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magic9mushroom  If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me  2yr ago (abc.net.au)   2077 thread views

Interview with chief Australian spy re: possibility of great-power war (among other things)

abc.net.au

This dropped a few days ago: the head of ASIS (Australia's version of MI6 and the CIA) gave an interview. It's 26 minutes with no speedup option, so while most of it's pretty interesting I'll give some timestamps for things that are relevant to the broader geopolitical situation and thus might be the most interesting for non-Australians (as opposed to "how does ASIS work" and "reflection on specific past incidents"): 5:00-7:00, 9:17-11:17, 21:59-25:29 and to some extent 16:25-18:19.

Thought this might be of interest to you guys; also interested in what others think he meant with the various vague allusions, since I have my own ideas but I could be projecting my prejudices.

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Vietnam is interesting, mostly because I didn't know Australia participated until I played Rising Storm 2 for the first time. I have to wonder if it's simply because they're in the Pacific and thus much closer to Asia and the happenings there. They were concerned about the Japanese during WWII, I think.

Plus, also, the sparse urbanization of Australia probably helps its cultural makeup be similar to that of the US. Also, cars (we Americans have our muscle cars, the Australians have their V8 sedans).

Out of curiosity, do you mean sparse urbanization in that our cities are low-density, or sparse urbanization in that we have a large rural population? The former is true, but the latter definitely isn't

I did mean more "large stretches of nothing," but I can accept that it probably is nowhere near the same extent as the US.

Indeed, there was a lot of concern about Japan invading in WW2. The most interesting thing is that despite all this concern about Japan and now China, the Australian military is a complete disaster. 60,000 troops across all services - barely even a drop in the bucket. Submarines are a complete disaster, acquisition is at least a decade behind schedule, something like a billion paid in fees to the jilted French consortium. No nuclear submarines until the 2040s.

https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/nuclear-powered-submarines-for-australia-what-are-the-options/

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZRSb9c-mHM0

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