Four federal polls have been released since Sunday. One Nation has taken the primary vote lead from Labor in both the Redbridge and YouGov polls and is tied with Labor in the Morgan poll. Labor held a primary vote lead in Fox & Hedgehog.

If the polls are ranked by the overall vote for One Nation and the Coalition, the F&H poll is Labor’s worst, with the right vote at 52%. The right had 51% in Redbridge, 49% in YouGov and 47% in Morgan.

Labor still led One Nation by respondent preferences in all four polls, though only by 51–49 in Redbridge. In F&H, Labor trailed the Coalition on respondent preferences, but led in the other polls. Morgan and YouGov had polls taken immediately after the budget.

One Nation has gained in both these polls from their post-budget editions. The next federal election is not due until early 2028. If the changes introduced in the budget pass parliament, they will mostly be implemented from July 2027.

Analyst Peter Brent suggests Labor may regain ground if the sky doesn’t fall in after July 2027.

Redbridge poll A national Redbridge and Accent Research poll for The Financial Review, conducted May 25–28 from a sample of 1,005, gave One Nation 31% of the primary vote (up four since the last Redbridge poll in late April), Labor 28% (down three), the Coalition 20% (down two), the Greens 12% (down one) and all Others 9% (up two).

By respondent preferences, Labor led both One Nation and the Coalition by just 51–49, a four-point gain for One Nation and a three-point gain for the Coalition. By 2025 election preference flows, Labor led the Coalition by 52–48, a one-point gain for the Coalition.

Anthony Albanese’s net favourability slumped ten points to -19. Treasurer Jim Chalmers also crashed 13 points to -18.

Greens leader Larissa Waters was down two points to -6, Liberal Andrew Hastie down six points to -6, Angus Taylor down two points to -4, Nationals leader Matt Canavan down two points to -4 and Pauline Hanson up one point to net zero.

Read more: View from The Hill: Could One Nation be the unofficial opposition at the 2028 poll? In a three-way preferred PM question, Albanese had 31% (down two), Hanson 25% (up two) and Taylor 14% (steady). By 55–23, respondents thought the federal budget would be bad for the nation rather than good.

By 48–11, they thought it would be bad for them personally.

On issues, the combined score for the Coalition and One Nation led the combined score for Labor and the Greens by 39–28 on cost of living, 35–29 on housing, 55–20 on immigration, 42–25 on economic management, 42–23 on crime and 42–24 on national security.

The left had a 36–32 lead on healthcare and a 40–24 lead on climate change. The right has gained on issues that were assessed in late April.

YouGov poll A national YouGov poll for Sky News, conducted May 26 to June 2 from a sample of 1,471, gave One Nation 29% of the primary vote (up four since the mid-May YouGov poll), Labor 26% (down two), the Coalition 20% (down three), the Greens 13% (steady), independents 6% (up one) and others 6% (steady).

By respondent preferences, Labor led One Nation by 52.5–47.5, a 0.5-point gain for One Nation. Labor led the Coalition by 51.5–48.5, a 0.5-point gain for the Coalition. Albanese’s net approval slumped seven points to -26 with 60% dissatisfied and 34% satisfied.

His net approval has dived 12 points in the last two YouGov polls. Albanese led Taylor as preferred PM by 41–39 (41–38 previously). He led Hanson by 47–41 (50–38 previously). By 46–31, respondents supported One Nation and the Coalition working together to form government.

Among One Nation voters, this was 53–25 support and among Coalition voters 45–28 support. The previous YouGov poll was taken after the May 12 budget, so this poll suggests further damage for Labor and Albanese and gains for One Nation since the immediate budget aftermath.

Fox & Hedgehog poll: combined right vote jumps A national Fox & Hedgehog poll for News Corp, conducted May 25–26 from a sample of 1,700, gave Labor 29% of the primary vote (down one since the late March F&H poll), One Nation 27% (up four), the Coalition 25% (up two), the Greens 10% (down three) and all Others 9% (down two).

By respondent preferences, the Coalition led Labor by 51–49, a two-point gain for the Coalition. This is the first Coalition lead in a poll other than Essential. Labor led One Nation by 54–46, a two-point gain for One Nation.

Albanese’s net approval was down three points to -22, with 51% disapproving and 29% approving. Taylor’s net approval was steady at net zero (29% both approving and disapproving). Hanson was down one point to +8 (44% approve, 36% disapprove) and Chalmers was down five points to -17 (37% disapprove, 20% approve).

Taylor led Albanese as preferred PM by 38–36 (39–35 to Albanese previously). If a teal-style party ran, this poll suggests it would get 6%, with that support coming most at the expense of Labor (down three points to 26% vs the standard question).

There would be no effect on the combined vote for One Nation and the Coalition. Just 28% thought Labor had done enough to deserve re-election while 57% thought it was time to give someone else a go.

But by 44–30 and 45–40, respondents thought the Liberals and One Nation respectively were not ready for government. By 47–19, respondents had an unfavourable view of the federal budget. By 59–20, they did not trust the Labor government’s promise not to introduce taxes on the family home or death taxes in future budgets.

Morgan poll: Labor and One Nation tied on primary votes A national Morgan poll, conducted May 25–31 from a sample of 1,542, gave Labor 27% of the primary vote (down 0.5 since the May 18–24 Morgan poll), One Nation 27% (up 1.5), the Coalition 20% (down three), the Greens 13.5% (steady) and all Others 12.5% (up two).

By respondent preferences, Labor led One Nation by an unchanged 53.5–46.5. Labor led the Coalition by 55.5–44.5, a 2.5-point gain for Labor. By 2025 election flows, Labor led the Coalition by 53.5–46.5, a 1.5-point gain for Labor. Since the budget, One Nation’s support has increased every week in Morgan’s polls.

Morgan had not been friendly for One Nation prior to the budget.

Adrian Beaumont does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/one-nation-surges-to-first-on-primary-votes-in-two-new-polls/

The United States hosted its first World Cup in 1994. Soccer has changed dramatically in many ways since then – on and off the pitch. As the US (with Mexico and Canada) gets set to host the mega-event once again, more than anything, the tournament’s defining change since 1994 is its sheer scale-up.

The scale-up This scale-up can be clearly quantified. The 1994 tournament featured 52 matches across 32 days with 24 teams. By contrast, the 2026 event (the first three-nation World Cup) will involve 78 matches in the US alone, over 39 days. The competition’s 48 teams are divided into 12 groups, with progression to the knockout stage awarded to the top two teams in each group along with the eight best third-placed teams.

In terms of games, the tournament has doubled in size since 1994. The scale-up is not accidental. It has been driven by the twin forces of globalisation and commodification, alongside a deliberate strategy by FIFA president Gianni Infantino to both protect and extend football’s commercial dominance.

Central to this has been expanding the tournament into non-traditional markets, most notably the US – the world’s largest sports economy – thereby generating substantial financial returns and commercial interest. Infantino and FIFA have faced sustained criticism in global media – ranging from controversial symbolic gestures involving Donald Trump to concerns over ticket pricing.

But the broader outcome is clear: the World Cup has become more expansive and commercially powerful than ever.

Read more: Why Trump and FIFA are perfect bedfellows as the World Cup heads to the US At the same time, FIFA has deepened its claim to global reach by incorporating smaller nations such as Cape Verde and Curaçao, whose combined populations are well under one million.

The scale-up rests on two core dynamics. First, more matches mean more broadcast content, and media rights remain FIFA’s largest revenue stream. Expanding to 104 matches significantly increases the value of rights deals, particularly across participating nations.

Second, expansion broadens FIFA’s political base. By granting more countries access, it strengthens the influence of nations previously on the margins of global soccer. Within FIFA’s voting structure, each member association carries equal weight: the vote of powerhouse Brazil counts the same as that of Curaçao, a recent entrant with a population around 150,000.

At the same time, a larger tournament increases the likelihood that major population centres and emerging consumer markets (such as China, India, and Southeast Asia) will participate, further expanding the World Cup’s commercial reach.

The unresolved question for FIFA is one of limits: how far can expansion go before it dilutes the exclusivity and premium value of the World Cup? The World Game in the US Soccer in the US has grown markedly since the 1994 event.

In many ways, this growth reflects the original intent behind awarding the 1994 World Cup to the States. The 1994 tournament was still the best-attended in history, largely due to the use of National Football League (NFL) venues.

It was granted on the condition that a viable professional league be reestablished following the collapse of the North American Soccer League in 1984. Major League Soccer (MLS), launched in 1996, is now firmly established within the US sporting landscape.

The pathway has also strengthened, with college athletes feeding into MLS and increasingly major European leagues, alongside the expansion of secondary professional and semi-professional tiers. Growth has been especially strong in the women’s game thanks to significant new investment.

The US men’s team, currently ranked 16th in the world, could plausibly make a deep run in 2026. As in 1994, matches this year will largely be staged in football stadiums to maximise capacity. Rule changes and technology FIFA’s rule changes are largely designed to keep the ball in play and increase the tempo of matches.

Measures addressing time-wasting – from stricter control of throw-ins and goal kicks to tighter management of added time – reflect this objective. The 1994 World Cup introduced major reforms, including a ban on back-passes to goalkeepers and awarding three points for a win to encourage attacking play.

Looking to the 2026 event, technological oversight will expand, with Video Assistant Referee (VAR) technology applied more broadly to decisions such as second yellow cards and corner calls. Player welfare has also become more prominent: after the extreme heat issues of 1994, mandated drinks breaks will be introduced – one in each half around the 22-minute mark.

Substitution rules have also evolved significantly, increasing from two in 1994 to five regular substitutions, along with an additional allowance for concussion replacements. Same game, different scale Since its codification and even in early filmed matches more than a century ago, soccer’s simplicity has been the foundation of its global dominance.

The sport’s continuity bridges generations.

The leading players of the 1994 World Cup, such as Italy’s Roberto Baggio and Brazil’s Romário, could plausibly compete in the modern game, even if today’s players are generally more physically developed.

Ultimately, despite the scale, global reach and commercialisation of tournaments like the World Cup, soccer’s enduring success lies in its consistency.

The game played on the world’s biggest stage remains fundamentally the same as that played in parks, schools and local grounds; simple, universal and instantly recognisable.

Steve Georgakis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/from-usa94-to-now-how-soccer-has-changed-since-the-last-american-world-cup/

The colonisation of Brazil, which began in the 16th century with the arrival of the Portuguese, caused profound transformations in the lives of Indigenous peoples. This included the spread of disease, loss of territory and violence.

Today, a comparable process is underway, one we are calling “Indigenous digital colonisation.” We have been investigating how growing access to the internet and mobile devices is impacting Indigenous communities, causing significant social, cultural and behavioural change.

Recently, with support from the Association for Consumer Research, American Marketing Association and Transformative Consumer Research, we had the opportunity to conduct an ethnographic study in a series of remote Amazon tribes accessible only by humanitarian flights, such as those carried out by the “Aliança de Esperança” (“Hope Alliance”) mission.

Higor Leite, one of the co-authors of this piece, spent a week in these communities in the state of Pará in the north of Brazil. He observed the residents going about their lives and spoke with them about the impact of the internet on their communities.

The experience was both productive and deeply unsettling. Connecting the disconnected As a research team, we have long argued that inclusion is necessary for people experiencing vulnerability, especially when it comes to accessing resources widely available to the rest of society.

In the communities Higor visited, we closely observed the positive effects of initiatives to expand connectivity in the Amazon. Residents reported meaningful improvements in communication with family members in urban areas and other tribes. Access to essential services has also expanded.

In emergencies, the communities can now quickly contact the health system, receive initial guidance, and arrange aerial evacuation when necessary. In this respect, technology functions as more than a facilitator. It can, in certain cases, save lives.

Beyond health care, internet access opens new pathways to information. Indigenous communities members can now follow and participate in debates far beyond their tribes. During our visits, we noticed that Starlink antennas paired with solar panels had become part of the local landscapes.

What was once a single, communally shared connection is giving way to individualised access, with residents managing their own devices and accounts. A return to a disconnected Amazon is neither realistic nor, at this point, desirable.

At first glance, this represents significant advancement with real potential for inclusion and social transformation. But during our time in the field, we identified an important and under-examined gap: the limited understanding of the side effects of unequal access to technology.

When inclusion becomes exclusion Our conviction that inclusion is a positive process was directly challenged by what was witnessed in the communities. To be clear: we continue to believe that digital inclusion is fundamental for supporting people experiencing vulnerability.

But this fieldwork made clear that the effects are not uniformly positive. Alongside the gains, technology brings a set of less visible, and often unintended, consequences. Intensive use of mobile devices is already widely associated with hyperstimulation, increased screen exposure, and behavioural changes, particularly among young people.

If these effects are a significant challenge in urban areas, the impacts are likely to be more acute in communities experiencing vulnerability, such as Indigenous populations who have had no gradual acclimation. As Higor walked around the communities, he witnessed children and adolescents deeply absorbed in their phones.

Many times, his presence went entirely unnoticed. Groups of people gathered together under trees, but remained isolated from one another, focused on online games, with little or no direct interaction. The impact was intensified at night, when the absence of natural light made the glow of screens all the more visible.

A major health event also occurred in one community during Higor’s stay, which allowed for access to chiefs, teachers and leaders from neighbouring communities. They described similar scenes in their communities, where cell phone use had become compulsive, in some cases comparable to alcoholism or substance dependence.

There were reports of residents inverting their sleep cycles, trading daytime activities for night to maximise their time online. Many had withdrawn from traditional practices, such as hunting, fishing and cultural gatherings. When device use was interrupted, particularly among children and adolescents, many showed signs of withdrawal: heightened aggression, anxiety, verbal abuse and disrupted sleep.

In the most serious cases, leaders described instances of suicide ideation or attempts. This is what we have come to call “Indigenous digital colonisation”. While promoting inclusion, access to technology has also simultaneously caused dependency and put strains on elements of cultural identity that hold communities together.

The parallel to historical colonisation, however, runs deeper than just the metaphor. Hidden risks of Indigenous digital Colonisation Beyond the intensive screen time, other risks arise from exposure to the broader digital environment. A recurring pattern involves scams via WhatsApp and Instagram.

Indigenous people are being targeted through extortion, pressured into financial transfers under threat of having intimate images exposed. There were also accounts of recruitment attempts targeting women in particular, with promises of a better life in urban areas.

These episodes point to something beyond the direct risks of connectivity. There is a significant asymmetry in preparedness between these communities and the digital environment they are now navigating. Distinguishing legitimate content from fraud is a challenge even for people long familiar with the internet.

For communities at an early stage of technological adaptation, with social vulnerabilities, communication barriers, and limited digital literacy, exposure to harm is amplified even further. A connected Indigenous future Our research is in its early stages, and we expect further layers of complexity to emerge as our analysis continues.

Our central premise remains: the digital inclusion of Indigenous people must be preserved and strengthened, given its potential to expand access to rights, services and opportunities. But more work is required. The effects of Indigenous digital colonisation must be understood and mitigated to ensure technological inclusion translates into genuine improvements in wellbeing, rather than new and insidious experiences of vulnerability.

Our research agenda is moving toward applied solutions in four areas: developing structured protocols for internet access in communities producing educational materials on digital safety and privacy raising awareness of risks associated with excessive screen time and building digital literacy within Indigenous communities.

The challenge is no longer simply whether to connect. How access is shaped, mediated, and supported will matter as much as the connection itself.

These communities deserve better than the version of connectivity that has, so far, largely been delivered to them.

Higor Leite receives funding from the Transformative Consumer Research (TCR) Committee, the Association for Consumer Research (ACR), and the American Marketing Association (AMA).

Alison M Joubert receives funding from the Transformative Consumer Research (TCR) Committee, the Association for Consumer Research (ACR), and the American Marketing Association (AMA).

Amelie Burgess não presta consultoria, trabalha, possui ações ou recebe financiamento de qualquer empresa ou organização que poderia se beneficiar com a publicação deste artigo e não revelou nenhum vínculo relevante além de seu cargo acadêmico.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/indigenous-digital-colonisation-how-the-internet-is-affecting-the-lives-of-indigenous-peoples-in-the-amazon/

Wasana Kunpol/Getty Many Australians have stopped worrying about respiratory viruses. The pandemic has passed and attention has shifted. COVID no longer dominates the headlines, and influenza is often dismissed as a routine winter illness.

But the latest provisional figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) suggest otherwise. In 2025, there were 1,455 deaths in Australia due to influenza. This is the highest number the ABS has recorded in this series of data in modern times.

This is more than in previous peak years, such as 2017 (1,276 deaths) and 2019 (1,072 deaths). COVID continued its long decline as a cause of death. In 2025, there were 1,718 deaths due to COVID, down from 3,908 in 2024 and 4,613 in 2023.

These figures count deaths directly attributed to each virus. The charts below also include deaths where the virus contributed but was not the main cause. More importantly, between August 2025 and January 2026, influenza was the underlying cause of more deaths each month than COVID, a pattern we have not seen since the pandemic began.

None of this means COVID has disappeared. Far from it. But it means the mix of respiratory viruses is changing. There’s also a third respiratory virus that often gets overlooked – respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.

Looking beyond case numbers When people hear reports that a respiratory virus season is “bad”, they often think about case numbers, meaning the number of people testing positive for a particular disease. But case numbers have become increasingly unreliable.

Most people with a cough, sore throat or fever don’t get tested. Many never see a doctor. Even when they do, they aren’t always tested. And if they are, no test is 100% accurate.

That’s why epidemiologists often pay more attention to severe outcomes such as hospital admissions and deaths. Hospital admissions are generally a better measure than case notifications, but at the moment not all Australian states and territories report them consistently.

That leaves deaths as the most reliable measure for comparing the impact of respiratory viruses over time. The ABS data show that deaths caused by COVID have steadily fallen over the past three years, while deaths caused by influenza have moved in the opposite direction.

In 2024, influenza was recorded as the underlying cause of death in 807 Australians. Last year that almost doubled to 1,455. A big jump like that is unusual for a virus for which we have had vaccines for decades.

Influenza vs COVID deaths One reason influenza appears to be doing so much damage is what we’re comparing it to – COVID – has become less deadly in recent years. Population immunity from vaccination and prior infection has substantially reduced the risk of severe disease.

COVID treatments are also available for people at high risk of severe disease, and hospital staff now have better ways of treating those severely ill. Influenza behaves quite differently. The virus evolves rapidly, and vaccine effectiveness varies from year to year.

As a result, immunity from last year’s infection or vaccination doesn’t necessarily provide much protection against this year’s strains. That is why a new influenza vaccine is needed every year. Some years influenza causes relatively little severe disease.

Other years are much worse. In 2025, we saw one of those years. A late-emerging H3N2 subclade K influenza variant (known as super K) extended the season and was poorly matched to the H3N2 strain in that year’s vaccine.

At the same time, influenza vaccine coverage among Australians aged 65 years and over was around 62%. This is down from 64% in 2023 and well short of the World Health Organization target of 75% for this age group. Read more: Can I get a free flu shot?

And will it cover ‘super K’? Your influenza vaccine questions answered Then there’s RSV Lost in the discussion about flu and COVID is RSV. This is best known as a cause of illness in babies and young children.

But older people can also become seriously ill. In 2025, RSV was the underlying cause of 198 deaths in Australia. However, RSV is often recorded as a contributing rather than underlying cause of death because it can worsen conditions such as chronic lung disease or heart failure.

In 2025, another 392 deaths listed RSV as a contributor. Taken together, this points to RSV playing a much larger role in respiratory deaths – by both contributing to, and being the underlying cause of, death. What does this mean for winter?

So, will 2026 be another severe flu year? We don’t yet know. What is clear, though, is all three viruses are circulating side by side, and any one of them could surge. Early data suggest influenza deaths during January and February were roughly double those recorded during the same period in 2025.

However, these figures can fluctuate considerably early in the year, so it is too soon to draw firm conclusions. COVID deaths remain at relatively low levels, while RSV continues to circulate in the background. Older Australians remain at greatest risk of death from all three viruses.

So vaccination still matters. People aged 65 years and over, aged-care residents, people with chronic health conditions, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, pregnant women and young children should be up to date with recommended vaccines.

The 2026 flu vaccine has been updated to better match last year’s troublesome H3N2 strain. Importantly, influenza, COVID and RSV vaccines can all be given at the same visit.

Adrian Esterman receives funding from NHMRC, MRFF and ARC.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/how-flu-overtook-covid-as-australias-deadliest-respiratory-virus/

Gabrielle Henderson/Unsplash Profound changes are ahead for online advertising. At the recent Google Marketing Live event, the tech giant outlined expanded artificial intelligence (AI) systems for digital ads. What will that look like? Picture ads integrated directly into your conversation with an AI chatbot.

Or a discounted price that only you see because an AI system served it based on your browsing behaviour, intent to buy the product, and what’s available locally. And, of course, generative AI tool suites for producing online ads start to finish.

Meta and ByteDance (parent company of TikTok) have similarly accelerated the rollout of their own AI-driven advertising systems. Meta is expanding tools that automatically generate and personalise ad images, video backgrounds, captions and targeting across Facebook and Instagram feeds.

Facebook is offering tools to create personalised ads based on users’ interests and behaviours. Meta Bytedance’s TikTok Symphony suite can generate promotional videos, scripts, AI avatars, dubbed voiceovers, and creator-style content from simple text prompts or product links.

At the same time, ads on these social media platforms are becoming harder to recognise. As one example, Instagram and Facebook recently eliminated their familiar “sponsored” labels in favour of smaller “ad” markers. It may look like a minor interface tweak, but it signals something larger: the steady erosion of clear boundaries between advertising, entertainment, recommendation, and ordinary social interaction.

Dissolving into the flow Social media platforms have engineered ads to mimic organic content. Just think of influencer and creator partnerships, AI-personalised search results, or brands using memes. Increasingly, online ads are less of an interruption to the content you consume.

Instead, they’re designed to dissolve into the flow itself. When companies buy advertising space on social media, ads are automatically disclosed as a commercial message. With partnerships and AI-personalised results, the platforms currently offer limited forms of disclosure.

The result is a blurring of the lines. Products, ideas and political messages are spread through ads that look a lot like all other, non-sponsored content. And the less an ad feels like an ad, the more effective it often becomes.

This is precisely where public accountability starts to break down. For several years, researchers like us, working through projects such as the Australian Ad Observatory and the Australian Internet Observatory, have documented how difficult it already is to observe and analyse online advertising systems.

Our work has examined everything from political advertising and astroturfing campaigns, the marketing of alcohol and unhealthy foods, and the veracity of “green” claims made by advertisers. In many cases, this work depends on relatively simple but crucial forms of signalling.

Researchers need to know what counts as an advertisement, who paid for it, where it appeared, and why it was shown to particular audiences. But those signals are weakening. Blurry and harder to audit A blurred system is harder to audit.

Audiences should be able to recognise when they’re targeted with ads. Without clear ad disclosures, we can’t easily detect or question commercial influence in our feeds and search results. New AI tools intensify this challenge.

Instead of seeing discrete ads in your feed, you might be getting a stream of product suggestions and discounts nobody else sees. This means regulators and researchers can’t even audit them. These personalised, disguised ads could also make product recommendations that are biased and potentially harmful.

For instance, you might be telling an AI assistant that you’re stressed, and suddenly be offered a discount on a case of wine. AI-driven dynamic advertising is highly concerning for products that are unhealthy, harmful or regulated – such as alcohol and gambling.

If ads appear one moment and are gone the next, it’s almost impossible to make sure they comply with relevant regulations. The danger is not simply that users may encounter more advertising. It’s that the underlying commercial and promotional logic and messaging become even harder to see.

Read more: OpenAI will put ads in ChatGPT. This opens a new door for dangerous influence We’re not powerless Australia’s emerging digital duty of care framework offers an opportunity to confront this problem directly.

Much of the current discussion has focused, understandably, on harms such as misinformation, scams, abuse, or risks to children. But opaque advertising systems are also a public interest issue. They shape political communication, consumer behaviour, health information, financial decision-making, and civic trust.

If platforms increasingly profit from blurring advertising and ordinary communication, then stronger positive obligations around disclosure and transparency become essential.

Minimum disclosures for digital advertising on social media should include: consistent and clear human and machine-readable advertising labels across formats and services accessible ad archives for public-interest scrutiny, including AI variations inclusion of meaningful and accurate information about targeting and delivery, and clear identification of AI-generated or AI-mediated advertising, including specifics on how AI was used.

This is not about banning advertising. Nor is it about returning to some imagined “clean” internet untouched by commerce. Advertising has always adapted to new media and will continue to do so. But there’s a fundamental difference between visible persuasion and persuasion that disappears into the infrastructure.

Without clear signals on what is and isn’t an ad, we lose one of the few remaining ways to understand who is shaping the information environments we increasingly depend on every day.

Daniel Angus receives funding from the Australian Research Council through Linkage Project LP190101051 ‘Young Australians and the Promotion of Alcohol on Social Media’.

He is a Chief Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making & Society, and QUT Node Lead for the Australian Internet Observatory.

Nicholas Carah receives funding from the Australian Research Council through Linkage Project LP190101051 ‘Young Australians and the Promotion of Alcohol on Social Media’ and Discovery Project DP250102499 ‘The Australian experience of automated advertising on digital platforms’.

He is an Associate Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making & Society.

He is Deputy Director of the Australian Internet Observatory and Deputy Chair of the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education.

Lauren Hayden does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/online-ads-are-becoming-harder-to-spot-but-were-not-powerless-to-stop-it/

Justin Paget/ Getty Images If your child has ever dug their heels in on the morning of the school athletics or cross country day, or refused to speak in front of the class, you’re not alone.

For some children, these kinds of events bring a heavy, anxious feeling: what if I’m the slowest, what if everyone’s watching, what if I get it wrong? For parents, it can be hard to know what to do.

Push too hard and the morning becomes a meltdown. Let them off and you worry you’ve taught them to opt out. Is it ever okay to follow their lead? And how do you give them the best chance of having a go next time?

Why (gently) facing fears matters When we avoid something we’re afraid of, we feel instant relief. That relief is powerful, and it teaches the brain that avoiding worked. Over time, the fear grows and the impulse to avoid gets stronger.

This is true for all of us, not just children. So, in general, it helps for children to face fears sooner rather than later, before avoidance settles in. But that doesn’t mean forcing a child through a panic.

Pushing too hard can confirm to them the situation really is dangerous. It’s worth helping your child face the fear before avoidance takes hold. What that looks like depends on what’s driving it.

Start by understanding what’s going on If you can see a tricky day coming, talk to your child about how they are feeling ahead of time. Ask gentle questions to work out what the resistance is actually about.

Did something happen last time? Is something going on with friends? Is your child worried about failing, being judged, or being laughed at? You might say: I noticed you got really quiet when Dad mentioned athletics day.

Is something about it worrying you? Children won’t always have the words straight away, so give them time. It can help to have these conversations side-by-side rather than face-to-face: at bedtime, walking or driving together.

Without eye contact, children find it easier to think and talk about hard things. Try not to jump in to say “you’ll be fine” or “there’s nothing to worry about”. This can come across as dismissing the feeling, and your child may stop talking.

Just listening can help children open up. Validate the feeling Once you have a sense of what’s going on, let your child know the feeling makes sense before moving to suggesting what to do.

Children find it easier to think about solutions once they feel heard. You might say: I can see this feels really big right now. It makes sense you’re worried. Pause and stay silent for a moment.

They may start crying, which is often part of processing fears. This is often when we are tempted to rescue or reassure them. Instead, try to just remain a supportive presence. You can offer a hug and say, “This sounds really hard”.

Then work out a plan together At this point, help your child think about what taking part might look like in a way that feels safe and manageable for them. You might say: I wonder what might make it easier to go?

What’s one small part of it you think you could manage? Options might be walking the cross country instead of running it, reading the speech to one trusted teacher before presenting to the class, or going along and just observing to start with.

For some events, it’s worth having a quiet word with the teacher too, so the plan works at school as well as at home. The goal isn’t a perfect performance, it’s helping your child take part in a way they can manage.

Try not to rush or pressure them. If they say “I don’t know” acknowledge it can be hard to think when you are feeling worried. Sometimes it helps to take a brief break and come back to explore options later.

On the day You can calmly remind them of what has been discussed. It can help to state what you would like to happen and then provide opportunity for the child to express how they are feeling: It’s time to go.

I know this is not easy and a part of you really doesn’t want to do this. If they become upset, stay close and let the feelings be there. You don’t need to fix it or hurry them through it.

A hand on their back or a quiet “I’m here” is often enough. Children often need to feel their fear before they can move through it. This is where courage grows. Courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s being able to move forward even when fear is present.

When children see they can carry their worries and still take part, they begin to develop confidence in their ability to cope with challenges. Is it ever okay to follow their lead? Sometimes, yes, if your child is really distressed, a brief step back will help them regain a sense of control.

A one-off opt-out isn’t a problem, and children are allowed to dislike things. The warning sign is a pattern: when avoidance is creeping in more often, or your child is missing out on things they actually want to do.

If there’s a history of bullying, a bad past experience, or their fear and anxiety is starting to limit daily life, it’s worth seeing your GP for a referral to a psychologist who works with children.

How to approach ‘achievement’ and ‘participation’ in general Most of what helps a child “have a go” is built in to the everyday conversations at home, not on the morning of the event. It’s about gently setting expectations: that we don’t always have to win, be the best, or get it right, and that’s okay.

A few themes are worth weaving in often. The first is everyone has different brains and bodies so some things will come more or less easily to each of us. Difference is normal, and worth admiring rather than ranking.

You might say: I loved learning from my colleague Penny at work today. She knows so much about how water works in the environment. The second is that skill is built, not bestowed. Children often think of sport, music or performance as fixed talents you either have or you don’t.

But ability develops with practice. A child who plays sport every day will find running at athletics day easier, because they’ve put in the time, not because they were born for it. The third is to help children notice progress against their own past self, rather than the ranking.

Last week you could swim 20 metres, and now you are swimming almost 30! And the fourth, persisting at something hard is the real achievement. It’s easy to do what you’re already good at. Sticking with the thing that doesn’t come easily is harder, and worth naming when you see it.

I can see how frustrated you are with your reading. Keeping going – when it’s this hard is the bit I’m most proud of.

The goal isn’t a fearless child The goal is a child who learns, over time and in small steps, that they can do hard things, and that being different from the child next to them is okay and a normal part of life.

Elizabeth Westrupp receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council.

She is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Mental Health & Prevention, affiliated with the Parenting and Family Research Alliance, and is a registered clinical psychologist.

Christiane Kehoe is co-author on the Tuning in to Kids suite of programs and receives royalties from the sale of the facilitator manuals used by clinicians who deliver the parenting groups.

She is affiliated with the Parenting and Family Research Alliance and Deputy Editor of the journal Mental Health & Prevention.

Rebecca Knapp does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/how-to-encourage-a-child-to-try-new-scary-things-without-traumatising-them-in-the-process/

In the popular imagination, the phrase “Viking hoard” might evoke images of plunder stashed by marauding Norse pirates. Or perhaps you picture sacred objects hidden by frantic monks in the uproar of a violent raid.

The Galloway Hoard reveals the truth of the Viking expansion was less dramatic. But as the richest Viking-era hoard discovered so far in the United Kingdom and Ireland, it also exposes a more complex and intriguing past.

The hoard was buried in southwestern Scotland around 900 CE.

We owe its recovery to a gold-standard cooperation between Derek McLennan, the metal detectorist who uncovered it in 2014, and the archaeologists who helped preserve it – and are now hard at work to unlock its mysteries.

Traces of a complex maritime world The hoard, which consists of more than 100 items of mostly silver and gold, is currently on display in Sydney at the National Maritime Museum. This is a particularly fitting venue, as it embraces the hoard as a mirror of the Vikings’ legendary seafaring culture.

The exhibition greets visitors with a replica of a Viking-era boat stempost from the Isle of Eigg in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides. It reminds us of the importance of ships for this world, where voyaging the sea lanes was as important as taking the land.

Some of the hoard’s most unique and exotic items open its northern world up to the south and the east parts of the globe. In the exhibit, 3D-printed replicas allow visitors to see these items in all their original splendour.

These include an ornate silver vessel from the ancient Persian Sasanian Empire, a jar carved from Roman-era rock crystal, and Scotland’s earliest surviving fragments of silk. Even the more “local” objects have unexpected features indicating cultural and linguistic complexity around the Viking-occupied perimeter of the Irish Sea.

Viking-era silver armbands inscribed with Old English runes, for instance, point to the persistence of the earlier language in this area despite Scandinavian incursion. One such armband states its owner is Egbert – definitely a pre-Viking English name.

Other pre-Viking English treasures include a cross, rare for having its neck-chain still attached, and seven brooches with Christian and pagan features. This so-called “Viking hoard” then, is actually a material record of overlapping times and places that have been deliberately gathered and buried together.

But who gathered these goods together for burial, and why? What did these items mean to them? Were they venerating them, hiding them, or keeping them safe? And did they mean for the hoard to remain undiscovered for more than a thousand years – or perhaps forever?

The mystery of hoards These questions may never have definitive answers.

Hoards, broadly defined by British archaeologist Eleanor Ghey as buried or concealed items “kept together, perhaps gathered all at once or gradually amassed over time”, fascinate us because they’re as mysterious as they are revealing.

Ghey notes, though, that there are clues to be found in the objects themselves, and where and how they’ve been deposited. The Galloway Hoard’s 900 CE dating comes from its silver and textile items.

Inscriptions on some armbands point to possible collective or even communal ownership. One especially intriguing feature is the hoard’s two layers: a bed of gravel separates a less valuable upper deposit of silver bullion from a lower deposit containing gold and exotic goods from afar.

The upper layer might simply be a later deposit. But some speculate it’s a decoy, designed to stop finders from digging down to the more cherished goods. Perhaps we’ll know someday. Detecting the past The Galloway Hoard’s 2014 discovery is part of a broader explosion of similar significant finds by amateur detectorists.

In 21st-century Britain alone, detectorists have uncovered dozens of Iron Age, Roman, Pictish, Saxon, Viking and late medieval hoards. In 2009, for example, they attracted worldwide coverage after discovering the vast 7th-century Staffordshire Hoard. The public frenzy wasn’t just due to the splendour of the 4500+ objects, but to the serendipity of its discovery by an amateur.

British detectorists have shown commitment to establishing good practice. The National Council for Metal Detecting cooperates with professional archaeology bodies and promotes legal and ethical detecting. The Galloway Hoard’s finding was a model of good practice.

When he realised he’d found something significant, detectorist Derek McLennan downed his tools and contacted archaeologists, who protected the site and goods and contacted the national Treasure Trove Unit. That said, detectorist conduct hasn’t always been so exemplary, as I discovered when researching for my forthcoming Exeter University Press book Detectorists: Feeling for the Past.

In 2015, the discovery of the Viking-era Hereford Hoard resulted in the conviction of detectorists and coin dealers for illegal finding, concealing, and black-market selling of items. McLennan, by contrast, kept his allotted 50% of the £1.98 million (about A$3.7 million) paid by the National Museum of Scotland.

This is surely a modern parable for the importance of sharing, rather than hoarding, the spoils. Treasures of the Viking Age – The Galloway Hoard is showing at Sydney’s Australian National Maritime Museum until October 11

Louise D’Arcens has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/galloway-hoard-exhibit-in-sydney-dives-into-the-secrets-of-the-viking-world/

Mick Tsikas/AAP, Hakim/Canva, The Conversation, CC BY New polling this week put One Nation ahead of Labor in the primary vote for the first time, as the party’s latest policy announcements signal greater political ambition.

One Nation recently unveiled its new oil and gas policy at the Australian Energy Producers Conference in Adelaide. It promises “vastly greater returns” to an electorate “rightly unhappy” with the distribution of Australia’s natural resources.

While One Nation’s gas policy is not entirely new, the party’s growing prominence means announcements will attract greater scrutiny. So, what is the party proposing? Embracing government intervention The Norway-style gas proposal is One Nation’s first substantial intervention in current tax and energy policy debates.

It’s a marked shift away from the social and migration issues that have long defined the party. Norway heavily taxes its oil and gas extraction profits. It reinvests the wealth into the world’s largest sovereign fund to spent on social initiatives.

Echoing the Trump administration’s willingness to buy into resource and technology companies, One Nation’s announcement reflects a broader embrace of economic interventionism: where a government actively modifies a free-market economy. The announcement shows a stark differentiation between One Nation and The Liberal Party on the economy.

And it comes at a time when the parties have increasingly overlapped on issues like migration. Liberal frontbencher James Paterson attacked the policy as socialist. He described it as “borrowed from Venezuela and Hugo Chávez”.

One Nation’s policy Despite the splashy announcement, One Nation’s gas policy was not entirely new. Hanson has pointed to a Norway-style sovereign wealth fund as a model for gas revenue policy since at least 2017.

Senator Hanson has also frequently attacked parliament for being “hostage” to multinationals resource companies operating in Australia. In announcing the policy, Senator Hanson committed One Nation to encouraging more gas and oil exploration and production.

Hanson also said taxpayers should get a “fair share” on profits from Australian resources. Key elements of the policy include replacing the current Petroleum Resource Rent Tax, which places a 40% tax on the profits related to the extraction of petroleum, gas and condensate.

Instead, One Nation would give the government the option to take a 30% stake in future drilling projects, with profits directed into a new sovereign wealth fund. It’s not the first time this has been suggested.

Back in May 2017, Hanson proposed One Nation adopt a system of royalties paid on production, saying such a scheme would raise up to $10 billion per year. Tapping into public grievance One Nation’s position sets it apart from both major parties.

Labor and the Coalition hold sharply differing views on energy and Net Zero. But the two parties share common ground on one point: neither supports increased taxation measures on the gas industry, particularly amid global uncertainty caused by the US-Israel war with Iran.

With its policy, One Nation is tapping into real public grievance.

Others, such as The Australia Institute, the Greens, and Independent senator David Pocock have spent years pointing out the same basic unfairness: Australia exports vast quantities of gas, companies profit enormously, and the taxpayer gets very little in return.

But the timing of One Nation’s announcement deserves closer scrutiny. It was not made to a general audience but a gathering of energy industry heavyweights. Reports suggest the announced version was softened after consultations with industry representatives.

Pushing back at the ‘green agenda’ Far-right parties have a distinctive approach to energy policy – they simultaneously cast multinationals as “elites” who take wealth from ordinary people, while advocating for gas drilling expansion themselves. Hanson has adopted US President Donald Trump’s slogan – “drill, baby, drill” – to spruik her party’s approach to fossil fuels.

And she has called on the Labor government to push their “climate change bedwetters” to the side, and expand oil and gas exploration in the interest of energy security. One Nation blames environmental reforms for triggering an energy crisis, which it claims has cost everyday Australians.

Ending net zero is, accordingly, a “massive part” of One Nation’s gas policy, which they claim will safeguard fuel security. Hanson has described One Nation’s policy as “partnering with the oil and gas industry, rather than treating it as the enemy”.

Internal tensions This policy debate risks exposing potential tensions between the federal and state branches of One Nation. Efforts by the South Australian Labor government to repeal a ten-year moratorium on fracking in the south east of the state were blocked by the newly elected One Nation MPs and Liberal Opposition.

The inconsistency between the federal party’s pledge to expand gas exploration and the state branch’s efforts to block it have created headaches for their leader. Hanson distanced herself, dismissing it as a decision for the state branch.

Heading into the next election, One Nation wants contrast with the Liberals on economic interventionism, while setting itself apart from Labor, the Greens and the independents on climate and environmental policy.

It is calculated decision from a party that senses its moment.

Emily Foley receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Jordan McSwiney receives funding from the Australian Research Council, NSW Government, and NSW RNA Research & Training Network.

Kurt Sengul receives funding from the Australian Research Council, NSW Government, and NSW RNA Research & Training Network

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/hansons-gas-policy-follows-the-far-right-playbook-attack-elites-and-push-for-drilling/

Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock The Conversation’s Curious Kids podcast is back for a second season to answer some of the fantastic questions sent in by listeners around the world! Each episode, a curious kid joins host Eloise to ask a top researcher their burning question, such as: why do your fingers and toes go wrinkly in the bath?

Why does our taste in food change as we get older? And how high can volcanoes actually send molten lava up into the air? While we’ve been off air, The Conversation’s Curious Kids podcast was named Best Kids podcast at the British Podcast Awards 2025.

Follow us wherever you get your podcasts, or listen on the Yoto Player via the Discover section on the Yoto interactive audio platform for kids. New episodes every Tuesday from June 9, or listen back to season one here.

You can also read lots of answers to questions sent in by children around the world in our Curious Kids series. Got a question? Pop it in an email, or record it and send us the audio to curiouskids@theconversation.com.

This season of The Conversation’s Curious Kids is supported by the University of Southampton in the UK, a world-leading research-intensive university with a global network of international students and campuses in Malaysia and Delhi.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/new-season-of-the-conversations-award-winning-curious-kids-podcast-launching-this-june/

Workers prepare to burn imported plastic waste at a dump in East Java, Indonesia, in 2018. Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images Picture a pile of trash the size of Manhattan and taller than one and a half Empire State Buildings.

That’s how much plastic waste the world is predicted to be generating every year by 2050 if nothing is done to change course. It’s easy to think of recycling as the solution, but the vast majority of plastic waste now ends up in landfills, or worse.

A large amount of plastic waste gets shipped overseas. In a new study, my colleague and I analyzed what happens when plastic waste is shipped to lower- and middle-income countries, where open burning is a common way of dealing with excess waste.

The result, we found, is pronounced increases in toxic air pollution.

Plastic waste burning and health impacts Between 40% and 65% of total municipal solid waste is openly burned in low- and middle-income countries, largely as a result of 2 billion people around the world having no municipal solid waste collection.

Open burning occurs both intentionally and unintentionally, the latter when open dump sites containing organic waste spontaneously combust due to heat generated as the waste degrades. A worker carries a basket of plastic waste, wood and coconut husks to be used as fuel to fry tofu at a factory in Sidoarjo, Indonesia, in 2025.

Burning waste is a common way to cut fuel costs, but studies have found high levels of microplastics in the tofu from these factories, toxic ash inside the buildings and hazardous levels of air pollution.

Robertus Pudyanto/Getty Images When plastic burns, it releases particularly toxic air pollutants. Fine particles can penetrate deep into people’s bodies, along with gases that include carbon monoxide, styrene gas and hydrogen cyanide. It also releases persistent organic pollutants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and dioxins.

These particles and gases have been linked to health risks ranging from respiratory and cardiovascular disease to cancer and reproductive and neurological disorders. The ash from open burning can also contaminate soil and groundwater with persistent organic pollutants, heavy metals and other toxicants, creating more chances for people to be exposed to them through food and water.

The global plastic waste trade Large amounts of plastic waste are shipped around the world – some to be recycled and much to simply be disposed of in landfills or incinerated. In 2024, 9.34 million metric tons of plastic waste imports were reported, according to the United Nations.

Where this exported plastic waste ends up has been shifting. In 2018, China stopped importing plastic waste, causing the total amount of plastic waste moving among countries – at least through official channels – to drop dramatically. Between 1992 and 2016, China’s plastic waste imports made up 45% of global imports.

In 2018, the flow moved to other countries, largely in Southeast Asia but also other locations, including Turkey. In 2018, Indonesia became a net importer of plastic waste. The majority of this waste came from Western Europe, Australia and North America.

What happened to Indonesia’s air quality We harnessed data from multiple monitoring systems, including satellite observations and cargo ship tracking signals, to understand where these plastic waste imports went and how much air pollution was released by openly burning this waste.

As of 2020, the World Economic Forum and Indonesia’s government estimated that 48% of Indonesia’s plastic waste is openly burned.

We found that particulate matter air pollution – of great concern for health – increased an average of 3.3% at the locations of large open waste dump sites in Indonesia after China’s ban in 2018-19 relative to expected business as usual, based on data from 2012-17.

We found increases up to 1.68 micrograms per cubic meter.

Based on risk estimates from a global study of mortality associated with long-term exposure to outdoor fine particulate matter, this corresponds to an approximate 1.5%, 1.9% and 3.5% increase in mortality risk from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer and lower respiratory infections, respectively.

New constraints on the plastic waste trade In 2021, Indonesia restricted the import of nonhazardous waste to 15 specific ports and in 2025 banned the import of plastic waste altogether.

In mid-2025, Malaysia followed suit, allowing plastic waste only from countries that have ratified the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal – a treaty that the U.S. has never ratified.

For these bans to be effective, these countries must also find ways to contend with illegal plastic waste shipments and paper imports contaminated by plastic waste. Where plastic waste exports went in 2024. The chart does not include waste disposed of within the country where it was produced.

UN Comtrade, Ellen Considine, created with Flourish, CC BY-ND Meanwhile, negotiations for an international, legally binding treaty on plastic waste, started in 2022, have stalled.

In mid-2024 the European Union did pass a new regulation on waste shipments, prohibiting exporting plastic waste to countries outside the group of wealthy countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development from November 2026 to at least May 2029.

The effectiveness of these and future policies at reducing air pollution – and other kinds of environmental degradation – can be evaluated using methods like ours. Ways to reduce plastic waste As of 2021, only 5% to 6% of U.S. domestic plastic waste was recycled, according to estimates from the advocacy group Beyond Plastics and Bennington College.

It is now even harder to export plastic waste to other countries that could “recycle” it.

Part of the problem is lack of capacity: The Association of Plastic Recyclers estimates that current plastic reclamation facilities in the U.S. and Canada could at most increase their plastic recycling by 35% to 44%, depending on the type of plastic, leading to a total recycling rate of 7% to 9%.

Ultimately, both decreasing plastic use and increasing recycling will likely be needed to solve the problem. Beyond consumer choices, packaging reuse – creating packaging and return systems that put the same materials back to work – can reduce the need for new plastics.

Recycling experts call for harmonized design standards to help streamline processing and deliver higher-quality recycled plastics, as well as extended producer responsibility fees or taxes to raise the cost of producing products that aren’t recyclable.

The fees can provide needed funding to scale up recycling and other programs to reduce generation of plastic waste. Since 2021, seven states have enacted extended producer responsibility laws focused on packaging: Maine, Oregon, California, Colorado, Minnesota, Washington and Maryland.

However, it will take time to see the effects. Colorado’s final implementation plan, authorized in 2022, was approved only in late 2025. The first payment of extended producer responsibility fees to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment are scheduled to begin in mid-2026.

Ultimately, reducing and better managing our nation’s plastic waste can help prevent global health harms.

Ellen M. Considine does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/a-lot-of-recycled-plastic-is-being-burned-overseas-and-causing-widespread-pollution-linked-to-health-problems/

Myanmar’s civil war is one of the clearest tests of the international community’s promise to protect civilians. Two decades on from the creation of the United Nations’ “Responsibility to Protect,” that promise has been quietly abandoned.

Myanmar has spent most of its independent life in conflict. Since its inception in 1948, it has struggled to build a political order that can hold together its highly diverse ethno-politico-religious communities. At its core is an unequal relationship between a Bamar-dominated central state and the ethnic border regions.

Military rule has defined the country’s governance. Since General Ne Win’s 1962 coup, the army — known as the Tatmadaw — has governed directly or through proxies. The so-called 8888 uprising of 1988 and the monk-led Saffron Revolution of 2007 were both handily crushed.

Read more: Myanmar military’s ‘ceasefire’ follows a pattern of ruling generals exploiting disasters to shore up control A democratic opening from 2010 to 2015 gave Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy a landslide victory before the military seized power again in February 2021.

The elections the junta staged in late 2025 and early 2026 were widely condemned as neither free nor fair. The Responsibility to Protect Myanmar should matter to anyone who takes the Responsibility to Protect seriously. The edict emerged from the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty in 2001, a process tied to Canadian leadership, and was endorsed by UN member states in 2005.

Its premise is simple: when a state cannot or will not protect its people from ethnocide, commits war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, that responsibility passes to the international community (although this is an ambiguous entity in geopolitical terms).

Yet Responsibility to Protect provisions have always been applied selectively. Some crises attract diplomatic energy and intervention; others are treated as distant and inconvenient. A doctrine written for human protection loses its moral authority when it’s applied selectively.

Read more: Why has the West given billions in military aid to Ukraine, but virtually ignored Myanmar? Myanmar exposes this weakness. Its war draws far less western attention than Ukraine or the Middle East. Why is such an enduring and intractable conflict being treated with scant urgency?

The cost is not only battlefield deaths, but the slow attrition of refugee camps, children growing up stateless and unschooled and people denied for years the right to return home or work. The scale of displacement is hard to absorb.

Bangladesh hosts well over a million Rohingya refugees, most in the camps of Cox’s Bazar, with roughly 150,000 more arriving since early 2024 as violence in Rakhine, a coastal state in western Myanmar, intensified in 2025-26.

Thailand shelters more than 80,000 refugees from Myanmar in nine temporary shelters along the Thai-Myanmar border. In addition, it’s home to several million Myanmar nationals or migrants, with the International Organization for Migration estimating around 4.1 million Myanmar nationals residing in Thailand in 2024, including a large irregular migrant population.

These are not temporary inconveniences; they are long-term political failures. Fighting the state The Rohingya are the most visible face of this catastrophe. The 2017 exodus from Rakhine drew global attention, and Gambia’s genocide case has kept legal pressure on Myanmar.

In January 2026, the International Court of Justice held three weeks of hearings on the merits, with a judgment expected this year. But the Rohingya are only one part of a wider conflict. For decades, ethnic armed organizations have fought the state for autonomy or territory, and many are more than armed entities.

As Prof. Imtiaz Ahmed from Dhaka University has argued, some function as “proto states,” meaning they have their own currencies, control over territories and armed forces. Most importantly, the cost of non-resolution is enormous. The five economic and cost-analysis models in the Myanmar Crisis Dashboard show that inaction carries measurable human, regional and economic consequences.

A war economy keeps the fighting alive. Rare earth mining, drug trafficking and online scam compounds did not cause the conflict, but they sustain it. Kachin State has become central to the global rare earth supply chain and UN investigators have traced a multi-billion-dollar scam industry to the country’s lawless border zones.

Read more: Inside Southeast Asia’s scam compounds: A trafficked worker tells of fraud, coercion and torture How to end the conflict If a war economy helps sustain the conflict, ending it means building something that can out-compete it.

That is the premise behind Charting a Lasting Peace in Myanmar, a project funded by Global Affairs Canada and implemented by the organization I direct, the Conflict and Resilience Research Institute Canada. Myanmar needs peace architecture that offers an alternative to war.

One idea is a stabilization and reconstruction plan for Rakhine, among the country’s poorest regions and central to both Rohingya displacement and the wider conflict.

The reconstruction proposals draw inspiration from the post-Second World War Marshall Plan and, more recently, from China’s Belt and Road Initiative Read more: US pressure has forced Panama to quit China’s Belt and Road Initiative – it could set the pattern for further superpower clashes Justice alone has not produced safety or peace for decades.

A reconstruction plan could build a peace dividend, showing that infrastructure, schools, clinics and livelihoods can deliver more than a war economy ever will. Such a plan would rest on three commitments. Displaced people, in the camps and the diaspora, would be trained for work so they are ready to rebuild when conditions allow.

Planning should not wait for a final peace deal; negotiation and reconstruction are separate tracks that reinforce each other. These proposals also need credible backing from donors and regional governments. The risk is that reconstruction money could be seized by the entities who profit from the war.

Designing to guard against that possibility is part of the work. Global effort required Geopolitics cannot be ignored. China holds major stakes through the Belt and Road Initiative and hedges between the military and the armed groups; India has concerns about its northeastern frontier.

The crisis is regional, not just domestic. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, must play a larger part. Its Five-Point Consensus, agreed in 2021, has not resolved the crisis and is now widely judged as a failure, yet it remains the most legitimate regional platform.

The organization’s Institute for Peace and Reconciliation could study reconstruction-based alternatives. Canada has a role, too. It helped shape the origins of the Responsibility to Protect and has funded research on peace in Myanmar.

It can do more by lobbying partners, supporting regional reconstruction architecture and ensuring Myanmar isn’t forgotten. The Responsibility to Protect cannot apply only when intervention is politically convenient. The real test isn’t how loudly governments speak when a crisis is visible, but whether they act equitably when the suffering is slow, distant and inconvenient.

Myanmar is one of those tests.

So far, the world is failing it.

Kawser Ahmed is Executive Director of the Conflict and Resilience Research Institute Canada (CRRIC), which receives funding from Global Affairs Canada to implement the project Charting a Lasting Peace in Myanmar discussed in this article.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/myanmars-forgotten-war-how-the-world-is-failing-the-test-of-the-uns-responsibility-to-protect/

Three-quarters of S&P 500 companies now tie a portion of their CEO’s pay to environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics. They typically include carbon emissions, workforce diversity and worker safety, among others. The justification is straightforward: if shareholders want corporations to take climate change and social responsibility seriously, firms should pay their leaders for achievements on these dimensions.

This practice is encouraged by boards and large institutional investors. Read more: ESG bonuses are on the rise: Are they improving sustainability or just increasing executive wealth? Regulators are now trying to standardize the underlying metrics so investors can compare firms on a common basis.

The European Union has gone the furthest by directly regulating ESG rating providers. In 2024, the Canadian Sustainability Standards Board released its sustainability disclosure standards aligned with two global standards issued in 2023 by the International Sustainability Standards Board.

Around 40 jurisdictions have now adopted those standards or taken formal steps toward doing so. Why the push for standardization? One persistent problem concerns how ESG performance should be measured in the first place. Today, major rating providers — including MSCI, Sustainalytics, S&P Global and Bloomberg — rate the same firms very differently, even when assessing the same dimension of performance.

One influential paper found that the average correlation between major ESG ratings is around 0.54 — far below the near-perfect agreement between credit rating agencies. The same firm can look like a sustainability leader under one provider’s score and a laggard under another’s.

This divergence is widely seen as a problem, and the standard prescription is harmonization. The conventional view is that convergence on a common standard is unambiguously desirable. But is that really the case? In a recent paper, my co-reseacher Nicolas Sahuguet and I set out to answer a simple question: If executives understand how the metrics tied to their pay are calculated, how will they actually respond?

The answer points to an unintended consequence of the push for harmonization.

When targets get gamed Critics, including law professor Lucian Bebchuk at Harvard University and economist Alex Edmans at London Business School, have argued that tying executive compensation to specific ESG metrics invites executives to game the scheme and may end up exacerbating the agency problem of executive pay.

An executive who knows exactly how a carbon-intensity score is calculated does not need to actually reduce their firm’s environmental impact to improve that score. They can outsource emissions-heavy production to external suppliers or shift the firm’s activities toward those that improve relevant metrics without changing its underlying environmental impact.

None of this requires fraud — only an understanding of how the scoring system works. What our research shows To examine this, we built a formal model of the relationship between a manager and a socially responsible board.

The model accounts for the manager’s ability to anticipate how their decisions will affect their own ESG-based pay, and to game the incentive scheme accordingly. The picture that emerges is more nuanced than the debate usually allows.

ESG-linked pay can be second-best optimal, but it is never without cost. Because our model showed that the manager games whatever metric is used, ESG bonuses inevitably distort their decisions, diverting resources toward investments that improve the score rather than the underlying outcome.

The board accepts this distortion only when the alternative is worse — that is, when it genuinely wants the firm to do more for the environment or for stakeholders than what would maximize its stock price.

If shareholders already reward social performance through the stock price, as they increasingly do, equity-based pay is already providing adequate incentives.

Adding ESG bonuses on top is then counterproductive on two fronts: it distorts investment decisions through gaming and pushes the firm to over-allocate resources to ESG activities beyond what either shareholders or the board actually want.

This helps explain why the sensitivity of CEO pay to ESG metrics is usually small, even in firms that have made serious public commitments to environmental or social goals. That is not necessarily window dressing.

Boards keep this sensitivity low precisely to limit the distortion from gaming. Why disagreement has value Our model also generated a less obvious finding: the current patchwork of competing rating methodologies may actually be doing useful work.

When several raters use different methodologies, gaming becomes harder because what improves one score may not improve another. An executive who knows that Provider A weights one set of indicators, Provider B weights different ones and Provider C weights different ones still cannot easily satisfy all three without genuinely improving underlying performance.

A single official measure, by contrast, gives every CEO a clear target to optimize against. Once the methodology is public and predictable, the gap between hitting the metric and improving actual performance widens.

For harmonization to be a net improvement, the unified standard would need to be of substantially higher quality than the patchwork it replaces by a factor that scales with the number of providers being consolidated.

The central premise driving the harmonization push — that disagreement among raters is a flaw to be regulated away — deserves more scrutiny than it has received. That is a high bar. Disagreement among raters has costs, but it also has benefits.

By limiting a manager’s ability to game the metrics, multiple independent measures allows firms to provide more effective incentives across ESG dimensions. Regulators should consider preserving the discipline that comes from keeping those measures independent.

Pierre Chaigneau is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Finance.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/the-push-to-standardize-esg-scores-could-make-corporate-greenwashing-easier-not-harder/

If we do the maths, the target readership for this teen adaptation of Jacinda Ardern’s bestselling memoir A Different Kind of Power were at primary school when she was prime minister. Those were the days when Ardern’s “stardust” – as her particular brand of political magic was described – saw her reach extraordinary heights of popularity, both at home and abroad.

But, as we know from the adult edition of her memoir, Ardern had always struggled with the self-confidence and self-belief we normally associate with effective leadership. Review: What If You Could – Jacinda Ardern (Penguin) Facing down this imposter syndrome informs the new book much more than the various events she had to contend with during her time in office.

Dedicated to “the leaders of tomorrow – who just don’t know it yet”, it is more accessible and immediate, with much less political detail. Ardern always wanted her original memoir to speak to her 14-year-old self, dedicating it to “the criers, worriers and huggers”.

What If You Could expands on that, spinning her life experiences and challenges into a self-affirming guide to following dreams, being strong and ultimately creating a different kind of power. No celebration of impossible standards Deftly adapted by New York-based writer Ruby Shamir, the book spends no time dwelling on COVID.

Ardern’s time working for Tony Blair in London is gone. Leaving the Mormon church is summarised in one sentence. But both books begin with pivotal bathroom moments. In A Different Kind of Power, Ardern is in her friend’s toilet, taking a pregnancy test while waiting to learn if she can form a coalition and therefore become prime minister.

This time, she is in a high school bathroom stall before a debating competition, so nervous she’s cut her finger trying to open the jammed door. Cleverly, these different prefaces are united by the same passage: My whole life I had grappled with the idea that I was never quite good enough.

That at any moment I would be caught short, and that meant no matter what I was doing, I had no business doing it. Instead, Ardern believed she was more suited to working behind the scenes.

She wasn’t tough enough, was too “idealistic and sensitive” for the political front line. And so the passages from the original memoir about her connection with Ernest Shackleton and the heroic age of Antarctic exploration are also gone.

Despite her own achievements – one of New Zealand’s youngest ever prime ministers, a woman in a male-dominated world who gave birth while still in office – the book avoids any celebration of impossible standards. Rather, she turns inward toward the psychological terrain, describing her feelings of being an imposter and the nagging fear of being exposed as a fraud.

Near the end of What If You Could, Ardern speaks directly to “everyone who doesn’t fit the old mould”. She encourages young people to channel the challenges of imposter syndrome into something positive: In fact, all of the traits that you believe are your flaws will come to be your strengths.

The things you thought would hold you back will in fact make you stronger, make you better. They will give you a different kind of power and make you a leader that this world, with all its turmoil, might just desperately need.

Read more: In her memoir, Jacinda Ardern shows a ‘different kind of power’ is possible – but also has its limits Corrective mantras to self-doubt If there is a whiff of the self-help genre here, it is also a welcome change from the kind of inspirational literature commonly aimed at young readers throughout modern history – heroic tales of courage, bravery, physical prowess and intelligence.

Aimed at encouraging good citizenship, often their goal was as much to encourage conformity, service and, if necessary, sacrifice.

More recently, however, books for young adults have tended to focus on individual agency, engaging readers by directly asking “what would you do?” The subjects may still be on pedestals, but the message is that you can follow in their footsteps and change the world.

To that end, each of the 17 chapters of What if You Could has a key aspirational heading that sets out a challenge and guides the reader beyond their own self-imposed limits: what if you could be sensitive and show you care, what if it’s okay not to have all the answers, what if you could face your fears.

The absence of question marks in the book’s title and chapter headings is deliberate. Each serves as a corrective mantra to wash away self-doubt. Ardern affirms the power of traditionally gendered qualities such as being sensitive and caring.

And she grounds her own progressive politics in the language of answering calls for change and doing things differently. Her most personal feelings are explored in chapters about facing your fears, choosing your own path and following your passion, all of which address imposter syndrome and insecurity.

The final chapter echoes a currently fashionable self-affirmation catchphrase, “I am enough”, reframed here as “what if doing your best is enough”. Ardern then returns to those high-school years and recollections of how hard being young can be.

But adult life can be difficult too, she says, so you need to “be kind to yourself”.

No doubt there will be those for whom such notions – “you are not weak, you are human […] you are enough, just as you are” – will be reminders of why they resisted Ardern’s politics in the first place.

But in this time of global conflict, political cynicism and mean-spiritedness, they also represent a graceful, positive sentiment that world leaders – current and future – could do worse than adopt.

Katie Pickles does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/jacinda-ardern-turns-her-own-imposter-syndrome-into-self-help-wisdom-for-young-readers/

Pancreatic cancer has been notoriously difficult to treat. Steve Gschmeissner/Science Photo Library via Getty Images For a long time, the likelihood of surviving pancreatic cancer has been extremely low. For patients who were diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer between 2015 and 2021, about 97% died within five years of their diagnosis.

Pancreatic cancer is so deadly in part because there are no effective screening tests, and it rarely causes noticeable symptoms in its earliest stages. By the time a patient experiences signs, such as jaundice – a yellowing of the skin – or abdominal pain, the cancer has often already spread to other organs.

As a gastrointestinal oncologist and researcher specializing in early-phase clinical trials, I have seen the critical need for more effective therapies for patients with pancreatic cancer. For decades, successfully targeting the central mechanism that causes the vast majority of pancreatic cancers was considered impossible.

However, that narrative is rapidly changing with a new drug that can shut down the key protein that drives pancreatic cancer, nearly doubling survival rates for patients with advanced stages of the disease. ‘Undruggable’ tumors The standard treatment for advanced pancreatic cancer has historically relied on chemotherapy, potent drugs designed to kill rapidly dividing cells.

While chemotherapy can slow the progression of the disease, its effectiveness is often limited by the ability of pancreatic cancer cells to develop resistance against these drugs. KRAS (blue) has been difficult for drugs to target.

Fvasconcellos/Wikimedia Commons Pancreatic cancer’s success lies in its genetics. More than 90% of pancreatic tumors are driven by mutations in a gene called KRAS. This gene codes for proteins that function as switches that turn cell growth on and off.

When the KRAS gene is mutated, the switch becomes permanently stuck in the “on” position, commanding cancer cells to multiply endlessly. For decades, scientists considered KRAS to be “undruggable.” The surface of the protein is exceptionally smooth, lacking the molecular pockets that standard drugs require to bind to and turn the switch off.

Because existing drugs haven’t been able to target this protein, treatment for pancreatic cancer has primarily relied on toxic drugs that act more like blunt instruments than precise tools. Chemotherapy attempts to control the disease through widespread cell destruction, causing significant collateral damage to healthy tissues that lead to side effects.

What is daraxonrasib? A new drug called daraxonrasib offers a critical advance in treating metastatic pancreatic cancer. Daraxonrasib is taken daily by mouth. Instead of binding to KRAS directly, it attaches to a molecule called cyclophilin A in cells that helps fold proteins into their final 3D structures.

This protein complex is then able to bind to the active KRAS protein and shut down its ability to signal cancer cells to multiply. The company developing the drug, Revolution Medicines, presented results on May 31, 2026, from its Phase 3 clinical trial of 500 patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer who had received prior treatment.

Compared to standard chemotherapy, daraxonrasib nearly doubled overall survival from 6.7 months to 13.2 months after diagnosis. Overall, daraxonrasib reduced the risk of death for metastatic pancreatic cancer patients by 60%. Daraxonrasib nearly doubled survival for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer compared to chemotherapy.

The most common side effect is a prominent skin rash, which affected more than 86% of patients in the study. Patients also frequently dealt with stomatitis – painful swelling and sores inside the mouth – as well as diarrhea, nausea and vomiting.

However, patients taking daraxonrasib were far less likely to stop treatment due to severe side effects compared to chemotherapy, and they had improved quality of life with reduced pain. Next steps for daraxonrasib By successfully targeting the specific genetic mutation that drives the vast majority of pancreatic cancers, researchers have demonstrated that this “undruggable” disease is treatable with targeted therapy.

The immediate next step is regulatory review of the drug’s readiness for the clinic. With data now officially published, Revolution Medicines will use these findings to seek formal approval from the Food and Drug Administration and other global regulatory bodies.

Because advanced pancreatic cancer is notoriously difficult to treat, breakthrough therapies that demonstrate this kind of significant survival benefit are often granted expedited or priority review. When daroxonrasib becomes available to patients will depend on the review timeline.

Should the drug obtain approval, it could be available in clinics within months. For the broader landscape of drug development, this milestone represents a likely shift in pancreatic cancer treatment. I expect more clinical trials exploring combination therapies pairing KRAS inhibitors with other drugs to prevent tumors from developing resistance to treatment.

Should daraxonrasib succeed, it could help set the stage for more precise, personalized and effective treatments for pancreatic cancer in the years to come.

Christopher Lieu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/breakthrough-drug-nearly-doubles-survival-with-advanced-pancreatic-cancer-an-oncologist-explains-how-daraxonrasib-overcame-an-undruggable-disease/

Hybrid work can create unexpected problems and less certainty to workers’ routines than if they go either fully remote or fully in-office. LYCS Architecture on Unsplash, CC BY A truce of sorts has quelled the return-to-office wars that have raged in the post-pandemic workplace.

Hybrid work policies, which require some in-office work while allowing flexibility to work from home, have become commonplace. In 2023, only 20% of companies had implemented hybrid policies. That number had shot up to 38% in 2024 and to 42% in 2025, according to the workplace survey Flex Index.

Hybrid work supporters can point to research suggesting that hybrid policies improve employee retention and decrease turnover. Some human resource professionals agree, citing their personal experience, with some job seekers seeing hybrid work as a bare-minimum expectation as they consider opportunities.

As business scholars who study management and communication technologies, we have discovered a more complicated picture. Our research shows that employees actually have more mixed feelings about hybrid work, with some becoming disillusioned. In fact, a hybrid solution may not always be the sustainable compromise it’s hyped to be.

A changing workplace landscape We tracked a group of employees from three large companies in the financial services sector starting in 2022. Coming out of the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, one company decided to go fully back to the office, one chose to stay fully remote, and one adopted hybrid policies.

In each case, not surprisingly, employees had mixed responses to whatever the policy was. It was clear, though, that the hybrid policy had the fewest fans.

While office work was preferred by 50% of employees in the back-to-office company, and remote work by 62% of employees in the fully remote business, only 44% of employees in the hybrid workplace told us they were happy with their company’s policy.

When we checked back with our participants in 2025, it looked like most employees in each company were now on board with their company’s chosen policy: The share of approval rose to 60% for back-to-office, 72% for fully remote and 63% for the hybrid format.

Notably, these companies also experienced very low turnover, so the sample of workers remained largely the same. At first glance, the almost 20-percentage-point jump in the approval rating for hybrid work would suggest it had turned into a golden compromise over time.

But a closer look reveals an unstable support base. In the other two scenarios, all of the employees who preferred in-office or remote work back in 2022 were still on board with their company’s policy in 2025.

In contrast, in the hybrid company, only half of those who preferred hybrid in 2022 had the same outlook in 2025. The other half now said they preferred either in-office or remote work. The hybrid policy had gained new support, but it had lost half of its original fans.

Those who now embraced the office spoke about better collaboration and relationship building opportunities.

“Because I like my team and my work is somewhat collaborative, I tend to find it more enjoyable and productive to be in most of the time,” said one worker who said their preference changed from hybrid to in-office.

Meanwhile, those who switched to preferring remote work often spoke of personal arrangements as a key driver. “My wife and I have made decisions about childcare based on me being able to work from home,” is how one employee put it.

Sticky versus fluid preferences The upshot: Back-to-office and fully remote work policies create more durable, or “sticky,” preferences for those respective types of work. In contrast, hybrid policies form preferences that are more fluid. In our book “The New Workplace,” we explore this divergence through the eyes of employees.

One reason the nonhybrid policies create sticky preferences is that they help employees set routines with predictability. And people like predictability in their work and life. But going to the office every day isn’t just predictable.

It offers an added bonus of work-life separation. “I need structure!” was a common refrain we heard from office-preferring participants, who spoke of work and life “bleeding together” without workplace boundaries. Hybrid work promises greater in-person collaboration, but only if workers go to the office at the same times.

Campaign Creators on Unsplash, CC BY Working remotely every day is predictable in a different way. It offers the added bonus of increased autonomy and freedom. Remote-preferring participants prized their independence so much they described their employer’s remote policy as “golden handcuffs” that kept them there even though they otherwise might leave.

Hybrid policies, in contrast, create competing demands that challenge employees, forcing them to constantly switch between work and home modes. This requires both personal flexibility and adaptability – psychological traits that few people naturally possess. Even hybrid-preferring employees spoke of having to “train my brain” and “flip my mind” as they tried to adjust to the format’s unpredictability.

In the long run, some adapted to hybrid successfully by developing a new skill we called task-location fit. They learned to do focused, heads-down work at home and collaborative work at the office.

This was the crowd that remained on “team hybrid.” But others got tired of trying to adapt to the competing demands of hybrid – what we called paradox management fatigue – and decided either fully in-office or fully remote work was best for them.

This fatigue, in the end, is what made the hybrid preference fluid.

“I still value the flexibility to be able to work from home when needed, but I think getting out of a consistent rhythm has made me prefer working in the office,” said one worker who came to appreciate full-time in-office work.

A second reason hybrid policies lose fans is poor implementation. One error, we believe, is when companies hire across geographies. Most participants worked on teams where at least some, if not most, team members were in a different city, state or even country.

This defeated the purpose of an in-office requirement, as it effectively required remote team meetings. “I can Zoom from my home,” many participants said. Another mistake, in our view, is letting employees choose their in-office and remote work days.

While this lives up to the flexibility promise of hybrid, it leads to a half-empty office that’s lonely for those who come in. Furthermore, employees know they’ll find their teammates in the office under a back-to-office policy, or that their teammates will be available online under a fully remote policy.

But a “choose-your-adventure” hybrid policy removes the certainty of how, when, and where to reach teammates. The worst of both worlds? With these challenges, no wonder Dropbox recently called hybrid work “the worst of both worlds” and declared the company will stay fully remote.

At the same time, given the rising adoption of hybrid work, employers that are jumping on that bandwagon need to figure out how to prove the critics wrong and make hybrid work more sustainable. For example, employers can implement a structured hybrid schedule by setting one or more days when employees have to come in.

While this may sacrifice some personal flexibility, structured hybrid solves the coordination challenges. When everyone’s in the office at the same time, it won’t feel empty – and co-workers will collaborate more smoothly. Managers can also make the physical office a place of community where people want to be.

This means investing in livening up the office. In our research, participants’ stories were steeped with nostalgia for the days of company picnics, Oscar-style end-of-quarter celebrations, and disco-at-the-office parties. They said they also appreciated the little things, like pizza at the office or a food truck in the parking lot.

Participants wished these social activities would come back, even with a hybrid work schedule. Finally, companies can better align hiring and team design practices. Hiring across geographies allows locally unavailable talent to join the ranks.

But geographically dispersed teams aren’t hybrid – they’re fully remote. To solve this contradiction, managers should assign employees to teams based on geographic location. When that’s not possible, they should provide teams with a generous travel budget and encourage periodic in-person team gatherings.

These are just some tactics that can help companies make hybrid work.

As one manager, a believer in hybrid work from the start, said: “I continue to see huge benefits for my team members feeling like they can show up as their best selves at work because hybrid allows for work-life integration.”

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/hybrid-work-is-not-always-the-golden-compromise-employees-expect-even-as-more-companies-implement-it/