The Sydney Dialogue (TSD) is just weeks away! If you haven't yet registered, head on over and do so now: https://tsd.aspi.org.au/enquire

In the second episode of TSD Summit Sessions, David Wroe speaks to Anduril co-founder and CEO of Anduril Industries, Brian Schimpf. This is an episode for our defence wonks - Brian talks about the need to build capabilities quickly, affordably and in ways that mean it can be built using a country's existing industrial capacity for years to come. He also talks about deterrence, using Ukraine and Taiwan as real time examples, and the need for companies to be on the side of liberal democracies, and to be thinking about the long-term strategic needs of liberal democracies.

And, of course, the conversation also covers autonomy and artificial intelligence, the need to keep human decision making in the loop and what human-machine teaming looks like. It's a great conversation that covers a lot of ground, and provides an excellent lead-in to the discussions that will be had at TSD on 4-5 December in Sydney.

Last month, some of the world’s leading artificial intelligence experts signed a petition calling for a prohibition on developing superintelligent AI until it is safe. One of those experts was Dan Hendrycks, director for the Center for AI Safety and an adviser to Elon Musk’s xAI and leading firm Scale AI. Dan has led original and thought-provoking research including into the risk of rogue AIs escaping human control, the deliberate misuse of the technology by malign actors, and the emergence of dangerous strategic dynamics if one nation creates superintelligence, prompting fears among rival nations.

In the lead-up to ASPI’s Sydney Dialogue tech and security conference in December, Dan talks about the different risks AI poses, the possibility that AI develops its own goals and values, the concept of recursion in which machines build smarter machines, definitions of artificial “general” intelligence, the shortcomings of current AIs and the inadequacy of historical analogies such as nuclear weapons in understanding risks from superintelligence.

To see some of the research discussed in today’s episode, visit the Center for AI Safety’s website here.

Russia has more than 100 times the population of its neighbour Estonia, yet the small Baltic nation has played a clever strategic hand, wedding itself closely to NATO and the European Union, and investing in sovereign tech and security capabilities. But with Moscow pressing and testing Europe, Estonia and its neighbours are under pressure.

Veteran Estonian MP and chair of the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee Marko Mihkelson argues democracies became too relaxed in the decades after the Cold War, with Europe disarming and the US and others assuming trade would dissuade authoritarian nations such as China from conflict.

Democracies today need to stick together, he says in this wide-ranging conversation, especially by supporting Ukraine. Marko talks about the ways authoritarians are exploiting polarisation in democracies and seeking to end the western-led liberal order. He explains why he believes imperialism has become ingrained in Russia over centuries. And if the likes of Estonia are to avoid a repeat of the half-century of occupation of Russian occupation they experienced during the Cold War, Russia must be utterly defeated.