The Trump administration has moved aggressively to build out America’s strategic and economic partnership with the Philippines. At the center of this effort are two interlocking frameworks: the Luzon Economic Corridor and the Pax Silica initiative. Together, they represent a serious attempt to rewire critical technology supply chains, repositioning the…
By Robbin Laird The Sir Richard Williams Foundation seminar of 23 April 2026 brought together practitioners, analysts, industry leaders and allies to confront a deceptively simple question: what does it actually mean to exploit Australia’s strategic advantage, not in a decade, but now? “Fight Tonight” was not a slogan but…
In April 2026, the European Union and the United States launched a new critical minerals partnership through a memorandum of understanding and an accompanying Action Plan, aimed at reducing dependence on concentrated supply chains, especially those tied to China, and at coordinating policy across the full minerals value chain. The…
By Robbin Laird When the Marine Corps introduces a new platform, the temptation inside the institution and outside it, is to describe it as a better version of what it replaces. More powerful, more capable, longer range. An incremental advance. This framing is understandable, and sometimes accurate. It is not…
By Robbin Laird The Royal Australian Navy has stood up its Maritime Autonomous Systems Unit, MASU. This is not a reorganisation of boxes on an org chart. It is a strategic decision about how Australia intends to fight at sea in the coming decade, and what kind of contribution it…
Dateline: Canberra, Australia By Robbin Laird The Australian Government released its 2026 National Defence Strategy (NDS) and the accompanying 2026 Integrated Investment Program (IIP) in mid-April 2026, just days before the Sir Richard Williams Foundation seminar in Canberra. Together these documents represent the most ambitious defence planning exercise Australia has…
By Robbin Laird When Franklin Roosevelt invoked the phrase ‘Arsenal of Democracy’ in December 1940, he was describing a specific industrial mobilizationL American factories redirected toward supplying a world under siege. The phrase has echoed through successive generations as shorthand for the proposition that democratic nations, marshaling their combined industrial…
For three decades, the dominant narrative of Western economies has been one of deindustrialization, offshoring, and financialization. Manufacturing moved to Asia. Software and services became the prestige sectors. “College for all” became the default cultural script, and anyone who questioned it was accused of writing off an entire generation. The…
