Haha you’ve just literally described the stock standard recruitment profile of literally every humint outfit in the world there. Thats very much one of the *key* factors in the recruitment cycle typically.

Right. It’s a bong hit inspired plan at the moment. I’d like for the greens to have sensible natsec / defence positions, everyone would benefit but it’s more complicated than a tweet. Going it alone isn’t an option and we need a modern sub capability so any plan needs to start from that premise

The Bobby Tables of 2025. 😜

It’s a good and healthy thing to be honest about where your areas of expertise are and coming to a scenario without assuming you happen to have all of the answers to an incredibly complicated topic because you read a Wikipedia page about one of literally thousands of related subtopic.

But whatever on earth possessed you to think you should be debating “strategy” as you put it despite not seeming to actually know anything about the topic should genuinely be a moment of personal introspection. It’s an incredibly weird thing to do.

I am finding it rather ironic that you started this conversation with telling someone else to read a history book. I’m going to leave it here. There’s no point continuing, you live in a totally different reality to mine where it looks like you only read 20% of the book and now you want to debate it.

I really really really *wish* that was true but not a single economic or defence planner would agree with you. Unfortunately you’re wrong here and the numbers don’t work out and have zero to do with “leaders with vision” it’s a math problem and it’s not even close.

But this idea of just trying to make ourselves small and hope that China decides not to act in their own interests and make Australia essentially a vassal state through coercive trade and foreign policy is not a credible path either, we have IRL evidence that won’t work from
Recent history.

There is a lot to be said for building better relations with a lot of our neighbours in the region too. That is something that is already underway and has been for years. It’s part of a not putting all our eggs in the US basket strategy which we both agree on is a bad idea

A non fascist, non isolationist US that is *actually committed* to human rights and a rules based global order is really the only credible path forward here and it’s a huge amount of work but far less than all the other options available.

Listen if you want my honest opinion here I think Australia should be doing everything it possibly can in order to help remove the fascists from power in the US. That’s as big a threat as anything else on the cards and we aren’t set up to deal with that scenario

Australia is completely incapable of going it alone which is actually the main part of what makes this so incredibly complicated. Also a maybe uncharitable reading of your plan says we should essentially “switch sides” and ally with China which is really a non-starter for human rights reasons.

I really don’t see how that’s incompatible.

Though Trump’s pardons can’t extend to state crimes, I think it’s worth pointing out the message being conveyed:

Trump’s allies are alleged to have stolen data from state voting systems in an effort to help him overturn an election he lost.

Now he’s pardoning them for it.

bsky.app/profile/anna...

Not being rude but I’m going out on a limb here and guessing perhaps you don’t have a particularly sophisticated threat model of Australian natsec interests or defence strategy, which again is fine but don’t yell “read a history book” at people who do.

I’m not even asking you to rely on the US. I think we should have stuck with the original deal with the French personally because the threat of Trump was always real. But I’m asking you to come up with a plan… not just rip up what we have and hope it all magically works out.

This isn't a random topic that I started thinking about 30 seconds ago and is something I know quite a bit about. I don’t think the same can be said for you. It’s ok to just admit when you don’t know anything about a topic. I get it’s popular to bash the US I don’t like what’s happening there either

Again, I’m begging you to please finish that thought. This isn’t an actual plan. It’s step 1 of something maybe… What comes after that? Have you actually thought this through? It’s a lot more complicated than you’re making it out to be and I have to assume you know that since it’s literally your job