Author: Defenceline Webdesk

Greg Sheridan has always been provocative. The foreign editor of The Australian is well known for his strident view that Australia should fully embrace American military power. One recent sermon focused on the need to support the U.S. Navy base at HMAS Stirling. “Frankly,” he writes, “I’d much rather entrust Australia’s security to the U.S. Navy than to the Albanese government.” Sheridan then moves to flattery for Labor’s resident Kentucky Colonel, aka the minister for AUKUS, Richard Marles. Marles, he says, has “done quite well on the critical question of U.S. alliance management.” Despite his distaste for most things Labor,…

Siem Reap province, Cambodia — A 63-year-old woman watched her two grandchildren play on dry ground beneath her high-stilted house in mid-July. By this time of the year, Pou village in Siem Reap province is normally flooded as the nearby Tonle Sap lake rises and expands with the monsoon. Stilted houses would be perched over the water, while floating houses drift on the bloated river. When Sok Rina was young, the water would begin rising in June, flooding the riverbank and surrounding forests by July. The floodwaters would become rich with fish, supporting the livelihoods of villages on the water.…

No great movement designed to change the world (or a nation) can bear being laughed at or belittled, argued Czech-French novelist Milan Kundera in his 1967 novel, “The Joke.” “Mockery is a rust that corrodes all it touches,” he wrote. In the summer of 2026, a satirical protest movement calling itself the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) — a wry play on India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — did something few observers thought possible in Narendra Modi’s India: it made mockery of the prime minister feel normal. The movement was born out of the mockery of a remark by the…

When U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly ordered the Pentagon to substantially reduce joint military exercises with South Korea, officials in Seoul were caught off guard. The annual Ulchi Freedom Shield drills still went ahead, but were cut short on Trump’s order. The episode was a reminder that even one of Washington’s closest allies can find the assumptions of its security policy changed with little warning. That uncertainty is why, across the Indo-Pacific, several of the United States’ closest partners are investing more heavily in relationships with one another – and, increasingly, with Europe. South Korea and Japan are expanding cooperation…

WASHINGTON — With Congress headed on break, a continuing resolution in place through Dec. 11 and no hope for a near-term defense supplemental, Defense Department planners are scrambling to stretch available funds and make it through the end of the fiscal year. The issue took center stage this week, thanks to a Thursday statement from Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, where she said the Pentagon is making a “secretive attempt to siphon” billions of dollars away from the National Institutes of Health through an “interagency agreement.” “These funds were provided for lifesaving medical research, not…

The robots lined up on the track. For a moment, it looked almost like an ordinary athletics meet. Then the race started. The machines lurched forward, their metal legs struggling to keep their balance as they sprinted toward the finish line. One of them, a Chinese humanoid robot called Tiangong Ultra, finished the 100 meters in 8.64 seconds – faster than Usain Bolt’s human world record. The scene took place this August at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, where more than 2,000 robots competed in 51 events. Some ran and boxed. Others performed household chores or industrial tasks. Some…

WASHINGTON — The US State Department today greenlit several potential arms deals for key Middle East partners Saudi Arabia, Oman and Iraq, totaling about $6.1 billion-worth of equipment. By far the largest approved sale would be for Riyadh to buy just over 10,000 kits of the extended range Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) and associated equipment in a deal valued at $5 billion. The prospective transaction includes a similar number of dumb bombs — split almost evenly between 500 lb. and 2,000 lb. munitions — which when equipped with a JDAM can be used as a precision weapon. JDAMs are…

World politics feels like it is in disarray. Rules intended to regulate the behavior of all countries and institutions seem not to matter. International human rights norms now appear decidedly unfashionable, even in Australia, a country that should be one of the staunchest defenders of global human rights, where I have just spent two weeks meeting with government officials and civil society. Transactional power politics increasingly disregard internationally agreed rules, enabling powerful governments, from China and Russia to the United States and their allies, to accelerate violations of human rights with few consequences.  But the longing for human rights is…

As rescue efforts have continued on both sides of the border following the devastating floods in Nepal and Tibet, a fight over how the disaster is being reported has been growing in intensity on social media. The dispute centers on the claims and counterclaims following a story by the BBC’s China correspondent, Laura Bicker, about how China is censoring videos of the floods. Bicker said videos of the landslide and flood surge sweeping through Gyirong Port on the border was scrubbed from the internet, in part, because Beijing fears instability in the politically sensitive region of Tibet. Some social media…

For years, the race for artificial intelligence leadership has been framed as a contest over advanced semiconductors. But the decisive advantage may belong not to the country that manufactures the best chips, but to the one that can deploy the most computing power across its economy. In the AI era, nanometers still matter. Yet increasingly, so do gigawatts. China’s emerging strategy, including plans to connect AI data centers via a national computing network and expand supporting energy infrastructure, reflects a broader belief that AI leadership will be determined by large-scale deployment. Governments focusing mainly on semiconductor fabrication may be chasing…