Conference Participation

IN-PERSON ATTENDANCE 
We would love for you to join us in person, in the Auditorium, Australian Centre on China in the World Building #188 on the ANU Campus, on Friday 21 July and Saturday 22 July. 

ONLINE-ATTENDANCE
The 2023 Myanmar Update will be live streamed via Zoom Events. Please note no Q&A from the online audience, and some sessions are in-person only, we apologies for this inconvenience.

REGISTRATION 
Please register in-person and online tickets via Zoom Events. You will get both in-person and online tickets via Zoom Events. If you have any queries, or need assistance to register in the Zoom Eevents platform, please let us know. Email: parnerships.cap@anu.edu.au 

PLEASE NOTE: 

Free of charge

• Reception for the launch of exhibition and guest lecture (20 July 2023)
• Pre-conference dinner for speakers, chairs and invited guests (20 July 2023)
• Conference reception (21 July 2023)
• Morning tea and afternoon tea (21 July 2023)
• Afternoon tea (22 July 2023)
• Lunch for speakers, chairs and organisers (21-22 July 2023)

Fees for general participants

• Conference lunch (21 & 22 July) is proudly provided by the Australia Mon Association in Canberra: $10 per meal for participant.

War is changing rapidly – and with it the challenge of ensuring that restraint is exercised in both the resort to force and its conduct. Lethal autonomous weapons systems are able to select and engage targets, with and without human authorisation. Algorithms that rely on big data analytics and machine learning recommend targets for drone strikes and will increasingly infiltrate state-level decision-making on whether to wage war. The spectre of future iterations of these intelligent machines surpassing human capacities, and escaping human control, has recently received a surge in attention as an approaching existential threat. Yet, this future-focused fear obscures a grave and insidious challenge that is already here.

A neglected danger that already-existing AI-enabled weapons and decision-support systems pose is that they change how we (as citizens, soldiers, and states) deliberate, how we act, and how we view ourselves as responsible agents. This has potentially profound ethical, political, and even geo-political implications – well before AI evolves to a point where some fear that it could initiate algorithmic Armageddon. Professor Erskine will argue that our reliance on AI-enabled and automated systems in war threatens to create the perception that we have been displaced as the relevant decision-makers and may therefore abdicate our responsibilities to intelligent machines. She will conclude by asking how these risks might, in turn, affect hard-won international norms of restraint – and how they can be mitigated.

About the speaker

Toni Erskine is Professor of International Politics in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at The Australian National University (ANU) and Associate Fellow of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at Cambridge University. She is also Chief Investigator of the Defence-funded ‘Anticipating the Future of War: AI, Automated Systems, and Resort-to-Force Decision Making’ Research Project and a Founding Member and Chief Investigator of the ‘Humanising Machine Intelligence’ Grand Challenge at ANU. She serves as Academic Lead for the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP)/Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) ‘AI for the Social Good’ Research Project and in this capacity works closely with government departments in Thailand and Bangladesh. Her research interests include the impact of new technologies (particularly AI) on organised violence; the moral agency and responsibility of formal organisations in world politics; the ethics of war; the responsibility to protect vulnerable populations from mass atrocity crimes (‘R2P’); and the role of joint purposive action and informal coalitions in response to global crises. She is currently completing a book entitled Locating Responsibility: Institutional Moral Agency in a World of Existential Threats and is the recipient of the International Studies Association’s 2024 International Ethics Distinguished Scholar Award.

About John Gee

Dr John Gee AO served with distinction as an Australian diplomat in a number of countries. His greatest contribution, however, was in the field of disarmament, where he had a particular interest in chemical weapons. After a period as a Commissioner on the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq following the first Gulf War, he became Deputy Director-General of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague, serving there until 2003. In recognition of his achievements, Dr Gee was made a member of the Order of Australia in January 2007. Gee leaves behind a legacy and a memory of a great Australian.

If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please contact the event organiser.

You are warmly invited to join a workshop exploring the relevance of your research for the research priorities of the Australian Army, and relevant funding opportunities.

• DATE: Thursday 19 Oct 2023
• TIME: 12 - 2pm
• VENUE: Canberry-Springbank Room in the J.G. Crawford Building, Building #1332, Lennox Crossing, ANU, Acton, ACT 2601.
• WHO SHOULD ATTEND: ANU academics who would like to explore research collaboration opportunities with the Australian Army.

You may never have considered your research to be of interest and value to Army. Army's main research challenges: (see the attached research priorities document for more information)

• Advise and assist
• mobilization
• littoral manoeuvre
• power and energy
• quantum
• autonomy and counter-autonomy

have wide-ranging implications that cover many disciplines across HASS and STEM; call for deep regional studies as well as conceptual underpinnings; and can benefit from comparative as well as direct approaches.  

Army regularly offers research grants, and ANU and the Army Research Centre are cooperating in an exciting fellowship program, through which ANU staff can spend time working with ARC staff in an Army context to generate highly relevant and impactful research and build enduring networks (see attached flyer). 

You are warmly invited to join fellow ANU researchers from across campus to participate in a workshop exploring how your own research is relevant to these topics, and explore research cooperation opportunities across campus and with Army.

The workshop will be led by: LtCol James Groves, National Security College (NSC); Prof Stephan Fruehling, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre (SDSC); as well as staff from the Australian Army Research Centre (AARC).

SHARE: Please share this invitation widely - your networks of fellow researchers from both HASS and STEM backgrounds are very welcome to join us.

REGISTER: Please register on this link, no later than Friday 13 October 2023. 

Further information:

• ANU-AARC Fellowship flyer
• ANU-AARC Research Priorities

How best should key strategic partners in Asia and Europe meet their future defence and security needs in a world that offers less policy space and more complex problems?

This project examines four significant cases – Japan, Singapore, Germany, and the UK – which share many contemporary security challenges.

The launch event will feature a roundtable discussion with the project leads and their country rapporteurs presenting their findings about how those countries mobilise power and exercise statecraft within a world that gives them less control over the outcomes they want to achieve.

SPEAKERS

• Professor Jochen Prantl, ANU
• Professor Evelyn Goh, ANU
• Professor Sven Biscop, Egmont–Royal Institute for International Relations
• Dr. Yusuke Ishihara, National Institute for Defence Studies
• Mr. Paul Chamberlain, ANU

You are warmly invited to the launch of

Defence Industry in 'National Defence': Rethinking the Future of Australian Defence Industry Policy

Building the Australian defence industry is critical for our national security in a geopolitically contested era. But our current paradigm for defence industry was built in a different era, and needs to be updated to reflect our contemporary environment.

This report examines how Australia should reframe defence industry policy by drawing lessons from five peer countries: Sweden, France, the UK, Israel and Canada.

While facing different strategic circumstances, their experiences illustrate how the possession of an independent but internationally linked defence industry is itself an asset during a period where the risk of major conflict is rising.

Their experiences offer pertinent lessons for Australia. This report identifies several factors that shape effective policy, argues that a fundamental rethink of Australian defence policy is required, and offers five recommendations.
 

SPEAKERS:

• Innes Willox, CEO, Australian Industry Group
• Professor Brian Schmidt, Vice-Chancellor, ANU
• Kate Louis, Executive Director, Defence Council, Australian Industry Group
• Professor Stephan Frühling, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, ANU
• Chaired by Professor Helen Sullivan, Dean, ANU College of Asia & the Pacific.

DETAILS:

• DATE: Monday 18 Dec 2023 
• TIME: 10 - 11am
• VENUE: Cinema, Kambri Cultural Centre, The Australian National University, 153 Tangney Rd, Acton, ACT 2601.

The launch will be followed by morning tea.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND: Scholars, graduate students, policymakers and practitioners working in the fields of Defence and Strategic Studies.

SHARE: You are very welcome to share this invitation with your colleagues and networks in industry government, the APS and academia.

REGISTER: Please register your attendance here, no later than Wednesday 13 December 2023.

This event is cohosted by the Australian Industry Group (AIG) and the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre (SDSC) in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at ANU.

Image: HMAS Arunta and Naval Ship Management personnel on board the ship during its docking scheduled refit at Garden Island Defence Precinct, Sydney. Credit: Defence Imagery, LSIS Susan Mossop.

In 2019, Indonesia’s newly re-elected president Joko Widodo installed his then-rival Prabowo Subianto as defence minister – arguably the most powerful figure in that role in the democratic era. Subianto seemed to breathe life into long-held goals for Indonesia to build the conventional power necessary for it to project force over its vast maritime domain. Subianto’s ambitious bid to upgrade the country’s military capabilities included at least a dozen major contracts for air and naval platforms from foreign suppliers.

Subianto’s achievements, however, fell short of what he had originally sought. He had proposed more than doubling the military’s budget. Yet the overall defence budget remained low throughout his term. Public comments by the President and Finance Minister suggested their resistance to his proposed agenda. His legacy, therefore, is unclear and will in some respects be at the mercy of Indonesia’s next government.

This PhD proposes to take Subianto’s term as defence minister as the starting point for an examination of Indonesia’s acquisition of major military capabilities. The research proposes to engage with the acquisition process from two perspectives. What were the local and systemic factors that help explain Indonesia’s decision to dramatically accelerate its pursuit of externally oriented military capabilities? What was the process of contestation that, at least in the example of Subianto’s term, ultimately constrained the realisation of these policies?

The study will contrast events between Widodo’s two terms in reference to broader patterns in Indonesian history. The tenure of Subianto’s predecessor (who boasted of never seeking to import military equipment) offers a striking counterpoint that will help draw out the changes and continuities at play in Indonesian defence policy and international posture more broadly.

About the Speaker  
Monty Pounder commenced a PhD program as a Sir Roland Wilson Scholar in 2023. Monty is at ANU on leave from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. His last role at DFAT was Deputy Head of Mission in Baghdad and he has also served overseas in Jakarta and New York.

Zoom link
https://anu.zoom.us/j/87883168602?pwd=SEV2dTMwYm9sTENNVFZZOWpTNnB2dz09 
Meeting ID: 878 8316 8602
Passcode: 297892