ASPI
Australian Strategic Policy Institute
🌐 Deep Dive · Entry #001
🏛 Canberra, Australia
🏷 Think Tank · Policy · Tech Intelligence
Website: aspi
Government-funded. Editorially independent. Tracks which countries are winning the race for 64 technologies that will define the next 30 years — and publishes the data openly. That combination is rarer than it should be.
What Is ASPI
ASPI is Australia’s independent, non-partisan think tank on defence and strategic policy.
Government-funded but editorially independent — a distinction that matters when the output includes research that names China’s technology dominance across 37 of 44 critical technology categories.
It publishes reports, runs the Critical Technology Tracker, and operates projects like Xinjiang Data Project, which maps detention infrastructure in Xinjiang using satellite imagery and open-source data.
The institutional model is the interesting part:
- Public funding
- Independent editorial line
- Open data
Most government-adjacent research is either captured or classified. ASPI publishes everything.
Critical Technology Tracker
ASPI’s flagship data project.
It measures national research output — publications and citations — across 64 critical technologies, country by country, year by year since 2003.
At a glance
- 64 technologies tracked
- 7 domains
- 20+ years of data
- Launched March 2023, updated annually
Explore: https://techtracker.aspi.org.au/
Pick a technology, pick a country, get ranked output over time. The data runs through the August 2024 update — long enough to watch China’s research machine accelerate in real time.
The 7 Domains
- Advanced Materials and Manufacturing
- AI, Computing and Communications
- Biotechnology, Gene Technology and Vaccines
- Energy and Environment
- Quantum
- Sensing, Timing and Navigation
- Defence, Space, Robotics and Transportation
Plus:
AUKUS subset — submarine, undersea, electronic warfare.
Why “Critical Technologies”
Technologies with capacity to significantly enhance, or pose risk to, national interests, including economic prosperity, social cohesion and security. — Australian Government (2022)
The key idea is dual-use.
The same technology can drive economic growth and military advantage.
Examples:
- AI → productivity + autonomous weapons
- Quantum → computing + codebreaking
- Biotech → medicine + biosecurity risk
That’s the policy problem.
Why It Matters Now
Three pressure points:
1. Research concentration
A few countries lead most domains. Monopoly risk becomes security risk.
2. Supply chain dependencies
Critical minerals, chips, biotech inputs are now security questions.
3. Dual-use dilemma
Civilian and military applications overlap, making export controls messy.
Cross-Cutting Enablers
Two technologies amplify all others.
Quantum
- Better navigation, sensing, radar
- Post-quantum cryptography matters for everything built on encryption
AI / ML
- Accelerates drug discovery
- Accelerates materials science
- Accelerates autonomy
Less a sector, more a layer under everything.
Comparable Trackers
ASPI isn’t alone.
| Tracker | Org | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| CSET ETO | Georgetown CSET | Emerging tech, global |
| Carnegie India Tech Tracker | Carnegie India | India-focused |
| WIPO Inspire TechTracker | WIPO | Patents/IP lens |
| MIT Technology Tracker | MIT | Broad tech trends |
| Delhi Policy Group | DPG | India–China tech security |
Why It’s In Here
Open data.
Government-independent.
Geopolitically honest.
The Critical Technology Tracker answers:
Who’s actually winning?
…with citations, not vibes.
And the answer is often uncomfortable for Western audiences.
That’s exactly why it’s worth keeping close.
Collected by Saptak
https://nilarkian.github.io/Saptak