13. Space technology and the US-Australian alliance, with David Schaefer

Sub Rosa Podcast

In this episode, Andrew talks to David Schaefer about developments in space technology and how they are changing long-held assumptions about the military alliance between Australia and the United States. David Schaefer is currently a PhD Candidate at King's College London. When this episode was recorded in September 2017, David was based at the University of Melbourne, working for AsiaLink and Ormond College. We spoke about his research on how technological changes have impacted the US-Australian alliance in ways that haven't always been widely recognised in Australia's national security debates. We also spoke about how this potentially makes Australia's exposure to great-power conflict more complex and ambiguous than during the Cold War, particularly in the context of US-China rivalry and the prospect that any new conflict could open with cyber-attacks against information networks shared between Australia and the United States.