Australian nuclear news – week to 28 March 26
Australian nuclear news – week to 28 March 26
- The high costs of Albo’s rubber-stamp war in the Middle-East.
- How climate and renewables “disinformation networks” are fuelling a major national security threat.
- Your money, their rules. Super funds support Israel war machine
- The war against Iran:Lessons still unlearned.
- UK’s Astute nuclear submarine timeline is very unlikely to be met.
- Trump is the most dangerous man in the world
- The Iran war is Australia’s margin call.
- The weakest link: Australia’s submarine hopes depend on the UK, but Britannia no longer rules the waves.
The high costs of Albo’s rubber-stamp war in the Middle-East
by Stuart McCarthy | Mar 19, 2026, https://michaelwest.com.au/costs-of-albos-rubber-stamp-war-in-the-middle-east/
While the “Iran war” is fuelling Israel’s desire for Middle East chaos, Australia finds itself in strategic quagmire of confused priorities and escalating energy costs. Stuart McCarthy reports.
According to the 2023 Defence Strategic Review, Australia is confronting the “worst strategic circumstances since WWII.” A need to “pivot” from pointless “forever wars” in the Middle East towards the Indo-Pacific and counter a rapid build-up of Chinese military power evidently warrants an overhaul of our “not fit for purpose” defence force, expenditure of up to $368B on AUKUS submarines and a plan to enter the “missile age.”
No mention is made in that “strategic” document of this country’s most serious vulnerability. Namely, our systemic exposure to exactly the kind of global oil shocks triggered by the latest Middle East military fiasco.
Our lack of preparedness for these shocks is the result of at least two decades of inexcusable incompetence across the political spectrum.
The reality we face is that Australia has been caught with its pants down during a seismic but foreseeable shift in the global geopolitical landscape. The fallout from the current Middle East war will hit us hard, and we are not prepared.
Even if the Strait of Hormuz – the vital artery for 20% of global oil supplies – is miraculously reopened to merchant shipping within the next few weeks, an economic recession is already a safe bet. The 1979 oil shock saw a severe recession across industrialised countries. Australia saw a double-dip recession, and unemployment rose to more than 10%.
Oil dependency
Australia produces less oil now than it did in 1979, but demand has doubled over the same period, in line with economic growth. We are now 90% dependent on imported petroleum fuel.
The 20 years needed to transform our road transport fleet have been squandered, and we are at the tail end of a jet fuel-dependent global air transport system. The demand-led Covid recession saw a 7% decline in domestic petroleum fuel consumption, mostly as a result of the near total shut down of the aviation sector, but we now face a collapse in the availability of globally traded petroleum fuels, affecting the entire transport sector.
And there’s more. As much as two-thirds of the Urea fertiliser used by Australian farmers also usually comes through the Strait of Hormuz. There are already shortages of some essential medicines and other manufactured goods, which rely on fragile, just-in-time global supply chains.
The stability of our financial system remains as dependent on the assumption of perpetual economic growth as it did before the 2008 financial crisis. Oil supply and economic shocks such as these are blithely dismissed as “externalities” in business-as-usual finance and economic models. Much of the financial capital we need to properly transform our economy to a sovereign resilience model is sure to evaporate in equities and finance markets.
This shock will undoubtedly be much worse than what we saw in 1979.
“And who will pay the price? In short, we all will.”
The cost of war
Since the end of WWII, the human costs of Australia’s wars have been carried solely by the tiny proportion of our community who serve in the defence force, their families and the populations of countries “over there.”
For most of us, mere curiosities on the evening news or social media feeds.
Within military circles, Australia’s contributions to US-led wars in the Middle East and elsewhere have often been disparaged as niche wars. Relatively small contingents of “niche” capabilities were assigned to US-led military coalitions with little impact on overall strategic outcomes other than legitimising US hegemony, while minimising domestic political risk and accountability in case things went wrong.
Given this government reflexively committed us to this war with even less forethought than previous governments in the last several wars, it would more accurately be described as Albanese’s rubber-stamp war.
Within hours of the first Israeli and US air strikes against Iran on 28 February, Albanese regurgitated the Israeli pretext that Iran posed an imminent nuclear threat. This pretext has already been publicly debunked by the US Director of National Intelligence.
Unprovoked attacks
For the second time in less than a year, the attacks were launched even as US officials were negotiating with the Khamenei regime over its uranium enrichment program. Iran would be irrational to come back to the negotiating table because that is now proven indicator of the next Israel-US aerial bombardment campaign.
“The degree of Israel-US incompetence on display here is breathtaking,”
even before any moral or legal considerations are made.
Now facing a direct existential threat, the Khamenei regime, on the other hand, has responded with a coherent strategy of lateral escalation, for which they have been preparing since at least 2003.
From their perspective, to “win” this war, all they need to do is survive.
Their strategy is to inflict severe economic pain on the global economy by closing the Strait of Hormuz until the US eventually comes to its senses, and to drive a wedge between the US and the Gulf states, which host permanent US military bases that project power across the region.
These bases have been a growing source of tension in the Middle East since the Iranian revolution in 1979 and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan later in the same year. The US at the time saw a Russian presence in Afghanistan as a threat to its vital national interests in maintaining access to Middle East oil exports, responding with a permanent military presence in the Gulf states under its “Carter doctrine.”
Over time, this US support also allowed the Gulf states and Israel to contain the perceived threat to regional stability from the Iranian regime.
Now, almost fifty years later and with the NATO-led Afghanistan and Iraq wars in the rear view mirror, US bases nonetheless remain, part of a self-perpetuating escalatory spiral with Iran.
Iran will not be content with Israel and the US merely stopping their attacks. They are now demanding that US bases in the Gulf be shut down permanently. The Gulf states – despite their serious diplomatic efforts to establish stable relations with Iran – are trapped in the middle of a war they didn’t want, and they have no clear way out.
War out of control?
On Wednesday night, Israel bombed South Pars, the world’s largest gas field jointly owned by Qatar and Iran. Iranian officials have vowed to launch retaliatory strikes against gas and oil infrastructure elsewhere in the region. This marks the next step up the escalatory ladder, and it means the duration of the energy and economic shock will be measured in years, not months.
Trump no longer has control of the situation, even if he ever did. Netanyahu has for many years envisaged not merely regime change but the fracturing of the Iranian state as a strategic win for Israel, and he – not Trump – is calling the shots.
For Australia’s part, our rubber-stamp contribution of an air force Wedgetail surveillance aircraft, ostensibly to help defend the United Arab Emirates from incoming Iranian missiles, has actually played into the hands of the Iranian strategic narrative.
Regardless of Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s nauseating semantics over this aircraft playing a “defensive” role,
“Australia is now party to the war with Iran,”
from our own base at Al Minhad in the UAE, which has already been targeted by the Iranians at least twice. We are one of only a small handful of Western countries with a permanent military presence in the Gulf, a presence that in and of itself is helping to fuel the escalatory spiral.
While all this plays out “over there”, for the first time in almost a century, some of the human cost of this war will be carried by the wider public here at home. Costs for fuel, food and utilities will continue to soar, as will mortgage payments and rents. Savings and investments will take a hit. Many people will lose their jobs. Some will lose their homes.
Among them are those who used to be considered Labor’s core constituents – the “Aussie battlers” who work hard but struggle to make ends meet – before the “workers’ party” abandoned its principles in favour of banal neoliberal economic rationalism, political careerism and mindless identity politics.
We can only hope that this shock might at last see a consensus emerge for a rational, sovereign, independent national security and foreign policy. Our policies of vassal state subservience to the US and, in this case, Israel are beyond unfit for purpose. They are directly undermining our vital national interests. In the meantime, we’re in for a rough ride.
Stuart McCarthyStuart McCarthy is a medically retired Australian Army officer whose 28-year military career included deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq, Africa, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Stuart is an advocate for veterans with brain injury, disabilities, drug trial subjects and abuse survivors. Twitter: @StuartMcCarthy_
Does SMR Stand for Spending Money Recklessly?
March 23, 2026, Susan O’Donnell, M.V. Ramana, https://www.theenergymix.com/does-smr-stand-for-spending-money-recklessly/
What did Canadians get for the $4.5 billion in public funding spent on small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) activities? Our new report assessing SMR development in Canada found the results underwhelming, to say the least.
Published in 2018, A Call to Action: A Canadian Roadmap for Small Modular Reactors recommended that the federal government fund SMRs and undertake other support measures. The report’s first “expected result” was that “one or more SMR demonstration [projects would be] constructed and in operation by 2026.” Our report in this milestone year covers not only this expected result, but also what the federal government has provided in funding for SMRs in Canada.
For many years, the “Micro Modular Reactor” (MMR) proposed for the Chalk River nuclear site in Ontario was to be this first demonstration. Back in 2019, the project proponents applied to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) to prepare the site for construction.
Fast forward to 2024: instead of the reactor built and being prepared to go into service, CNSC announced it had “paused all work” on the MMR project. Later that year, the company leading the project, Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation, filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States, leaving unpaid debts of more than $16 million. That total included $641,307 to the CNSC and lesser amounts to dozens of Canadian small businesses.
In 2018, the New Brunswick government lured two start-up SMR companies into the province from the U.S. and the United Kingdom—ARC and Moltex—giving each $5 million and help to apply for funding from federal taxpayers. The SMR strategy called for two “advanced” reactor designs, which were not cooled with water, to be built at NB Power’s Point Lepreau nuclear site. Both designs have serious problems that have been documented extensively (for example, in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) .
Over the next five years, the federal government handed over more than $97 million to develop the two SMR designs in New Brunswick, and the provincial government added more than $31 million to the project. Yet in late 2025, New Brunswick’s Energy Minister said the government would no longer wait for the ARC and Moltex designs because the province could not take on the risk of first-of-a-kind reactors. The millions of dollars in subsidies are essentially a write-off, funding highly paid positions at these companies at the public expense.
Of the 10 SMR designs in Canada since 2018, only one is in development. Most of the public subsidy money for SMRs—$4.025 billion—has been spent developing this reactor design, the BWRX-300, to be built at the Darlington nuclear site on Lake Ontario. As of early 2026, workers are digging a deep shaft for the reactor vessel. Sometime this summer, we can expect to see concrete being poured into the ground.
Four billion dollars is a lot of money, but nowhere near enough to pay for the four BWRX-300 reactors planned for the site. Even the first BWRX-300 reactor is expected to cost more—$6.1 billion—and the whole project will run at least $20.9 billion. It final bill could come in far higher, since the vast majority of nuclear power projects have historically overrun initial cost estimates.
The high costs for the SMR compare poorly with other options for electricity generation. For example, estimates by Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) show that each unit of electrical energy from SMRs would be far more expensive that a corresponding unit from solar and wind power plants, even when the cost of storage technologies and other means of accounting for renewable energy’s variability are included.
CSIRO has been undertaking an annual cost estimate in collaboration with the Australian Energy Market Operator and its reports involve extensive consultation with various stakeholders. The research agency’s analysis is informing an active debate under way in Australia to determine if the country should embark on nuclear energy. There is no corresponding effort at rigorously computing the costs of different kinds of generating energy from different technologies by any official research agencies in Canada.
Overall, the report’s analysis found little interest in SMRs among banks and other sources of private capital. When measured in terms of their ability to generate power, SMRs are more expensive than big reactors. Given the high costs, the report suggests that exporting significant quantities of SMRs from Canada is only a slim possibility.
Susan O’Donnell and M.V. Ramana are authors of the report on SMRs in Canada. O’Donnell is Adjunct Research Professor and lead investigator of the CEDAR project at St. Thomas University in Fredericton. Ramana is Professor; Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security; and Director pro tem of the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
Israel’s primary role in Iran war scrubbed from mainstream media
By Walt Zlotow , 25 Mar 26, https://theaimn.net/israels-primary-role-in-iran-war-scrubbed-from-mainstream-media/
No Israel, no Iran war. That fact is AWOL from any coverage of criminal US, Israeli war destroying Iran, US Gulf States bases and possibly the world economy.
Destroying Iran as a hegemonic rival preventing their Middle East expansion of Greater Israel has been Israel’s objective for decades. But the small country of Israel, without billions in US firepower and participation could never accomplish their cherished goal. What to do? Put tremendous carrot and stick pressure on Donald Trump to achieve Israel’s Middle East supremacy.
They came close to getting George W. Bush to take out Iran after Bush demolished Afghanistan and Iraq back in 2003. But Bush stopped his war-crazed Veep Dick Cheney from pulling the Iran war trigger.
Obama was a huge problem for Israel. Instead of attacking Iran he made peace with it… or tried to. His leadership in creating the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) put the end to any concern that Iran was developing nuclear weapons. Which they never were. It should have stopped Israel’s lust to destroy Iran. But it didn’t. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu embarked on a relentless propaganda campaign to destroy the JCPOA.
His dream was realized when Trump succeeded Obama in 2017. A year later, Trump, likely following Netanyahu’s orders, withdrew from the JCPOA, putting Iran regime change back in play.
When Biden succeeded Trump in 2021, Netanyahu garnered another complacent ally in the White House. Biden did nothing to rejoin the JCPOA and normalize relations with Iran. But the Israeli genocide in Gaza, fully supported and funded by Biden, put Iran on the back burner.
Enter Donald Trump – back in power in 2025. Within 9 months he secured a ceasefire in Gaza. Palestinian genocide switched places with Iran on the forefront of destruction. Iran moved into Trump’s crosshairs to please his Israeli masters.
Had Harris succeeded Biden, likely no Iran war. Unlike Trump, Harris was neither as fully funded by the Israel lobby nor possibly subject to Israeli blackmail threatening to expose Trump’s peccadillos.
The war against Iran:Lessons still unlearned
By William Briggs | 26 March 2026, https://independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/the-war-against-iran-lessons-still-unlearned,20853
The dreams of the U.S. President, that it would all be over in days – that the Iranian people would rise against their tyrannical regime – is now a nightmare that Trump has visited upon the world.
The global economy is on the brink of disaster as oil dries up. America and Israel have further isolated themselves from world public opinion and, apart from an ever- shrinking clique of semi-vassal states like Australia, Trump appears to be alone and increasingly dangerous.
The war offers a great many lessons, but while life and history can be great teachers, there seem to be precious few pupils ready to learn those lessons. This applies equally to apologists for U.S. power, to governments of all stripes and to many of those who inhabit the Left and lay claim to Marxist credentials.
The war was never about “liberating” the Iranian people from the right-wing theocracy. It was about securing a compliant regime that would ensure the flow of oil and to make sure that the USA, as a fading imperial power, maintained global hegemony — both politically and economically.
The slogan that accompanied the wars of aggression against Iraq, that tore Libya apart and which laid waste to so much of the Middle East was simply, No Blood for Oil! The years have slipped by, and yet the same foul motivation for despoiling the globe and destroying a people remains.
Our mainstream media know this to be true, even as the “story” turns its focus to the retaliation by Iran and to the oil pressure that the blocking of the Straits of Hormuz entails. The same media focuses on potential oil shortages, and rightly so, but seems less keen to link that invasion to the fact that people are paying stupid prices for petrol and diesel.
Fewer voices can be heard that would remind the people of how the war started and who is responsible. That has become largely the responsibility of the Left — the Marxists, the campaigners against war and imperialism.
This is as it should be, but something is very wrong. Marxism is quite clear that economics is the defining factor and that politics works with and responds to economic demands. The war, then, can only be understood from an economic perspective. But is it being understood in this way? Sadly, no.
Some see it as a political gamble by a beleaguered and dangerously unhinged U.S. President. Some portray it as a means, by Israel, of destroying any potential risk to its domination of the region. Some come a step closer by recognising the strategic desire to weaken China, as it is a principal customer for Iranian oil.
Any and all of these considerations are enough to allow blame to be sheeted home to the USA and Israel, but there is a deeper, more worrying aspect to this. The United States has been and remains the single biggest military force and greatest economic power that the world has seen. It is, as the Marxist Left will say, an imperialist power. It is also a declining power.
For decades, its main preoccupation has been how to hold back the rising tide of its one great rival. China’s rise, accompanied by a global capitalist economy that has run out of ideas and resilience, ensures that wars are either finishing, beginning, or in the planning stage. A failing economic structure is driving the world to the point of no return. The war against Iran is one battle in this endless spiral into decay. The USA, as the central power in the capitalist global economy, is more than willing to destroy entire nations in its quest to keep the sinking ship afloat.
No crime is too much. The U.S. bombing the girls’ school in Iran, the Israeli destruction of oil facilities on the edge of Tehran that have led to acid rain and an unimaginable civilian health disaster, sicken all reasonable people. But those who plan such actions are not among the reasonable.
These acts need to be condemned. Governments need to show at least a modicum of decency. Our Prime Minister needs to stop slinking in the shadows and act. He needs to denounce such actions. He needs to find the courage to say “No!” and to work to secure the natural resources needed to keep Australia functioning. This is unlikely. Our political structures are such that we remain totally subservient to the demands and interests of the USA..
Those whose anger compels them to take to the streets deserve better than the Babel that has become the protest movement. The most recent action in Melbourne, which was dominated by ever more shrill denunciations of Israel, while mention of the USA and its causal responsibility for the war was at best an afterthought. Protest has merit, it is necessary and has purpose. It also needs focus, if it is to have either merit or purpose.
Protest is also about winning the hearts and minds of people. Sound and fury might be a therapy for some, but numbers count and numbers must grow, people must be educated, encouraged to talk to others, to build a movement that can go beyond noise.
Part of that building process must include the raising of collective consciousness. It must be able to show and convince people that this or that crime of the USA, of Israel, of imperialism, is not isolated, or in any way an aberrant thing, but is a symptom of a deeper, structural crisis. It is not enough for the ideologues to make demands that cannot be achieved. The protest movement, the anti-war movement, should aim at providing a vehicle, a voice for those who want something better than news screens full of war stories and a Federal Government pathetically marching to the fifes and drums of a fading U.S. empire.
European Union leaders have been prepared to stand back a little; to say that the war is not their war. It is hard to imagine an Australian government being daring enough to question anything that comes from Washington. As the sun sinks on U.S. hegemony, Australia seems ready to go down with the American ship.
UK’s Astute nuclear submarine timeline is very unlikely to be met.
Brief Update on the SSN Programme
17.03.2026, https://www.nuclearinfo.org/article/brief-update-on-the-ssn-programme/
The Astute project has the objective of delivering conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines for the Royal Navy, otherwise acronymised as SSNs. Seven submarines are planned to be delivered, with five currently operational: HMS Astute, HMS Ambush, HMS Artful, HMS Audacious, and HMS Anson. During February, HMS Anson arrived in Australia at HMAS Stirling. This visit was intended to be for maintenance and a symbolic demonstration of the trilateral AUKUS partnership between the UK, US, and Australia, which aims to develop nuclear-powered submarines with advanced conventional capabilities. AUKUS submarines are planned to succeed the Astute class. The sixth Astute-class submarine, HMS Agamemnon, was commissioned into the Royal Navy and completed its first dive last year, while HMS Achilles is currently under construction. The seven Astute submarines were once hoped to be delivered by the end of this year, but this timeline is very unlikely to be met.
This reflects the persistent challenges that have long bedevilled submarine construction in the UK, including delays, technical issues, accidents, and rising costs. HMS Anson itself for instance was delayed (among other factors) due to setbacks with HMS Audacious, while the 2024 fire in Barrow, the main shipyard for manufacturing the UK’s nuclear submarines, will further delay progress on the final Astute submarine. Also, AUKUS may generate geopolitical tensions among its partners. A US Congressional report earlier from this year has raised the possibility of withholding submarines from Australia due to concerns that the sale may divert US submarine capacity from a potential conflict with China. Meanwhile, some analysts question the strategic trade-offs of deploying HMS Anson to the Indo-Pacific, given the UK’s defence commitments in Europe and the Atlantic. These issues point to dual risks facing the SSN programme: first, achieving successful and timely delivery, and second, achieving agreement among allies over its strategic objectives and operational use.
Trump is the most dangerous man in the world
By Mark Beeson | 21 March 2026, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/trump-is-the-most-dangerous-man-in-the-world,20838
Trump’s Iran war raises fears of global conflict — while allies stay silent and diplomacy collapses, writes Mark Beeson.
U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP is the most dangerous man in the world. Why are we supporting him?
Many people were concerned about what a second Trump presidency might look like, but it’s uncontroversial to claim that it’s much worse than even the gloomiest pessimists feared.
It has been plain for a long time that Trump has little regard for the truth and is determined to silence independent media. But the one thing his supporters and the world in general might have hoped for was that he wouldn’t have gone back on his promise to not start unnecessary, ill-conceived wars, especially in the Middle East.
And yet, not only has Trump launched an illegal war with Iran, which has already resulted in the deaths of thousands, including innocent schoolgirls, but he is also displaying a psychopathic delight in using America’s overwhelming military might ‘just for fun’.
Given that the assault on Iran is being conducted with – or even on behalf of – Israel there is a breathtaking irony in the fact that Trump is displaying the same sort of indifference to human suffering that allowed individual Nazis to take part in the ‘final solution’ and the murder of six million Jews.
It is, of course, entirely possible that Trump doesn’t really know what’s going on given his increasingly obvious cognitive decline, but he has never exhibited much human empathy and is a compulsive liar and confabulator. These qualities arguably made him unfit to be a property developer, much less the most powerful man on Earth.
Given his famously child-like need for attention and adulation, which his courtiers and cronies are only too willing to provide, there is absolutely no chance of him changing. On the contrary, his belief that God is proud of him ought to alarm ought to alarm friend and foe alike.
After all, this is a man with the capacity to blunder into World War 3 without having any idea what he’s doing. The complete absence of any plan or exit strategy in the escalating conflict with Iran demonstrates that even the most apocalyptic of unforeseen consequences cannot be ruled out.
While an international economic crisis may not be the worst thing that could happen, for those of us fortunate enough to live in peaceful Australia it really ought to demonstrate that Trump is a threat to supposed friends and allies, as well as the innocent Iranians he promised to help.
If nothing else, Trump’s behaviour should make the danger and folly of relying on someone quite so delusional and self-obsessed clear to even our most unthinking policymakers. Trump will be satisfied with nothing less than the complete support and cooperation of allies, no matter how misguided or inhuman his policies may be.
Given the decades of uncritical fealty Australia’s leaders have displayed to the United States, it is no surprise that there has generally been an uncomfortable silence about ‘our’ response to the latest American-led fiasco.
Penny Wong wrote:
‘We (sic) support the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent Iran continuing to threaten international peace and security.’
It’s worth remembering that Iran was attacked while trying to negotiate a new agreement to replace the one Trump tore up, a tactic that may have allowed the U.S. to decapitate Iran’s leadership but won’t making resolving the conflict any easier. Truth, diplomacy and trustworthiness are clearly for losers. Might clearly does make right in Trump-world. This reality may help to explain why the Albanese government is keeping its collective head down.
Other leaders have not been quite so supine and gutless, however. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, after fruitless attempts at ingratiating himself with Trump, unambiguously stated that the “government will not participate in this war”. Moreover, Merz pointed out that Trump’s war had nothing to do with NATO, which was a defensive alliance, not one designed for wars of aggression.
Trump responded in his usual fashion with threats and bluster, suggesting a failure to support his ill-conceived war would be ‘very bad’ for NATO. Although we have learned not expect truth or consistency when dealing with Trump, suggesting that the foundation of the Western alliance may be in jeopardy is hardly a minor threat. Trump’s great friend Vladimir Putin must be delighted.
If our leaders are too unimaginative and cowardly to speak up in defence of international law, or to criticise unilateralism and the intensification of great power politics, civil society must do what it can. The absence of the sort of activism and protests that characterised opposition to the equally ill-conceived and pointless Vietnam War is disappointing and revealing, however. Perhaps it takes 500 actual combat deaths and the prospect of being called-up to bring home the reality of war to Australians.
Or perhaps rising interest rates, the cost of filling up a monstrous SUV, or re-routing your European holiday might do the trick. Either way, it’s reassuring to know that President Trump thinks the war with Iran is going so well that he gives if 15 out of 10. Nothing for our leaders to worry about after all.
Fortnight to 21 March in nuclear-related (non-corporate) news
Some bits of good news – Nigeria unlocks $552 million for basic education. The Iran war is turning energy security into an electrification story Canada’s Supreme Court has opened Quebec’s daycare system to refugee claimants. Big cities breathed a little easier.
TOP STORIES. Principled: Trump-appointed counterterrorism director Joe Kent resignsin protest over US war with Iran.
Trump hints U.S. will turn to Cuba after Iran: ‘Just a question of time’ – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lKxS-NmJVY
Israel planned this war on Iran for 40 years- everything else is a smoke screen.
In US/Israeli war on Iran, all roads point to rise in global nuclear weapons. .
Small modular reactors – smaller regulation?
Oxfam responds to mass forced displacement in Lebanon and ready to respond to wider regional crisis.
While Hinkley Nuclear Was Being Built, The UK Grid Decarbonized.
Climate. Humanity heating planet faster than ever before, study finds.
Noel’s notes. Why should Trump get all the blame?
AUSTRALIA.
- The Software Upgrade Australia Didn’t Need.
- The Architecture of Silence: Palantir, AUKUS, and the Business of Genocide.
- Shhh! Don’t Mention the War! – Scam of the Week- Pointless sending of UK nuclear submarine HMS Anson to Australia?
- The Perfect Storm: How the Far-Right Surge and Labor’s Silence are Reshaping Australia.
- Penny Wong’s Iran war lies exposed – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjcjyK6oglw .
- Millions in tax-deductible donations to IDF, illegal settlements
- The Toxic Legacy of Britain’s Nuclear Testing in Australia.
- “Grow your own and buy local”: Networks seek change and flexibility to manage a 100 pct renewable grid.
- More Australian news at https://antinuclear.net/2026/03/08/5-australian-nuclear-news-week-to-14-march-2026/
NUCLEAR_RELATED TOPICS
| ARTS and CULTURE. Is a Mass Revolt Against Technocracy Starting to Happen? |
| ECONOMICS. For Denmark, Large uncertainties on the expected costs of SMRs in the 2040s and 2050s Re/insurers must plan for nuclear-powered ships, says Axa XL. |
| EDUCATION. UK universities getting more enmeshed in the nuclear lobby. |
| EMPLOYMENT. UK’s nuclear research body consults on plans to cut about 200 jobs – ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2026/03/21/1-b1-uks-nuclear-research-body-consults-on-plans-to-cut-about-200-jobs/ Trident workers to strike in row over nuclear job cuts. |
ENERGY.
- As the oil and gas crisis drives the world economy towards another financial crash, green energy is the only viable future.
- The Strait Is Closed: How Trump’s Strike on Iran Triggered a Global Energy Crisis.
- ‘Punching them while they’re down’: US & Israel bomb Iran’s schools & hospitals, with ‘no stupid rules of engagement’.
- Bill Gates’ TerraPower Finally Has a Permit for a Nuclear Reactor, but No Reliable Way to Fuel It.
| ETHICS and RELIGION. Cardinals McElroy and Cupich denounce Iran war: ‘War now has become a spectator sport.’ |
| MEDIA. A chilling reminder of the deceit & violence of Iraq war. |
| OPPOSITION to NUCLEAR . Coalition Grows Against Hochul’s Nuclear Plan. The Welsh dragon is getting ready to roar. |
POLITICS.
- Scottish National Party face an uphill battle in home of UK’s nuclear subs.
- Macron accosted.
- “AIPAC Is Toxic”: Illinois Races Expose a Shifting Democratic Landscape.
- Senator Joins Police to Eject Antiwar Marine From Hearing, Breaking His Arm – https://youtu.be/HIo4uY1N0Tg? t=27
- Marco spills the beans…’Bibi made us do it’
- As proposals for nuclear stations proliferate across Canada, ‘fleet-based’ reactor deployment remains elusive – ALSO AT …..
- Canada will soon release new electricity and nuclear strategy, minister says .
POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY. Israel’s Manipulation of Trump on Iran.
Washington’s Public Swagger Meets Private Panic Over Iran. Alone at the Apex.
Trump’s NATO Warning Sounds More Like a Threat.
| SAFETY.Safety meltdown: Trump’s weakening of nuclear reactor regulations sparks opposition. |
| SECRETS and LIES. Scottish Labour donation linked to ‘astroturf’ nuclear campaign.‘We deserve to know the truth’: 11 questions about US bases in Britain.Pro-nuclear group faces questions over ‘links’ to major London PR firm. A Japanese ‘conman’ tried to sell an undercover DEA agent nuclear materials – but how did he get them? Hungary detains Ukrainians transporting tens of millions in cash and gold. |
| SPINBUSTER. Debunking Nuclear ‘Hopium’ – Dr. GordonEdwards. |
| URANIUM. Iran’s nuclear materials and equipment remain a danger in an active war zone. |
| WASTES NRC ends work on three proposed rules for securing spent fuel |
| WAR and CONFLICT. UN preparing for nuclear catastrophe ‘worst case scenario’ including use of nukes in Middle East. Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant ‘hit in strike’ as radiation update issued. As Trump Talks of Taking Cuba, Havana Promises “Impregnable Resistance”. Trump, Netanyahu down to last card in criminal Iran war.Iran signals a ‘fight to the end‘ with choice of new ayatollah .Back on its heels, will Israel nuke Iran? Starmer’s Self-Defence Fudge: The UK’s Growing Involvement in the Iran War. |
| WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES. Macron names next $11.5 billion nuclear-powered aircraft carrier ‘France Libre’ as a symbol of independence. |
The weakest link: Australia’s submarine hopes depend on the UK, but Britannia no longer rules the waves
Guardian, Ben Doherty, 21 Mar 26
If the US is unable to provide Virginia-class submarines and the UK’s timeline to build the Aukus class falters, Australia could be left with nothing
Ben DohertySat 21 Mar 2026 01.00 AEDTShare178
When HMS Anson – a British nuclear submarine – surfaced just off the coast of Perth last month, it was hailed as vindication of the Aukus triumvirate: “a historic new phase” in Australia’s path towards commanding its own nuclear submarines.
The submarine’s arrival, it was argued, was demonstration of the political will behind the ambitious Aukus deal: manifestation of Donald Trump’s exhortation the agreement was “full steam ahead”.
But the Anson’s arrival brought with it no small amount of consternation also.
Anson is now the only attack submarine in the British fleet that can be put to sea, of a supposed complement of six. The others are all in maintenance, being refitted or have been stripped for parts to keep other subs afloat.
“Perhaps more local concerns should be the priority,” the news site Navy Lookout suggested, unconvinced by foreign adventurism.
And so it came to pass. When war suddenly broke out in the Middle East and the Anson abruptly ended its engagement in Australia early – called back to a potential deployment in the strait of Hormuz – there was no fanfare, none of the triumphalism.
t was, perhaps, a neat metaphor for the Aukus agreement itself: political intent aplenty, but capacity lacking.
The spirit is willing, but the flesh …
A ‘demanding’ timeline
In the gallons of newsprint spilled over the Aukus deal, forensic attention has been paid to the capacity of the US to spare three Virginia class submarines for Australia from the early 2030s.
Given sclerotic – and thus-far stubbornly unshiftable – rates of shipbuilding in the US despite billions in Australian taxpayers’ assistance, the Congressional Research Office has openly considered that instead of the US selling any Virginia-class submarines to Australia, it would instead rotate its own US-commanded vessels through Australian ports.
But Australia’s use of the American submarine is only ever intended as a transitory capability.
Far more than the US, Australia must depend on the UK.
For its own, sustained nuclear submarine capability, Australia will rely on Britain’s capacity to design and build the first of an entirely new class of nuclear submarine: the SSN Aukus.
Some have argued the UK’s nuclear submarine industry is beyond salvation.
“The UK is no longer capable of managing a nuclear submarine program,” rear admiral Philip Mathias, a former director of nuclear policy at the Ministry of Defence, said last year, blaming “gross mismanagement” and a “catastrophic failure of succession and leadership planning”.
Even the booster-ish House of Commons inquiry into Aukus heard it was “a source of national shame the way we’ve treated the nuclear submarine building enterprise in this country”.
Lord Case, formerly the head of Britain’s civil service, told the defence committee: “somehow, we became the world’s most embarrassed nuclear nation”.
The published “optimal pathway” forecasts the first Aukus class submarine being built by the UK for the Royal Navy in the “late 2030s”.
The design of that vessel will form the basis for Australia’s own Aukus submarines, to be built in Adelaide. Australia’s first Aukus submarine is due in the water in the “early 2040s”.
It is, by even the most optimistic accounts, a “demanding” timeline. And the UK has more pressing priorities.
It must first complete the seventh and final boat in the Astute class (Britain’s nuclear attack submarine, of which the Anson is the most recent into active service). But the UK also has, in construction, four Dreadnought class nuclear ballistic submarines, the basis of the UK’s nuclear deterrent.
All of these are being built by BAE Systems Submarines at Barrow-in-Furness, in Cumbria.
Put frankly, one senior UK defence source told the Guardian on condition of anonymity, while upholding Aukus is politically important to the UK, other boats must, and will, take precedence.
Back of the queue
That leaves Australia in an invidious position.
If the US is unable (by its own legislation) to provide Virginia-class submarines, and the UK’s timeline to build the Aukus class falters, those countries still have nuclear submarine fleets.
Australia will be left with nothing (its ageing diesel-electric Collins class submarines already having been extended far beyond their slated working life).
Australia has the most at stake in Aukus, but the least control over how it unfolds.
For while Australian tax dollars –A$1.6bn of a committed A$4.7bn to the US and A$452m of A$4.6bn to the UK – flood into foreign shipbuilding industries, Australia finds itself intractably at the back of the queue…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Questions to be asked
Marcus Hellyer, head of research at Strategic Analysis Australia, describes himself as “Aukus agnostic”.
“I don’t jump in and say ‘it’s all doomed’ or ‘it’s the greatest policy idea ever’, but there are certainly questions to be asked about the process that got us here, and how it is going.”
Hellyer says Aukus was announced to the Australian people without any public debate or a proper assessment of alternative defence strategies, such as hypersonic missiles.
And, he argues, while focus has been on the US capacity to deliver surplus Virginia-class submarines, Australia will ultimately have to rely far more heavily on a UK naval nuclear enterprise that has been “chronically underfunded”.
“Now the UK government would say ‘well, where we’re addressing that, we’re funding that’, but there is a massive backlog in both investment required and work to be done.”
Also, Hellyer says, it is hard to pin down exactly how far progressed the design for the new Aukus submarine is.
“It’s really hard to get any kind of reliable information out of any of the players about the maturity of the assets in this program. We keep being told by admirals that the Aukus design is ‘mature’. Well, define ‘mature’.”
“We’re not in the detailed design phase, so we’re still nowhere near starting construction … when are we actually going to start building this thing?”
There is, too, the adversary argument.
Since Aukus was announced in 2021, zero additional Aukus-nation submarines have been built beyond those already in the pipeline before the agreement was revealed. The US has built seven of its own nuclear submarines, the UK has launched one for its navy.
In that time, China, the superpower Aukus is designed to counter, has launched 10 nuclear submarines.
Historically, great naval powers have always had significant civilian industries upon which they can draw. China is now the world’s largest civilian ship builder. The US now accounts for just 0.1% of global shipbuilding.
“And their shipyards are successful not because they’ve got gazillions of lowly paid unskilled people banging away with hand tools,” Hellyer says, “they have significant technology and they are absolutely driven by efficiency, by delivering on time and on budget.
“That’s why the Chinese will continue to outcompete us in terms of building ships and increasingly submarines … and now they’ve made that policy switch: they’re now bringing that to their undersea domain.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/20/the-weakest-link-australias-submarine-hopes-depend-on-the-uk-but-britannia-no-longer-rules-the-waves
No Good Exit
Pine Gap is almost certainly providing targeting intelligence that has enabled strikes now characterised by UN human rights experts as potential war crimes. Under laws amended by the Howard government in 2001 and never restored, the Prime Minister can take Australia to war on Cabinet agreement alone, no parliamentary debate, no public mandate, no vote. Nobody in the national media is asking whether that authority has been invoked. Nobody is asking whether it should be.
21 March 2026 David Tyler, Australian Independent Media
John Mearsheimer sees war with Iran as a strategic folly, arguing it is unwinnable, will not destroy Iran’s nuclear knowledge, and could, instead, boost Iran’s interest in acquiring nuclear weapons.
No stranger to irony, or paradox, Dr Mearsheimer does not mince words. The West Point graduate and former Air Force Captain, now a distinguished scholar at Cornell, has spent two decades documenting exactly how an American Eagle could get sucked into the vortex of wars that serve its bovver-boy, or Middle-East proxy, Israel, and its bellicose aspirations at enormous cost.
When Mearsheimer speaks about a US military adventure in Iran, he is not waffling. He is quoting from the autopsy he wrote in advance. And Mearsheimer’s verdict on Operation Epic Fury, is that Trump has dug himself into a deep hole; an opinion all the more damning for its formal, almost courteous understatement:
“I think President Trump has put himself in a situation where he really doesn’t have a good exit strategy.”
Trump’s catastrophe may be complex and irretrievable, but it was not inevitable. It was predicted, in detail, by experts whose job it was to predict it, and who were systematically ignored, discredited or sacked for saying so. Trump ignored the experts. This is how he can always snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
The pretext for the attack doesn’t bear scrutiny. Before the first double-tap Tomahawk missile crushed and burned alive 168 schoolchildren on 28 February, Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Al-Busaidi was announcing what could have been a diplomatic coup: Iran had agreed to never stockpile enriched uranium, had accepted full IAEA verification, and was prepared to irreversibly downgrade its enriched uranium to the lowest level possible.
Peace, he said, was “within reach.” Further talks were due to resume on 2 March.
Iran now says that the US President never intended to avoid war and that the talks were a ruse to get more time to set up a military attack. It’s true. It’s also true that Trump and Netanyahu are driven by the need to stay out of court. Both are hell-bent in quest of a more enduring diversion-and both would have always pulled the trigger anyway. Even without Saudi encouragement……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Iran now says that the US President never intended to avoid war and that the talks were a ruse to get more time to set up a military attack. It’s true. It’s also true that Trump and Netanyahu are driven by the need to stay out of court. Both are hell-bent in quest of a more enduring diversion-and both would have always pulled the trigger anyway. Even without Saudi encouragement.
……………………………………….. Many missile strikes in the war’s opening phase are seen by UN human rights experts as potential war crimes under the Rome Statute. At least a million Lebanese people have been displaced.
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Meanwhile, Donald Trump, on his Truth Social, calls Iran “militarily ineffective and weak.”…………………………………………………………………………………..
Trump is demanding NATO allies help secure the Strait of Hormuz. NATO is, to put it charitably, otherwise engaged.
Retreat? Mearsheimer is equally clear-eyed. Declare victory and withdraw, and it will be “perceived as a humiliating defeat for the US.” And that assumes Iran cooperates. “They have many cards to play,” he notes. “They can inflict significant losses. Therefore, even if we retreat, it’s unclear whether this will solve the problem.”
Trump promised a generation of winning. He has delivered a generation’s worth of losing, compressed into twenty days. And let’s not forget his Latin American fiasco. El Presidente, who endeared himself to millions south of the border with his talk of “shithole” countries, has rather a lot of Venezuelans on the warpath after his regime change curdled almost on contact into a neocolonial farce, with Maduro gone, sovereignty shredded and the gringos already with their fingers in the till.
Cuba could be next on Hegseth’s hit-list? Trump does need to keep the distractions going. Meanwhile disinformation is being pumped as vigorously as the Ford plumbing. And with similar effect.
Fox News cheerleaders and the Netanyahu communications office have been carefully not telling the American public: Iran is not the isolated, backward, sanction-crippled military of the pre-war briefings.
It is fighting with Russian eyes and Chinese precision. Together, those two contributions have changed the strategic calculus in ways that neither Washington nor Tel Aviv appear to have seriously gamed………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The Netanyahu Factor: Closing Every Window
Mearsheimer’s analysis cuts deepest on the question of diplomacy.
On Day 19, Israeli strikes killed two of Iran’s most consequential figures: security chief Ali Larijani and Basij commander Gholamreza Soleimani. Larijani’s death was not a military decapitation strike in the conventional sense. It was the targeted elimination of Iran’s most experienced nuclear negotiator; a pragmatic, sophisticated operator whom analysts had consistently identified as one of the few figures capable of opening a negotiated exit.
Israel killed the man who could have brokered the ceasefire Netanyahu claims to want.
Netanyahu told Sean Hannity that Operation Epic Fury “will usher in an era of peace that we haven’t even dreamed of” and create conditions for Iranians to form “their own democratically elected government.” He said something substantially similar about Iraq in 2003. About Libya in 2011. The script is laminated. The outcomes are identical. The lesson is never drawn.
He is currently in a bunker, hinting with characteristic coyness that perhaps the Iranian regime survives after all. Of course it does. The Islamic Republic has outlasted everything the West has thrown at it: the Iran-Iraq war, decades of sanctions, assassination campaigns, Stuxnet, and the twelve-day bombing campaign of last June………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
The Intelligence Scandal Underneath It All
One more thread demands to be pulled. Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, has been accused of altering her Senate testimony on Iran; specifically, of omitting intelligence details that contradicted Trump’s claim that Tehran posed an imminent threat. The IAEA had found no evidence Iran was moving toward a nuclear weapon. Oman had just brokered what its foreign minister described as a breakthrough agreement……………………………….
What Australia Needs to Ask
An Iranian projectile struck near Australia’s military headquarters in the UAE this week. Anthony Albanese confirmed it. Then said nothing else useful.
Pine Gap is almost certainly providing targeting intelligence that has enabled strikes now characterised by UN human rights experts as potential war crimes. Under laws amended by the Howard government in 2001 and never restored, the Prime Minister can take Australia to war on Cabinet agreement alone, no parliamentary debate, no public mandate, no vote. Nobody in the national media is asking whether that authority has been invoked. Nobody is asking whether it should be.
The question Mearsheimer asks about Washington; what’s the exit, and who owns the consequences, deserves to be asked in Canberra. With the same urgency. And considerably more honesty than we are currently getting.
……………………. Trump got his war with Iran, on the urging of a foreign government, on the basis of intelligence his own Director of National Intelligence allegedly falsified, over a diplomatic resolution that was days from signature.
History won’t be interested in who did the urging. He owns this. Every schoolgirl in Minab. Every barrel at Ras Laffan. Every day the Hormuz stays closed.
It has, as Mearsheimer warned, no good exit. https://theaimn.net/no-good-exit/
The Iran war is Australia’s margin call
the Greens’ Senator Larissa Waters captured the mood of many when she warned:
‘…every day Trump and Netanyahu’s demands of Australia keep growing.’
She accused Labor of having ‘no red lines’. Australia’s significant Iranian, Israeli, Lebanese, and broader Middle Eastern diaspora communities bring both personal grief and political intensity to the debate.
By Vince Hooper | 19 March 2026, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/the-iran-war-is-australias-margin-call-,20830
Operation Epic Fury is exposing the true cost of alliance dependence, energy fragility, and strategic distraction from the Indo-Pacific, writes Vince Hooper.
ON 28 FEBRUARY 2026, the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran. As the war enters its third week, the scale is staggering: at least 1,348 Iranian civilians killed and over 17,000 injured, 3.2 million displaced, approximately 6,000 U.S. strikes, and a new supreme leader – Mojtaba Khamenei – vowing to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed.
The International Energy Agency warns of the ‘largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market’. Oil has breached US$100 (AU$142.11) a barrel. More than 820,000 have been displaced in Lebanon as Israel–Hezbollah hostilities reignite.
For Australia, geographically distant but entangled through alliance commitments, intelligence infrastructure, energy dependence and a 115,000-strong diaspora in the Middle East, the ramifications are immediate. In financial economics, alliance membership functions like a call option — the right to draw on a protector’s military power, but at a price paid in sovereignty foregone, bases hosted, and conflicts joined.
The Iran crisis is Australia’s margin call. The price is suddenly, painfully visible.
The alliance reflex
The Albanese Government endorsed Operation Epic Fury with speed that surprised even American officials, while insisting Australia was “not participating” offensively.
By 10 March, that distinction had eroded: Albanese deployed an E-7A Wedgetail early warning aircraft, air-to-air missiles for the UAE, and 85 Australian Defence Force personnel to the Gulf. The Wedgetail’s capacity to map missile launch locations and coordinate battle management in real time makes it far more than a passive shield — the line between defensive and offensive enablement is, as one analyst observed, a blurry one at best.
It has since emerged that three Royal Australian Navy sailors were aboard the U.S. submarine that torpedoed the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena near Sri Lanka on 4 March — the first U.S. submarine torpedo attack since the Second World War.
Albanese confirmed their presence but insisted they did not take part in offensive action. Meanwhile, the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap near Alice Springs – now hosting 45 satellite radomes and dishes – continues to provide real-time intelligence across the Middle East. A former NSA analyst confirmed in 2023 that Pine Gap was collecting data on the Gaza conflict and “surrounding areas”.
That intelligence flows to Washington and, in turn, to Israel. Having invested decades in this facility, Australia cannot credibly claim neutrality. It is infrastructure that commits the country irrevocably — a strategic investment with no exit clause.
The Indo-Pacific opportunity cost
Here is the dimension that should concern Australian strategists most. In what economists call “real options” theory, the value of an investment depends on keeping the opportunity alive until conditions are ripe. AUKUS is precisely such an option: a ticket to a credible submarine deterrent, but only if the U.S. industrial base and technology transfers remain available. The Iran conflict is degrading every one of those conditions.
The U.S. submarine industrial base produces around 1.2 Virginia-class boats per year against a combined requirement of 2.3.
An Iran war that diverts Navy priorities means no spare construction capacity for Australian boats. Congressional approvals, State Department licences, and Department of Energy support all stall when those agencies are managing Iran’s nuclear fragments. Australia’s planned 2030s submarine delivery could slip to the 2040s. We know the cost of American distraction: between 2001 and 2020, while Afghanistan and Iraq consumed U.S. bandwidth, China militarised the South China Sea, developed carrier-killing missiles, and built the world’s largest navy.
The U.S. has already spent over US$11 billion (AU$15 billion) in Epic Fury’s first week. As the Hudson Institute’s Zineb Riboua has argued, every dollar spent defending Red Sea shipping lanes is a dollar unavailable for Pacific basing or Taiwan contingency planning.
Fat tails at the fuel bowser
Australia imports roughly 90 per cent of its refined liquid fuel. The Strait of Hormuz, carrying a fifth of global petroleum, has been reduced to what the IEA calls ‘a trickle’ — global supplies down an estimated eight million barrels per day. IEA members have agreed to release 400 million barrels from emergency stockpiles, the largest coordinated release in history, but analysts warn this only partially offsets prolonged disruption.
For anyone who studies what statisticians call ‘fat-tailed’ distributions — events that are rare but devastating when they occur — this is a textbook case. Australia’s fuel supply architecture is built for normal times: 36 days of strategic reserves against an IEA benchmark of 90.
According to Westpac’s modelling, a one-month Hormuz disruption lifts the Australian CPI by approximately 1 percentage point; a three-month closure spikes it by 1.5 points and reduces GDP by 0.5 points. Petrol prices could rise 40 cents per litre. LNG prices have surged 12 per cent, and Qatari production remains halted. These pressures compound: higher oil costs flow through shipping, fertilisers, and manufacturing into broader inflation, landing on an economy where the RBA is already navigating delicate disinflation.
115,000 reasons to worry
An estimated 115,000 Australians were in the Middle East when the conflict erupted.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong said:
“This is a consular crisis that dwarfs any that Australia has had to deal with in terms of numbers of people.”
The closure of airspace across Bahrain, Iraq, Iran, Qatar, Kuwait, and Syria stranded thousands.
By 10 March, over 2,600 had returned on 18 flights from the UAE.
Tens of thousands remain, with Smartraveller now advising against all travel to the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Israel, and Lebanon. Bus convoys to Kuwait and Bahrain, overland routes to Oman, and limited commercial flights have been the improvised lifelines. Canberra also granted asylum to five members of Iran’s women’s football team who were in Queensland for the AFC Women’s Asian Cup — a gesture that only hints at the potential for larger refugee flows if the conflict deepens further.
The rules-based order — selectively applied
Operation Epic Fury was launched without UN Security Council authorisation. Ben Saul the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, has stated that Iran had not enriched uranium to the point of building a nuclear device — the case for self-defence, in his words, “does not fall anywhere close”.
Australia’s refusal to address the strikes’ legality places it in what ANU’s Don Rothwell calls a “say nothing” posture — conspicuously at odds with its willingness to assert the illegality of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In my own work on alliance behaviour, I model geopolitical commitments using the same frameworks that price financial options. International law functions as a hedge — an insurance policy limiting everyone’s downside. When a country lets that insurance lapse for allies while enforcing it against adversaries, it is strategically exposed.
For a middle power whose influence rests on normative authority rather than military mass, this shapes standing in ASEAN, the Pacific Islands Forum, and every multilateral setting where Western double standards are a live issue.
Domestically, the Greens’ Senator Larissa Waters captured the mood of many when she warned:
‘…every day Trump and Netanyahu’s demands of Australia keep growing.’
She accused Labor of having ‘no red lines’. Australia’s significant Iranian, Israeli, Lebanese, and broader Middle Eastern diaspora communities bring both personal grief and political intensity to the debate.
The energy transition as strategic hedge
If the conflict carries a silver lining, it may be in strengthening the case for energy transition. Renewables and storage now provide nearly 45 per cent of electricity on Australia’s main grid and contributed to halving wholesale power prices in late 2025. Renewable energy is a natural insurance policy against geopolitical oil shocks: its fuel cost is zero and its supply chain is overwhelmingly domestic.
Accelerating electrification of transport, homes, and industry reduces exposure to precisely the kind of extreme energy price events that the Strait of Hormuz crisis illustrates. But the transition is capital-intensive: a one-year delay in wind or transmission projects could increase residential power prices by up to 20 per cent. The conflict sharpens both the urgency and the stakes.
The margin call
The Iran conflict is a stress test for Australian strategic policy on every front: alliance dependence, energy fragility, consular capacity, and commitment to international law. Most importantly, it reveals the opportunity cost in the Indo-Pacific.
Every month of Middle Eastern entanglement is a month in which AUKUS – and a credible deterrent posture in the Western Pacific – loses value. The conflict is not just consuming Australian resources. It is consuming the strategic future those resources were meant to buy.
For policymakers, the lessons are uncomfortable but clear. Diversification – of energy sources, strategic relationships, and economic exposure – is not merely desirable but urgent. The capacity to make independent strategic judgements, rather than reflexively aligning with allied positions, must be cultivated alongside the alliance itself. International law must be applied consistently, not selectively invoked when adversaries breach it and quietly set aside when allies do the same. The margin call has arrived. The question is whether Australia can pay it without liquidating the portfolio.
Vince Hooper is a proud Australian-British citizen and professor of finance and discipline head at SP Jain School of Global Management with campuses in London, Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore and Sydney.
Israel’s Manipulation of Trump on Iran
The public has noticed who is in charge. According to a soon-to-be-released poll from IMEU Policy Project and Demand Progress, conducted by Data for Progress, voters believe the war is being conducted for Israel’s benefit over America’s by a nearly 2-to-1 margin.
Today on TAP: The worse the Iran war goes, the more blame is likely to be directed at Israel, and by association the Jews.
by Robert KuttnerMarch 18, 2026, https://prospect.org/2026/03/18/iran-israel-joe-kent-trump-netanyahu-antisemitism/
On Tuesday, Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, became the first senior administration official to resign over the Iran war. He resigned not because the war is a debacle, but because of Israel’s role in triggering U.S. involvement.
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” he wrote in a letter to President Trump. “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
Kent has a history of association with far-right white nationalist and antisemitic groups, according to the Associated Press. At the time of his confirmation hearing last February, Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI) pointed out, “During his two failed campaigns for Congress, we learned that Kent has ties to white nationalists … [and] sought political support from a Holocaust denier.”
Administration officials and allies spent a frantic 24 hours trying to do damage control, stepping around the question of why a well-documented antisemite should have been given the sensitive post in the first place. The question is doubly awkward, given Trump’s supposed love for the Jews when that posture is convenient to assault universities.
Quite apart from Kent’s record and motives, the issue of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s manipulation of Trump should be taken seriously. Early in the war, on March 2, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a press briefing, “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.” That’s about right.
Rubio has repeatedly tried to walk that back, but he can’t unsay it. The Israeli attack of February 28, which assassinated top Iranian leaders and effectively set off the war, was reportedly aided by U.S. intelligence, but Netanyahu was determined to launch it whether or not Trump concurred.
Just to rub Washington’s nose in Israel’s habit of escalating war without asking Trump’s permission, on Tuesday of this week top Israeli officials made clear that Trump learned about Israel’s latest assassinations only after the fact. The Wall Street Journal reported, “Israel killed Iran’s security chief, Ali Larijani, in airstrikes Monday night, according to Israel’s defense minister. President Trump would be informed of Larijani’s death, Israel Katz said. ‘Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and I directed the IDF to continue to hunt down the leadership of the terror and oppression regime in Iran and cut off the head of the octopus again and again and prevent it from regrowing,’ Katz said in a statement.”
Let me repeat that, in italics: President Trump would be informed of Larijani’s death, Israel Katz said. Not only was Trump not informed or asked to concur before the assassination. The Israeli defense minister, speaking for himself and Netanyahu, informed Trump via a statement to The Wall Street Journal. That’s even more contemptuous than announcing it on social media, Trump-style. The fact that it was in a deliberate prepared statement means that this was no accidental off-the-cuff blunder. Just yesterday, Israel continued targeting Iran’s leaders, killing the country’s intelligence minister, Esmail Khatib.
The public has noticed who is in charge. According to a soon-to-be-released poll from IMEU Policy Project and Demand Progress, conducted by Data for Progress, voters believe the war is being conducted for Israel’s benefit over America’s by a nearly 2-to-1 margin………..
As the odds increase against Trump finding some kind of exit with dignity, the risk is that he will widen and deepen the war. While Trump is ambivalent, Netanyahu has made it clear that he wants the war to continue, and he acts accordingly. He is just as reckless as Trump, but more strategic.
When a wider war turns into an even bigger crisis, more people who did not start out as antisemites will be inclined to blame history’s favorite all-purpose scapegoats, the Jews. Only in this case, Bibi has provided plenty of ammunition.
“Grow your own and buy local”: Networks seek change and flexibility to manage a 100 pct renewable grid
RENEW ECONOMY. Giles Parkinson, Mar 19, 2026
The head of Australia’s peak network group has called for regulatory change and more flexibility for homes and their power assets, to help local networks manage the consumer-driven push towards 100 per cent renewables across the country.
Andrew Bills is the chair of Energy Networks Australia, and finds himself at the cutting edge of this transition as CEO of SA Power Networks, where the output of rooftop solar alone exceeds grid demand about every second day of the year.
South Australia is expected – within 18 months – to become the first gigawatt-scale grid in the world to reach 100 per cent “net” renewables (the net refers to the fact that it imports and exports at times and is not an isolated grid), and is already running at a 75 per cent share of wind and solar.
Much of that solar comes from households, with nearly half (48 pct) of all homes supporting a total of 3.2 gigawatts of rooftop solar capacity, which is significant in a grid with average demand less than half of that.
That solar penetration is also world leading, and at a level that stuns network peers in other countries. It is rapidly being followed by a faster uptake of home batteries (double that of the country average), and a growing interest in electric vehicles.
This has required South Australia to be at the forefront of key technologies designed manage this home energy revolution, initially with the blunt and rarely used “solar switch-off”, required by the market operator as a last resort to help maintain grid security.
That has been followed, more successfully, by the rollout of innovative technologies that allow for flexible exports for solar households, and no longer limits the amount of rooftop solar that can be installed.
iis now being augmented with the trial installation of home energy management systems and tariffs that reward homes for cutting imports, as well as exports, at key times………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://reneweconomy.com.au/grow-your-own-and-buy-local-networks-seek-change-and-flexibility-to-manage-a-100-pct-renewable-grid/
Me and the Pope – but is he the Antichrist?
19 March 2026 Noel Wauchope, https://theaimn.net/me-and-the-pope-but-is-he-the-antichrist/#google_vignette
Following my recovery from Catholicism, I never imagined that I would become a fan of the Pope. Perish the thought that I would ever sink back into believing those weird dogmas, and agreeing to Catholicism’s punishing rules about sexuality and abortion, and so forth.
Well, I haven’t sunk back that far – yet, but I just have to applaud Pope Leo. Under the guidance of Pope Leo, Catholic spokesmen have acknowledged that artificial intelligence is a useful tool, but warn against AI “overloading us with information to the point of paralysis.” Pope Leo XIV has given a tactful, but unmistakable warning against AI taking over control of our thinking. He recently advised the priests of Rome to use “their brains more” rather than AI when preparing homilies.
I feel that Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, set the course for this trend, in the condemnation of military attack as a way to resolve conflicts, and urging for human discussion and negotiation.
All good – you think? But is there something sinister about Pope Leo’s attitude to AI? Well the squillionaire Peter Thiel thinks so. He’s just given a series of lectures on Pope Leo’s doorstep in Rome. A critique of Peter Thiel’s ideas has been supplied, beautifully explained, in Australian Independent Media by Ricky Pann, also supplying this video:
It’s too much of a coincidence, that Mr Thiel has decided to make Rome the centre of his lecturing activities. The Pope has a huge worldwide influence, and his views on artificial intelligence have an impressive forcefulness and clarity. It’s pretty obvious that Thiel finds this a threat to the technological empire that he leads. And the Church recognises this – ‘Agent of chaos’ Peter Thiel is lecturing on the Antichrist at the Vatican’s doorstep.
You didn’t know that the technological geniuses who run our world can be not only so very scientifically knowledgeable, but also extremely religious. Scarily religious – I think. Thiel predicts a possible Caesar-Papist fusion, in which a tyrant – the Antichrist, joins up with government, in a sort of anti-science domination of the world. Thiel doesn’t actually see Pope Leo as the Antichrist (the Antichrist has to be young), but certainly worries about Pope Leo’s teachings.
Pope Leo is the first Pope with a formal degree in mathematics, and has called on mathematicians to be ”prophets of hope” and to integrate ethical responsibility into their technological advancements, particularly regarding artificial intelligence.
Oh dear, that’s very persuasive. Is Pope Leo indeed the Antichrist, the supporter of the facilitator of the coming Antichrist. Or is Peter Thiel a dangerous nutter?
The Software Upgrade Australia Didn’t Need
18 March 2026 AIMN Editorial, By Ricky Pann https://theaimn.net/the-software-upgrade-australia-didnt-need/
Palantir and the Digital Dictator’s Operating System
Australia is undergoing a system update. It didn’t pass through a referendum, nor was it meaningfully debated in Parliament. Arriving quietly under the guise of maintenance and safety, Palantir Technologies has embedded itself into the central nervous system of Australia’s financial and intelligence apparatus. Through AUSTRAC and the Fintel Alliance, data from banks, law enforcement, and government agencies are now integrated into a single “God view”. The Australian Government is in fact investing in Palantir through stocks held by our Future Fund.
An Upgrade Without an Uninstall
Palantir represents a new phase in Silicon Valley’s evolution, a shift from consumer platforms to sovereign infrastructure. From apps designed to distract us to systems designed to govern us.
Palantir’s software deployment in Australia comes ahead of a coordinated lobbying push to expand adoption of its systems, positioning them to become a de facto operating system for governments globally through sheer market dominance.
Australia is making an unspoken admission: that social democracy is now seen as too slow and inefficient for an AI-driven world, where speed is quietly replacing human judgment. This is the great deception of hasty AI adoption.
These are the quiet admissions of a society steered by populist fear: the myth that productivity driven growth is limitless, and the delusion that automating human empathy will not edge us toward autocracy.
So where do we stop?
Do we outsource judgment.
Do we automate trust.
Do we accept a black box view of reality in exchange for speed.
The result is a feedback loop. Data feeds the system. The system reshapes perception. Perception justifies more data. Slowly, the world begins to look exactly as the software expects it to.
There’s a familiar feeling after a software update.
Nothing looks different.
The icons are where you left them.
The system boots. The coffee still tastes the same.
But something subtle has shifted.
Menus rearranged.
Permissions altered.
A few options you used to have simply evaporated.
We’re expected to accept a system that doesn’t reason, doesn’t ask permission, operates without consent, and collapses the complexity of human context, nuance, and lived experience into binary outcomes.
No announcement. No apology. Just a new normal.
The quiet inversion Orwell warned about: not brute force, but soft machinery. Not the scream, but the hum.
A world where seeing everything replaces understanding anything, where speed outranks judgment, and probability passes for truth.
The system doesn’t need to lie.
It just decides what is perceived as real.
Palantir isn’t a surveillance scandal. It’s a design choice.
Who’s Watching the Watchers?
One day, sitting on a bench, watching light move through trees, you realise something small but irreversible.
You’re no longer being seen by people.
You’re being interpreted by infrastructure.
That’s not a crisis moment.
It’s an installation moment.
And installations, once embedded deeply enough, rarely come with an uninstall option.
Australia didn’t choose authoritarianism.
It chose efficiency
We didn’t suspend democracy.
We quietly routed around it.
You don’t lose freedom all at once. You outsource it, piece by piece, to systems that promise to manage burden for us.
The pitch is seductive to politicians and bureaucrats: efficiency, seamless integration, prevention over response. But this isn’t a routine upgrade. It’s a Trojan Horse, quietly ushering in a new era of global corporatocracy.
Palantir does not merely process data; it installs a proprietary “ontology” with a map of clusters of a calculated reality that dictates to a government what is considered relevant or risky.
It replaces the presumption of innocence with algorithmic probability, shifting justice from what you did to what you might do. Once a sovereign nation relies on such a system, it no longer acts as a customer but as a dependent, outsourcing responsibility and accountability.
Authors note: I don’t mean to be nasty but…
I’m not in the habit of playing the man/woman/person instead of the ball but, this is the age of disruption in a period of brazen populism that rewards narcissism.
People like Trump, Musk, Altman, Karp and Thiel routinely make statements that are disconcerting, extreme, misleading, and at times plainly unhinged.
They face little consequence because wealth and power insulate them, reinforcing the belief that billionaire status equates to insight – despite being far removed from the lived reality of the people most affected by the chaos caused by the systems they shape.
Buyer Beware: To understand the creeping authoritarianism we as Australians just installed, we must look at the radically unhinged ideologies of the architects who designed it.
Peter Thiel: The Sovereign Dream
Founder Peter Thiel has been unusually candid about his beliefs. He has stated that he no longer believes freedom and democracy are compatible.
His worldview, influenced by René Girard’s theory of mimetic conflict, treats human society as inherently unstable, something to be managed, contained, and overseen by a competent elite.
Thiel’s Zero to One philosophy celebrates monopolies. Competition, he argues, is wasteful. Governance by consensus is inefficient. The future belongs to singular systems operated by those smart enough to bypass friction.
This worldview is not theoretical. Thiel is now a New Zealand citizen and has publicly acknowledged preparing for large scale civilisational disruption.
He owns property on New Zealand’s South Island, widely reported as part of a network of fortified survival infrastructure intended to function during a catastrophic global event, often described in Silicon Valley as an H2 scenario, a hard reset moment involving systemic collapse.
This may sound like a dramatic interpretation of his intention however, considering the dots we are joining, Palantir is the practical expression of this thinking.
Its a monopoly on state intelligence designed to operate beyond the slow checks and balances of democratic process, resilient not just to crime or terrorism, but to political instability itself.
This is mostly true for all disruptive big tech firms. They grow and evolve so fast that the consequential fallout of the technology lags years behind legislation. They operate in the wild west at the expense of law, privacy, social cohesion, mental health, criminality and human rights till the sheriff arrives.
Alex Karp: The Dialectical Justifier
CEO Alex Karp presents differently. He speaks the language of philosophy, progress, and reluctant necessity. He frames Palantir through a dialectical lens, civil liberties on one side, a dangerous world on the other, resolved by a system powerful enough to neutralise chaos.
Alex Karp acts as the “dialectical justifier, using Hegelian philosophy to reframe total mass surveillance and the reduction of citizens to managed variables as a necessary, moral “synthesis” between civil liberties and global chaos.
In this framing, surveillance is not abuse but compromise.
Dominance becomes protection.
Efficiency becomes morality.
Karp has acknowledged that bad times are very good for Palantir. The company is built for crisis. It thrives on instability, on moments when societies are willing to trade uncertainty for control.
The contradiction is hard to miss. In claiming to prevent fascism by enforcing order, the system quietly adopts fascism’s core mechanism, total visibility, preemptive control, and the reduction of citizens to managed statistical variables.
It is not win lose.
It is domination.
It is founder Peter Thiel who pushes this idea of world domination into the realm of absolute madness.
Thiel delivered a series of private, unhinged lectures titled “The Antichrist”. Using cobbled-together 1st-century doomsday theology and pop-culture manga like One Piece, he attempted to frame himself and his fellow technocrats as heroic rebels holding back a demonic, stagnant global state.
If you strip away this ridiculous theatrical charade, you don’t find a philosopher. You find the Nero of Silicon Valley, a wanna be digital dictator actively engineering the end of inconvenient democracy.
Here is the actual plumbing behind the smoke and mirrors:
A: The Hypocrisy of the “Anti-Satanist” Thiel preaches that global governance and regulation are the “Antichrist” of our era. Yet, his primary engine of wealth, Palantir, is the ultimate weapon of the administrative state.
Palantir provides the data-mining backbone for ICE, the Pentagon, and global police forces. He decries the global surveillance state while acting as Big Brother’s lead software engineer.
He isn’t fighting the system as a small government libertarian; he just wants the monopoly on its operating system.
B: The Untruths of “Stagnation” In his lectures, Thiel claims the world is trapped in scientific “stagnation,” literally labelling anyone who advocates for climate change mitigation, environmental survival, or AI safety guardrails as a “Luddite” and a “legionnaire of the Antichrist”.
This is a blatant untruth used to mask regulatory capture. He doesn’t care about stagnation; he simply demands a world where his tech monopolies can operate without the friction of human empathy, environmental protection, or legal boundaries.
C: The Puppeteer Behind the Chaos Thiel presents a false binary choice between total “Armageddon” and a stagnant global state.
But he is not a prophet warning us of the fire; he is the arsonist selling the fire extinguisher.
Operating through dark money donor networks, Thiel is the primary financial engine behind figures like J.D. Vance and organisations such as the Heritage Foundation – the architects of the Project 2025 blueprint.
He is one of the chief puppeteers behind the Trump-era chaos. Thiel actively funds anti-establishment disruption to dismantle regulatory frameworks, intentionally manufacturing the very societal chaos he claims only Palantir’s mass surveillance can manage.
D: The Delusion of Superiority and Human evolution Driven by René Girard’s “Mimetic Theory,” Thiel views the general public as a mindless, moronic mob that must be controlled by elites like him.
Embracing the delusion of the Sovereign Individual, Thiel has no intention of fixing the democratic systems he helps break. Instead, he is hoarding fortified doomsday bunkers in New Zealand, actively preparing for an “H2 scenario” heralding a catastrophic, systemic global collapse.
This deep disregard for humanity culminates in an obsession with redesigning human evolution itself. Thiel treats human limitation and death as defects to be solved, pouring massive investments into transhumanism, cryonics, and young blood transfusions.
His endgame is a complete evolutionary split: engineering a future where the billionaire class achieves digital eternity as a sovereign, immortal species, leaving the masses to burn on an unregulated, collapsing planet.
This may be hard to grasp but thats the type of people Australia has entrusted their government data to.
The Verdict
Australia didn’t choose authoritarianism; it chose efficiency. We are quietly outsourcing our reality to an unaccountable technocracy.
Thiel’s lectures aren’t a warning about a coming digital dictator; they are a job application for the position.
He is the man who sells you the matches, then offers to build you a fireproof bunker for the price of your freedom.
Palantir isn’t just software. It is an installation moment. And installations this deep rarely come with an uninstall option.
1 This month
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
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