Lowy Institute

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An address by ASIO Director-General Duncan Lewis Sep 04, 2019

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The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) is charged with protecting Australia and its citizens from terrorism, foreign interference, espionage, sabotage, and politically motivated violence.
ASIO Director-General Duncan Lewis gave a public address at the Lowy Institute, followed by a Q&A with the Institute’s Executive Director, Dr Michael Fullilove.
Duncan Lewis has served as the Director-General of Security since 2014. Mr Lewis served in the Australian Defence Force for 33 years, including as commander of the Special Air Service Regiment and Major General, Special Operations Commander Australia.
Since 2005, Mr Lewis has served in a number of Australian Public Service roles, including assistant secretary of the National Security Division within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Australia’s inaugural National Security Adviser, and Australia’s Ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg, the European Union, and NATO. Mr Lewis was appointed Officer of the Order of Australia in 2005.

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Cressida Dick on police “licence to operate” in the Digital Age – a UK perspective Sep 03, 2019

Show notes

Modern technologies offer enormous opportunities for police and for criminals. Most crimes have a digital element. Rapid technological advances have led to new tools such as facial recognition, camera-equipped drones, and fingerprint scanners. These advances provide enormous amounts of data to be assessed and interpreted, generating a role for artificial intelligence in modern policing. They also create new tensions between protection of citizens’ safety and protecting personal data, as well as presenting a multitude of challenges for police leaders, policy makers, and those who hold the police to account.
Cressida Dick was appointed UK Commissioner of Police in 2017, the first female commissioner in the history of the Metropolitan Police. She leads the United Kingdom’s largest police service, having served as a police officer for most of her 35-year career.

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In conversation: Anna Fifield on solving the mystery of Kim Jong-un Sep 02, 2019

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Anna Fifield, a long-time foreign correspondent, is one of the most knowledgeable journalists writing about North Korea, a nation that has largely walled itself off to outsiders. In her new book, 'The Great Successor: The Secret Rise and Rule of Kim Jong Un,' she draws on her dozen-plus trips to the country to penetrate the layers of myth and propaganda surrounding the young leader and his nuclear arsenal. Fifield has gained rare access to Kim’s inner circle (including the aunt and uncle who posed as his parents while he was growing up in Switzerland, members of the entourage that accompanied basketballer Dennis Rodman on his visits, and the Japanese sushi chef who pointed to Kim as the most likely successor to his father) to give a detailed and insightful portrait of one of the world’s most secretive dictators. Fifield, the Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post and former Seoul correspondent for The Financial Times, had a conversation with Richard McGregor, a Lowy Institute Senior Fellow.

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In conversation: Bobo Lo on Putin’s Russia Aug 27, 2019

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In this wide-ranging conversation, Bobo Lo and Lowy Institute Executive Director Michael Fullilove discussed key themes in Russian domestic and foreign policy, including the stability of the Putin regime, the issue of political succession, and Moscow’s growing activism in the Asia-Pacific region.
Dr Bobo Lo is a Nonresident Fellow at the Lowy Institute. He is an independent analyst and an Associate Research Fellow with the Russia/NIS Center at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI). He was previously Head of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House and Deputy Head of Mission at the Australian Embassy in Moscow. Dr Lo’s most recent book, A Wary Embrace: What the China-Russia Relationship Means for the World, was published as a Lowy Institute Paper by Penguin in 2017. His book Russia and the New World Disorder (2015) was described by The Economist as ‘the best attempt yet to explain Russia’s unhappy relationship with the rest of the world’.

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Democracy and Disinformation - lessons from the Philippines with Nicole Curato Aug 26, 2019

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Was the Philippines Patient Zero of the disinformation era? Democracy expert Dr Nicole Curato unpacks the role networked disinformation has played in the dramatic and fractious political moment we are living in; and discusses how disruptive populists like Duterte and Trump may be the new normal for democracies.
Nicole Curato is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra. She is the author of two books published this year: Democracy in a Time of Misery: From Spectacular Tragedies to Deliberative Action and Power in Deliberative Democracy: Norms, Forums, Systems (with Marit Hammond and John Min). She has been published in academic journals in the fields of politics, policy and sociology, and featured in international media including the New York Times, Financial Times, the New Yorker, and CNN. She has just released a study about disinformation in the 2019 mid-term elections in the Philippines.

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In conversation: Ian Morris on the rise of China in historical perspective Aug 23, 2019

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The Lowy Institute hosted a discussion with esteemed archaeologist and historian Professor Ian Morris on the forces that drove the rise of the West to global dominance in the 16th–19th centuries and those that now propel China. The Lowy Institute’s Sam Roggeveen chaired this conversation on the patterns of history and what they reveal about the future.
Ian Morris is Jean and Rebecca Willard Professor of Classics and a Senior Fellow of the Archaeology Center at Stanford University. He has published 13 books, including Why the West Rules – For Now (2010), War! What Is It Good For? (2014), and most recently Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve (2015). He is currently writing a book about Britain’s relations with Europe and the wider world across the last 8000 years. His books have been translated into 16 languages.

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In conversation: Ben Bohane on Bougainville's independence referendum Aug 23, 2019

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It is two decades since a bloody secessionist conflict on Bougainville was settled – first in a truce, and then in a peace agreement that deferred the question of the region’s future political status.
In 2019, that question will be answered when the people of Bougainville vote on whether to become independent from Papua New Guinea.
Ben Bohane is a photojournalist who has covered Asia and the Pacific for the past 30 years. He reported on Bougainville throughout the conflict and in the years since. He travelled to the Autonomous Region for a forthcoming Lowy Institute research paper to find out how the people of Bougainville are preparing for the coming referendum.
The Lowy Institute hosted Ben Bohane for a conversation with Lowy Institute Research Fellow Shane McLeod, to discuss the prospects of a new nation being formed on Australia’s doorstep.

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Panel discussion: Making sense of President Trump’s Iran policy Aug 19, 2019

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The withdrawal by the Trump administration from the Obama-era nuclear deal (known as the JCPOA) and the subsequent campaign of ‘maximum pressure’ against Iran by the United States in an effort to get a better deal from Tehran, has raised regional tensions to near boiling point. Five ships have been attacked in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, a US drone shot down by an Iranian missile, and an Iranian and UK tanker seized. The war of words between Washington and Tehran has been escalating week by week. And the European states have been busy trying to keep the JCPOA alive rather than signing up to President Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign.
It is a difficult policy problem to resolve and even more difficult to gauge how the current American policy is seen by Iranians given the difficulty in gaining press access. In order to provide some insight into these questions, Lowy Institute Research Fellow Dr Rodger Shanahan hosted a panel with Dr Amir Mogadam from the University of Newcastle, Mahmoud Pargoo from the Australian Catholic University and Dr Gorana Grgic from the University of Sydney to discuss the current tensions in the Gulf from US and Iranian policy perspectives.

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Panel discussion: Hong Kong on the brink Aug 15, 2019

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Hong Kong is facing the deepest political crisis since it was handed back to China by the United Kingdom in 1997. The partially autonomous Chinese territory has been shaken by weeks of huge democracy protests, and violent clashes between activists, the police and supporters of the Chinese Government. The spark for the latest tensions was a now-suspended bill that would have allowed Hong Kongers to be extradited to mainland China. But the protests are being driven by opposition to Beijing’s intensifying pressure on the freedoms and autonomy that were promised to the city for 50 years from 1997.
The Lowy Institute hosted a panel discussion about the causes of this crisis, the implications for this global financial centre, and the impact on China’s place in the world.
Lai-Ha Chan is a Senior Lecturer in the Social and Political Sciences Program at the School of Communication at the University of Technology Sydney. She studies China’s international relations and its place in the global order. Before coming to Australia to conduct her PhD research, she worked for the Hong Kong Government.
Jared Fu is a university student and democracy activist from Hong Kong who helped organise the recent protest in Sydney against the extradition bill.
Ben Bland is the Director of the Southeast Asia Project at the Lowy Institute and a former correspondent for the Financial Times in Hong Kong. He is the author of Generation HK: Seeking Identity in China’s Shadow, which tells the stories of the young Hong Kongers on the frontlines of the city’s struggle for freedom.
The discussion was chaired by Richard McGregor, Lowy Institute Senior Fellow and leading expert on China’s political system and Asian geopolitics. He is the award-winning author of The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers and Asia’s Reckoning: China, Japan and the Fate of US Power in the Pacific Century.

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In conversation: Christine Fair on future security challenges for Afghanistan Aug 13, 2019

Show notes

Australia, along with many other Western countries, has a strong interest in the ongoing stability of Afghanistan. Not only in the sunk cost in collective blood and treasure but also because we have seen how semi-governed territory provides opportunities for jihadists to plan and train for attacks against the West.
Lowy Institute Research Fellow Dr Rodger Shanahan had a discussion with Christine Fair about the future security prospects for Afghanistan and the challenges it faces not only internally but also externally from regional actors advancing their own strategic agendas.
Christine Fair is a Provost’s Distinguished Associate Professor in the Security Studies Program within Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. She previously served as a senior political scientist with the RAND Corporation, a political officer with the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan in Kabul, and a senior research associate at the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention at the United States Institute of Peace.

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