Understanding right-wing extremism, China’s talent-recruitment & Covid-19 vaccine disinformation

In this episode of Policy, Guns & Money, Leanne Close, head of ASPI’s Counter-terrorism Program, speaks to Julia Ebner, Resident Research Fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in London and author of ‘Going Dark – the Secret Social Lives of Extremists’. They discuss right-wing extremism and Julia details her experiences going undercover to engage with extremist groups and individuals and shares her ideas on how governments can respond. Danielle Cave, Deputy Director of ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre (ICPC), speaks to Analyst Alex Joske about his recent report ‘Hunting the Phoenix: The Chinese Communist Party’s global search for technology and talent’ on China’s global talent-recruitment programs. They talk about the scale of the programs and how governments can shape their policy responses. And ICPC Researcher Elise Thomas and Research Intern Albert Zhang provide a run-down on their latest report ‘Pro-Russian vaccine politics drives new disinformation narratives’, which looked at vaccine disinformation which emerged from Eastern Ukraine’s pro-Russian media ecosystem and managed to make its way across international social media networks. Mentioned in this episode: ‘Hunting the Phoenix’ report: https://www.aspi.org.au/report/hunting-phoenix ‘Pro-Russian vaccine politics drives new disinformation narratives’: https://www.aspi.org.au/report/covid-19-disinformation Guests: Leanne Close: https://www.aspi.org.au/bio/leanne-close Julia Ebner: https://www.isdglobal.org/isd_team/julia-ebner/ Danielle Cave: https://www.aspi.org.au/bio/danielle-cave Alex Joske: https://www.aspi.org.au/bio/alex-joske Elise Thomas: https://www.aspi.org.au/bio/elise-thomas Albert Zhang: https://www.aspi.org.au/bio/albert-zhang Background music: "Atmospheria" by Francis Preve via the You Tube Audio Library.