Trajectory Daily Brief: 15 January 2026

Australia | Security | Government response to Bondi terrorist attack addresses symptoms while core radicalisation dynamics persist

Situation

Fifteen people died in a December 14, 2025 terrorist attack at Bondi Beach during a Hanukkah celebration. Two gunmen pledging allegiance to Islamic State targeted the Jewish religious event, killing eleven men, three women, and a ten-year-old child.

The Australian government responded with multiple simultaneous measures: a Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, new gun laws capping firearm ownership and reducing magazine capacity, hate speech legislation, and a $20 million support package. The NSW Terrorism and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 represents the most concrete policy change, tightening Australia’s already-strict firearms regime.

The attackers obtained their weapons legally despite existing regulations and prior ASIO warnings about accelerating radicalisation trends.

Context

The response reflects a political system that metabolises trauma through bureaucratic ritual rather than addressing structural causes. Each measure targets a different diagnosis: antisemitism (Royal Commission), intelligence failure (institutional review), firearms access (gun laws), and social fractures (hate speech legislation).

This scatter-shot approach avoids confronting harder questions about radicalisation pipelines and intelligence gaps. The gun law focus is particularly revealing—it provides visible action for urban constituencies while sidestepping the fact that 260,000-plus illicit firearms circulate regardless of legal restrictions.

Historical analysis of Royal Commissions shows a predictable decay curve: initial enthusiasm, partial implementation, gradual abandonment. The Bell Commission faces the additional challenge of spanning antisemitism, social cohesion, and attack circumstances—related but distinct issues requiring different frameworks.

Trajectory

The government’s multi-pronged response will likely produce modest improvements in individual areas while leaving underlying dynamics intact. The Royal Commission will generate recommendations, some will be implemented, but radicalisation pathways and intelligence coordination problems will persist beneath a veneer of decisive action.

More concerning is the precedent this sets for future crisis response: address visible symptoms through familiar bureaucratic tools rather than confront systemic issues. The focus on gun laws and hate speech legislation allows politicians to demonstrate action without tackling the harder problem of why individuals move toward extremist violence faster than intelligence agencies can intervene.

Indo-Pacific | Defence | PLA AI command systems face political bottlenecks that may negate speed advantages over US decision-making

Situation

China’s People’s Liberation Army is developing AI-driven command systems capable of generating targeting recommendations in milliseconds, part of Beijing’s broader “intelligentized warfare” concept. These systems aim to fuse satellite imagery, signals intelligence, and weather data for rapid decision-making in potential Taiwan scenarios.

However, the PLA’s dual-command structure requires political commissar approval for significant military decisions, creating human-speed bottlenecks in machine-speed systems. Meanwhile, ongoing purges of senior PLA leadership under Xi Jinping have disrupted institutional continuity and may incentivize optimistic rather than accurate readiness reporting.

Context

Both sides face structural constraints that limit AI decision advantages. The PLA’s speed limitations are internal and political—preserving Party control over military action. US constraints are external and diplomatic, requiring coordination across allied nations with sovereign approval processes that algorithms cannot bypass.

Historical Taiwan Strait crises have featured decision timelines spanning “days to weeks,” not milliseconds. The Central Military Commission’s hierarchical structure prioritizes deliberation over rapid response by design. US DoD directive 3000.09 similarly requires “appropriate levels of human judgment” in autonomous weapons employment, creating multi-signature approval processes incompatible with crisis speeds.

Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology identifies significant PLA challenges in data collection and C4ISR integration that could undermine AI system effectiveness.

Trajectory

Speed in warfare is relative to adversary decision requirements, not absolute processing time. Both militaries are building systems promising rapid response while embedding approval structures that guarantee delay.

The decisive factor may not be technological capability but willingness to delegate authority to automated systems during crisis. Xi’s centralized decision-making style and the CMC’s age-graded hierarchy suggest China may be less likely to exploit AI speed advantages when they matter most.

The real test will be whether either side can resolve the fundamental tension between human political control and machine-speed military action.

Russia | Europe | NATO can detect undersea sabotage but legal gaps prevent interception

Situation

On January 26, 2025, NATO watched a Chinese-flagged vessel drag its anchor across the Baltic seabed, severing a telecommunications cable between Latvia and Sweden. Allied intelligence tracked the ship’s erratic course for hours but took no action to prevent the attack.

This incident joins eleven documented disruptions to Baltic undersea infrastructure between 2023-2025, including Nord Stream explosions and the Balticconnector pipeline damage. Each follows the same pattern: suspicious vessel activity, severed infrastructure, implausible denials, and no meaningful consequences.

NATO’s problem is not detection—it possesses sophisticated surveillance capabilities. The problem is that detection without response authority equals mere observation.

Context

The legal framework governing undersea infrastructure creates an exploitable void. The 1884 submarine cable convention predates exclusive economic zones, while UNCLOS requires flag-state prosecution but provides no enforcement mechanism. When vessels operate under flags of convenience through shell companies, determining jurisdiction becomes impossible.

Russia’s shadow fleet deliberately exploits this gap. Ships registered in third countries with ownership chains designed to frustrate attribution can drag anchors with impunity—sabotage looks identical to mechanical failure until forensic analysis proves otherwise, which takes months.

NATO’s consensus-based decision-making compounds the problem. Russia need only ensure one of thirty members hesitates about boarding vessels or expanding surveillance zones. Different threat perceptions across the alliance guarantee this hesitation, creating “lowest-common-denominator” responses.

Trajectory

NATO faces a structural trap where its greatest strengths—legal legitimacy, democratic accountability, multilateral consensus—become exploitable weaknesses. The alliance’s deterrence architecture optimized for conventional war fails against ambiguous harassment below Article 5 thresholds.

The Baltic Sentry monitoring initiative launched in January represents genuine effort but insufficient capability—frigates and patrol aircraft cannot intercept without legal authority to board suspicious vessels.

Russia will likely calibrate future attacks to this NATO decision-making rhythm, timing incidents to exploit the weeks required for alliance consultation and compromise. The geometry of undersea warfare favors the saboteur.

China | Indo-Pacific | Southeast Asian elites prefer Beijing as ally despite viewing it as regional threat

Situation

The US pledged $45 million to Thailand and Cambodia for regional stability—equivalent to four days of Chinese construction activity in Southeast Asia. China deployed $11.3 billion in regional investment in the first half of 2025 alone, primarily through Belt and Road infrastructure loans.

A milestone shift occurred in elite preferences: 50.5% of Southeast Asian leaders now say they would choose China over America if forced to pick sides, up from 38.9% in 2023. However, the same elites still view America as more trustworthy and China as the greater regional threat.

The Laos-China Railway exemplifies the dynamic—creating $1.3 billion in annual debt service that exceeds Laos’s combined health and education budgets.

Context

This apparent contradiction reflects the revival of Southeast Asia’s pre-colonial mandala system, where rulers maintained simultaneous loyalties to multiple power centers. Modern elites extract infrastructure from China and legitimacy from America while committing to neither—not hedging from weakness, but strategic opportunism.

The preference for China as an ally reflects calculation rather than affection: China is present, proximate, and cannot be avoided given its infrastructure investments and debt relationships. Chinese loans create visible monuments but also debt traps and technical dependencies lasting decades.

American aid operates differently—building networks through military training and governance programs rather than dependencies, but producing no visible achievements that politicians can photograph or inaugurate.

Trajectory

Both powers face institutional absorption limits that constrain their influence strategies. Chinese infrastructure succeeds in creating grudging accommodation rather than genuine loyalty, while American aid struggles with recipient countries lacking the governance capacity to effectively utilize assistance.

The maintenance trap will prove decisive. Chinese infrastructure creates permanent technical dependencies through spare parts, software updates, and operational expertise that outlast debt repayment schedules.

Neither power fully grasps the game being played—Southeast Asian states will continue extracting maximum benefit from both while the real competition occurs in long-term institutional capture rather than immediate financial flows.

Yesterday’s Assessments

• Australia’s Bondi response: comprehensive action, structural evasion
• Why the united states cannot stop making war
• How military dependency is reshaping American governance

Until tomorrow.