In the long contest between open societies and those who would destabilize them, Australia finds itself navigating a new and unsettling asymmetry: the same artificial intelligence that promises prosperity has handed foreign adversaries sharper, cheaper, and more convincing instruments of interference and disruption. Home affairs officials warned Parliament this week that AI has transformed both disinformation campaigns and cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, while the government lacks the detection capabilities that private AI companies have quietly built for themselves. Australia's respo