About The Sydney Dialogue

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Sydney Dialogue is the premier policy summit for critical, emerging and cyber technologies.

Technology is being developed much faster than societies can regulate it or even fully absorb its implications.

The remarkable surge in the capabilities of generative artificial intelligence (AI), and the lack of any agreed roadmap on what the next breakthrough will be – much less how governments might respond – are just the latest and most profound demonstrations of the growing gulf between the intrepid advances of innovators and the understandably tentative actions of policy-makers.

More than ever before, we face a risk that smaller groups of people have a monopoly on key decisions, including decisions they haven’t asked for and aren’t equipped to make. There is also a risk that if we fail to connect and communicate between governments, business and civil society, good ideas will never make it out of the silos in which they germinate.

The Sydney Dialogue (TSD) was created to help break down these silos and bring together governments, businesses and civil society to discuss and progress policy options. We will forecast the technologies of the next decade that will change our societies, economies and national security, prioritising speakers and delegates who are willing to push the envelope. We will promote diverse views that stimulate real conversations about the best ways to seize opportunities and minimise risks.

TSD reaches across technology fields – AI, cybersecurity, quantum computing, biotechnology, climate and space technologies to name just a few – and is focused on bringing more diverse voices into public debates. The positions of the United States, China and Europe tend to dominate the global conversation, while the world hears too little about the policy thinking taking place in India, Japan, Southeast Asia and Oceania.

TSD 2024 will have political leaders, senior officials, technology industry innovators and civil society leaders feature in a mix of keynote speeches, panel discussions, closed-room sessions, briefings and media engagements. TSD is also a place where new partnerships are built between governments and with industry, and where existing partnerships are deepened.

TSD 2024 is the third Sydney Dialogue. Explore TSD 2021 and TSD 2023 here to find out more about the speakers, sessions, side events and supporters that were involved in previous dialogues.

Organisations and governments can find out more about partnership opportunities for TSD 2024 here.

Vision for 2024

TSD is the premier policy summit for critical, emerging and cyber technologies. As the only international forum that brings together the top thinkers and decision-makers in these fields from government, industry and civil society, TSD positions Australia and the Indo-Pacific to facilitate agenda-setting dialogue on critical and emerging technologies.

TSD 2024 will generate conversations that address the awesome advances being made across these technologies, their impacts, individually and together, and how we can best manage their adoption by our societies and economies.

This year is a chance to capture a number of trends that are dominating international technology, security and geopolitics discussions.

Generative artificial intelligence has demonstrated a remarkable potential that illustrates the degree to which technology’s advance is challenging societies’ ability to absorb its implications, let alone develop effective and timely policies to respond.

Across 2024, more than 80 national elections will take place, affecting more than four billion people. TSD 2024 will focus on the importance of political leadership, global cooperation and the stable development of technologies amid these power transitions and at a time of geopolitical uncertainty and ongoing conflict.

This year’s event will build on the momentum of the first two dialogues, which included contributions from India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Japan’s former Prime Minister, the late Shinzo Abe, Samoa’s Prime Minister Fiamē Naomi Mata’afa, Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas and Chair of the Special Competitive Studies Project and former CEO of Google Eric Schmidt.

TSD will convene frank and productive discussions that resonate with the Indo-Pacific – including the Pacific Islands, Southeast Asia and South Asia. We will discuss technologies that are disrupting workforces, upending economic and strategic power, splintering supply chains and transforming militaries. We will tackle the increasingly sophisticated nature of cybercrime, online disinformation, hybrid warfare and electoral interference – risks to our societies that now benefit from the use of AI technologies.

We will also address how technologies, when managed in partnership, could accelerate climate security and green energy transitions.

The event will pay particular attention to international standards and norms, as well as technology design with the aim of enhancing partnerships, trust and global cooperation.

In addition to public sessions, TSD 2024 will also include a series of closed-door discussions, smaller roundtables and media engagement.

What is ASPI?

The annual Sydney Dialogue is convened by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) – an independent, non-partisan think tank that produces expert and timely advice for Australian and global leaders.

ASPI generates new ideas for policy makers, allowing them to make better-informed decisions and is one of the most authoritative and widely quoted contributors to public discussion of strategic policy issues in the Indo-Pacific region.

ASPI was established by the Australian Government in 2001 and is partially funded by the Department of Defence with other sources of revenue including from overseas government agencies, corporates and civil society groups.