> Samantha Hoffman and Fergus Ryan, both experts on China at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute As a patriotic Australian I'd like to give you all a fri

> Samantha Hoffman and Fergus Ryan, both experts on China at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute As a patriotic Australian I'd like to give you all a friendly reminder about ASPI. While presenting themselves as an independent think tank for the Asia Pacific region they are anything but. This organisation that pumps out news articles more than papers are entirely funded by companies and departments that need ever more war and security theatre to feed their budgets. Some of their biggest donors include Raytheon, BAE, Northrup Gunnman and the US department of state, not to mention the Australian department of defense. Ironically we only found out about the foreign funding due to electoral interference laws originally aimed at the Chinese, no one knew about this US funding until they were forced to disclose it. How "independent" does that sound as a source for expert advice on a scale of one to ten? For an organisation that supposedly has Australia's best interest at heart they somehow manage to constantly get everything wrong from Saddamm's imaginary weapons of mass destruction to our decades long involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, the rise of ISIS, the terrible materiel purchases that were billions more than they should be and protecting a man who proudly commits and boasts about extrajudicial murder in the Philippines. Australian politicians across a wide political spectrum have voiced deep concerns about their influence and funding sources. Does this sound like a group of people that really care about advancing Australia, or something else is at work? I'm all for protecting data from overzealous evil companies, but you'll be waiting a very long time for these _independent_ national security specialists to say a single thing about the forty other apps on Australian phones sending sensitive data across the globe every minute. https://www.michaelwest.com.au/independent-think-tank-aspi-behind-push-for-more-defence-spending-rakes-in-advisory-fees/ https://www.michaelwest.com.au/independent-think-tank-aspi-b... https://johnmenadue.com/john-menadue-australian-strategic-policy-institute-by-their-fruits-you-will-know-them/ https://johnmenadue.com/john-menadue-australian-strategic-po...