China analyst @ASPI_CTS 🦋 Find me: https://xitter.cf/t.co/IY9NzQLRXD 📨 Anon tips/feedback: https://xitter.cf/t.co/dVmp67cY6K 📱 Signal: fergus.99
Joined May 2007
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What if you could test propaganda on thousands of synthetic Australians, Americans and others before publishing it?
Chinese state-linked researchers are trying to do something close to that.
My latest: aspistrategist.org.au/china-…
Fergus Ryan retweeted
'If foreign open-weight models become part of the country’s sovereign-AI strategy, what else are we importing with them?' write @fryan and @alexcolv1lle. aspistrategist.org.au/austra…
Fergus Ryan retweeted
ICYMI 🔊
We’re looking for a China Analyst or Senior Analyst to join ASPI’s high-performing China team.
Don’t miss the opportunity to join one of the Indo-Pacific’s most influential think tanks and contribute to globally recognised research.
🔗 Apply: bit.ly/4jlyegA
Fergus Ryan retweeted
China is building an AI system for tailoring its foreign propaganda | @fryan | bit.ly/4rnqcGi
Fergus Ryan retweeted
JOB ALERT 🔊
ASPI is looking for an experienced China analyst or senior analyst to join the team.
The role will focus on China’s foreign and security policy, defence and military affairs, Australia–China relations and China’s impact on the region.
🔗: bit.ly/4z2utBF
A UN-backed fact-finding mission found reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed war crimes in two strikes in Iran on 28 February.
ohchr.org/sites/default/file…
Universal Pictures, which has the worldwide rights to Alex Gibney’s Elon Musk documentary outside of North America, “appears to be having second thoughts on a documentary it paid a significant sum to acquire.”
hollywoodreporter.com/news/p…
Fergus Ryan retweeted
'Forgive me my pedantry, but if Australia is going to regulate social media algorithms, we should be precise about what an algorithm actually is,' writes @fryan. aspistrategist.org.au/austra…
A lot of attention has gone into how AI can be used for propaganda. I’m not sure we’ve thought as hard about how powerful it could be as a new form of political visual satire.
Ideas that once lived in an essay or cartoon can now be rendered as vivid, pseudo-realistic nightmares.
Fergus Ryan retweeted
In @CapitalBrief, @fryan argues Australians should have more choice over how their social media feeds are curated under the federal government’s proposed digital duty of care, pointing to @bluesky as one model for giving users more control.
📰 Read 👇
capitalbrief.com/article/the…
Gaza Doc ‘NAZA,’ From ‘No Other Land’ Directors, Earns Record-Breaking 24.5-Minute Venice Ovation variety.com/2026/film/festiv…
You can’t really “turn off” the algorithm.
A reverse-chronological feed is an algorithm too!
The real question is who gets to choose our feeds.
My argument, outlined in @CapitalBrief, is that we should be able to choose who designs the algorithms that shape our feeds.
Maduro is gone. Venezuela’s surveillance state isn’t.
Before he fell, Caracas signed for Chinese AI from iFlytek. Washington has a rare chance to stop the AI layer before it’s built.
aspistrategist.org.au/maduro…
Report: aspi.org.au/report/warning-s…
Fergus Ryan retweeted
🚨 NEW REPORT 🚨
In ‘Warning signals’, @fryan, @BethanyAllenEbr and Nathan Attrill et al. warn that 🇻🇪 is in a position to become one of the first countries outside 🇨🇳 to import Beijing’s new generation of AI systems for surveillance and control.
📕: bit.ly/3SXFN2r
Fergus Ryan retweeted
Maduro is gone, but his surveillance state has a Chinese AI upgrade on order | @fryan | bit.ly/4yrK3WP
A striking piece from Li Yuan on the growing difficulty the Chinese party-state is having imposing “positive energy” on an increasingly pessimistic online public.
nytimes.com/2026/09/07/busin…
At the risk of being pedantic, what exactly do people mean by an option to “opt out of the algorithm” when a reverse-chronological timeline is itself an algorithm?
