GEOSIGNALLING

Most commentary thus far has been on how the Australian government will handle a Trump Administration. More will emerge on the implications for Australia, from Trump's tariff policies to the likely continued decoupling from China, and Trump's transactional nature. As a first cut, here are some fundamental defence issues the government - of whatever persuasion - must address.

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Years ago, a task often assigned graduates newly arrived in Defence was to draft responses to letters from the public. Responses would be composed by stitching together relevant ‘standard paragraphs’—pre-agreed words to common issues or concerns—then dispatched to the minister’s office for signature. There are fingerprints of that approach in the National Defence Strategy (NDS).

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In A Security Symphony, Aspen Digital’s Global Cybersecurity Group calls for establishing regulatory harmonization principles, with a focus on collaboration and standardization. The principles span the core categories of interoperability and transparency, market competition, and mutual recognition frameworks. The paper also demonstrates the real-life harms of lacking coordination as well as the benefits of harmonized models through case studies on the 2016 dismantling of the “Avalanche” network and the Factor Analysis of Information Risk (FAIR).

Read more with the Aspen Institute.