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Source — AITW Ep010: ASPI's Danielle Cave and Tom Uren on Cyber

Metadata

Field Value
Episode 10
Title ASPI's Danielle Cave and Tom Uren on cyber
Publication date 2018-12-14
Speakers Darren Lim (host), Danielle Cave (guest), Tom Uren (guest)
Allan Gyngell Not present
Duration ~50 min

Summary

Allan Gyngell is absent from this episode — the only episode in the first ten in which he does not appear. Darren hosts alone with two ASPI cyber specialists: Danielle Cave and Tom Uren. There is minimal direct biographical yield. One small detail is worth noting: in Ep007, Allan had said explicitly that he felt he "really badly needed to update my knowledge of cyber policy," and had deliberately read a book on the subject before that episode. This specialist two-guest episode, recorded a month later, can be read as the institutional follow-through — Allan appears to have helped identify the need and arranged the coverage, even if he was unable to participate. The episode shows the podcast's willingness to step outside its usual format (Allan-and-Darren dialogue) to bring in domain specialists on topics where practitioner knowledge is required. It is the exception that confirms the rule: Allan's presence is what gives the format its distinctive character, and his absence here is noticeable.

Key Topics

  • Defining "cyber" beyond security (content, information, digital diplomacy)
  • Internet of Things (IoT) risks and regulatory gaps
  • Russian interference in the 2016 US election as paradigm shift
  • Digital diplomacy: Australia's under-investment
  • Great-power competition: China's "cyber sovereignty" model vs. free/open internet
  • Australia's regional cyber aid programs
  • Regulatory directions: GDPR vs. Australian void
  • Sources of cyber power: US vs. China vs. Russia

Guest Profiles

Danielle Cave

  • Master's in Security, Sydney University
  • Journalism background
  • Worked at Lowy Institute (Pacific Islands focus)
  • Now Deputy Head, ASPI International Cyber Policy Centre
  • Primary interest: content of cyberspace; information flows; digital politics; digital diplomacy

Tom Uren

  • Biology degree, ANU
  • Worked at CSIRO on forest tree genetics (molecular biology)
  • Pivoted to Defence Signals Directorate
  • Visiting Fellow, ASPI International Cyber Policy Centre
  • Focus: big-picture technology/security nexus; IoT policy

Notable Guest Quotations

Danielle Cave on content vs. security framing

"I felt that 99.9% of individuals were looking at cyber and seeing just cybersecurity and very traditional cyber threats... but we could see more threats coming down the pipeline which were nontraditional and were about the content side of cyberspace, information."

— Danielle Cave [00:04:40.160 --> 00:06:08.800]

Danielle Cave on Australia's cyber vulnerability

"Australia is one of the few countries left in the Asia Pacific that has a mostly free and open cyberspace. And I think that's something that most Australians don't realise. It's sort of us and New Zealand, Japan and Taiwan and the Pacific Islands to some extent. But the rest of the region is really moving towards a very heavy, heavy regulated, very censored cyberspace."

— Danielle Cave [00:20:01.160 --> 00:22:02.860]

Tom Uren on black-swan cyber risks

"The things that happen often happen often and you develop plans to deal with them and you're pretty resilient to them. There's these kind of black swan events where things interact in a particularly funny way or something just totally unexpected happens and you end up in a world of hurt because of it."

— Tom Uren [00:15:15.160 --> 00:16:52.820]

Tom Uren on Western moral vacuum in cyber

"China has a strategic view of how it's doing that... The West, well, Europe's got the GDPR and the US and Australia, sort of a moral vacuum in terms of regulation."

— Tom Uren [00:35:06.000 --> 00:39:43.440]

Relevance to Allan Gyngell Project

Minimal direct relevance — Allan is absent. However:

  1. Allan's interest in cyber: Allan had noted in Ep007 that he was "badly needing to update my knowledge of cyber policy" and had read a book on it. This episode is the institutional follow-through on that concern: he arranged for Darren to host cyber specialists.

  2. Format flexibility: The podcast occasionally features expert guests in solo interviews with Darren, showing it is designed to be a platform for others as well as for Allan's views.

  3. Topical range: The corpus covers a genuinely broad range — not just Allan's preferred topics.

Open Questions

  • Does Allan return to discuss cyber in later episodes, informed by Cave and Uren's framework?