Australian Strategic Policy Institute

And he is a senior fellow on foreign policy and national security at the Center for China Analysis.

Prior to joining ASPI, Lyle was a senior policy analyst at RAND, leading projects on Chinese military modernization.

He's also spent a few years serving in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as the country director for China, advising OSD on defense relations between the Department of Defense and the People's Liberation Army, the PLA, and on Indo-Pacific maritime security.

And he received the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service for that role.

Others have been calling for increased government regulation of their own sector, saying that controls or guardrails are needed to put, uh, needed to be put over the technolo-technology, which is becoming a, you know, we're seeing this, uh, Frankenstein's monster scenario developing, where they're starting to fear what it is that they've created.

Now, it's against that backdrop that the Director General of the Australian Signals Directorate, Abigail Bradshaw, has told a gathering at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute over here that greater coordination with AI companies is necessary to identify the potential risks of the technology breaking out.

[lip smacks] Now, how that would remo-- would work does remain a little vague.

The cybersecurity chief does say she believes a body bringing together reports of individual incidents would help identify wider patterns emerging in a rogue AI scenario, with those risks potentially extending beyond cybersecurity to areas such as biotechnology.

My guest is the Minister for Industry and Innovation, Tim Ayres.

Uh, speaking at a, a Australian Strategic Policy Institute event yesterday, the Shadow Minister for Industry, uh, and Sovereign Capability, Andrew Hastie, uh, was talking about the need for a sovereign AI frontier model here in Australia.

Do you agree that Australia needs one?

Well, what, well, what I agree with is that we, uh, must build sovereign capability in artificial intelligence.

Starting his career as an intelligence analyst, he was a journalist at the Sydney Morning Herald, was international relations advisor to Bob Hawke during his prime ministership and served as a senior official in the Department of Defence.

He was the founding director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, served as the head of the Australian National University Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, has authored nine major publications as an author and co-hosts the Foreign Exchange podcast, and his writing features regularly in publications like the Saturday Paper, Australian Financial Review, and the Lowy Institute.

That's an abridged bio, but what it points to is if there is anyone in this country more credentialed and capable of eloquently and comprehensively sharing about the state of global affairs and Australia's place in the world, Hugh is it.

We cover so much ground in this chat, from Australia's required identity shift to move with the changing world, the narrative required to do that, and the political consequences of dealing with the geographical realities.

Firstly, thank you so much for having me on the program.

It's great to be here and talking around the end of life report that the Australian Strategic Policy Institute released, which was sponsored by Cisco, a very important topic that we're keen to shine a light on.

I think in answer to your question, I don't think it's a kind of deliberately malicious kind of decisions that boards are making or one that kind of ignores the risk.

I think there are often legitimate reasons as to why an organization be that government or private sector makes the decision to continue on.

And so that leads me to my next question around, should critical infrastructure operators be required to report when they continue using unsupported technology, rather than just be allowed to manage that risk quietly behind closed doors, given, you know, we spoke about the regulation piece.

Do you think that'll be something companies need to declare then moving forward?

Yeah, it's a really good question and one that the Australian Strategic Policy Institute dived into as part of their report.

So they do articulate their merits of having reporting obligations around end of life devices.