By Robbin Laird Something has changed in Japanese strategic culture, and the world has been slow to notice. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s first female prime minister, holder of a commanding two-thirds supermajority in the Diet, and a politician who came of age studying American power in Washington, is executing…
By: Alexandra Brooks On May 13, 2025, President Donald Trump stood before Saudi ministers, Gulf investors, and technology executives at the King Abdulaziz International Conference Center in Riyadh and delivered what may be remembered as one of the defining foreign policy speeches of the decade. The event was written off…
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…
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…
The emergence of Ukraine’s Flamingo cruise missile is about more than a new long‑range strike weapon; it is a signal of how the missile industrial base itself is being re‑engineered under wartime pressure. What makes Flamingo strategically important is not simply its range or payload, but the way a drone‑native…
By Robbin Laird The war in Ukraine represents the first full-scale laboratory for kill web operations in modern warfare, where the rapid adaptation of drone systems and tactical innovation proceeds not in isolation, but anchored by a sophisticated ISR grid provided by diverse democratic allies. This coalition ISR ecosystem, spanning…
