Épisodes

  • Catching up and pulling ahead: Inside America’s 2025 China report

    Catching up and pulling ahead: Inside America’s 2025 China report
    May 12 2026
    For years, the conventional wisdom held that the United States retained a decisive lead over China in the technologies and industries that will define the 21st century. The 2025 report of the US–China Economic and Security Review Commission to Congress challenges that view, and its conclusions make for sobering reading. Ahead of the Trump–Xi summit where trade and technology are on the table, the Commission finds that China has not only caught up with but in multiple sectors now leads advanced economies including the United States. From electric vehicles and solar panels to quantum computing pathways and pharmaceutical supply chains, Beijing’s combination of state direction, entrepreneurial competition, and sustained investment has produced results that Western policymakers are only beginning to reckon with. In this episode, the Lowy Institute's Richard McGregor speaks with Randy Schriver and Mike Kuiken — vice-chairs of the Commission — about what their report found and what it means. They discuss China’s model of directed innovation, the case for a consolidated US economic statecraft entity, the multiple “choke points” China now holds over industrialised economies, and what sustained engagement in the Pacific, including by Australia, must look like to be effective. They also assess the military situation around Taiwan and the second-order implications of the ongoing conflict with Iran. Randy Schriver served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs in the first Trump administration. Mike Kuiken is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a former senior adviser to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. More episodes of the Lowy Institute's podcasts are available on your favourite podcast apps, including Spotify, YouTube and Apple. Follow the Lowy Institute on our website, X, Instagram or LinkedIn.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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    28 min
  • After the unravelling: Confronting the new world order

    After the unravelling: Confronting the new world order
    May 7 2026

    The post–Cold War international order hasn't collapsed from a single shock. It's been deliberately unwound.

    Thomas Wright, a former Senior Director for Strategic Planning in President Biden's National Security Council, argues that China, Russia, and the United States have each adopted foreign policies that broke the foundational restraints holding the system together. By historical measures, what's emerged has the hallmarks of a pre-war environment.

    Drawing on his time inside the White House, Dr Wright diagnoses how we got here and what may come next. From Xi Jinping's strategy of asymmetric economic dominance, to Putin's war of conquest in Europe, to Trump's redefinition of American alliances as transactional arrangements.

    This event was hosted by Sam Roggeveen, Director of the Lowy Institute's International Security Program, in Melbourne on Wednesday 6 May 2026.

    More episodes of the Lowy Institute's podcasts are available on your favourite podcast apps, including Spotify, YouTube and Apple.

    Follow the Lowy Institute on our website, X, Instagram or LinkedIn.

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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    1 h
  • A multilateral green trade pact?

    A multilateral green trade pact?
    May 4 2026
    International trade has faced multiple shocks in recent years, making the need to reform the architecture of global trade more urgent than ever. Aligning new trade rules with global net-zero ambitions will be crucial to providing the necessary incentives for firms and economies to decarbonise. Many have already recognised the need to “green” trade. But how to do it? The Lowy Institute’s Grace Stanhope and Robert Walker are joined by Ryan Mulholland, a senior fellow for international economic policy at the US-based Center for American Progress, to discuss what green trade is, how it fits into global decarbonisation efforts, and how governments could go about designing green trade agreements. They also discuss how major economies like the United States and China fit into a green trade future, where Australia might fit, and what it’s like being at the forefront of negotiations. More episodes of the Lowy Institute's podcasts are available on your favourite podcast apps, including Spotify, YouTube and Apple. Follow the Lowy Institute on our website, X, Instagram or LinkedIn. Further reading: See Ryan’s latest work on green trade here: https://www.inettt.org/news-blog/unilateralism-in-trade-calls-for-a-new-approach-to-build-a-green-future Robert’s latest work on green trade and implications for Australia here: https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/green-trade-partnerships-will-make-or-break-australia-s-renewable-superpowerSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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    22 min
  • The decline of the West: Samir Puri on “Westlessness” and the new global order

    The decline of the West: Samir Puri on “Westlessness” and the new global order
    Apr 28 2026

    Samir Puri, former UK diplomat and author of Westlessness: The Great Global Rebalancing, joins Transnational Challenges Program Director Lydia Khalil to explore the long decline of Western dominance in world affairs. They discuss why the rise of the non-West is about far more than China's challenge to the United States, and how the BRICS bloc is reshaping global networks. They also explore what a more multipolar world means for a country like Australia — Western by heritage, but increasingly embedded in Asia.

    More episodes of the Lowy Institute's podcasts are available on your favourite podcast apps, including Spotify, YouTube and Apple.

    Follow the Lowy Institute on our website, X, Instagram or LinkedIn.

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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    28 min
  • Cartel Paradise: Unpacking the Pacific’s drug superhighway

    Cartel Paradise: Unpacking the Pacific’s drug superhighway
    Apr 23 2026

    Australia's appetite for methamphetamine and cocaine is reshaping Pacific communities, turning island nations into key transit points on a global drug superhighway, and exposing them to violence, corruption and addiction.

    In this special panel discussion, the Lowy Institute's Oliver Nobetau is joined by three ABC Pacific Local Journalism Network reporters who have reported from the front lines of the crisis: Lice Movono in Fiji, Marian Kupu in Tonga, and Chrisnrita Aumanu-Leong in Solomon Islands. All three played a pivotal role in Foreign Correspondent's two-part investigation Cartel Paradise.

    Drawing on their deep local knowledge and hard-won access, the reporters take us behind the scenes of a complex, multi-country collaboration. From gaining access to naval and intelligence operations in Fiji, to tracking narco subs in Solomon Islands, to examining how deportation policies are fuelling gang culture and drug networks in Tonga.

    This event was recorded on Wednesday 22 April 2026.

    More episodes of the Lowy Institute's podcasts are available on your favourite podcast apps, including Spotify, YouTube and Apple.

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    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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    59 min
  • Strait of Hormuz crisis: Iran, shipping, and Australia's strategy

    Strait of Hormuz crisis: Iran, shipping, and Australia's strategy
    Apr 16 2026

    When Iran deterred shipping from the Strait of Hormuz following Operation Epic Fury, it sent shockwaves through global energy markets and exposed uncomfortable truths about Australia's dependence on maritime trade.

    Jennifer Parker, a Nonresident Fellow at the Lowy Institute and former Royal Australian Navy warfare officer, joins Research Fellow Charlie Lyons-Jones to explain what a naval blockade means for the crisis. They also unpack Australia’s new National Defence Strategy and discuss why Australia’s surface combatant fleet is the smallest it's been since the 1950s.

    This episode was recorded on Wednesday 15 April 2026.

    More episodes of the Lowy Institute's podcasts are available on your favourite podcast apps, including Spotify, YouTube and Apple.

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    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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    29 min
  • Globalisation always wins: Parag Khanna on the emerging world order, Iran, and Asia's multipolar future

    Globalisation always wins: Parag Khanna on the emerging world order, Iran, and Asia's multipolar future
    Apr 14 2026

    Geopolitical strategist Parag Khanna joins the Lowy Institute's Sam Roggeveen to make sense of a world in flux.

    In a wide-ranging conversation recorded on the day President Trump declared the Iran war nearly over, the pair discuss what the conflict reveals about multipolarity, why Mark Carney's Davos speech resonated more than expected, and why every attempt to unwind globalisation ends up deepening it.

    More episodes of the Lowy Institute's podcasts are available on your favourite podcast apps, including Spotify, YouTube and Apple.

    Follow the Lowy Institute on our website, X, Instagram or LinkedIn.

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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    28 min
  • British MP Darren Jones on Labour, Brexit and the United Kingdom's place in the world

    British MP Darren Jones on Labour, Brexit and the United Kingdom's place in the world
    Apr 9 2026

    British Cabinet Minister the Rt Hon Darren Jones MP joins the Lowy Institute’s Executive Director Dr Michael Fullilove AM for a wide-ranging conversation about politics, power and the transatlantic relationship.

    Serving as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Minister for Intergovernmental Relations, and Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, Jones is one of the most senior figures in PM Keir Starmer's government.

    In this episode, Darren Jones and Michael Fullilove discuss the MP’s rise from a council estate in Bristol to the Cabinet table, the lessons UK Labour learned from Hawke and Keating, and why people shouldn't underestimate Keir Starmer.

    They also cover the challenge posed by Nigel Farage's Reform UK party, the long shadow of Brexit, how Britain navigates its alliance with President Trump's America, and the strategic logic of AUKUS.

    More episodes of the Lowy Institute's podcasts are available on your favourite podcast apps, including Spotify, YouTube and Apple.

    Follow the Lowy Institute on our website, X, Instagram or LinkedIn.

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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    25 min