Rules Based Audio

Episode 16 - Digital authoritarianism is the use of digital technology by authoritarian regimes to monitor, manipulate and control both domestic and foreign populations. China and Russia are at the forefront, representing two distinct but related models. There are many dimensions to it, from the recent revelations China is developing facial recognition technology to sort people by ethnicity, to Russia’s attempts to create a sovereign Russian internet. Digital authoritarianism is reshaping the power balance between democracies and illiberal states. What can democracies do to level the playing field, without sacrificing core democratic values? My guest on this episode of Rules Based Audio, Dr Alina Polyakova, is the founding director of the Project on Global Democracy and Emerging Technology at the Brookings Institution. And she is the co-author of a recent paper, ‘Exporting Digital Authoritarianism’, published by Brookings. She argues that the west must start conceiving of the democratic digital domain as an asset in this contest, one that must be be protected and defended – but also one that’s more resilient than we think. Rules Based Audio is a half-hour, fortnightly podcast covering stories from the cracks and faultlines in the global order, hosted by Kelsey Munro and powered by the Lowy Institute. This is our last episode for 2019 and my last episode as host. Rules Based Audio will be back in 2020. Thanks for listening!

Episode 15 of Rules Based Audio takes a look at China's interests, influence and intentions in the Pacific. Reports of a planned Chinese naval base in Vanuatu in 2018 helped focus policy makers’ attention on China’s strategic intentions and economic influence in the island nations of the south Pacific. But in many ways, the debate in Australia and the US lagged far behind the reality on the ground. These days the Chinese presence – from state owned enterprises, infrastructure projects, commercial ventures and a significant new wave of immigration – is, according to the director of the Lowy Institute’s Pacific Islands program Jonathan Pryke, everywhere in these tiny island nations. Jono talks us through the many dimensions of China in the Pacific. But first, a case study: Vanuatu is reaping over $100 million a year from the sale of passports, mostly to Chinese nationals; while there has been a big step up in Chinese loans and direct investment. But when earlier this year, Vanuatu-based journalist Dan McGarry reported on the secret dawn arrest of six Chinese nationals – by local police in the presence of Chinese security officials – who were then deported without charge to China, he apparently crossed a line for the island nation’s government. Mr McGarry has been refused re-entry to Vanuatu. I spoke to Mr McGarry about the ways the authoritarian giant’s influence is playing out in the tiny democratic nation of 280,000. Jonathan Pryke is the director of the Lowy Institute’s Pacific Islands program and Mr McGarry is the media director of the Vanuatu Daily Post. Rules Based Audio is a half-hour, fortnightly podcast covering stories from the cracks and faultlines in the global order, hosted by Kelsey Munro and powered by the Lowy Institute.

The mass commercialisation of artificial intelligence, machine learning technologies and automation, combined with outsourcing to lower income countries is about to cause massive upheavals and hundreds of millions of job losses in developed economies, according to my guest this episode of Rules Based Audio, economist and globalisation expert Professor Richard Baldwin. He warns that the next phase of globalisation is different, because of the speed and scale of the likely changes, and the expected impact on the middle classes in rich countries. Professionals who thought their jobs were safe are now directly in the firing line. There’s likely to be earth-shaking political consequences. It sounds pretty grim for the developed economies, but Professor Baldwin says he’s an optimist about where this will get us to in the future – if we can survive the socio-political earthquakes in the meanwhile. Richard Baldwin is a professor of international economics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva; and the author of several books on globalisation, trade and European integration. In this episode of Rules Based Audio, we discuss his latest book, 'The Globotics Upheaval: Globalization, Robotics and the Future of Work'.

Dr Rodger Shanahan unpacks the implications of the US withdrawal from Syria and the death of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in October 2019 in Syria. Are the two events linked? US President Trump’s decision to withdraw US forces from northeast Syria, abandoning the Kurds who fought with the US against Islamic State, allowed Turkey to invade and gave what Dr Shanahan says was “a gift” to Moscow and Damascus. He also discusses what the death of al-Baghdadi means for the future of the Islamic State terrorist group and other militant Islamist groups in the region; and whether the timing and proximity of the two events might be more more than coincidence. Dr Rodger Shanahan is a Research Fellow at the Lowy Institute specialising in Middle East security and terrorism studies. A former army officer, he had extensive service within the Parachute Battalion Group (PBG) and has had operational service with the UN in South Lebanon and Syria, with the PBG in East Timor, in Beirut during the 2006 war, and in Afghanistan. He was the former director of the Army's Land Warfare Studies Centre, and has also been posted to the Australian Embassies in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. Dr Shanahan has a PhD in Arab and Islamic Studies from the University of Sydney.

Episode 12: Former US Ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns talks about the instability of US foreign policy under Trump and how to recover from it, the significance of US alliances in great power competition with China, and also why he rejects former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ pointed criticism of Senator Joe Biden’s foreign policy record. Ambassador Burns is the 2019 Rothschild Distinguished International Fellow at the Lowy Institute. He is one of the US’s most eminent former diplomats, having served under Republican and Democrat administrations in a 27 year career in the foreign service. He was US Ambassador to NATO and later Under Secretary for Political Affairs, the State Department’s third-ranking official. He is now a Professor of Diplomatic Practice and International Relations at Harvard University; and has more recently joined Senator Joe Biden’s campaign as foreign affairs advisor.

Episode 11: The next phase of China's massive Belt and Road Initiative is shifting emphasis after foreign criticism about debt-trap diplomacy, and concerns about corruption, local impacts and environmental issues. Less talk about grand infrastructure projects like ports and rail; more about ‘soft infrastructure’ like special economic zones and people to people exchanges. The new BRI, China says, will be ‘lean, clean and green'. But how much in the BRI has really changed, and is there any harm in the West embracing China’s vision for an interconnected world? Episode 11 of the Lowy Institute’s podcast takes a look at the second phase of the BRI, from two perspectives. Chinese foreign policy expert and former Chinese diplomat to the EU, Professor Wang Yiwei outlines China's perspective; and the US-based, French BRI expert Nadège Rolland (at 15:30) takes a more critical view. Rules Based Audio is hosted by Kelsey Munro and powered by the Lowy Institute.

Episode 10. The Washington Post Beijing bureau chief and author Anna Fifield talks with host Kelsey Munro about life and politics in North Korea today. Kim Jong-un has permitted strategic changes to the economy of the isolated country, even as he keeps an iron grip on politics and citizens' freedoms. These days, for the wealthy urban dwellers in Pyongyang, there are gleaming apartment towers, yoga classes and craft beer bars - even if they don't have a reliable electricity supply. Fifield argues the dictator’s grandson, who few thought would last a year in the job, has surprisingly proved a ruthless, adept and confident leader and diplomat, forcing China and the US to the table without giving up anything, including his nukes. Anna Fifield is the author of the new book ‘The Great Successor: The Secret Rise and Rule of Kim Jong-un’. She has been to North Korea over a dozen times, and interviewed hundreds of escapees from the country, including tracking down members of the Kim family and former inner circle living in exile. She was formerly the Post's bureau chief in Tokyo from 2014 to 2018, covering Japan and the Koreas.

What does Russia want in the world? The dissident Russian journalist and academic Yevgenia Albats talks to Rules Based Audio host Kelsey Munro about how President Vladimir Putin has successfully dominated Russian politics for two decades; and then former Moscow-based diplomat and veteran analyst Bobo Lo discusses Russian foreign policy and worldview, and whether Russia is forming an authoritarian alliance with China.

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.

Lowy Institute Research Fellow Ben Bland and Financial Times journalist Primrose Riordan talk about the roots of the ongoing political unrest in Hong Kong, and where it might end. The semi-autonomous Chinese territory is being squeezed by an increasingly authoritarian Beijing, putting pressure on its autonomy and rule of law. The city has been convulsed for over two months by mass protests, including violent clashes between police and demonstrators and indiscriminate beatings by organised pro-Beijing mobs. After the peaceful Umbrella movement of 2014 ended without concession from the government, its leaders barred from political office and jailed, where does the cycle of repression and resistance end, and will Beijing step in? Ben Bland is the Director of the Southeast Asia program at the Lowy Institute, and the author of the 2017 book Generation HK: Seeking Identity in China’s Shadow. Primrose Riordan is a Hong Kong based journalist for the Financial Times.

With a Brexit-obsessed new Prime Minister in the UK and an unpredictable President in the White House, are Australia's "great and powerful friends", in Menzies' famous phrase, looking quite as close or reliable as they once did? Lowy Institute Executive Director Dr Michael Fullilove analyses the state of play in Canberra, Washington and London.

In Episode 5 of Rules Based Audio, Lowy Senior Fellow Richard McGregor discusses the domestic and international reaction to Xi’s centralisation of political control and assertion of Chinese power on the world stage. Xi has removed his own term limits, cracked down on dissidents and purged the party with a popular, ruthless and politically convenient anti-corruption campaign. But with a slowing economy, demographic pressures, and increasing pushback from adversaries without and within, how long can Xi’s grip on China last? Award winning journalist and author, now Lowy Senior Fellow Richard McGregor is a globally recognised authority on the Chinese Communist Party.

In Episode 4 of Rules Based Audio, we're talking power in the Asia Pacific. Who's got it, who's losing it, and who's using what they've got in the smartest way? Kelsey Munro talks to the lead researchers on the Lowy Institute's Asia Power Index, Herve Lemahieu and Bonnie Bley, about the implications of their findings about power in Asia.

Episode 3 of Rules Based Audio is a story in two parts. My guests are New York Times Beijing correspondent Chris Buckley, and James Griffiths from CNN Hong Kong. Chris Buckley discusses what it's like covering the opaque world of elite politics in China, how media works under the pervasive censorship regime, the government’s determination to control historical narrative and the discourse around sensitive dates in China, and the prospects of political change under Xi Jinping. And James Griffiths, author of The Great Firewall of China, takes us through a short history of how the CCP built an alternative version of the internet, and how it became the perfect authoritarian tool.

Counterterrorism expert Lydia Khalil discusses women who join violent Islamist groups; and the unprecedented role of women in the Islamic State caliphate. Rules Based Audio is a fortnightly podcast, hosted by Kelsey Munro and powered by the Lowy Institute, for anyone interested in making sense of a changing world.

In the first episode of Rules Based Audio, powered by the Lowy Institute, host Kelsey Munro talks to Professor David Shambaugh from George Washington University about the shift to full-spectrum competition between the US and China, and what it means for the rest of the world.