Researchers at Melbourne start-up Cortical Labs have taught their “biological computer” made from living human brain cells to play Doom.

They say it brings biological computers a step closer to real-world uses, such as drug-testing or robotics applications.

Cortical Labs synthetic biological intelligence scientist Dr Alon Loeffler told Midday Report it was the “first code-deployable biological computer”.

“We like to call it neurocomputer, made out of about 200,000 to 800,000 cells that were taken from stem cells and turned into brain cells,” he said.

“Then we had an early access user, a customer of ours, in one-week programme the game Doom, or a free version of Doom, without the copyright restrictions, so that the cells can navigate this environment and try and beat the game.”

He said the cells were very similar to what would be in a real-life brain.

Loeffler said while they were human brain cells, they were not taken from people’s brains, but rather from blood donations.

“We take blood donations from willing volunteers and donors and then our amazing biology team does some biology magic, which is science, but I think of it as magic.

“They turn these blood cells into stem cells, similar to what in the past you’d have to take out of embryos, but now you can just get them from skin cells or blood cells.

“Then those are converted to brain cells or cortical cells, which are then placed on a Petri dish, and we can record the electrical activity from the cells because they communicate via electrical signals, similar to how they would in the brain.”

In that sense, they were alive, he said.

‘Learning to improve over time’

Loeffler said because the system didn’t have sensory inputs such as eyes or ears, the question was how they would encode the information.

A lot of research had gone into that, he said.

“We’re still in the very early stages of understanding that, but the idea is, for example, in the Doom game, if there’s an enemy or demon that appears on the left side, you can send in an electrical input on the left side of the chip, and if it’s on the right side, you could send in an electrical signal on the right side of the chip.

“This is obviously a much more condensed version and simplified version, but then the response of the culture would then kind of tell the game or tell the controller what to do, to move to the left or to move to the right, for example.”

Loeffler admitted the computer was not very good at the game, but would outperform a model that shot randomly.

He said it was “learning to improve over time”.

Loeffler said there were several real-world applications it could be applied to, such as drug development and testing.

“You can test all sorts of different drugs on these cells, and they’ll perform much more similar to biological systems,” he said.

“They’re also much more similar to brains than animal models, so you can kind of remove the need for mice and chimpanzees and sheep in animal models. You could also potentially use them for robotics applications.

“It’s one thing that biological systems are really good at doing, which AI is terrible at doing, is navigating new and changing environments.”

He said if they could improve its ability to understand inputs, they would be able to navigate an environment in a more biological way.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Researchers at Melbourne start-up Cortical Labs have taught their “biological computer” made from living human brain cells to play Doom.

They say it brings biological computers a step closer to real-world uses, such as drug-testing or robotics applications.

Cortical Labs synthetic biological intelligence scientist Dr Alon Loeffler told Midday Report it was the “first code-deployable biological computer”.

“We like to call it neurocomputer, made out of about 200,000 to 800,000 cells that were taken from stem cells and turned into brain cells,” he said.

“Then we had an early access user, a customer of ours, in one-week programme the game Doom, or a free version of Doom, without the copyright restrictions, so that the cells can navigate this environment and try and beat the game.”

He said the cells were very similar to what would be in a real-life brain.

Loeffler said while they were human brain cells, they were not taken from people’s brains, but rather from blood donations.

“We take blood donations from willing volunteers and donors and then our amazing biology team does some biology magic, which is science, but I think of it as magic.

“They turn these blood cells into stem cells, similar to what in the past you’d have to take out of embryos, but now you can just get them from skin cells or blood cells.

“Then those are converted to brain cells or cortical cells, which are then placed on a Petri dish, and we can record the electrical activity from the cells because they communicate via electrical signals, similar to how they would in the brain.”

In that sense, they were alive, he said.

‘Learning to improve over time’

Loeffler said because the system didn’t have sensory inputs such as eyes or ears, the question was how they would encode the information.

A lot of research had gone into that, he said.

“We’re still in the very early stages of understanding that, but the idea is, for example, in the Doom game, if there’s an enemy or demon that appears on the left side, you can send in an electrical input on the left side of the chip, and if it’s on the right side, you could send in an electrical signal on the right side of the chip.

“This is obviously a much more condensed version and simplified version, but then the response of the culture would then kind of tell the game or tell the controller what to do, to move to the left or to move to the right, for example.”

Loeffler admitted the computer was not very good at the game, but would outperform a model that shot randomly.

He said it was “learning to improve over time”.

Loeffler said there were several real-world applications it could be applied to, such as drug development and testing.

“You can test all sorts of different drugs on these cells, and they’ll perform much more similar to biological systems,” he said.

“They’re also much more similar to brains than animal models, so you can kind of remove the need for mice and chimpanzees and sheep in animal models. You could also potentially use them for robotics applications.

“It’s one thing that biological systems are really good at doing, which AI is terrible at doing, is navigating new and changing environments.”

He said if they could improve its ability to understand inputs, they would be able to navigate an environment in a more biological way.

Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Illegal diving and forced entry at the wreck of HMNZS Manawanui have prompted the Samoan government to increase surveillance of the navy vessel.

The Royal New Zealand Navy ship sank in October 2024 off the south coast of Upolu after hitting a reef, spilling hundreds of thousands of litres of diesel and oil into the ocean.

Three naval officers are now facing a court martial – a specialised military court that tries members of the Army, Navy and Air Force.

The charges include negligently causing a ship to be lost, which is punishable by up to two years in prison.

The Samoan government has ordered a 300-metre radius ban around the vessel, saying it poses significant risks to divers, fisherman and small craft.

Its Marine Pollution Advisory Committee (MPAC) said the vessel will be more closely monitored following reports of divers in the vicinity.

MPAC’s chair Fui Tupai Mau Simanu said the government had a statutory duty under the Shipping Act to prevent unsafe interaction with marine hazards.

He said divers risked getting tangled or trapped in ropes and cables and the wreck was unstable.

“It could suddenly shift due to currents and tides, and wreck material could threaten boats that may be operating nearby,” Simanu said.

He said there was a risk of pollutants being released, with lubricants still embedded in piping systems.

“When pipes corrode and break these chemicals will leak out into the ocean,” he said.

The committee has also imposed a ban on manned and unmanned aircraft flying below 500ft above sea level over the zone.

However, he said commercial air traffic at cruising altitude is not affected, as only low-level drone activity is regulated.

“It is Standard Practice in Maritime Emergency Zones. It aligns with International Maritime Organisation (IMO) and International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) guidelines for wreck sites and pollution response.”

“It is also stipulated in the United Nations Conventions on the Law of the Sea Article 60, where a Coastal State is allowed to establish a safety zone of up to 500 metres around a dangerous zone,” he said.

The New Zealand Defence Force’s Manawanui response lead Captain Rodger Ward told RNZ Pacific that signs of unauthorised activity were found during a recent survey of the ship.

“Unauthorised diving on HMNZS Manawanui is an unsafe practice and creates a risk of injury and to life,” Ward said.

“There is currently a 300 metre Prohibited Area around Manawanui providing a safety buffer zone, with all diving within that zone prohibited unless authorised by Samoa’s Ministry of Works, Transport and Infrastructure.”

He said a team of Royal New Zealand Navy diving personnel would travel to Samoa to conduct an extensive survey the wreck and carry out remediation work.

The ban will remain in force until the MPAC is satisfied the wreck is stable, all pollution risks have been mitigated and the area is safe for navigation and public activity.

The government said it plans to “secure” the wreckage by stabilising the wreck, containing pollutants and controlling access to the site.

It will also erect navigational warnings and continue constant monitoring.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Aid organisations in Gaza, say they have been unable to get supplies or staff into the city since January.

A court temporarily blocked a decision by Israel to ban 37 aid organisations for failing to cooperate with new rules.

Those rules included registering names and contact details of staff with Israeli authorities as well as providing details of the group’s funding.

Médecins Sans Frontières, also known as, Doctors Without Borders’ (MSF) executive director for New Zealand and Australia, Tom Roth, told Nine to Noon, the organisation had been discussing with authorities why they needed that information and what it would be used for.

He said there were fears about staff being targeted using the information and so far there had been no assurances on how that information would be used.

Despite the court temporarily blocking the decision, supplies and staff had not been able to enter Gaza since January, Roth said.

He described the situation as “catastrophic”.

“Eighty percent of the infrastructure [in Gaza] has been destroyed, it’s a massive catastrophe… Palestinians are struggling just with basic shelter. They are living within 40 percent of Gaza’s land mass, living in tents trying to survive without access to food, water and medical assistance.”

Roth said there had been limited food in Gaza since before the ceasefire, and even with it there had still been limited amounts of food coming in.

“There’s an obligation under international humanitarian law that Israel is required to allow unhindered humanitarian access for NGO’s.”

Roth said after the new rules came in last year, a petition was taken to the Supreme Court to overthrow the registration ban.

He said an injunction to stop it being implemented was now in place, but by the time it was put in place, MSF has already removed staff from Gaza.

“We’ve requested staff and supplies to come into Gaza since then and that has been refused.

“We’re still waiting for the Israeli government’s response to it.”

MSF had no international staff in Gaza and the West Bank at present, Roth said, but Palestinian staff remained, which made up about 80 percent of the staff.

“So we have and will continue to operate in Gaza for as long as possible.”

However, Roth said staff needed the means to do their job, including the supply of medical equipment which at the moment was unable to replenished, he said.

“People are living in tents desperately searching for food, for water, there’s thousands of people needing urgent medical attention.

“It would take five years to evacuate the children needing urgent medical evacuation. It’s heartbreaking we’re put in this situation.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

A Papua New Guinean anthropologist has warned that a campaign by authorities to remove communities from informal settlements in Port Moresby will not solve growing social problems in PNG’s capital.

The government is determined to end the role of settlements as what Prime Minister James Marape decsribes as “breeding grounds for terror” as part of its law and order reforms, but recent evictions have run into problems.

Almost half of Port Moresby’s estimated population of around 500,000 live in settlements, often without legal title or access to basic services. Some of the settlements have become notorious as crime hotspots.

However, in late January, police moved into the settlement at 2-Mile, sparking clashes with residents that resulted in two deaths and numerous injuries.

Police then moved to evict another settlement at 4-Mile, but this met with a legal challenge which led to the National Court placing a stay order on the eviction.

While the campaign is essentially paused, Marape has said that his government would soon announce a permanent plan to replace unplanned settlements with properly titled residential allotments.

He also apologised to residents affected by the evictions, in recognition that many law-abiding and hard working families have made settlements their home over the years.

Urban drift

Previous attempts at evicting settlement communities did not exactly lay a template for the success of what authorities are trying to do in 2026.

In numerous cases, homes were destroyed or razed to the ground, people were left homeless and then simply moved to other areas of vacant land or ended up living with wantoks in other parts of Morebsy.

A PNG anthropologist who has done extensive work on settlements, Fiona Hukula, noted that settlements are long-established communities, stretching back decades.

“Essentially, people came to work in the towns and the cities, like in Port Moresby, and so where there was low cost housing, or where people weren’t able to afford housing, they started living in settlements, and some of the settlements on the outskirts, there’s stories that they made some kind of connection and deals with the local landowners.”

Dr Hukula said over the decades, migration to the towns and cities had grown significantly, but the available housing had not kept pace.

“People are just now coming into the city, really, to access better services, health and education. Some Papua New Guineans are coming to the city to escape various forms of conflict and violence.

“And this is now where we’ve seen just an influx of people coming into the city, and obviously there’s nowhere to live, and they live in settlements, and many of Moresby settlements are populated by families who have been there for several generations.”

‘Difficult thing I have to do’

Many of Moresby’s settlements are now populated by families who have been there for several generations. Removing people from these communities is a complex challenge.

“An eviction is not going to solve the problem, because people will just go and find somewhere else to stay (in Moresby), especially if they’re generational families who have lived in these settlements, who don’t necessarily have the ties back to their rural villages and their connections to their people in their village,” Dr Hukula said.

Adding to the complexities of the eviction drive are social connections forged in the National Capital District (NCD) over the years.

The head of the NCD Police Command Metropolitan Superintendent Warrick Simitab admitted that for him personally, leading the eviction exercises such as at 2-Mile had not been easy.

“It’s been difficult, because I grew up here. I grew up in NCD. For example in 2-Mile. Most of my classmates that I went to school together with, they live there. So for me personally, it’s a difficult thing that I have to do,” he told RNZ Pacific.

Simitab would not be drawn on when the evictions would start up again, saying things were paused while political leaders decide next steps.

Criminal hotspot

The local MP for Moresby South Justin Tkatchenko said the 2-Mile settlement had become a notorious criminal hotspot, and that the people of the city have had enough of it.

“Hold ups nearly every night and every day, women have been raped, attacked, citizens have been held up, cars stolen, injured, abused for nearly 20 years,” he said.

Things came to a head when police were shot at and those living in 2-Mile refused an ultimatum given by police to hand over the criminals, he explained.

Tkatchenko said the government was steadily working on resettling settlers with proper, legal allocations of land to live on.

“We have already allocated land and sub-divided that land for over 400 families in the 2-Mile Hill area and other areas. Some have already been resettled and moved, and others will follow suit,” the MP said.

Dr Hukula acknowledged that crime linked to some settlements was an issue that the general population keenly wanted addressed.

But she said persisting with displacing communities from other settlements would not address the underlying cause of the problem.

“It is a ticking time bomb. It’s going to be like this, where there’s evictions and then people move. And the thing is that the cycle of violence continues, and that’s what we’re trying to address here, the crime.”

The anthropologist stressed that “not everybody in settlements are criminals”, saying the people who lived in settlements were often working people, “people who are doing the menial jobs in the offices, the office cleaners, the people who are drivers, all of these kinds of people also live in settlements, and so when they’re being kicked out, there are people who can’t go to work, children who can’t go to school”.

Dr Hukula has researched and written about how settlement communities have developed informal systems of settling disputes or addressing law and order problems such as through local komiti groups or village courts.

These provided a way in which the communities could maintain order and general respect between their people. But “because the settlements have just exploded now it’s not like necessarily everybody comes from the same area or the same province” she said, making it harder to maintain a social balance.

In Dr Hukula’s view, “the village courts and the community leaders still play an extremely important role in being that bridge” between the authorities and the settlement community, and should be supported to play that role.

She said one of the other main things the government could do to help the situation was “to make sure that there’s affordable housing for all levels, all kinds of Papua New Guineans”.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

If you get a regular flu vaccine, you may be well aware that it protects against the most prevalent strains. But because influenza viruses evolve rapidly, the flu vaccine is updated annually to provide protection against new strains.

A universal flu vaccine looks to change that, providing protection against all strains of the flu – past, present, and future.

It’s a step closer to becoming a reality, with the first human trials about to take place for Centivax’s universal vaccine Centiflu 01 in Australia.

US-based immunoengineer and founder of Centivax, Dr Jacob Glanville, who is leading the trials, told RNZ’s First Up Centiflu 01 was designed to solve the problem that flu vaccines have.

“This is a single vaccine that you don’t need to change, and it focuses the immune response on parts of flu viruses that never change. So, we are expecting the efficacy, the proportion of people who take the vaccine and then don’t get sick, to be much higher than current flu shots,” he said.

Dr Glanville said the vaccine’s animal trials showed the immune response was better than the commercial vaccines, which he said are 10-60 percent effective.

“Your immune system has basically a limited budget of antibodies and T-cells that it chooses to respond randomly, normally against a virus,” he said.

“We are just adjusting that budget to make it entirely focused on the best parts of the virus to focus on.”

Dr Glanville said that while a normal flu shot doesn’t work against future viruses, hence the need for annual shots, his company’s vaccine continued to provide protection from viruses 15 years later.

“You don’t know where flu is going to mutate, except you know it’s not going to mutate on these spots that haven’t changed in thousands of years,” he said.

“… That’s sort of the big transition here. It’s making flu shots into like a normal vaccine. One that you take, and then it provides anticipatory future protection for years to come.”

Phase one of trials in Australia is the first step in a broader programme that will enrol roughly 300 healthy volunteers in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

Phase two of the trials would commence next year, and phase three in 2028, Dr Glanville said.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

On 28 February, Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed by joint US and Israel attacks on his residence. A further week of strikes on Iran have targeted nuclear and military sites, including airfields, radar, and naval facilities.

The Red Crescent estimates the death toll has topped 1000 people across Iran, including at least 165 girls killed when their school was bombed in the city of Minab. Iran has retaliated against military and civilian targets across the Gulf states, and Israel has also attacked Hezbollah in Lebanon.

As the strikes continue, Iranians living here in New Zealand talk to Kadambari Raghukumar about their views on the war and the divide in the community that it has amplified.

Mahdis Azarmandi, an expert in Peace and Conflict studies and senior lecturer at University of Canterbury said: “I think what people need to understand that this war is motivated and it’s a continuation of the genocide in Gaza, the war in Lebanon, of the restructuring of West Asia. So it has to be seen politically in a broader context of how to rearrange the, you know, Middle East or West Asia more accurately. And that has been underway for a period of time. And Iran, as one of the few countries left that retains sovereignty, is a threat to the reordering of that part of the world.”

Many in the Iranian community are divided over the conflict.

While some Iranians around the world have celebrated the death of Khamenei and welcome the attacks, there are large numbers denouncing the assault on Iran and decrying the attack on their nation’s sovereignty.

Mahdis said: “This is not just about people who opposed the war and people who are celebrating the war in some park. It means that entire families and communities are going to be completely divided for a very long time. So that is what concerns me on a personal level. I think it’s that how many relationships are broken right now because of it.”

Separating the personal from the current politics is hard, Mahdis tells Raghukumar – especially for those who had to leave Iran during the 70s or 80s – either during the rule of the last Shah of Iran, Mohamed Reza Pahlavi, or after he was deposed in 1979, when the first Supreme Leader, the Grand Ayatollah Khomeini took power.

Mahdis said: ” I think I am constantly living through all of these layers of personal experience. So the personal experience of being in a diaspora Iranian with a particular kind of relationship to the Islamic Republic and who sees these things not in isolation from each other, but in conjunction. And I think that is what differentiates the people who are now more concerned and maybe taking a step back and defending the sovereignty of Iran, which I think is what is at stake.”

The current bombings came after weeks of negotiations between Iran and US and are viewed by many commentators as a breach of international law.

Dr Behzad Dowran has been living in New Zealand for eight years. He said: “From the past, we can remember they invaded many countries. And the result was just, innocent people were killed over there. And nothing but misery they gifted to those countries.”

In January, Dowran happened to be in Tehran, a witness to the violent protests that saw thousands of people killed. Behzad said “nobody can imagine being attacked by negotiators”.

“We have had many internal issues, many internal problems, mismanagement or wrong policies, many things. But we have had this experience, and we were going to manage it in a way internally to solve it.

“It is not easy to solve these sort of problems when you have long term of sanctions. But we managed it, more or less. But they attacked the country just in the middle of negotiations.”

Dowran said he was “very angry” because it violated international law.

“Nobody has the right, no country has the right to invade another country and kill the head of another country. And I am sorry and I am very sad that I see my Iranian comrades here think this is a thing that they may celebrate.”

Another Iranian, who preferred to remain anonymous for concerns of their safety, told Here Now that “the Iranian community is very diverse. Whatever the people inside Iran want that is what should matter most. Many people believe that a lasting solution must come from inside Iran, not imposed from outside”.

“Different approaches doesn’t we mean are enemies to one another. Most of us want the same ultimate goal -a better, freer, more dignified future for Iranians. But the ways we reach that goal may be very different.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

The Gulf states’ calls for Australian military assistance shows the changing nature of weaponry, and warfare leaders on both sides of the Tasman are reckoning with it, say defence experts.

The Australian government is considering a request for help from all six Gulf states – Oman, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar – for protection against Iranian drone and missile attacks, which have targeted airports and oil infrastructure, the ABC reported.

New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters said the government has not received a request for military assistance and is not considering it.

Massey University professor of International Relations Bethan Greener said Australian ministers will have to carefully weigh what counter-drone and missile protection means.

“What’s quite important about the requests is by nature they are being deemed defensive, and so the Australian government is having to weigh what that might look like, and whether or not engaging in any way in this war could potentially pull them into a more offensive action.”

Malcolm Davis, senior defence strategy analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told Nine to Noon the Gulf states’ request was a “legitimate” one.

He said the government could offer a short-range surface-to-air missile system called NASAMs, which would involve teams operating on the ground in the Gulf states.

Greener said the request showed the changing nature of warfare – the Australian government had recently become highly interested in counter-drone operations, launching a project called Land 156 in late January focused on safeguarding critical infrastructure.

“I think this conflict will be quite a telling one with regards to what kind of weaponry we are going to see, what kind of movement of troops or manoeuvre, the difference in air power crewed, or uncrewed.

“For a long time, a lot of western militaries have still clung to the model of an infantry – often a light mobile infantry, backed by artillery and armoured components – this really does change things up.”

Greener said the New Zealand government was also looking at this, with an announcement 10 days ago that the defence force would trial air, land and sea drones made from kiwi company Syos Aerospace.

“It’s quite important this year that New Zealand is looking much more seriously in to how it might utilise drones, I know that’s contentious for New Zealanders, it’s discomforting, the idea of unpeopled vessels potentially carrying ammunition – those sorts of ethical questions.”

She said it wasn’t surprising the New Zealand government had not been asked for military assistance from the Gulf states, and reflected the size of the country’s military.

Davis said governments had not taken “the counter-drone mission seriously enough”, and it was something Australia and other Western powers were now considering.

“Now we’re finding that we’re confronted with this reality, and it’s not just about Iran, it’s also about what China and Russia can do in a conflict.”

He said he expected a decision from the Australian government on military assistance early this week.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

By Graeme Acton, Asia Media Centre

If China decides to attack Taiwan, what exactly does the rest of the world do? Graeme Acton is at the 2026 Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi.

It’s the kind of question that diplomatic forums sometimes avoid. However, this week’s 11th Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi decided to take the Taiwan Strait issue seriously, first session, second day.

A panel of five experts took the stage, and warned that the scope of simultaneous conflicts across the globe is widening in ways that stress-test the architecture of deterrence and diplomacy – with much of that stress seemingly by design.

Washington’s policy of strategic ambiguity – deliberately leaving unclear whether it would militarily defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack – has long provided a kind of managed uncertainty that has kept Beijing cautious.

But the “might is right” ethos of American power under the current administration, combined with its scepticism toward long-standing commitments and international norms, has eroded the credibility that US ambiguity once traded upon.

Simultaneously, Beijing has grown more, not less, vehement in its insistence on what it calls “reunification”.

Experts at Raisina 2026 argued that the ongoing conflict in Iran is no longer a regional affair but one that is “bleeding together” with security concerns across the Indo-Pacific. Dhruva Jaishankar, Executive Director of ORF America, pointed to the expanding reach of Iranian missile and drone capabilities – including strikes on a British military base in Cyprus – as evidence of this widening arc of instability.

Indian commentators are obviously also concerned about the sinking of an Iranian warship off the coast of Sri Lanka just a few days ago. The ship had just been on exercises with the Indian navy, and PM Modi has been roundly criticised in Indian media for his silence to date on the issue.

The risk, Raisina panellists argued, is that Beijing sees American engagement in Iran Asia as a window of opportunity. Bonnie Glick of the Foundation for Defence of Democracies pushed back on that assessment, maintaining that Washington remains perfectly capable of dealing with multiple crises simultaneously and that its messaging on Taiwan stays firm. “I think China views bottom line American intervention in Iran right now as a moment for consideration of Taiwan,” she told the audience, but she also felt China has this moment to consider the consequences of dealing with a US administration quite happy to let loose the dogs of war under circumstances it regards as appropriate.

Helena Legarda of the Mercator Institute for Chinese Studies offered a more cautious European perspective. While acknowledging that Beijing might exploit other conflicts for “rhetorical ammunition,” she noted that this does not necessarily legitimise direct military action against Taiwan – partly because Beijing still wishes to present itself as a responsible global power.

But her assessment of Europe’s practical capacity to respond to a Taiwan crisis was sobering. If the war in Ukraine is still ongoing and Europe is managing that conflict largely alone, she said, it would be unlikely that EU member states could assemble the right military assets quickly enough for a standoff in the South China Sea.

Ms Legarda cut to the chase on what makes the Taiwan question so difficult: the world’s potential democratic responders are already stretched. Japan has adopted the firmest posture among US treaty allies, bolstered by a new defence pact with the Philippines.

But what Australia, New Zealand or South Korea would actually do in the event of a crisis -not rhetorically, but operationally – remains cloudy. All three nations have trade and economic ties with China that hugely complicate the situation.

From Taipei itself, I-Chung Lai of the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation offered his reading of China’s military readiness: China simply does not yet possess the capability to carry out a successful invasion of Taiwan.

Crossing the Taiwan Strait is one of the most complex military operations imaginable. You need to move tens of thousands of troops, armoured vehicles, and supplies across 150-200 km of open water, under fire, and then storm heavily defended beaches. But as Dhruva Jaishankar pointed out , China has been involved in extensive military exercises in the South China Sea, as much a signal to Taiwan as a process of military preparedness.

Some analysts suggest the Chinese Army (the PLA) just doesn’t have the resources necessary at present. Add to this the fact that Taiwan has just signed off on the largest defence budget in its history – roughly $US40 billion to be spent from 2026 to 2033 – focused on asymmetric warfare capabilities including munitions designed to cripple amphibious landing forces at long range

I-Chung Lai also mentioned the concept of “Pax Silica.”, the peace maintained by the understanding that global chip makers would be devastated if Taiwan’s giant semiconductor factories went down. The disruption to supply chains – from cars to laptops to AI infrastructure would be massive on all sides of the conflict. In 2025 the US moved to set up a network of “trusted chip suppliers” – India joined that group last month.

But despite the chip issue, Beijing’s signals around Taiwan remain clear, and the recent invasion of Ukraine shows that sometimes nations will act against their economic interests while chasing their strategic objectives.

What Raisina 2026 made clear is that the comfortable old framework – American strategic ambiguity underpinning a reasonably stable cross-strait status quo – is fraying. The burden of deterrence is being redistributed across a coalition whose cohesion, resolve, and actual capacity vary enormously.

For New Zealand’s part, the three AUKUS founding members (US, UK, Australia) have themselves said they are “not yet in a position to consider expanding to additional partners” – meaning New Zealand hasn’t been formally offered a military “Pillar Two” membership.

But New Zealand’s recent Defence Capability Plan, released nearly a year ago, proposes investments in long-range drones, satellite surveillance, data integration, and counter-drone technologies that closely mirror the priorities seen in AUKUS.

New Zealand also maintains its own ambiguity on the Taiwan question -arguably edging closer to the alliance without triggering Beijing’s red lines –or the New Zealand public’s nuclear-free sensitivities and marked hesitancy about fighting other people’s wars.

The question is not simply whether anyone will come to Taiwan’s defence. It is whether the network of interests, alliances, economic interdependencies, and democratic solidarity that constitutes the current world order can commit and act quickly enough, and firmly enough, to make Beijing reconsider an assault on the island.

-Asia Media Centre

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand