Alice Han

It's a very, very sad turn of events.

But the silver lining and a lot of media attention is being paid to this right now is one Australian hero, Ahmed Al Ahmed, a Syrian migrant who became an Australian national, was the guy, I don't know if you saw the video, James, who tackled one of the shooters.

and took his gun away from him.

He's in hospital, but certainly has garnered a lot of attention, including from Trump himself, who has called him a hero too.

And so on that note, we'll talk a bit about the Trump administration's approach to national security.

The Trump administration just dropped its new national security strategy, and the biggest headline isn't what's in it, but what's missing.

The fire and brimstone language about China being America's top threat

gone.

Instead, Trump is framing China mostly as an economic rival, softening his previous position on trade, security, and even cybersecurity issues.

Beijing's reacting positively so far, at least publicly.

So are we looking at a real reset in the relationship here, or just a tactical pause, a detente, in a long and bumpy relationship?

James, I'll start with my take, because I've been following this very closely, and it's worth mentioning to listeners that the National Security Strategy is a congressionally mandated report in the US.

It states the executive branch's national security goals and how it intends to achieve them.

And what was interesting to me is in the first Trump administration,

its NSS, which was first released in 2017, had a way more hawkish tone vis-a-vis China.

It identified China as a great power competitor and a primary challenge to American statecraft.

In many ways, I think that this new national security strategy document is a product of international conflict within the Trump administration.

You've got hawks and doves, and clearly what I sense and what I've heard is that

The Doves, mainly Secretary Besant, Treasury Secretary Besant, clearly want this document not to be incendiary so that they can continue to have relatively stable negotiations with the Chinese counterparts in advance of Trump's potential April visit to China.

And one thing I will add, when I looked at the document itself, and Chinese media finally reflected on this too, is the fact that the Taiwan issue, which is critical to this relationship, was only mentioned three times in this document versus eight times in the 2017 document.