Stop the World

Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
  • 4.6 (11)
  • POLITICS
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

Everything seems to be accelerating: geopolitics, technology, security threats, the dispersal of information. At times, it feels like a blur. But beneath the dizzying proliferation of events, discoveries, there are deeper trends that can be grasped and understood through conversation and debate. That’s the idea behind Stop the World, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s podcast on international affairs and security. Each week, we cast a freeze-frame around the blur of events and bring some clarity and insight on defence, technology, cyber, geopolitics and foreign policy.

  1. 3 HRS AGO

    Estonia’s Foreign Minister: “Putin is just playing with Trump” on Ukraine peace

    Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna joins Stop the World for a conversation about Russia, Iran, the United States and the imperative for smaller countries such as Estonia and Australia to work together. Minister Tsahkna shares frank views from the perspective of his 1.3 million-strong NATO member nation, which borders Russia and is on track to spend 5 percent of its GDP on defence this year. “We’ll bring the war to Russia,” he says, as he calls for countries like Ukraine and Georgia to be embraced more fully into Europe lest they remain targets of Russian predation. He expresses support for the US campaign against Iran but also has some concerns about the signals being sent and the lack of clarity about objectives. He believes Trump is committed to European security if Europe accepts its share of the heavy lifting, and that Putin is ultimately more afraid of Donald Trump than he was of former Presidents Biden or Obama, but that Putin right now is “just playing with Trump” on Ukraine peace talks—indicating untapped potential in Trump’s leverage. As the world’s second largest processor of many rare earths and rare-earth batteries, Estonia can work with Australia to break China’s near-monopoly over these critical resources, he says. And seeking Australian support for a Nuremberg-style tribunal to bring accountability for Russian war crimes in Ukraine, he says shared values are central to closer cooperation.

    45 min

  2. 1 DAY AGO

    Ukrainian MP Galyna Mykhailiuk: ‘This is the moment when international law either exists or not.’

    Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine recently entered its fifth year—longer than the Soviet Union fought in World War Two. To discuss the state of the war and the peace negotiations we’re joined by Ukrainian MP Galyna Mykhailiuk, who headed a delegation of MPs last week to Australia. Galyna talks about Ukraine’s current position in negotiations, the outstanding differences over Russia’s excessive demand for territory and the vexed position for Kyiv of needing a referendum to make territorial concessions but the practical difficulty of holding such a referendum during war time. She discusses her own role as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s representative to the Parliament, political dynamics in Ukraine, the scope to increase sanctions and seize frozen assets in order to pressure Putin, and of course about the impact of the Iran conflict on Ukraine and its security. With Iran seizing current global headlines at the moment, we’ll keep covering global security broadly including Ukraine.

    34 min

  3. 6 DAYS AGO

    Anthropic vs Pentagon, Chinese AI and democracy with the GMF’s Lindsay Gorman

    Today we speak about artificial intelligence and security with Lindsay Gorman, managing director and senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund’s Technology program, and a former senior tech and security adviser in the White House under President Joe Biden. Lindsay and David discuss the fight between the Pentagon and AI company Anthropic, the legitimate concerns of the military, and the Trump Administration’s terrible signal to tech companies that want to support national security. They talk about who should control this megapowerful technology in the future—the state or the private sector? They also cover the US-China tech race, Chinese innovation, authoritarian versus democratic governance of AI, disinformation and deepfakes, and the need for democracies to steer AI towards applications that value freedom and human agency. Mentioned in this episode David Wroe's article on the Pentagon-Anthropic saga and who should control AI: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/pentagon-anthropic-brawl-demands-rethink-of-ai-industry/ Looking to keep up with developments in AI and cyber? Subscribe to ASPI's Cyber and Tech Digest: https://aspicts.substack.com/subscribe

    58 min

  4. 24 FEB

    AI, the India summit and the future of work with Dr Andrew Charlton and Maxwell Scott

    It’s a double-segment episode of STW today. Fresh from last week’s India AI Impact Summit in Delhi, Australia’s Assistant Minister for Science, Technology and the Digital Economy, Dr Andrew Charlton, speaks with us about artificial intelligence, the future of the Australian economy—including the future of work—and progress on international cooperation on AI. Then we hear from Maxwell Scott, co-founder and CTO of Strat Alliance Global, which helps companies and organisations integrate AI safely and lawfully. Max continues the conversation on the prospects for rising productivity, how AI might complement, enhance or replace certain human tasks, the near term limitations of AI models, comparisons to the Industrial Revolution, and the worry that keeps Max awake at night: the risk of deliberate misuse by rogue humans. Max, who recently visited Australia, also talks about AI opportunities and risks here, prospects for global cooperation and governance, and competing models for national regulation. Speech by Dr Andrew Charlton Dave’s piece in the Australian Financial Review

    1h 6m

  5. 13 FEB

    Wrestling the dragon: IPAC head Luke de Pulford on staring down Beijing

    Luke de Pulford is executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China – a cross-party network of parliamentarians from more than 40 countries who share concerns about Beijing’s behaviour at home and abroad.   Luke, a human rights activist and anti-slavery advocate, recounts how the group came together in 2020, the challenges it faces and how it works to shift the centre of gravity on debates relating to Beijing’s punishment of critics and defiance of international norms.   He talks about the challenges of holding China to account even as many countries drift away from taking principled stands, the impact of the United States’ retreat from leadership of the liberal order, and the need to be the squeakiest wheel when pushing human rights cases.   He discusses the recent conviction and sentencing of businessman and democracy activist Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong, Britain’s shifting position on China relations, and the dilemma for Australia—which counts 20 parliamentarians from the major parties as members of IPAC—in having an economy heavily invested in China and a security strategy invested in the US.

    59 min

  6. 10 FEB

    Mira Rapp-Hooper on Trump, China and the future of US grand strategy - Episode 100!

    It’s STW’s 100th episode, so we had to make it a good one! Enter former Biden White House adviser Mira Rapp-Hooper, one of the sharpest minds around on Indo-Pacific Strategy. Mira served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for East Asia and Oceania in Joe Biden’s National Security Council. She’s the author of two books and is now a visiting fellow at Brookings. She gives her thoughts on Donald Trump’s China strategy and the unlikely prospects for a grand bargain; the strategic options for US allies such as Australia and Japan; the fallacy of seeing Washington’s unreliability as a reason to move closer to China; Xi Jinping’s plans for Taiwan and the dependability of US support to the democratic island. And the big question: what happens to US grand strategy after Donald Trump? Can the US start afresh and help build a new international order that serves the interests of all nations?

    51 min

  7. 5 FEB

    The Economist’s Shashank Joshi on 'purging the sentimentality' from our US relationship

    Shashank Joshi is the Economist’s revered Defence Editor. He has deep strategic understanding combined with a rare gift for explaining things clearly. In today’s snappy half-hour episode of STW, Shashank shares his concerns about the future of democracy in the United States, the implications for the rest of the world, and the question of any emerging “Trump doctrine” from the US President’s international interventions. He talks about the impact of Trump’s short and sharp military operations without lengthy entanglements, his options on Iran, the significance of Europe’s firm stand against Trump over Greenland at Davos—which Shashank attended—the deep uncertainty as to Donald Trump’s overarching strategy towards China and the latest military purge by Xi Jinping. A key takeaway is the notion of derisking, which has traditionally applied to countries’ relationships with China but now is being discussed with respect to the US. As Shashank puts it, countries are having to think about a “ruthless purging of the sentimentality” in their US relationships

    30 min

  8. 29 JAN

    RIP the world order? Constanze Stelzenmueller on trans-Atlantic turmoil and its consequences

    It’s been a hectic start to the year in international affairs: Greenland, Davos, Minnesota and more. Canada’s Mark Carney has delivered the last rites to the international rules-based order. NATO has settled back into a nervous simmer after Donald Trump escalated his demands to own Greenland only to back off. Again the question arises: can Europe strengthen itself to a point of security self-reliance and perhaps even form the foundation for a new liberal world order? For our first episode for 2026, David Wroe caught up with Constanze Stelzenmueller, expert on trans-Atlantic security, Fritz Stern Chair and a senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, to discuss these questions and more. Constanze gives her thoughts on Carney’s Davos speech as well as NATO head Mark Rutte’s dismissal that Europe can defend itself without the US. She talks about the difficulties with an independent nuclear deterrent, political dynamics in Europe — including with the far right — and ways for Europe to work around Brussels bureaucracy. Constanze finishes with some reflections from a brilliant short piece she wrote about Germany’s lessons on three-way dependencies on Russia, China and the US, as part of a series about Vladimir Putin’s notorious 2007 speech to the Munich Security Conference. Links: The Munich Security Conference’s volume on Putin’s 2007 speech: https://securityconference.org/en/news/full/out-now-selected-key-speeches-volume-iii/ The Steady State’s paper, “Accelerating Authoritarian Dynamics: Assessment of Democratic Decline,” https://substack.com/home/post/p-176315953

    1h 8m
See All (106)

Ratings & Reviews

4.6
out of 5
11 Ratings

About

Everything seems to be accelerating: geopolitics, technology, security threats, the dispersal of information. At times, it feels like a blur. But beneath the dizzying proliferation of events, discoveries, there are deeper trends that can be grasped and understood through conversation and debate. That’s the idea behind Stop the World, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s podcast on international affairs and security. Each week, we cast a freeze-frame around the blur of events and bring some clarity and insight on defence, technology, cyber, geopolitics and foreign policy.

Information

  • Creator
    Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    106
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
  • Show Website
    Stop the World

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