

While there are reasons for worry, including Trump’s transactionalism and the views of some of his likely advisers, fundamental US interests still favour the continuation of the AUKUS submarine acquisition program. 

First, can Trump win? Today’s much-anticipated debate will help answer that question but, even with the repositioning of the Democrats under Kamala Harris, Trump is in a powerful position. Many Republican-controlled states have been putting in place mechanisms to deprive their opponents of their capacity to bring out all their supporters. Democrats are also hardening themselves to the prospect of Republican state legislatures to overthrow hostile outcomes. 

At the last election, Biden won 51.3 percent of the popular vote to Trump’s 46.85 percent, yet the Republican advantage in the electoral college meant the result was close and came down to narrow margins in a few key states.  

The Democrats will need to be further ahead this time, but no polls have put Harris in that position. 

Under no circumstances will Trump go quietly. 

If Harris does become President, debate over timing and whether or not we are complying with the heavy security and safety requirements that the US requires, will continue. Relevant congressional committees will continue to argue with the US Navy on US building pace and capabilities. But Joe Courtney, the ranking Democrat on the Sea Power and Projection Forces Subcommittee, is confident that by 2028 the US yards will deliver 2.33 submarines a year—the pace required to meet AUKUS targets for transfer while advancing US numbers.  

A Harris administration would weigh on the side of delivering. 

And Trump? Public reports have suggested the former president is likely to support the agreement, as have the majority of the Republican congressional delegation. On the other hand, figures like Elbridge Colby, a senior Defense official in Trump’s last administration touted as a possible national security adviser in a second administration, have criticised the agreement—though he has recently nuanced his position, describing himself as ‘agnostic’ on AUKUS and being careful to avoid suggesting he would support any rash withdrawal. In any event, our government and its representatives would need to work hard to guarantee support. 

But beyond public commentary, we should consider fundamental US interests.

In the air and on the surface, it is becoming increasingly difficult not to be detected and therefore attacked. True, there are also increasing underwater threats, particularly from unmanned and autonomous vessels. But nuclear submarines can reposition themselves very quickly and never expose themselves to surface detection unlike conventional boats that need to ‘snort’ or take in air every few days.  

Nuclear powered submarines therefore exercise substantial deterrence. Operated from Australia’s unique regional geography, they could be decisive. The Republican focus—notably that of the likes of Colby—is on the Pacific. Their pacing power is China. At least since last century, American isolationism has largely been directed against European entanglements, not against Pacific involvement.  

And Australia’s land mass is critical in American strategic thinking. In the Cold War, it was largely as the focus of a southern look at potential enemy capabilities in the Eurasian land mass. Now, it is as an anchor in the Indo-Pacific. Northern airbases and the naval base in the West are vital to the US posture in the zone. 

Trump would not be well disposed to a US engagement over Taiwan, though many in his congressional delegation and among his advisers insist on it. The Biden Administration, though defensive of Taiwan, has not been focussed on US pre-eminence in the region, preferring to see allies as part of a balance. Republicans still argue for pre-eminence. 

Either way, our geography is seen as significant for the US capacity to operate in the Indo-Pacific.  

For some, we are likely even to be seen as the last bastion, particularly if things have gone badly in the northern Pacific.  

Australian operation of nuclear-powered submarines makes us a more effective ally and one that is more capable of looking after ourselves while also providing options in a full-scale conflict. 

Trump is very transactional but, when it comes to the Alliance, so is Australia. Official speeches on both sides of the Pacific love a reference to shared values but in fact our values are not identical. I used to enjoy saying to American audience: ‘We like Americans, but we are not like Americans. The one word which sums up American values is “freedom”.  The one word that sums up Australian values is “fairness”’.   

What really counts is shared security interests, and they are substantial. Our joint facilities are critical to our mutual defence. Pine Gap is the largest US technical intelligence base. 

Australia pays its own way, as we will do with AUKUS by contributing a substantial sum of money to the US build of Virginia class submarines. Our defence spending, while debated domestically, is nevertheless at a level Trump requires of his allies. 

There is nothing that should make Trump hostile to AUKUS. Australia will have its work cut out in keeping Washington focussed and supportive under a second Trump administration, but the strategic realities are very much in our favour. 

 

Fuel under fire: insights from the 2024 Defence Fuel Symposium

The 2024 Defence Fuel Symposium, held in early September in Canberra, highlighted the urgent need for a strategic overhaul of Australia’s fuel security in response to increasing global instability. 

The rules-based international order that has helped maintain stability in the Indo-Pacific for decades is under threat. China’s rapid military expansion, coercive pressuring of neighbours such as the Philippines in the South China Sea, and aggressive words and actions regarding Taiwan have raised tensions and increased the risk of conflict. Simultaneously, climate change presents a profound threat, demanding a fundamental shift in how we manage our national fuel supply and reserves. 

Fuel security is crucial for the Australian Defence Force (ADF). Without it, the ADF goes nowhere fast. To operate, it requires reliable access to the right fuel in the right quantities and right locations at the right time. While efficiency has been the focus for a long time, a shift towards effectiveness of fuel supply is now imperative. 

As early as 2008, Australia’s liquid fuel vulnerability was identified as a strategic concern. This was further emphasised by the 2013 report on liquid fuel security. This report exposed our reliance on imported crude and declining domestic refining capabilities. Although the 2017 Defence Fuel Transformation Program made strides in addressing safety and resilience of the fuel network, the strategic landscape has evolved significantly since its inception. 

Since 2012, Australia has lost six of its eight sovereign oil refineries, leaving us dependent on imported crude oil. The globalisation of our economy and reliance on a rules-based order exposes the fragility of our fuel supply chains.  

Our sea lines of communication, vital for economic and military needs, pass through maritime chokepoints such as the Strait of Malacca and highly contested waters such as the South China Sea. These areas, which handle over a third of global trade, are increasingly threatened by geopolitical tensions and the risk of disruptions from military actions, piracy or blockades. The Ukraine war, global energy disruptions and the Houthi attacks on shipping routes in the Red Sea give a sense of what impact those actions would have if conflict were to occur in the Indo-Pacific. Similarly, the 2021 urea shortage, which disrupted diesel supplies and negatively affected the transport sector, exemplifies our vulnerability to external disruptions most acutely and shows what would happen in a moment of global crisis. 

Given these global challenges, policymakers must consider the value of resilience. The current strategic environment demands enhanced preparedness. Any disruption to oil transport through critical maritime chokepoints could lead to significant delays, increased costs and the need for costly security measures and possibly naval resources. 

Australia’s domestic force posture, which includes resilient bases in northern Australia, faces growing pressure from increased fuel demand and potential forward staging of allied forces. Despite efforts, our fuel reserves have not met the International Energy Agency’s 90-day minimum requirement since 2012. 

These external challenges are then compounded by domestic ones. Limited road networks in northern Australia leave RAAF Base Tindal and ‘bare bases’ Sherger, Curtin and Learmonth—which have no permanent ADF presence but which can be rapidly activated in a crisis—reliant on fuel delivered by roads. These roads are vulnerable to wet season closures and dry season road melt, increasing operational risks. Moreover, additional fuel storage doesn’t mitigate the risks of supply shock if demand surges due to disruptive weather, regional unrest or direct military threats. 

For these reasons, renewable energy and alternative fuels are essential for enhancing capability and should be evaluated based on specific platform needs. Advances in battery and hybrid propulsion systems, already adopted by commercial ships, could be applied to Naval support vessels. The Army’s Bushmaster electric vehicle prototype demonstrates the potential for electric power in military applications, highlighting the need for more prototype testing across ground platforms. 

With aviation consuming two-thirds of Defence’s fuel, developing sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is crucial. The recent SAF test by the RAAF Roulettes is promising, but industry needs a steady demand to justify investment in ramping up sovereign production capability. Countries like the US and Britain have led the way in using alternative fuels, enhancing operational capability and reducing fossil fuel dependence. Australia should follow by certifying alternative fuels for the ADF, enhancing interoperability with coalition partners. 

Producing fuel domestically is also a strategic necessity for achieving net-zero targets, supporting the agriculture sector, reducing reliance on imported oil, and utilising the new northern fuel storage facilities. As shown elsewhere, sovereign biofuel production requires joint ventures, low-interest loans, grants, streamlined approvals, increased research and development funding, long-term supply agreements, government-funded training and tax incentives. 

The evolving global landscape necessitates reducing reliance on imported fuel, diversifying sources across ADF platforms and strengthening strategic fuel reserves. Investment in research and development for renewable energy and alternative fuels would extend their capabilities and positioning Australia as a leader in clean energy technology. 

With legacy platforms set to operate beyond 2050, balancing sustainability with operational feasibility is key to meeting net-zero challenges. 

The 2024 Defence Fuel Symposium reinforced that fuel is a capability, not a commodity. Strengthening industry partnerships, enhancing interoperability and prioritising innovative, cost-effective solutions are key to ensuring Australia’s defence fuel network can adapt to modern demands. 

Cables under the sea: Pacific island countries need integrated electricity grids

Australia should supercharge the development of Pacific Island Countries (PICs) and contribute to their lasting economic security by investing in inter-island electricity grids and diversified energy sources.

A green energy project in Vanuatu completed this August demonstrates the opportunity—and the need for action on a much larger scale.

Pacific islands suffer from poor electricity access and reliability, with as few as 60 percent of households connected. Local energy production depends on fossil fuel imports, whose vulnerability to price shocks and supply disruptions poses a disproportionate economic burden on PICs. Fuel for electricity generation often exceeds 10 percent of GDP of multiple states, and shortages sometimes leave communities subject to prolonged blackouts.

Despite the necessity of reliable energy supply for economic development, the sector receives only 3 percent of aid to these countries. Governments struggle to pay for the rest.

Nonetheless, many PICs have committed to reaching 100 percent of renewable energy by 2030, and that ambition has become a focus of what little aid goes to the sector. The Asian Development Bank and the United Nations Development Programme are investing in decentralised, small-scale sources of electricity generation—such as off-grid solar—then in some cases linking them via intra-island microgrids. These are necessary first steps for building energy access, but such decentralized sources can’t fully meet the Pacific’s energy needs.

The Vanuatu Energy Access Project is an example. Commissioned by the Vanuatu government and the Asian Development Bank, it built a transmission line between two towns on the island of Espiritu Santo and a hydropower plant on another island, Malekula. But Malekula’s grid access increased only from 8 percent to 14 percent and national diesel imports were barely dented.

The project’s localised improvement on energy access highlights a need for a new energy development paradigm led by Australia: the establishment of inter-island, nationally encompassing grids that could integrate and diversify local generation while enhancing efficiency, resilience and economic progress.

Connecting isolated sources to a national grid would enhance the reliability and extend of electricity supply. A national grid would also standardise energy regulations, utility fees and maintenance operations across an island chain.

Australia should also support diversifying Pacific islands’ sources of green energy through development finance. The islands variously suit using wind, solar, hydro and copra oil for cheap, renewable generation, decreasing fossil fuel dependence.

Connecting variety of generation types to a national grid would also mitigate the intermittency of renewable energy production. When one form of production is unavailable, households can access alternatives through the grid. Achieving power-sharing between communities and islands is vital to securing reliable access to cheap energy for the Pacific.

A vision for integrated, diversified energy development furthers Australia’s goal of being the partner of choice in the Pacific. China is manoeuvring aggressively for influence in the Pacific under the guise of development, signing secret security deals, penning predatory loans and undermining good governance. As Pacific leaders call for collective action against climate change, this new development vision that Australia could pursue would enable to provide attractive counteroffers to China’s development model and build goodwill in the region.

However, tropical island geography complicates energy development endeavours, with population centres often separated by tens or even hundreds of kilometres of jungle or ocean. Integration and power-sharing would require long cable connections over land and under the sea.

Such obstacles are not insurmountable. In August 2024, the Australian government approved the Australia-Asia PowerLink, which is intended to carry solar-generated electricity from Australia to Singapore through a 4300km subsea cable.

Conceivably, Australia could fund a similar energy export model in the Pacific Islands where national grids transition into green energy export markets. Internationally integrated renewable energy grids will stop haemorrhages of Pacific wealth to foreign diesel suppliers, stimulate economic activity, and promote PIC unity and cooperation across the vast oceans between them.

Australia must play to its strengths to confront terrorism threat

The recent lifting of the terrorism threat level from possible to probable is a reminder how vulnerable Australia remains to a serious terror incident.   

Yet for the most part, Australians remain unaware of how close we have come to disaster and how near the threat of terrorism attack remains. In 2017, Australia came within a whisker of a catastrophic terror attack when Islamic State operatives sought to smuggle a bomb aboard an Etihad flight. Had they been successful, the resulting carnage would have claimed the lives of the 400 passengers aboard the flight. In 2009, a group of men planned to attack one of our military bases and kill as many of our soldiers as possible.  

These near misses remind us that Australia carries significant terrorism risk. That we have so far managed to minimise that risk is down to four factors: gun control, comprehensive and unprecedented security agency powers, a higher level of social cohesion and our understanding that our efforts go beyond our own borders. 

There have been six terror attacks in Australia involving knives in the past decade. In a more permissive environment, these attacks would have no doubt been carried out with guns, resulting in significantly greater death and destruction. To be sure, Australia has not entirely escaped the scourge of gun violence. In 2015, an Islamic State terrorist shot dead NSW Police employee Curtis Cheng outside the Parramatta Police Centre. And organised criminals have shown remarkable persistence in their efforts to obtain firearms, as the spate of gun violence in Western Sydney attests. 

But since the reform of our gun laws almost 30 years ago, it has been extremely difficult for criminals and would-be terrorists to source a firearm in Australia. And it is virtually impossible to obtain the automatic or high-powered weapons that have caused carnage overseas, for example during the Bataclan theatre shootings in Paris in 2015. This is a great credit to the courage of the Howard Government but also to law abiding gun owners who stopped guns getting into the grey and black markets.   

As the terrorism threat evolved over the last decade, the government responded by placing extraordinary powers in the hands of the Australian Federal Police, ASIO and other security agencies.  New laws generated little political friction and enjoyed the support of both major parties. Very few security establishments in democratic countries have the tools available to them that ours do.  These laws have allowed authorities to intervene at the earliest stages of terrorist planning, saving countless lives. Supporting this is the higher degree of confidence the Australian public has in their agencies than we see elsewhere.   

Australia has also managed migration better than many similar countries. And the resulting social integration has limited the opportunities for extremists to radicalise larger populations. Given the size of our immigration program, we are ahead in any international comparison for the ongoing strength of our society. The recent riots in the UK show you what it looks like when things don’t work as well. 

That said, our immigration system has still enabled the entry of small numbers of people who hold radical views that are violently contrary to our liberal values, and these extremist views have been able to incubate in pockets of our communities. The best intelligence about radicalised members of a community needs to come from that community itself, which is why our police and intelligence agencies work closely with these communities and their leaders. Australia has traditionally taken a forward defence approach to its counter-terrorism efforts. This reflects the fact that both the drivers and the perpetrators of terrorism often lie far from our shores. More Australians have been killed in terror attacks in Indonesia than in the rest of the world combined, so keeping us safe is more than a domestic concern. 

This is particularly evident in our own region, where we have played a significant role in helping our neighbours. It is vital that the focus of the past two decades on countering international terrorism continues, because it helps secure Australians’ safety when they are offshore and also helps our neighbours to mitigate domestic terrorism threats. Therefore, notwithstanding successes in recent years to degrade terrorist groups such as ISIS, it is incumbent on the government to continue resourcing our agencies to undertake this international work.  

Global events disrupt our social harmony and magnify our differences. The shock resurgence of public antisemitism shows how quickly civilized norms can unravel. Our police and security agencies enjoy high levels of public respect but this can be quickly challenged if any group in society feels that policing is uneven across different communities. Internationally there are cases where minority communities feel overpoliced. But then sometimes the pendulum can be perceived as swinging the other way. In Britain, for instance, a feeling has sometimes developed that police have a ‘two tiered’ approach, with critics saying that political correctness has led them to excessive trepidation with migrant communities, ultimately eroding broader confidence in law enforcement. In the US, the security establishment is perceived by some people to have been co-opted and owned by political parties. 

Our agencies, thankfully, have been largely successful in maintaining an even-handed perception. It is imperative that they continue to avoid the political fray.   

We must continue to prize our social cohesion, but not through censorship or at the expense of speaking plainly about problems. We need to acknowledge the potential for terrorism without promoting panic and sowing distrust between communities. 

 The world remains a dangerous place.  Our laws always need to be a work in progress and should be monitored and updated if holes become apparent or events expose weaknesses.   

We have rightly been focused in the past few years on the shocking invasion of Ukraine and the potential for conflict with China. But the terror threat remains alive and we must continue to play to our strengths to keep Australia safe. 

The US election will overturn Europe’s strategic status quo

With the US election just two months away, European decision-makers have gone from grappling with Trumpian nightmare scenarios—new trade wars, abandoning Ukraine and withdrawing from NATO—to experiencing an emotion they had almost forgotten: hope.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket has eliminated Donald Trump’s polling lead and allowed Europeans to contemplate alternatives to their worst-case scenario. Yet, even if Harris wins, it would be foolish to expect complete continuity with Joe Biden’s administration. Europe remains unprepared for what’s coming.

While Trump and JD Vance’s talk of ending US support for Ukraine has set off alarms in European capitals, a Harris administration’s Ukraine strategy would probably depart from the status quo, too. As the war grinds on, US officials have lost confidence that Ukraine will capture and hold enough ground to break the current deadlock. Despite the Ukrainians’ offensive into Russia’s Kursk region, they are still losing ground in Donetsk. Recovering the territory they have lost since February 2022 becomes more unlikely by the day.

Thus, a Harris administration would have to look for ways to strengthen Ukraine’s hand in the short term in order to pivot toward a settlement. Knowing better than anyone that their situation is bleak, the Ukrainians have been looking for a way out of the stalemate. Though they have launched their Kursk gambit, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in July that he wants the ‘hot stage’ of the war to end this year. Privately, Ukrainian leaders may be hoping that the United States will push them to the negotiating table, as that would provide the political cover they need to change course. Such discussions are already well underway in Washington.

This might come as a shock to those Europeans, including the next high representative for foreign affairs for the European Union, who still talk about supporting Ukraine for ‘as long as it takes’, and whose rhetoric has hardly changed since 24 February 2022. Whatever happens, the challenge for Europeans is to ensure that the war does not result in a ‘peace’ on Russian terms: a demilitarised Ukraine that is forced to abandon its aspirations to join NATO and the European Union.

Trade policy will be another major issue. Trump is promising a blanket 10 percent tariff on all imports, and new tariffs of 60 percent or more on all goods from China—in addition to all the restrictions already introduced by the Biden administration. Faced with US tariffs and pressure from the Trump administration to apply its own tariffs on Chinese goods, Europe would find itself in an extremely difficult position.

But, again, there is no reason to expect that Harris would have a significantly softer China policy than Biden—whose approach has been much tougher than Trump’s was while in office. The anti-China consensus in the US is solid, and in her few public statements on the matter, Harris has voiced strong support for Taiwan and complained about China dumping ‘substandard products into our economy’. While her running mate, Tim Walz, has visited China many times, he has done so largely as an advocate of human rights.

Unlike Trump, Harris has been vocal in her support for America’s network of alliances. But this commitment might make her expect more from US allies. Moreover, since she is no dyed-in-the-wool Atlanticist like Biden, the broader trend of US foreign policy shifting away from Europe and toward Asia would persist. When Europeans talk about investing more in defence, they should ask themselves whether they are merely trying to placate Trump, or whether they are genuinely serious about providing for their own long-term security.

Much of the task of envisioning what a Trump or a Harris presidency would mean for Europe will fall on the new European Commission. It will have to start preparing Europeans so that they do not panic if their biggest fears regarding Ukraine or China are realised. Failure to do so will increase the likelihood of a disjointed response, with smaller member states possibly peeling off to pursue bilateral deals with the US. It will be up to the bigger countries to calm their smaller counterparts, especially in eastern Europe.

To that end, recasting relations with Britain could be a game-changer. If the EU and Britain can work in lockstep on geoeconomic issues, they will have more policy leeway and clout vis-a-vis the US and China. Although Britain cannot replace the US, its reintegration into European defence and technology frameworks could significantly bolster the continent’s strategic position. British prime minister Keir Starmer’s new government has already embarked on an enhanced security and defence partnership with Germany. Similar deals with likeminded members could follow, culminating in a pact with the EU as a whole.

Poland and the Baltic and Nordic countries will likely take the lead in pursuing this outcome, but French president Emmanuel Macron may emerge as the key swing vote. Will he embrace a geopolitical vision of bringing Britain into the European fold on defence, technology and climate issues? Or will he channel Charles de Gaulle by sidelining Britain, thus weakening the EU in the process? One thing is clear: whether the next US president is Trump or Harris, Europeans must start planning for a change.

A sovereign Australian AI drive needs sovereign data centres

Australia needs to build its own domestic AI capability. To do so, it must first develop and build more of its own data centres across the country.

AI is the technology of both today and tomorrow. We’ll fall behind the world if we don’t make the most of it.

There is a push from CSIRO, pockets of government and the private sector for Australia to develop its own sovereign AI capabilities. Doing so will provide Australia with the domestic capabilities and leave us less dependent on overseas systems. But we’re not off to the best start.

ChatGPT, the main headline generator in the world of AI, has little to do with Australia other than the fact that people here use it. And in using it, they help to train the OpenAI’s models themselves without any direct benefit in return. We also don’t make the equivalent of NVIDIA’s AI chips here and it’s wildly unlikely we ever will.

It has now become more recognised that keeping the benefits of investment here is essential to ensuring we have a stake in a technology that will dominate industry for the next century. In doing so, we will be at the centre of whatever untold future-dominating technologies emerge.

After all, we have seen the same process already happen in our own lifetimes. The internet, personal computers and cloud computing have all radically altered our lives. With AI, those same types of changes can become supercharged.

In doing this, it also means we must secure the data used to better train AI and align that training with the nation’s rising data sovereignty requirements.

This is where sovereign AI meets data sovereignty.

The ability to store and manage data from within our own shores is a national security requirement. As a critical consideration for compliance with local and global data protection standards, Australia is highly dependent on offshore data storage systems for even some of its most crucial data assets. This is a consequence of the advent of cloud computing.

But sovereign AI won’t be sovereign if it relies on foreign data. It must be fed by data that’s in Australia.

Given the sheer amount of data we’ll need to create a domestic AI capability, Australia must first invest in data centres across the country. These centres will then be connected only within the borders of the nation and with no data to traverse beyond the land girt by sea. These will be essential to house, store and protect the data needed for AI to be effective and to adhere to data sovereignty standards.

One key constraint is the sheer level of additional power, storage and computing required. This constraint is staggering compared the pre-AI era. Thus, large-scale data centres on hectares of land will be required. While we are seeing large-scale private investments into data centres locally, we’ll need more. Data centre planning, approval and construction can take many years, and many of the facilities already in the pipeline were envisioned at a time before AI became mainstream. Direct government help to plan, build and fund these centres will be necessary.

But we’ll also need to see more data storage on premises. This is necessary to ensure that the data required is certainly sovereign and unable to be parsed through international servers. It can be done with data lakes, repositories of huge amounts of data from multiple sources ripe for analysis, stored within modern on-premises environments in one or multiple office sites.

This is not a new idea. Large-scale multi-city offices are quite common for large corporations. Ensuring data sovereignty due to the private nature of these deployments is vital.

Australia has a successful ICT services industry. With a handful of remarkable success stories like Canva and Atlassian, it has built a globally recognised brand. But at its core, Australia’s success is still propped up by the world around it.

While the eventual benefits of AI are still unknowable, we know what it can do for the present. In areas where Australia has deep investment, such as mining and decarbonisation, AI can filter through data to find what humans cannot. It can find the conclusions that will lead to better safety standards, create new products, find new veins and figure out new ways to do business.

Our fate on AI comes down to the data, plain and simple. If we don’t have our sovereign data ecosystems in place, we won’t have a sovereign AI success story to tell. If we don’t have a sovereign AI, we will be forced to use someone else’s. And they will get to use our data more effectively than us.

Private enterprise and government leaders need to seriously ramp up their sovereign data capabilities to help drive our AI future. Otherwise we risk being left behind by others who have already realised its potential and whose investment thus far leaves Australia in the dust.

Modernising the Bangladesh Air Force: time to turn away from China and Russia

The Bangladesh Air Force (BAF) needs modernisation. This time, rather than arming itself via Russia and China again, it should look west.

The deposing of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina presents an opportunity for a change of direction. The new government of Muhammad Yunus can modernise the BAF with western equipment. Doing so will strengthen Bangladesh’s long-standing foreign policy of non-alignment. Major BAF weapon systems, such as fighters, utility helicopters and surface-to-air missiles, were made by Russia or China. They are already decades old and have proven unreliable in the field.

Since independence in 1971, Bangladesh has stressed its principle of non-alignment. In maintaining this stance, Dhaka should be careful about Beijing’s and Moscow’s attempts to co-opt developing nations for their strategic advantage. To maintain neutrality, Bangladesh must strike a balance by also turning westward, curtailing over-reliance on Russia and China.

The dependence of Bangladesh’s neighbour Myanmar on China and of India on Russia are further reasons for Bangladesh to seek the superior equipment from the West.

Dhaka already faces tremendous challenges in executing its guiding modernisation program, ‘Forces Goal 2030’. It was offered as a solution to the BAF’s inability to operate modern aircraft, the risks to personnel lives from the existing systems and the need to enforce Bangladesh’s sovereign air space. It also aimed at bringing diversity to the armoury with NATO equipment, but it is likely that it will fall short of this goal.

According to a 1999 RAND report, some developing countries buy Chinese weapons because the equipment is ‘cheap and available’. The same can be said about Russian arms sales. And both of those countries also try to achieve strategic influence over a developing nation by providing broad access to their designs.

The BAF has had to pay a hefty price for this compromise. Four of the 16 Russian Yak-130 fighter-trainers crashed in less than a decade, in one case resulting in the death of the pilot. A pilot ‘went missing’ and was never found when a F-7MB newly acquired from China crashed in the Bay of Bengal in 2015. It has become normal for Chinese-made fighters and basic trainers like K-8 or PT-6 to crash due to malfunctions.

Dhaka should start procuring high-end systems, such as multi-role combat aircraft from reliable and efficient western suppliers. Potential partners include European countries, which make such fighters as the Rafale, Typhoon and Gripen. Though not strictly Western, Japan and South Korea could supply other types of aircraft.

All these states share warm bilateral ties with Bangladesh. Britain and the US perform joint exercises with Bangladesh and pay reciprocal visits. Because of these ties, the BAF’s personnel would welcome the introduction of Western equipment.

The West was critical of Hasina’s blind eye to eroding democratic values and her rigged re-election campaign. Consequently, defence ties were not deepened during her second tenure from 2009 to 2024. That was another reason for Hasina preferring to buy from Beijing and Moscow.

There are also military-technical reasons for the BAF to look to the west in its attempts to modernise. The war in Ukraine has become a graveyard of the Russian military-industrial complex. The sheer amount of Russian hardware lost against a much smaller army is shocking. Chinese systems are predominantly based off on Russian systems and are not battle-tested, as China has not seen an active combat situation since 1979.

Bangladesh’s change of government opens an opportunity to buy from democratic countries that will no longer hesitate in dealing with it as an autocracy. It’s a chance that should be seized.

20 years since the Australian embassy bombing in Jakarta

Twenty years ago today, on a Thursday morning, an innocuous white delivery van stuttered towards the gate of the Australian embassy in Jakarta. Seconds later, an explosion shattered windows for blocks around and left 10 Indonesians dead, including embassy security staff and a mother waiting in the visa line with her young daughter. More than 200 Indonesians and Australians were injured, mainly by flying glass.

This was the first time an Australian embassy had been attacked, although other Australian missions in the region had previously been the subjects of terrorist planning.

At the van’s wheel was Heri Golun. Those who sent him on his suicide mission and made the 1-tonne bomb included notorious Malaysian terrorists Azahari Husin and Noordin Mohammed Top, who would both meet their ends at the hands of Indonesian police, in 2005 and 2009, respectively. Co-conspirator Rois would be sentenced to death. Accessories Irun Hidayat and Agus Ahmad were jailed.

The embassy attack came after the cataclysmic Bali bombings on the night of 12 October 2002 and the August 2003 bombing of Jakarta’s Marriott Hotel—both representing hitherto novel targeting of Westerners in Indonesia. It would be followed by a second attack in Bali in October 2005 and then the simultaneous bombings of Jakarta’s Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in 2009. After that, the focus of terrorist attacks moved to Indonesian government targets, mainly law-enforcement officers.

What War on Terror?

Despite the extraordinary shock felt initially in Australia, the risk is that, 20 years on, it’s been largely forgotten, along with broader memories of the decades-long struggle against Islamist terrorism regionally. Similarly, a more recent anniversary, the highpoint of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) ‘caliphate’—Mosul’s capture in June 2014—passed with little notice. Australia largely overlooked that anniversary even though a disproportionate number of its citizens had sought to join the ranks of ISIS (and 230 did so). Many others were citizens of Australia’s neighbours—including Indonesians, whose numbers are variously estimated between 689 and almost 1300.

Nor does the name ‘Marawi’ resonate now, despite it being the scene of a bloody, five-month-long battle between the Philippines military and ISIS affiliates only seven years ago in 2017. Australia’s role in supporting the Philippines to liberate the city and recover from the siege is little remembered.

Understanding this history is a reminder that, notwithstanding the recent raising of the terror threat level in Australia to ‘Probable’, Australians have historically been more at risk of being victims of terrorism overseas, and especially in Southeast Asia.

This community-wide amnesia reflects ephemeral contemporary culture but also the degree to which the counter-terrorism experience was not shared equally across Australian society. Maybe this forgetfulness is in some sense deliberate, perhaps as a form of national resilience by just moving on quickly from crises. Or maybe we just want to focus on the next threat.

There’s also a certain embarrassment associated with counter-terrorism ‘elsewhere’, following Kabul’s fall in 2021 to the Taliban and revelations in the Brereton inquiry into special forces operations in Afghanistan. And we can too easily forget that it was an Australian, motivated by extreme racist ideology, who visited terror on Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019.

And there’s also an understandable desire to nurture social cohesion by modulating rhetoric on religiously motivated terrorism.

But with all those reasons—time, other threats, missteps and social cohesion—the reality is that silence is a short-term facade that eventually leads to unnecessary surprise, increased tension and distrust not only within the community but in the very institutions whose role is to keep us safe. That’s why long-term national resilience requires risk management, not avoidance. And that means there’s a need for regular, informed messaging about the threats we face and our successes and mistakes, so that the public is brought along on the journey calmly and objectively, not just when confronted by a crisis.

One reason the public can be surprised by the realisation of a threat is that too often governments fail to learn from history or to unpack crisis moments after the hard yards of recovery, which means that the lessons to help avoid or at least mitigate the next crisis are not heeded. What’s more, our broader bureaucracies are often more adept at responding to crises, rather than preparing for or preventing them. Their structures prioritise established procedures and reactive measures over proactive planning and innovation. And, at the societal level, Australia frequently experiences success in managing one-off events but often fails to adequately reflect on the ongoing and cumulative nature of persistent threats, due to a tendency to focus on immediate, high-profile incidents rather than sustaining long-term, systematic risk-management and prevention strategies.

That the terrorism level was raised last month with limited public discussion or build-up, and therefore came as somewhat of a surprise, shows that it’s human nature to think that a one-off success (‘mission accomplished’) is forever lasting: killing bin Laden and dismantling al-Qaeda in the Middle East and the Taliban in Afghanistan were viewed as ends in themselves. And, subsequently, ‘defeating’ ISIS may have helped to temporarily lower the global and Australian terror level but was always going to be cyclical. The lesson should be clear: these threats do wax and wane, but they don’t disappear. As they adapt, so must we.

We can identify this tendency in other counter-terrorism examples from the recent past:

—Mosul, of course, was declared a ‘no-go’ zone by the Australian government in 2015, just the second such declared zone after al Raqqa in 2014, and after both had been taken over by ISIS. With that legislative power having come under review, there were questions as to whether it remained necessary, only to now have recent reports about the government considering the declaration of parts of Lebanon as being controlled by Hezbollah.

—While it took longer than it should have, Australia listed Hamas in its entirety as a terrorist organisation under the Criminal Code (rather than in part or just for counter-terrorism financing purposes) in February 2022—only eight months before Hamas attacked Israel with shocking acts that have destabilised the region and resulted in conflict. That conflict has, at least in part, added to growing tensions in Australia that resulted in the terror threat level being raised.

And, in reducing the terror threat level, the ASIO director-general was at pains to say that the change didn’t mean the threat was gone. But the perception at the policy level appears different. The counter-terrorism coordinator no longer sits in the same portfolio as ASIO and the Australian Federal Police (AFP), is also the designated Counter Foreign Interference Coordinator and no longer seems to be the prime minister’s principal adviser on terrorism.

A success story in Southeast Asia

A more positive explanation for this amnesia is the genuine operational success experienced in Southeast Asia, aided considerably by the close and resilient working relationship between the AFP and the Indonesian National Police. In July 2024, after continuous degradation of Jemaah Islamiyah (in 2021, Indonesian police said that almost 900 JI members had been arrested since 2000), senior members of its remnant announced it was disbanding. One of JI’s most prominent imitators, the East Indonesia Mujahideen (MIT) was literally obliterated: its last member was killed in September 2022. In the southern Philippines, the notorious bombers, beheaders and kidnappers of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), lately affiliated with ISIS, suffered defeat in Marawi and the deaths of their principal leader and his ally. This year, the Philippines military claimed final victory over ASG.

While there is still ongoing violence regionally, including an IS-inspired attack on a Malaysian police station this year, the current situation is fundamentally different from that Thursday morning in 2004 outside the embassy. But dormant, dismantled and degraded don’t mean defeated permanently.

Indeed, Australia should exercise caution in declaring ultimate success against terrorism in Southeast Asia, as many of the underlying drivers of terrorism, such as socio-economic instability and regional conflicts, persist and could undermine longer term counter-terrorism efforts. For example, beyond Southeast Asia, we’re also seeing a familiar script play out in concerning reports about al-Qaeda and Islamic State—Khorasan Province (ISKP) growing in Taliban-led Afghanistan.

How to remember—and what to learn?

It’s also timely to ask: What was the ultimate meaning of those efforts? How should we commemorate sacrifices made by Australians in and out of uniform, by civilians who were the targets of terrorist atrocities and, not least, by the numerous brave police and soldiers (principally Indonesian and Filipino) who were the key to ‘victory’? And how should our reflections inform how Australia responds to future national security challenges?

While the former ASIO director general (and national security adviser) Duncan Lewis has provided a useful starting point with his ‘six lessons’, there’s much still to be drawn upon from the counter-terrorism age, especially in Southeast Asia.

From a narrowly operational perspective, the counter-terrorism age proved the value of:

—Setting clear objectives (and measures) in national security;

—Using intelligence to lead and enable public policy;

—Integrating national efforts across government, with collaboration actively prioritised and incentivised by ministers;

—Empowering and supporting those at the coalface, especially at the mission level overseas;

—Innovation—including intelligence fusion centres, new models of cooperation, and collaborative institutions, such as the Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Cooperation;

—Partnerships and (two-way) capacity building regionally—exemplified in the Indonesian Police’s Detachment 88 (DET 88), supported by Australia and the US;

—Traditional intelligence relationships, including as a broader framework for intelligence sharing and advanced capability development;

—Methodological advances in intelligence work, such as the development and mastery of targeting analysis; and

—Investment in the development of long-term interpersonal relationships between countries.

We can also learn at a strategic level:

—Terror and politically motivated violence (PMV) will always be with us, so long as they deliver political, spiritual and/or material benefits to terrorists. The real question is how they affect us and how we respond.

—We must appreciate the persistence and impact of disruptions and threats—see how Russia’s illegal war on Ukraine, the fighting in Gaza and Iran’s terrorist proxies of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis have upended the best laid plans globally—especially given Beijing’s active encouragement and enablement of spot fires that weaken those it regards as adversaries.

—Proactivity in addressing potential threats is important—a stitch in time (especially in the Southeast Asian context)—while remembering that operational success is just one piece of the puzzle, for any strategy that fails to tackle the causes of terrorism and PMV is destined for long-term failure.

—Public support for counter-terrorism measures is essential for their successful implementation and effectiveness, as it encourages collaboration between communities and authorities. It’s equally important for the public to stay security-aware without succumbing to fear, as excessive anxiety can undermine societal cohesion and resilience. Transparency, trust in government and clear communication play critical roles in fostering that balance, ensuring that counter-terrorism efforts are understood and supported while mitigating the risk of unwarranted panic or misinformation.

Those lessons are applicable, given that the challenge now for Australia is an expanded version of ASIO’s own careful balancing of the risks of espionage and interference on the one hand and PMV on the other. And balance is indeed key.

That is, how should Australia most effectively calibrate future effort on the biggest big-picture threat—Chinese hegemony in our hemisphere—while still taking proactive steps (within our power, that we can contribute to meaningfully and not as a token) to mitigate other pressing national security disruptions? Disruptions that include domestically propelled security concerns (such as terrorism, people smuggling, crime and so on) as well as increasingly in cyberspace. All within the context of the inescapable realities of our strategic geography and accelerating technological and demographic trends.

While informed by the work of the National Intelligence Community (NIC), it will be Australia’s policy agencies (in the departments of defence, home affairs and foreign affairs and trade, and also in the central agencies of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Treasury and Department of Finance) that will need to step up to shape and sustain efforts to address this hydra-like challenge. They and the NIC would benefit from concerted and comprehensive research into the lessons outlined above.

The human story of Australian counter-terrorism

But, in addition to matters of statecraft and public policy, there’s also a human story upon which to reflect.

Australia’s counter-terrorism campaign extended out beyond Southeast Asia. In fact, it started in Australia itself, in the intensive preparations of police and intelligence agencies leading up to the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Although we’ve now entered a new age of ideologically diffuse terrorism by radicalised individuals, the previous incarnation supposedly finished in 2016 and 2017 in the deserts of northern Iraq and on Marawi’s streets.

During that decade and a half, terrible names, terms and acronyms haunted the nightmares and waking hours of many thousands of Australians—diplomats, intelligence officers, defence personnel, police and bureaucrats alike. ‘VBIEDs’, ‘building stand-off ranges’, ‘indirect fire’, ‘KFR’, ‘duty to warn’, ‘EOD’, ‘JAT’, ‘blast wave’, ‘AML’, ‘takfir’, ‘terrorist transit triangle’, ‘pocket litter’, ‘CVE’, ‘CTF’, ‘mass casualty’, ‘multi-modal attack’ and so on and so on.

And for some of your neighbours, siblings and friends, the night still isn’t peaceful.

Governments and agencies are now much more aware of the mental-health impacts of national-security service and are building that awareness into their future ways of working, although the evidence provided to the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide suggests there’s much more to do.

Necessarily, mental (and physical) support is of primary importance but there is also a commemorative requirement. There could never be VP Day-style parades for Australia’s counter-terrorism veterans, but that’s no reason to not keep exploring more suitable opportunities for remembrance. Some of us have already written about how to better recognise intelligence service, but there’s a particular gap when it comes to honouring officials who served in Southeast Asia, outside of Defence deployments, or who worked to prevent terrorist outrages inside Australia itself.

But, first and foremost, today we should look back to the terrible atrocity committed 20 years ago, and to those it hurt so badly—but also to the indomitable response of Australians and Indonesians together. As then foreign minister Julie Bishop remarked on the 10th anniversary:

If the aim of the Jakarta embassy bombers was to fracture the relationship between Australia and Indonesia, they failed. If anything, they … helped draw our two countries even closer together and strengthened our resolve to work together against terrorism, and to address the risks of violent extremism in our region and beyond.