Defence & Security Podcast Network

When Opposition Leader Angus Taylor announced a Coalition government would develop and implement a national security strategy, many shouted, "Finally!", but delivering a strategy that is fit for purpose is more political than most would think.
 
Since the release of the nation's first whole-of-nation national security strategy in 2013, successive Australian governments have sought to mask the nation's lack of preparedness with individual but isolated strategies from across government.
 
Championed tirelessly but ultimately unsuccessfully by the late Jim Molan, a national security strategy has often been viewed as solely the remit of a narrow clique of public policy professionals with access to security briefings and the levers of power.
 
But as host Steve Kuper and geostrategic analyst Marc Ablong unpack, a truly encompassing, whole-of-nation national security strategy presents immense opportunities not just for the nation but also for the political party that recognises the challenges we face need to be overcome.
 
This conversation comes at a time when political upheaval, atomisation and social cohesion continue to challenge established and insurgent political movements at home and across the broader Western world.
 
The pair discuss the immense opportunity for the political party that understands and develops a strategy incorporating a distinct and inescapable but seemingly forgotten factor: national security begins with the individual.
 
They discuss just what makes a "good" national security strategy in the modern context, the lessons Australia can learn from the Scandinavian nations, the United States and other like-minded countries that have recognised the challenges and opportunities presented by the return of multipolar, great power competition.
 
Finally, they discuss a question, only just starting to re-emerge in the public and political consciousness: "What sort of country do we want Australia to be?"
 
Enjoy the podcast, 
The Contested Ground team

ThreatLocker's APAC director of operations, Emile Barakat, joins Cyber Daily's David Hollingworth to discuss what makes the Essential Eight so essential, the federal government's budget spend on cyber security, and the Australian outlook on cyber crime and why it happens here.

This week on the Cyber Uncut podcast, Cyber Daily deputy editor David Hollingworth speaks with Emile Barakat, the head of cyber security firm ThreatLocker's operations in the Asia-Pacific region.
ThreatLocker – and its boss, Danny Jenkins – is a big fan of Australia's Essential Eight cyber security standard, but what really makes that tick, and why is it so important? The pair discuss just why it's one of the gold standards of cyber protection and why other countries should take note.
Then it's time to consider this year's budget and the role of government in securing businesses, economies, and consumers in a world of growing cyber threats.
Finally, Hollingworth and Barakat get to grips with the local threat landscape and the human challenges of cyber security.
"Typically, an organisation will run security awareness training every quarter. Some will do it less frequently, unfortunately," Barakat says.
"Even with that training, you'll see compromises and, at times, the same employees make the same mistakes."
Enjoy,
The Cyber Uncut team

Many critics often describe Australia's glaring lack of industrial and economic complexity as a major national security challenge, while others see it as a glass jaw impacting our ability to sustain ourselves in a fight or crisis. So, what is needed?

This glaring gap in our national resilience and survivability has increasingly figured in commentary and analysis as the Indo-Pacific emerges as the epicentre of the 21st century's great game between great powers.
Increasingly, this issue has also figured strongly in our broader conversations with allies, most notably the United States, which is demanding that allies lift their defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP. Of that total, 3.5 per cent should be spent on military capabilities and the remaining 1.5 per cent on "enabling capabilities", including industrial capacity and infrastructure.
With Australia's defence spending in the crosshairs in more ways than one, shadow minister for industry and sovereign capability Andrew Hastie has ramped up his advocacy for Australia to reindustrialise to better enhance its national resilience and long-term economic and industrial capability and competitiveness.
Following his recent Anzac oration address to the University of Melbourne's Robert Menzies Institute, Hastie spoke with host Steve Kuper. The pair unpack the unique and intimate relationship between the US and Australia from the perspective of a special forces operator and how that relates to what the United States is now asking of us.
As part of this conversation, they discuss the need for a more considered industrial policy, unpacking the key hurdles that are limiting our industrial and economic competitiveness on the global stage and the pressures being faced by the allied industrial base.
The pair also unpack the economic and political opportunities that come from being a nation that, as Hastie describes, "makes things again" and how successive Australian governments have failed to capitalise on these opportunities to boost productivity, competitiveness and industrial capacity.
Additionally, they examine models of success, what Australia can learn from friends and foes alike, and embracing serious, considered and agile economic reform, including building and rewarding a more risk-accepting culture as a means of propelling the nation forward and finally breaking the shackles of the cultural dominance of tall poppy syndrome.
Finally, they also discuss an important and often overlooked question, with Hastie asking: "What sort of country do we want to be?"
Enjoy the podcast,
The Defence Connect team

As AUKUS implementation accelerates, questions remain around Australia's role in the Indo-Pacific and how the nation should balance capability development with regional strategic priorities.
In this episode of the Defence Connect Podcast, Stephen Kuper, Robert Dougherty and Bethany Alvaro discuss a busy week across Australia's defence landscape, including the establishment of a new US Navy support activity in Perth to support personnel involved in Submarine Rotational Force-West under AUKUS.
The discussion explores the significance of the new naval support activity and what it means for the growing American military and defence industry presence in Western Australia.
The team also assesses $72 million of investment in a new large-calibre artillery forging facility in Queensland and the importance of expanding domestic ammunition production capacity.
Attention then turns to the delivery and testing of the AS9 Huntsman self-propelled howitzer and the increasing importance of mobile artillery systems.
On defence exports, the team discusses Thales' accelerated delivery of Bushmaster protected mobility vehicles to the Netherlands and considers the future evolution of the iconic Australian platform.
Rounding out the episode, the panel dives into Australia's ongoing support for Ukraine through Operation Kudu and the debate surrounding Australia's role in maintaining security and stability across the Indo-Pacific.
Enjoy the podcast,
The Defence Connect team

Australia's maritime estate is simply too vast for any conventionally manned fleet to patrol effectively – uncrewed and autonomous systems will prove key to maintaining Australia's maritime sovereignty.
With an exclusive economic zone stretching across roughly 8.2 million square kilometres and critical northern chokepoints through which virtually all the nation's fuel and essential imports flow, the conversation establishes from the outset that the case for autonomous maritime systems isn't about technological novelty, it's about geographic necessity.
In this episode of the Defence Connect Spotlight podcast, host Steve Kuper speaks with Elysium EPL director Michael "Mitch" Mitchell where they discuss the increasing proliferation of autonomous and uncrewed systems with the Royal Australian Navy. 
Drawing on his experience as a submariner, Mitchell's first and most important argument is the persistence imperative. Manned patrol vessels, however capable, are constrained by crew welfare, logistics and port rotations. Autonomous platforms carry none of that overhead. They can loiter on station for days or weeks, consuming far fewer resources and requiring only remote oversight. 
His second key argument is a conceptual reframe: stop thinking about platforms and start thinking about payloads. The hull, in Mitchell's framework, is just a delivery mechanism. What matters is the modularity of what it carries – sonar, radar, sonobuoys, acoustic modems, hydrographic sensors – and whether those payloads can be swapped rapidly to meet different mission requirements. 
They also discuss Elysium EPL's dual-use certification approach, deliberately avoiding ITAR-restricted components, which is presented as proof of concept for this philosophy in practice. 
Perhaps the most culturally challenging argument Mitchell makes concerns attritability. Australian defence procurement culture treats assets as things to be preserved. 
Mitchell argues that small autonomous vessels need to be reconceptualised as expendable ordnance, drawing an explicit parallel with the Nulka active missile decoy deployed in numbers and postures that would be unthinkable for crewed platforms.
Enjoy the podcast, 
The Defence Connect Spotlight team