Justin Bassi, Executive Director, Australian Strategic Policy Institute

The assistant minister with responsibility for AI policy builds on his recent AI speech and his roadmap for Australia to leverage AI data centres to climb up the value chain. The conversation will cover the next steps for implementation, the government's plans for the next six to 12 months, and other issues for Australia in AI. 

Moderator: David Wroe,  Resident Senior Fellow and Head of AI and Security Program, Australian Strategic Policy Institute

Speaker:
Hon. Dr Andrew Charlton MP, Cabinet Secretary, Assistant Minister for Science, Technology and the Digital Economy and Federal Member for Parramatta, Australian Government

AI is already proving decisive to the global strategic order and is set to become increasingly so.  Many advanced capabilities, notably frontier models, are conspicuously concentrated in the US and China, but other countries play vital roles in various layers of the stack from chips to applications. This scene-setting session will consider how countries are looking to position themselves, the opportunities and risks for middle powers, strategies for managed interdependence, assessments of various sovereign strategies, and opportunities for Australia to work with capable international partners such as India, guided by the PACTS agreement. 

Moderator: Jisoo Kim, Co-Founder and Director, ClearAI

Speakers:
Ryan Fedasiuk, Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Aditya Maheshwari, Associate Professor, Indian Institute of Management Indore
Tak Tada, Chief Advisor, Global Public Policy, NEC Corporation

Australia has many strengths as a destination for data centre investment, including to train frontier LLMs, as well as a highly educated workforce and skilled research community. This panel will consider how Australia should capitalise on these advantages to translate them into benefits to national interest in the form of secure, sovereign access to advanced AI capabilities, whether provided by trusted partners, home grown or a mix of the two. Panellists will discuss what Australia needs to control, what it can leave to partners, what kind of conditions it should put on foreign investment, and what the prospects are for ambitious ideas such as sovereign models. 

Moderator: Olivia Shen, Director, Strategic Technologies Program, United States Studies Centre

Speakers:
Professor Nicholas Davis, Industry Professor of Emerging Technology and Co-Director of the Human Technology Institute, University of Technology Sydney
Hon Andrew Hastie MP, Shadow Minister for Industry and Sovereign Capability
Louise Stigwood, Managing Director ANZ, Public Sector, Amazon Web Services

A perspective from one of the world's leading AI companies. The conversation will cover Australia's role in the AI industry, OpenAI's plans in Australia, the state of frontier models, recent developments in risk and safety, data centre construction and communities; OAI's approach to global governance. 

Moderator: David Wroe, Resident Senior Fellow and Head of AI and Security Program, Australian Strategic Policy Institute

Speakers:
Ann M. O'Leary, Vice President, Global Policy, OpenAI

Safety and security are top of mind in the wake of a barrage of incidents and developments in 2026, from the revelation that Anthropic’s Mythos Preview was too cyber-capable to release publicly, to the astounding tale of OpenAI agents acting autonomously to launch a cyber attack against Hugging Face. Amid a frontier race with both commercial and geopolitical drives, leading industry figures are increasingly talking about slowing down research to enable greater safety. This panel will discuss cyber and other security risks, the attack-defence balance, misalignment and loss of control scenarios, and opportunities for Australia and likeminded partners to influence global governance, including through the work of bodies like the Australian AI Safety Institute. 

Moderator: Jisoo Kim, Co-Founder and Director, ClearAI

Speakers:
Dr S. Kate Conroy, General Manager, Australian AI Safety Institute
Hamish Hansford, Head of National Security, Department of Home Affairs
Liming Zhu, Research Director, CSIRO

Australia's Minister for Industry and Innovation discusses AI’s place in Australia’s industry strategy. The conversation will cover topics including AI adoption, sovereign capabilities, economic security and national resilience, and AI safety. 

Moderator: David Wroe, Resident Senior Fellow and Head of AI and Security Program, Australian Strategic Policy Institute

Speaker: Senator the Hon Tim Ayres, Minister for Industry and Innovation and Minister for Science

The head of Australia’s cybersecurity and SIGINT agency talks through the impact of AI-enabled cyber threats. The conversation will cover the recent growth in capabilities, the attack-defence balance, national security imperatives for enhanced AI capability in Australia, autonomy and the intersection of AI with other advanced technologies.

Moderator: Justin Bassi, Executive Director, Australian Strategic Policy Institute

Speaker: Abigail Bradshaw CSC, Director-General, Australian Signals Directorate

Australia aims to be the partner of choice in building AI capacity in the Pacific, and there are rich opportunities to collaborate with other Indo-Pacific nations. This panel will consider where the region stands on responsible AI adoption, what is needed most and how Australia can support it, taking account of the unique needs, cultures and languages across the region.

Moderator: Jessica Hunter, Australia's Ambassador for Cyber Affairs and Critical Technology

Speakers:
Tupou'tuah Baravilala, Director-General, Digital Government Transformation, Cybersecurity and Communications, Fiji
Dr Vidushi Chaturvedi, Advisor, Union Public Services Commission and former civil servant
Steven Matainaho, Secretary, Department of Information and Communications Technology, Papua New Guinea
Amit Shukla, Joint Secretary, Cyber Diplomacy, e-Governance and Information Technology, Ministry of External Affairs of India

China is close to the US on frontier models, behind on hardware, and formidable in many areas in between. This session will consider Chinese capabilities, strategies and priorities, and what they mean for the world, especially Indo-Pacific nations. The panel will discuss China’s preference for open weight releases and the implications for the AI adoption race globally, the sustainability of this approach, and the security and strategic risks for other countries. It will consider the obstacles China faces such as constrained compute, controversies such as distillation, and appropriate responses from other countries. 

Moderator: Finn McHugh, Canberra Playbook Co-Author and Federal Political Reporter, POLITICO Australia

Speakers:
Alex Colville, China AI Analyst, Australian Strategic Policy Institute
Ryan Fedasiuk, Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Kai-Shen Huang, Assistant Research Professor, Institutum Iurisprudentiae (Institute of Law), Academia Sinica, Taipei

Militaries around the world are scrambling to integrate AI to do everything from compressing decision time in operations and speed up targeting, through to improving back office tasks and helping with procurement, testing and evaluation. This panel will consider the opportunities for the Australian Defence Force and partner militaries, and look at the lessons from around the world, notably Ukraine with its remarkable use of drones, automation and AI. It will discuss concepts such as “decision-centricity” as a basis for reform, the opportunities in smart use of data, the security arguments for sovereignty and where our rivals stand. 

Moderator: Alice Hudson, Commercial Director, Altana

Speakers:

Nelli Blinova, Head of International Partnerships, Defence AI Center A1, Ministry of Defense of Ukraine
Kendy Hau, Head of Defence, Oceania, Fujitsu
Dr Paul Robards AM, Chief Data Integration Officer, Department of Defence

A perspective from one of the world's leading AI companies. The conversation will cover Australia's role in the AI industry, Anthropic's plans in Australia, the state of frontier models, the geopolitics of global governance, risk and safety, and data centre construction and communities. 

Moderator: Ryan Heath, Australia Launch Editor, Politico Australia

Speaker: Jeff Bleich, International Special Envoy, Anthropic

Justin Bassi, Executive Director, Australian Strategic Policy Institute