A quick personal update
Time management is a skill
Well, maintaining my own masthead is difficult. By way of a quick explanation for the radio silence, I have been splitting my time between two extraordinary institutions - the American Enterprise Institute in Washington D.C. and the US Studies Center in Sydney, Australia - which has been an absolutely marvelous experience and allowed me to work with some of the world’s finest defense minds. It has been professionally enriching and personally rewarding. That both reached out to offer an intellectual (and fiscal) home after a somewhat tumultuous end to 2022 was an immense kindness that I will be challenged to ever completely repay. It’s also been very busy!
My time with AEI has wrapped up as of the end of March, but I had one last op-ed in the chamber that ran with World Politics Review, which you can read here if so inclined. It’s also up on my USSC page here. I’ll also have a chapter in an upcoming book with AEI that discusses how the US can use the FY23 NDAA, particularly the Taiwan Enhanced Resilience Act (TERA), to enhance the island’s defenses and deter amphibious invasion. Again, my thanks go to AEI, my excellent Research Assistant and co-author Ben Lefkowitz, and the inimitable Kori Schake, who I would have worked for for free.
So now I’m working as a Research Fellow with USSC’s excellent Foreign Policy and Defense team, as well as a couple of my own projects. My colleague there, Alice Nason, and I had a piece in ISEAS’ Fulcrum outlet this week which you might enjoy, looking at AUKUS and Australia’s diplomatic efforts to land the plane a bit smoother with the AUKUS-class SSN announcement than with the original AUKUS roll-out a year ago. I’ve also had my most traumatic TV appearance in USSC’s service, going on ABC live only to find out my cat had stowed away in my office and decided to start screaming about five seconds into the interview. Obviously I couldn’t get up and get him because I was in classic “Business up top, party on the bottom” WFH attire, so I just tried to pretend he wasn’t there and lied to myself that the host couldn’t actually hear him. That lie held until we signed off and she said, LIVE ON AIR, “Well thank you Blake, we’ll let you go and tend to your cat, sounds like he wants some attention,” at which point my soul literally left my body. Mild disaster aside, suffice it to say I’m thrilled to be part of Mike Green and Peter Dean’s team in Sydney and I am looking forward to the work we’ve got laid out for the rest of this year looking at the US-Australia alliance as well as the wider Indo-Pacific.
Anyway, I just wanted to touch base with you all because I very much appreciate those of you that have taken the time to read and subscribe, as well as those of you that elected to opt-in for paid subscriptions, and I’m cognisant of the fact it’s been quiet around here! I’ll be locking in a bit more of a regimented schedule going forward now that I have a little more white space in my schedule.
As ever, let me know if there’s something in particular you’d be interested in hearing about.