Defence & Security Podcast Network

Defence's chief data officer and AI strategist explain how autonomy reshapes decision making while keeping commanders accountable for outcomes
 
The Australian Defence Force's approach to artificial intelligence and autonomous systems is not a rush towards unmanned warfare, it is a disciplined pivot toward decision-aid systems that augment human judgement rather than replace it.

Speaking ahead of ADSTAR 2026, Defence's chief data integration officer, Dr Paul Robards, and chief of space, intelligence, national security and cyber division, Andrew Seedhouse, outline how the Defence Force is engineering accountability into AI systems at scale. 
 
The centrepiece is a philosophy that officers remain personally accountable for all decisions, with AI functioning as a high-powered analytical support tool rather than an autonomous agent.

The challenge is acute. Defence systems now ingest vast volumes of sensor data, satellites, drones, communications and cyber intelligence, creating information overload rather than clarity.
 
AI's role is to parse this deluge, surface decision options ranked by strategic utility and present them with full traceability back to the source data. Commanders retain the final say; algorithms provide the why.

Both speakers emphasise the tension between technological velocity and governance rigour. Frontier AI labs release new capabilities weekly. Defence's testing, security validation and policy alignment move faster than legacy defence timelines but must remain slower than pure research cycles. Experimental systems run on ranges with physical limiters; enterprise systems sit firewalled in sandboxes until rigorous vetting confirms fitness for operational deployment.

Equally critical is Australia's industrial capacity challenge. Ukraine's autonomous systems success reflects decades of manufacturing expertise. Australia must build equivalent capability rapidly yet cannot rely on Defence alone to sustain industry. Commercial diversification and allied procurement partnerships are essential.

The strategic upside for a middle power is stark: AI enables capability multiplication without conventional force parity. Small teams wielding superior analytics and autonomous systems can achieve disproportionate effect.

The hard work now is execution without ethical compromise.
 
Enjoy the podcast, 
The Defence Connect team

Dr Ross Babbage warns that without urgent economic reform and industrial recalibration, Australia risks becoming a client state of Beijing.
Returning to the Defence Connect Podcast, strategic analyst Dr Ross Babbage delivers an unsparing diagnosis: Australia is drifting towards a future of strategic weakness, economic vulnerability and de facto dependence on Beijing – unless the nation urgently reverses course on industrial policy, governance efficiency and the information asymmetry crippling public debate.
In a wide-ranging conversation with host Steve Kuper, Babbage articulates an emerging geopolitical fracture: the world is crystallising into distinct economic camps. The first, led by the United States and including Western democracies, is erecting selective tariffs and deepened trade ties. Camp two is China and its authoritarian satellites. A third comprises developing nations watching carefully before committing.
Australia's position, Babbage argues, remains fatefully ambiguous. While virtually every Western ally has taken protective measures against Chinese manufacturing dumping and industrial subsidy – a regime he quantifies at eight to 18 times the support other nations provide – Australia has remained conspicuously reticent. China's leverage remains decisive: our iron ore and coal exports are non-negotiable parts of Beijing's strategic calculus.
The deeper problem, he stresses, runs through economic governance itself. Australia has deindustrialised deliberately over three decades, shed critical capabilities in steel and advanced manufacturing, surrendered energy cost advantage and starved investment in domestic capability. Without deliberate recalibration – smaller government, redirection of trade partnerships, strategic investment incentives – Australia defaults towards clientelism.
Equally critical is the communication void. Defence industry leaders, board chairs of major firms and even policymakers routinely tell Babbage they were unaware of the scale of Chinese subversion, intellectual property theft and coordinated disintegration operations aimed at fracturing Western cohesion.
The path forward, he argues, demands frank public briefings, ruthless priority setting and abandonment of exhausted economic orthodoxies. Without it, Australia becomes the strategic backwater Beijing expects.
Enjoy the podcast, 
The Contested Ground team

Australia's next strategic edge will be built beneath the waves, combining autonomous systems, artificial intelligence and AUKUS cooperation to reshape the underwater battlespace.

In a special Defence Connect Podcast episode recorded for the ADSTAR 2026 summit, Admiral Stephen Hughes, on the eve of his retirement, and Chief of Air and Maritime Dr Ninh Duong outline how the succession of Defence Strategic Reviews since 2023 has crystallised a seismic shift in Australian naval posture. The Indo-Pacific underwater domain, they contend, has become irreversibly more contested, more congested and increasingly transparent – demanding not just new platforms, but fundamentally reimagined operational concepts.

The centrepiece of this transformation remains Australia's commitment to conventionally armed nuclear-powered submarines. But equally critical, ADML Hughes emphasises, is the emergence of a distributed, scalable ecosystem of uncrewed systems: the Ghost Shark extra-large autonomous underwater vehicle developed with Anduril, the C2 Robotics Speartooth platform and surface vessels like Ocius Bluebottle. These systems, he argues, function not as replacements for crewed capability, but as force multipliers – saturating the environment, absorbing risk and freeing high-end platforms to deliver the deterrent effect only sophisticated platforms can provide.
Yet the genuine strategic revolution lies not in platforms themselves but in the algorithms, payloads and interoperable control architectures that AUKUS Pillar 2 is cultivating. Dr Duong stresses that Australia's comparative advantage rests in the convergence of technologies: advanced sensing, edge processing, AI-enabled decision support, and the governance frameworks that will allow sovereign capability to scale across allied networks.
Both speakers emphasise a persistent communication gap: the failure of public discourse to articulate the integrated logic thread binding the National Defence Strategy, the Defence Industry Strategy, and emerging science and technology roadmaps. Without that coherence in messaging, they warn, political pressure and social media fragmentation risk fracturing public support for the whole ambitious edifice.
As Australia readies for the post-Hughes era, the maritime imperative remains unambiguous – and technologically, strategically and diplomatically complex.

Enjoy the podcast,
The Defence Connect team

In this week's podcast, Cyber Daily's Daniel Croft and David Hollingworth argue for sovereign Australian AI, catch up with the Origin Energy data breach, uncover a Court Services Victoria hack, and ponder the efficacy of taking a foreign chat platform to court over terror content.

Should Aussie banks have access to Australian Taxation Office data to stop fraud? That's how the podcast kicks off, alongside the revelation that fraudsters are using AI to fake documents to secure massive bank loans. For Hollingworth and Croft, the answer is a resounding yes, which is also the case when it comes to sovereign AI capability, as Australian company Maincode brings its own coding agent online.
This week, Origin Energy revealed the extent of its recent data breach, while Court Services Victoria disclosed it had fallen victim to prolific hacker 2019. It's been a torrid time for data security in Australia, with even an insider threat rearing its head in a data breach at NSW Health.
Finally, the pair discuss whether or not eSafety can effectively sue chat platform Telegram over pro-terror content, while the Australian Communications and Media Authority said it is suing Optus over its Triple Zero failures last year.
Just another week in cyber security.
Enjoy,
The Cyber Uncut team

How can Australia strengthen its future defence workforce while building sovereign industrial capability across shipbuilding, sustainment and advanced military technology?

In this episode of the Defence Connect Podcast, Stephen Kuper, Robert Dougherty and Bethany Alvaro unpack a series of developments across Australia's defence and industrial landscape, including new pathways into higher education through the Australian Army Cadets, growth in the submarine supply chain and emerging defence industry opportunities.
Discussion includes a new initiative from James Cook University that recognises the Australian Army Cadets experience as part of university admissions and the role cadet programs can play in building future defence capability.
The team also examines major announcements linked to Australia's naval industrial base, including a contract awarded to Bisalloy Steels to support construction of Virginia Class submarines and the selection of a contractor to design a floating dry dock that will support Australia's future nuclear-powered submarine fleet.
Attention then turns to the announcement of a pre-feasibility study into a proposed new Australian oil refinery and the broader implications for national preparedness and economic security.
The panel also explores developments unveiled at the Farnborough International Airshow, including the appearance of the MQ-28 Ghost Bat alongside the Meteor beyond-visual-range missile, Boeing's plans to establish international manufacturing hubs, and growing international interest in next-generation combat aircraft programs such as the Global Combat Air Programme.
Rounding out the episode, the team discusses comments about the Ghost Shark, chemical weapons restrictions and facial recognition from Anduril founder Palmer Luckey.
Enjoy the podcast,
The Defence Connect team