I'm delighted to be back again. It was a great discussion last year, and I couldn't have been to better panel for today. We've got John Blacksland, Professor Blacksland, a former Australian Army officer, Director of the A&U Southeast Asia Institute, head of the Strategic and Defence Study Centre in the Bell School. Dr Hoon Lee too, currently a visiting fellow in the Bell School, educated in Poland, PhD from Taiwan, until recently based at the Institute of Southeast Asia Studies in Singapore, and third Professor Hugh White, former senior government official and ministerial advisor, including in this building over many years, who headed the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and then the Strategic and Defence Study Centre. We're here to talk about Australia's changing place in a changing world. So let's get stuck into it. John Blacksland, first to you. How is Australia traveling? I'm a glass half full kind of guy. I'm actually reasonably upbeat about the place of Australia in the world. We are doing remarkably well despite all of the naysayers and the gloom predictors. We seem to be able to weather storms pretty well. Our political system has an obsession with narcissism, very much focused on froth and bubble in terms of where we're heading, and that is arguably a big detractor from our political system and it's bringing questions about the appropriateness of our democratic model. But when we step back and we compare Australia to many other countries, our own neighbours and people in other predicaments, we are actually, you know, and Senator Penny Wong had talked about this in passing about Donald Horn's psychastic comments about the lucky country, but we still are in that predicament. You know, we are still extraordinarily fortunate we have things very much going our own way. And that is, I think partly because of institutional factors. You know, as Winston Churchill says, democracy is the worst form of government, apart from all the others. And yes, we can really be hard on ourselves about the short termism of our political system. And yet, despite that, we do seem to still manage to muddle through and come up with a country that people are dying to get to, literally and metaphorically. Now, you know, that in itself is controversial, but that speaks to one of the things about Australia that is so darn detractive, that is still so resilient, that is still so welcoming and so positive. So I'm very much a glass half full person. Yes, there are big security challenges and I'm looking forward to grappling with them in our conversation. But my sense is that we have lots of good reason to be pretty upbeat about our future. Wong, your thoughts, half full, half empty? I can offer a perspective maybe from the outside. And where I travel, whether it's Southeast Asia or Northeast Asia, I think all the perception about Australia has been positive, that has been quite consistent for a long period of time. And I agree with John, there are reasons to be proud of for Australia, good governance, you know, support for the rule-based order, support for international law and free trade. All of those are really meta. And to put it in the perspective on the context right now, I think from the Asian, Southeast Asian particularly region, there are a lot of anxieties about China's rise, about US presence or commitment to the region or not. And in that context, I think Australia really emerges as an oasis of stability. And there is consistent foreign policy, consistent image that Australia puts out. And I think in this time of uncertainty, especially for the regional neighbours smaller and little sized countries, that stability is really important. So this is a very positive trajectory that Australia has had. Professor White, your thoughts on that in the context of the short termism in the politics that John touched on, but are we living off the rewards of previous generations of our political leadership? Yes, Kieran. I think we are. I'm a little bit less optimistic than my fellow panellists. It's not because I don't think Australia's achieved very good things over the last few decades. I think we have. But I think a very significant factor in that has been that we've been living in a very stable region and we've been very closely aligned with the leading power in that very stable region, which has made it extremely easy for our region to work well for us. And that's provided the foundation. We're both politically and economically. We've been able to make the Asian story a very successful story for us. And I think overall we have. But the circumstances which have underpinned that, I think are changing and changing faster than our political system and for that matter our broader public discourse is acknowledging. And the key shift there, there are several of course, the most important one is the rise of China and what that means for America's role in the region. And I don't think our political system at the moment is yet grappling with the significance of what's happening in the shift in the distribution of power between America and China and what that means for America's role in Asia and China's role in Asia and so on. I think we're still coasting on in the hope that what's worked for us so well for the last 40 odd years, 45 years, is going to keep working in future and I think that looked implausible 10 years ago and looks frankly ludicrous now. We're in the midst of a huge shift in the way Asia works and we're still pretending to ourselves that it's not happening. You've written about it, discussed it for a long time, the idea of the China choice. We've heard so often our modern political leaders, you might say, we don't need to choose. We don't need to choose between our economic partnership of China and the strategic partnership of the United States. Why is that not right in those simplistic terms? Well it's right at one level and that is it's right that we don't yet, haven't yet had to choose between America and China in a sort of fundamental binary way, the way countries in the Cold War had to choose between the Soviets and the Americans. We haven't faced that choice yet but we might face that choice in future if strategic rivalry between the US and China continues to escalate as it has over the last few years, for the next few years then they will, both of them will increasingly, even more than they have so far, start to require Australia to make choices and the other point of course is that although we don't have to make that fundamental binary choice we're making smaller choices all the time. A whole drift of Australian foreign policy today is to try and position ourselves between America's desire for us to side with America in resisting China's growing power and China's insistence that we not do that and I think a great deal of Australian foreign policy is already focused on making that series of choices. The other way of thinking about it is that we do have a choice. It's actually the choice that Penny Wong mentioned as being framed in the opening paragraphs, opening passages of the Asian Century White Paper. The choice as to whether we as a country try and shape our destiny in a changing Asia or pretend it's not happening and I thought it was slightly ironic that she cited that because it does seem to me that on both sides of politics our political leaders are stepping back from our choosing not to try and really address this challenge as it confronts us and our choosing instead to pretend that it's not happening is a historic mistake. I think it would be interesting to extrapolate on that in the context of ASEAN and we'll get to that in a moment but Huang, in terms of the perspective from one of China's neighbours I'm interested in your thoughts on how Vietnam handles the China choice as Hugh describes it. Well, it's been a choice that already thousands of years that have been pondering and Vietnam always prides itself among regional neighbours. It knows China the best because of proximity because of cultural and political similarities but also because of trajectory of historical encounters yet I think leaders in Hanoi are everyday struggling how to respond to China and I think if to put the content into the context of choice and China choice I think Vietnam would choose a peaceful China would like to choose China a peaceful and responsibly rising China and prosperity China because that would mean that Vietnamese economic model also can succeed and also that political model can succeed as well but when it comes to assertive or even aggressive China and China that is actually threatening with Vietnam sovereign claims that wouldn't be the choice of course and I think Vietnam just like other regional countries perhaps also including Australia faces a double challenge one is that it must be very agile and very responsive to the changing China very fastly changing China it's not a peaceful China that is eager to participate in regional architecture multilateralism the peaceful benign neighbour from the 1990s it's a very different China today so that constant reimagination of strategies towards China needs to be there the second simultaneous challenge for Vietnam I think in other countries as well is to have in mind that everything that Chinese government do is with a longer term view so they have a long term vision so having that in mind both midterm and short term challenges as long as long term responses is I think the biggest challenge for smaller neighbours just like Vietnam and what about Professor Blacksland you were the defence attache earlier in your career in Thailand and Myanmar how do those nations handle the rise of China and that parallel superpower of our region the United States it's a good question and it's fascinating to see how countries like Myanmar and Thailand are responding both Theravada, Buddhist countries the narrow path very much have parallel experiences and interesting enough politically have come to almost the same point formerly Burma was a pariah state under the junta the slawk that wonderful Anumatopeic word slawk I love that term in a state law and order restoration council gave a sense of this brutish military regime that was Burma and they have come down this path of the road to democracy and Americans Obama went a couple of times, loved it of course butted up against the economic realities of the fact that Myanmar sits right next door to China and China has an extraordinary amount of influence over Myanmar it's got an oil and gas pipeline through to Chakpo from connecting to Yunnan it's got enormous investment there and sitting between India and China it's very clear that Myanmar is now seeing that its economic basket is very much tied to China and Aung San Suu Kyi's presence in Beijing repeatedly speaks to that interestingly in Thailand a country which still a US treaty ally and still has exercised Cobra Gold held in Thailand with American forces and coalition forces as well has got increasingly Luke Warm and my colleague Dr Greg Raymond and I have been on a very exciting Minerva Research Initiative project looking at through the prism of the Thai military how they view China and the United States and seeing the waxing and waning of enthusiasm both for China and the United States in Thailand a country that is clearly they've made some concessions they're now going to buy Chinese submarines the prime minister has exercised a superpower clause in the interim constitution to, sorry, the new constitution to overrule objections and approve Chinese investment in a major part of the Belt Road Initiative into Thailand very interesting to see that but at the same time we're seeing very keen, the prime minister of Thailand very keen to stay in touch with the United States not wanting that relationship to wither and also seeing the significance of ASEAN the work we're doing is very interesting to see the enthusiasm for keeping America engaged in Asia and making sure that ASEAN doesn't unravel is very, very telling interestingly also how they're very interested in what we in Australia say and do what it appears to me and this is my hypothesis is that Australia we kind of set the regional benchmark so where Australia goes others in the neighborhood are prepared to go just short of because then you won't quite invoke the ire of China and I think that's a very interesting perspective about what that means for us and how important what we say and do is because it's not just about us we are studied closely in the neighborhood our actions, our thoughts, our speeches have repercussions in the neighborhood and the neighbors all seem to be very interested in seeing what Australia does and then acting accordingly Well, the ire of China Professor White we've seen what it can mean in terms of the in the context of the THAAD missile system the South Korean the economic boycotts of various South Korean goods they can put their foot down and quite swiftly if we fast forward to say a decade how do you see the Chinese presence in the Asia Pacific under the most powerful leader for decades likely to extend many people believe beyond two terms as president of China Look it's a really critical question and you can look at it two ways what does Xi Jinping want I think we know he wants what he calls a new model of great power relations and that means that he wants China to be the leading power in Asia I think if he had his druthers it would be the only leading power in Asia I think he'd like to see the United States effectively cease to play a significant strategic role in Asia whether he achieves that is going to depend partly on what the United States does and partly what the rest of us does it's not at all impossible at the United States because it remains a very powerful country could sustain a strong leadership position in Asia I don't think it can sustain the dominance that's enjoyed for so long in future because I think China is too strong to be pushed back into its box but it could sustain a strong leadership role and help to balance China's power and that's I think what the rest of us in the region would very much want but that will depend on America being willing and able to use its power effectively that would be a very tough ask whoever was in the White House it would have been a very tough ask if Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush or somebody else have won the election on the 8th of November last year under Donald Trump it's not an outcome you can bet on and the second possibility is the United States withdraws now most of us, most of the time find that almost impossible to imagine including me the United States power in Asia has been a fact for so long that we can hardly imagine a region without it but then again we used to think that about the British and the other Europeans and Boris Johnson in Sydney a couple of weeks ago notwithstanding they're not coming back and so it's possible that we could live in a region within the time frames that are relevant perhaps not to my career but relevant to most of yours that we live in a region in which the United States no longer playing a significant role is what Japan does more than anything else and to a certain extent what the rest of us what other countries in the region do but Japan more than anybody else and I do think there's a chance that the Japanese will decide to live with China's power in which case we will all of us live in a region dominated by China that's not a statement of what I'd like I find it a bit scary all the reasons that one mentioned very scary we have to contemplate and if Australia doesn't like it we have to ask ourselves what are we going to do about it what can we as a country do to avoid China acquiring more power in Asia than we would like them to have and that's a conversation which we've not even begun to have in Australia John Blacksland your thoughts on that in terms of how well placed we are as a nation how do you deal with that scenario and not just on our own but as you alluded to with our regional our neighbours and others more broadly you know here's right to point out to the problem but I do think we actually are beginning to have that conversation I don't think it hasn't started it has started I certainly my engagement with the government officials in private has been very strongly championing the fact that Australia is seeking in effect to do its own pivot back to Asia has been placed on rethinking its engagement with the Philippines and this isn't just about Marawi it's about our place and the significance of the neighbourhood and I'm the director of the South East Asia Institute at ANU one of the reasons why I took on the job is because I really believe in the importance of ASEAN to Australia it's the 50th anniversary of the forming of ASEAN today ASEAN is easy to be dismissed as a weak read and strategist I've spoken to several you know are quite dismissive of it and yet ASEAN has been remarkably successful over its life and remarkably enduring and yes there are aspects of it that don't quite fit the western mould about how geopolitics should work and how they should balance and you know exercise great power dynamics but it it is a proto great power it's a proto great power 629 million people two and a half trillion dollar economy the gateway that you know what Joko Widodo called the Maritime Fulcrum he was talking about Indonesia but it really speaks to the whole of Southeast Asia if you look at that map and as we do on the STSC logo and just over your shoulder Kiran if you spin that map a bit and you put Southeast Asia directly north of Australia rather than off to the northwest you get a sense of how significant that space is to Australia and how it's kind of the gate between the Indo and Pacific and why Rory this morning you know talks about the Indo-Pacific I know he's got his detractors on that idea I think it resonates from an Australian point of view and from a Southeast Asian point of view because it speaks to that space we live in and when you think about it the most obvious space where we should be investing is in our relationships with Indonesia and more broadly with Southeast Asia but that's really hard because they're so different from us this is a very diverse group you know it demographically linguistically historically culturally legally economically demographically on so many fronts it's very diverse and very different from us but it is important no one's ever going to tow it away you know like and yet we keep on metaphorically and literally skipping over it I've heard many strategic thinkers and talkers talk about great power dynamics and forget Southeast Asia hang on guys it's our immediate neighborhood and this is the as I say a proto great power now it's got also hang ups it's got to hang up with particularly Cambodia it's got a chip on its shoulder about Vietnam and Thailand and I think there's something Thailand and Vietnam could work on because Cambodia is co-opted by China because it doesn't trust its neighbors and because it doesn't feel the United States can be trusted either so these are things that when the neighborhood looks at us they see us to a large extent as a kind of the litmus test for what Southeast Asia should do how hard can we not just should be but how hard can we push back to Chinese hard power and I think that's something where we actually need to there's another point here I think worth making we as a we talk about Australia as a middle power we're a middle power we're small power pretensions we don't like to think of ourselves exercising middle power dynamics we are a middle power we need to think of ourselves as having regional influence that may be waning economically you know in turn relatively speaking but we have it we have cloud we have soft power cloud as well and I think we need to reconceive as we think about that strategic balancing act and we manage a relationship with China and we manage a relationship with the United States a deep broad and we talk about maybe changing that we need to have a clear sense in our minds of how profound that relationship with the United States is it is not just deep it is very very broad we are extremely dependent on that now you can try and unravel that but you want to be very very careful about doing it and think through the implications because even even if American power does go down the path that Hugh has projected as possible and likely you know similarly with me hopefully doesn't happen but it's quite possible America still has an interest in Australia and in that maritime fulcrum that space that's an enduring American interest even if it wanes its influence elsewhere in the South China so there's a lot there but we in Australia I think need to reimagine our role our perspective on the neighbourhood and how we conceive of what we should do with our neighbours. You up until recently were based at the Institute of South East Asian Studies in Singapore what's your view on Professor Blacksland's thesis there is his take on South East Asia? Yes I agree I mean today is the ASEAN's 15th anniversary a big celebration in fact I think we should put a little bit of anthem of ASEAN to salute this remarkable success and I do think this should be recognised if you put it in a context of historical difficulties of the region you do recognise the importance of ASEAN and even today I would like to add on what John said playing a little bit of devil's advocate if I may from a perspective of someone who studies ASEAN and who wishes ASEAN well and I think it's a little bit overwhelming at the moment instead of celebrating ASEAN's successes there is a little bit too much attention to ASEAN shortcomings which is valid concern and should be put out there for constructive reflection and ASEAN probably like any other countries is a little bit obsessed with great power politics so it looks very much every day about to China to the US probably a little bit too much my own concern is not whether China can tear ASEAN apart or whether ASEAN would be confident enough in itself without other great powers support including US and what not but it's I think a little bit missing debate is about how ASEAN sees itself and this is quite worrying because you know they say there are many leaders in ASEAN 10 of them at least right but little leadership and it is true when you don't have leadership there's lack of unity as well and there are so many so many dynamics now that speak to different interests even you know internally within one country one country you asked me earlier about Vietnam also has many different views even though it's one party and that is similar to any other ASEAN member countries so if within one country you have so many inconsistent views you can imagine how many views in ASEAN within as John pointed out very very diverse group there could be so for me the biggest worry is how ASEAN can uphold its internal values and you know if you want to celebrate another 50 years of anniversary how can it keep commitment to itself among neighbors and I think there is a big change in the generation of leaders in ASEAN and whether the original visions of ASEAN founding fathers who wanted to come together and guard against actually great power rivalry and other forces in the region can this be inherited now and further on and this is the task that ASEAN is really facing how to make ASEAN people excited about ASEAN themselves how to make them commit to ASEAN so maybe a renewal of vows after 50 years okay well given the potential and also the vulnerabilities of ASEAN if you're sitting down with a new Australian foreign minister what would your advice be as to how to try and place Australia over the next 10, 20, 50 years I'd put a big emphasis on our relations with South East Asia but I wouldn't frame that through ASEAN ASEAN as an institution has been extremely successful at a very narrow but very important purpose what we're actually celebrating the 50th anniversary of today was an agreement brokered between the other states of Maritime South East Asia which was intended to manage the end of what had been a very contested era between them ASEAN was all about managing relations between its member states and it's been extremely successful at that and it's been extremely successful in expanding that relationship management process from the original group to include the present 10 other functions effectively as a manager of the relationship between those states and the great powers because its entire history has been framed by an era in which American primacy in Asia has been uncontested and what we've seen over the last few years what we saw just last week again in Manila is the difficulty that ASEAN has in trying to manage a position when it's sandwiched between the two states and I think it's very difficult for ASEAN to as an institution to manage that problem precisely because it is so diverse geography alone tells us that Vietnam or Laos are never going to have the same attitude towards China as Indonesia for example because they're just differently located, Vietnam and Laos have a border with China it makes all the difference in the world and thank God but sharing a land border with a country the size of China changes everything so I think ASEAN as an institution is not going to do much for us but I very much agree that one of the things we need to do is to think very carefully about how we develop our relationships with Southeast Asia I agree with John after decades and generations in which managing relations with the heart of Australian foreign policy for about the last 20 years that's fallen away and I do think that is a historic mistake on our part but I'd caution that the solution to so to speak our China problem is not going to be to work with the ASEAN to try and push China away because it's just not going to be that easy they're not going to be that unified and our interests aren't always going to be aligned with theirs we're not going to subcontract the management of our relationship with China to Hanoi or Vientiane or Bangkok or even Jakarta we're going to have to think for ourselves about what our interests are in managing that relationship and then see how we can work with the others so that requires before we start travelling around the region let's have a really serious debate at home about how we see our relationship with China and for that matter how we see our relationship with the United States which we hope will remain very important but which is not going to look like the relationship we've had I would say for the last 40 years Let's head north now and look at the Korean Peninsula the flash point in the world right now is there any any path forward that you can see some talk that Trump should open a dialogue with Kim Jong-un I can't think of anything much more scary than that well you could sell tickets to it and I'd buy one look I think the reality is that we are going to live with a North Korea that has nuclear weapons and on crescent trends we're going to live with a North Korea that has the capacity to deliver a nuclear weapon on a US city not this year maybe not even next year but soon and that does make a huge difference it doesn't to my mind make much difference to the risk of a nuclear attack on a US city direct because I do have a kind of old fashioned faith in deterrence and I think it would be very hard to persuade Kim Jong-un or his success is that a nuclear attack on an American city would result in a very immediate nuclear attack on the United States what it does do is undermine the credibility of US guarantees to its allies in Asia and that does undermine the strength of America's position in Asia and contribute significantly to the process which is already underway of undermining the US strategic position in our part of the world and so I think that's a significant factor that the worry I have is that the more the United States does what it's done in the last few months to a certain extent for the last 20 years that is repeatedly threaten terrible things to North Korea next time they do a nuclear missile test and then do nothing to back them up and the North keeps on testing and the nuclear capability develops and American political leaders keep on saying it's not going to happen and it does that undermines US credibility and credibility is a very precious commodity in a kind of power political rivalry we're seeing in Asia today not just in relation to North Korea but also in relation to China so the trick is I think that we're going to have to learn to live with a North Korean nuclear capability and think very carefully about how we manage that rather than to undermine our credibility by keeping on pretending we're going to do something about it which we're not as you say it's a deterrent until they use it and become a suicide what's your view on this because China has not helped as much as they could in terms of reigning in Pyongyang but anyone that thought they would I think is probably a little deluded because they want that buffer don't they they want that buffer they don't want an American ally up to their border that's the bottom line well we tend to think about the crisis any crisis in general but this one in particular in terms of again great powers responsibilities US China of course I mean they are key players but if this is the issue that concerns us as a broader region and I guess pretty much everyone of us in the room would be concerned about this are we okay to relieve this responsibility to very unpredictable outcomes I think it's a common concerns and hence it should be addressed multilaterally and I think every state needs to have this responsibility there's no buck passing there and I think there is certain consensus on that given the UN sanctions and even ASEAN has come to the consensus upon that just over the weekend the leaders have issued the statement saying the region is gravely concerned about the crisis so I think it's much more about the possibility of Trump or Xi Jinping in dealing with this matter and John Blacksland we saw China again join with Russia the rest of the Security Council with tougher sanctions on Pyongyang yesterday that's not the first time though is it this has happened a number of times over many years and incrementally Kim Jong-un and North Korea they edged towards that nuclear capacity so what are the options there are no military options are they the agreement we'll see how much of that gets actually implemented because words are words let's see the deeds let's see the implementation because China has enormous influence there but on your question about the military option the bottom line is you know the planners have looked at the North Korean option for years it's been a perennial military exercise option for planners in US Army Pacific and the Korean forces command so what they've what they've found is that there's no way of guaranteeing that they've identified all the potential launch points because many of them are hidden and so while you could you know there's a number of things I could consider special forces operations trying to get Kim Jong-un wherever he's located maybe conduct several raids to get most of the locations and then conduct precision guided munition strikes on the identified potential bunkers or the missile launching pads so what if you miss three and what about the the mobile ballistic missile launches that have that are not liquid field dependent but solid field rockets that can be moved and launched from different locations that maybe the satellite didn't pick up and what about the mass artillery that's hidden and spread out just north of the demilitarized zone the DMZ within range of millions and millions of people in Seoul what do you do? realistically there's not a viable military option so the Americans talk it up they talk it up and they talk about maintaining a military option realistically there isn't one so the question then is how bad would it be? well let's just think about how it's been in the past we thought it was bad that China that Russia got the bomb back in the late 40s but then we thought it was terrible that China got it then we thought it was terrible that India got it then Pakistan got it and then Israel and whoever else and yet none of them have used them why? because as soon as you do there's no way of having any kind of assurance that you will win more than likely you will invoke the opprobrium of the world and you will lose big time most people understand that and then the question is ok is Kim Jong-un a rational actor well my sense is he is a deeply paranoid rational actor and that paranoid is not unreasonable from where he sits if you put yourself in a North Korean shoes country that was bombed effectively to oblivion during the Korean War it sees America not as the great light on the hill but as the devil incarnate so from their perspective I'm not endorsing that perspective but when you think about the world from a North Korean perspective everything that happens is just confirmation of the need to burnish those efforts to make sure you've got the ICBMs you've got the miniaturized nukes you've got it all there as soon as possible lest you fall into the trap that Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein fell into of relinquishing their weapons of mass destruction Hugh White further on this issue do you think that Trump and others were deluded, misplaced in expecting Xi Jinping and China to really put the foot down on North Korea and further it's that is it overstated the influence because from my understanding I don't even think Kim Jong-un has ever met Xi Jinping I think they were mistaken in expecting or hoping that China would do their work for them I do think people exaggerate China's control over North Korea this is perhaps an impolite analogy but sometimes talking to American friends I remind them of Australia's relationship with Papua New Guinea you look at Australia's relationship with Papua New Guinea major aid don't even think well Australia should have an awful lot of control over what happens in Papua New Guinea but anyone who knows the Australia B&G relationship knows, no not at all and I think that the Chinese although they have the capacity to turn North Korea off they can flick a switch what they don't have is a joystick which allows them to control what North Korea does day by day it's a very potent and in its weird way effective independent regime with a very strong sense of its own interests and I think the analysis is right that the Chinese are not prepared to do anything which threatens the survival of the Kim regime I don't myself think that's so much because they fear that if the Kim regime collapses they'll have American troops on their border on the Yalu River I don't think the Chinese worry very much about whatever the US Army could do to the PLA on Chinese territory they're pretty confident that don't fight a land war in Asia is the motto that's chiseled in stone over the portals of the Pentagon I so I don't think that's actually a bigger problem for the Chinese I think it's rather that they just think why deal with that problem there'd be chaos in North Korea there are nuclear weapons on the loose they'd rather not deal with that problem and they'd rather just kick it down the road but the other point is that I do think Chinese strategists are likely to calculate that they benefit from the present situation they don't like the idea of North Korea having a nuclear weapon but they do like the fact that North Korea having a nuclear weapon complicates America's relationship with its allies in the western Pacific and the Chinese are hard men playing a tough game this is real power politics for something which is very important to them they are very willing to take risks including strategic risks to help them undermine US standing in Asia and North Korea is doing their work for them so the idea that Chinese would help America solve that problem it wasn't going to happen and Hong if we look at another flash point in the region the reclamation of the reefs and the islands of the South China Sea what's the view from Vietnam and from other affected nations Well I think the South China Sea has been quite a central point at the Asian Foreign Ministers meeting just over the weekend and Vietnamese position on that has been consistent in pursuing peaceful resolution of dispute in relying to the rule of law and international law and it has been emphasising these at the recent meeting Vietnam has been pushing to put an in the ASEAN collective joint statement that is a common concern for the region and it pushes for demilitarisation which also have met with certain pushback from neighbour countries including the claimants allegedly including the Philippines who was chairing the meeting so I think the militarisation and island building in the South China Sea concerns everyone in the region whether they have direct claims or not however how do they respond to diplomatically and open or backstage it's been very different over the past few years we've seen in ASEAN the change of government in the Philippines change a little bit of balance within the South East Asian claimant group because Philippines was the one who really took the legal actions against China and however Duterte's coming to power have kind of deep downplayed the dispute for the benefit of better relations, bilateral relations with China which is concerning for everyone in the region not only because they care about the neighbour's national interest and dispute but it questions the value of international law it questions the value of the system that is supposed to be based on the rule of the law and if this is neglected and despite the arbitral tribunal ruling then what can we expect next for worse scenarios in Hanoi's government is already okay if seas can be manipulated like that what's next maybe air spaces it's all about how you can uphold the international law John Blackstone do you think Australia has a role to play in guarding that international law in the sense of taking part in the freedom of navigation operations within 12 nautical miles of the reclaimed Chinese territory as the Americans up until recently hadn't done under Trump but they've now done as I understand it two freedom of navigation exercises should Australia follow suit my sense is that Australia should be very cautious Australia is already conducting we heard this morning operation gateway which is maritime air patrols over the South China Sea it conducts transits through the South China Sea routinely with the Royal Australian naval vessels but there is a reluctance to go where the United States under Admiral Harry Harris has encouraged us to go I think for very good reason the United States has been effectively behaving like a fickle player lately and it's not at all clear that the United States has our interests all that much at heart now I'm not dissing the Americans here, that's not my point my point is that we're not that important to them what is important is the relationship with China and then Japan and then dealing with North Korea and if a deal needs to be struck that requires some kind of compromise perhaps over the South China Sea and if Australia was to be too front footed on a phonop like going within a 12 nautical mile of one of the islands that is claimed by China, occupied by China and recognised by the arbitral tribunal ruling as meriting a 12 nautical mile territorial sea and there are a handful that do and a handful that don't if you do that you are unnecessarily I think in this case that is not in Australia's interests and so I think we need to be very wary about doing that I think we should continue doing what we do but there's another point here I think it's worth noting and that is that we don't want to then just completely vacate the field China will I believe and this is up from a huge amount of debate will take as much as you let it as we give and I think there is a parallel there with the expansion of the British Empire 200 years ago Britain expanded incrementally there wasn't a great plan to conquer the world the British East India Company established itself the military followed there's a parallel there with China's expanding economic interests and therefore looking to secure those economic interests that's actually not unreasonable it's quite reasonable but then how much how they exercise that reasonable right is one that requires a bit of checking Australia needs to be forthright about defending its interests and about cooperating with neighbours in defence legitimate interests of our neighbours that are actually congruent with our interests and in messaging back to Beijing that we respect their role we respect their historical entitlements but we also respect those of our neighbours and we expect China to respect that too and I think that's quite reasonable Professor White what are your overarching views of China and that region in the context of the so-called nine-dash line the view that China is going to be imperialistic and it's growth do you are you pessimistic or are you sanguine about the rise of China in the sense that they are they see themselves as the middle kingdom and they won't overreach I'm pessimistic look I think the key thing to understand about the South China is that we're looking really at an issue which is running at two levels at one level there is a significant issue about ownership of contested reefs and rocks about conflicting claims to maritime areas like the nine-dash line questions about how these issues are resolved but multilaterally or bilaterally all the stuff when he has talked about all the time but underpinning that and the reason why we're talking about it is that that whole set of issues is just a proxy for the strategic rivalry between the US and China which both Washington and Beijing for different reasons believe it to be to their advantage to play out in the South China Sea and it is I think a dangerous situation because it is a point of contention where inherently insignificant issues are directly linked with huge questions about regional order and great power politics and just as if I can use this analogy in 1914 Europe went to war over a relatively insignificant question about the status of Serbs in the Austro-Hungarian Empire it would be perfectly possible for the US and China to go to war of a relatively insignificant issue like who owns mischief reef or whether there should be a base built on Scarborough shoals China is using that confrontation as a way of showing that America is no longer as strong in the region as it used to be America is trying to use that confrontation as a way to demonstrate to the region that China is threatening to their interests and that they should support the United States both believe they can win on that space I suspect China at the moment is doing better than America but there's a very significant risk I think that will be the point at which competition turns into a confrontation and I think the management of that is therefore much more important than the question of who ends up owning mischief reef or who ends up building a base on Scarborough shoals and it's really not appropriate to be handling such a nuanced and precarious situation via Twitter is it as the president exactly it's a worry many final thoughts from you John Blackson before we wrap up thanks my sense is we talk about regional arrangements I think there is one that we haven't quite come up with yet and that's one I call Manis which is the word in Bahasa Indonesia means sweet which is stands for Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia and Singapore I recognise in the limitations of ASEAN while very supportive of ASEAN I think there is space for Australia to reimagine its relations with its immediate neighbours and that's something that I think really needs to be thought through Indonesia, the Indonesians I've spoken to have been quite enthusiastic about it there seems to be a little bit of traction to that idea of sweetening regional ties for Maritime Regional Corporation forum any final thoughts yeah I think as we celebrate again 50th anniversary of ASEAN a lot of thinkers in the region warn each other that we can't take peace for granted because it was hard and for Southeast Asia in particular but I think this is a moment more than ever we can't take peace for granted and each country whether small or middle or great have equal responsibilities in safeguarding the peace so that's why Thanks for listening Dr John Blackson Professor John Blackson Dr Hong Lee Tsu and Professor Huay thank you for your participation


To use the period of Easter celebration to renew their hope for a better tomorrow, Osaldima said this in his Esther message explaining that the hope of the Christians would be met in the resurrected Jesus Christ. He said that the federal government, under the able leadership of President Borla Tinnable, is working hard to improve the economy. As Christians, we have to show love to each other, and our members, leaders, and as Christians, that we love our state, that we love our community, that we love our country. Because we will never betray the trust of our public office, and now I wish my meeting, my leadership, and my great Christians, they, by virtue and criminality, should be sitting in our society, not escalating by the day.


An entertainment news, Walt Disney called say that on Friday, July 30th, it was making vaccination mandatory for all its on-site salaries and non-union hourly employees in the United States. And this comes as a highly infectious Delta COVID-19 variant arrives at resurgence in cases. Employees who are already vaccinated and are working on site will have 60 days to complete their protocols. The company also said that all the newly hired employers will be required to be fully vaccinated before beginning their employment. Disney's announcement comes after major tech companies including Google, Uber and Facebook said earlier this week that all U.S. employees must get vaccinated to step into offices. Notified about fresh news updates


Alrighty, so I am finally checking this out first. I got a couple questions This is how I'm getting the scene. So is that is that where it's supposed to be cut off because it adds that black bar? And she feels ever so slightly stretched out this way. So I'm not quite sure if anything got cropped I'm supposed to see You know in and the movie is pretty small you can make it a bit bigger. I would say if we look at Would say is it inspector? It's 480 by 270 you can easily make this 800 by 600, you know like some of the bigger for details and stuff Other than that Let me bring that back You let's watch it one more through come on with time through here You were champion and you do what you expect. So the first impression that I had you were champion She says all this is that her eye line is Is looking at his forehead or higher? So that's one thing where she doesn't quite feel connected to the guy You were champion and you do what you expected to do You were champion My biggest thing in all this and it's usually with lip sync is that and there's something where The jaw is moving and saying things right dog was up and down and it doesn't really affect the head It always feels like the head is doing the body animation and the lip sync is kind of a copy paste onto it without really affecting the rest so in your case if you look at this and I'm just gonna Make this a tad bigger looking at her You were champion it's Champion see how it's you got that down and then the rest of this and doing all of this here The head is just kind of moving forward and it seems like there's a head of line like a IK head almost and I think when she goes champion on Pian like champion like it can have a little bit of a tilt sideways and a bit of a tilt out I will it'll dip as a little accent for that word You were champion and you do what you expected to do anything here expected to do you know it has that kind of smooth move here Without really being Yeah, you know effect again. It's just it's the main thing is the jaw affecting the head and having some of the words be a bit more Pronouns and with accents to the head and again here. I'm not I really don't know what she's looking at at this point And you do what you expected to do and you do but I and everybody else thought you should do that's fantastic See how here don't thought you should do Should do I have you you have those little things that's just fantastic Thought you should do and you want to tell me that those fights weren't real that you and then same thing here on real You can have real bit of a tilt sideways Maybe on a bit down real or maybe like a down up a bit of arc when you track the nose Because if I scroll through this you can see how the rotation of the head from here on is pretty much the same So be careful that it doesn't look like an IK head and that you do have Some rotation in there and again being part having the audio be part of the head accents This seems a bit See the action that you have here the else thought you should do great little sharp Moment here. That's really cool Now on this one you could It's all also very one axis again where there are no sideways tilts or something in why where she goes So on thought it feels like you're just moving it forward one axis in the head forward and the And the nose could do a little bit of a or the head could do a bit of a why rotation like that So thought thought like a little bit of a out and back in just to have a bit more complexity in rotations But anyway that action and intensity is kind of missing here You know, it's I don't I don't believe it and it feels like not that it's an even rotation But it feels like she just turns are too early almost Where it's almost like I don't and she's still looking at him head raised nose up still trying to look at him and Believe it. They don't believe it. She does that big turn You were champion and you did what you were expected to do and you did what I'm everybody Let's go Anyway, but that's kind of That is kind of what I have for the head here. It's very really good You were champion and you do what you expected to do and you do what I'm everybody careful movements like this You watch her hand going up the screen left hand to do and you do what I mean So if you do this here, this feels a bit like an IK arm Because I feel like the rotation the angle of the forehead for arm and the rotation of the wrist It's kind of disconnected and it all kind of goes up in a fairly straight line here See that there's no arc in there and the timing is a bit even So for this I will go You know slower and fast to get into that down for The else thought you should do and you want to tell me that those fights weren't real that you were carried well I don't believe it Yeah, it's great and the same thing here on that arm If you track the wrist up over It's basically doing this It's very very straight very angular whereas you can have a bit of a bit of an arc like that And then a hole here, right the arm goes And arm goes up hold it out basically mirroring what the head would do to a certain extent and they both feel a bit It's a lifeless, but just it just kind of feels like a move it feels animated and not part of the performance That's about it really cool job a little of it All right There's an email you can sign up you can start whenever you want you can submit whatever you want You get 16 submissions either way a like and subscribe would be awesome. All right. Thank you


Know what's below, especially if you plan to dig. To prevent injuries and service interruptions, call 811 or visit mygeorge811.com at least two business days before you work and have underground lines marked. Georgia Power and Georgia 811, working to keep you safe and connected.


Thank you so much all for joining our webinar today. This is a dedicated webinar for our partners and prospects on how our forecasting AI models can help you identify early merging and unexpected risks and add value to your food safety workflows. We get a lot of questions very often from our partners on how our AI predictive models work, what's the rationale, what's the accuracy behind them. So we thought that we would take this opportunity to dedicate an hour to discuss the rationale behind our forecasting models and how those are reflected on Fudakai AI models. During this session we'll focus on three key pillars. What is the approach Fudakai follows regarding its forecasting capabilities? What are the benefits and use cases for such technology in food prevention? How can you use our ingredients and hazard predictions dashboard to extract meaningful information for your supply chain? And could we have a tailor-made forecasting model applied to each company's parameters? Finally, how do our partners experience the use of AI forecasting models in their workflows? And with that, I'd like to welcome our speakers, our data team leader and AI expert, Michalis Pela-Costaldino, who will walk you through our models and rationale. Rebecca Ferrer, who's Senior Manager of Global Food Safety at PepsiCo, responsible for global programs governing food safety, cultural health data analysis and risk mitigation of ingredients, who will reflect on how our forecasting models have added value to PepsiCo's workflows. And finally, your data scientist and prediction expert, Costaldino Spechrivanis, who will lead the Q&A session. During the webinar, feel free to share your questions on the chat and we'll collect those and answer them during the live Q&A at the end of the presentations. Please note that the webinar is recorded and the recording will be shared right after the session. And with that, I'm going to hand it over to Michalis. Thank you so much. Thank you, Marina, and thank you very much for your introduction. Now, in case some of you in the audience do not know who we are, we are Agrino, we are the data and analytics company using AI in order to predict food safety risks. And we are here today to talk about these predictions, how do they work specifically within the context of our software-reserved solution, namely Fudakai. This is what we will be focusing on today. And before we start, a couple of things behind how do our prediction predictive analytics work overall. So we're talking about a multi-step process that first starts with the data. So we first need to choose the data which we will use in order to train, test, and validate our AI models. You are seeing plural here on the slide because we are training multiple AI models and are selecting the one that is performing the best in order to apply it at scale when we're talking about application at scale, we're talking about applying it to all the ingredients and hazards available in our system. As I said, though, it all starts with data. Data is the underlying engine that fuels our predictions. And when it comes to Fudakai, our data platform has collected and analyzed more than 600 million data records coming from various sources, various places around the world, various regions, and covering many different types of data. You can see it will cover you on this slide. In terms of the actual prediction approaches, what we are using within Fudakai are basically two different approaches. One focuses on forecasting techniques. We will cover this when we talk about increasing ingredient and hazard prediction dashboards. And another one has to do with our correlation approaches. We'll talk about this when we discuss our tailor-made prediction dashboards. Regardless of the approach, keep in mind that the end game, the goal for each of these approaches, in terms of these prediction approaches, has to do with being able to identify what will take place for a specific ingredient, a specific hazard, a specific region or geography, or any combination of them over the next 12 months. We will focus initially on our forecasting techniques, ingredient and ingredient prediction dashboards the hazard prediction dashboards. In a nutshell, our approach can be analyzed in the following steps. So it all starts with a specific product, ingredient or hazard, for which we are going to perform forecasting techniques based on historical data, time series data, on recalls and border rejections announced by public food safety authorities around the world. We'll use this historical data to apply our forecasting techniques and train our IEI models. And based on their outcomes, we will use this output, what our most accurate models believe will take place, in order to be able to perform a risk assessment in the future for a specific ingredient or a specific hazard. And finally, obviously, when we are talking about dashboards, the end game is to actually show case in a meaningful way the results of these AI models. Some things that you will encounter throughout this presentation while using our system is the very core concept of accuracy. So let's spend a moment to discuss how we are calculating the accuracy within our system. So, when it comes to training a new AI model, the actual training will take place twice. First, we will train our models by extracting from the data set the past 12 months of data. We'll train our model and it will attempt to predict what has already taken place. Comparing what our models believe has already taken place and what has actually taken place, we are using this metric is two numbers to calculate the accuracy. And if it's accurate enough, then we add the missing data back into the data set, we retrain our model in order to move 12 months into the future. From a data point of view, keep in mind that whenever you go into any of our prediction dashboard, whether it's an ingredient prediction dashboard or hazard prediction dashboard, there are roughly 2.4,000 different models that are trained in order for the actual dashboard outcomes to be presented. Having said all that, let's go and dive into our ingredient prediction dashboard. Keep in mind, this is a forecasting attempt utilizing historical incidents, food records and border directions of the past to perform predictions in the future, forecasting the future over the next 12 months or performing risk assessment in the future. So what is there? First up, the dedicated block that based on each user's customizations, one can actually quickly identify how to follow the ingredients in their supply chain, which are products, which are the ones that are expected to have an increasing tendency. Basically, which are the products or ingredients that are expected to have more recalls over the next 12 months. And of course, one can dive in deeper. So we can select, as we said, the ingredient prediction dashboard is a dashboard that takes us to the starting point of specific ingredient or product and perform a deeper analysis further down. By selecting a specific ingredient or product, one can quickly identify what are most accurate models believe will take place over the next 12 months. And if we compare this number to what has actually taken place over the past 12 months, we are able to calculate the tendency. This is how we're highlighting products and ingredients that are expected to have an increasing or decreasing tendency based on our model's outcomes. For those of you familiar with our prediction dashboards, you know that we do this on a monthly and weekly basis. And you can perform this deeper analysis based on this. So you can study the monthly distribution of forecasted incidents highlighted here with the red dotted line and identify which is the month or months where you should be expecting most of the incidents concerning the specific product or ingredient. But also something very interesting is that we're also showcasing the validation period highlighted here with the yellow dotted line. These are what are models who launched our ingredient prediction dashboard back in September 2021. And we're showcasing in this yellow dotted line what are models believe back then will take place in the future. So you can see this validation period and identify cases where our model did pretty good. But also cases where our model was not able to perform accurately enough. Apart from that, as we said, we have more than 600,000 data records at our disposal. And these are analyzed also on a geography level. So we know which are the incidents that recalls important rejections for fruits and vegetables. Where did they originate from? Using this data, we are able to perform ingredient prediction, but for a specific geography or specific country. And you will be able to identify quickly which are the countries of origin for fruits and vegetables that are likely to be affected the most as opposed to others. Same thing you can do with hazards. We're still talking about ingredient prediction specifically for fruits and vegetables. There is a dedicated look in our dashboard that identifies imaging hazards. Let's take a moment to talk about what are the magic hazards for us? Imaging hazards are something very new, unknown hazards, hazards that have taken place for this specific ingredient for fruits and vegetables in these games for the first time over the past month, but never before as compared to the roughly 40 years of data that we have. This is what imaging hazard is, and you will see this highlighted as new in our dashboard. But we also do this kind of forecasting techniques for specific hazards. So out of all of the hazards that have taken place for fruits and vegetables, we are training our models on each of these time series and are highlighting here the hazard or hazards that are expected to have an increasing tendency of incidents over the next 12 months as opposed to the 12 months before. And you can quickly identify them using the dedicated block in our dashboard. Using this data, we are able to perform risk assessment in the future. And talking about risk assessment, let's spend a moment to discuss what is Fudakai's risk assessment formula. You can see this highlighted up top in the slide. It takes us input three different parameters, but let's for now focus on the last one, same probability. The probability basically is how often does a specific hazard take place for a specific ingredient or product category? And using what our most accurate models believe will take place in the future for a specific ingredient and specific hazard, we are using these numbers to perform, to apply a Fudakai's risk assessment formula into the future and be able to do this in a forecasting way. How is this visualized within our dashboard? First of all, you can see a quick snapshot of the risk assessment, of the predicted risk assessment for every hazard that has taken place for fruits and vegetables. This is one thing. And the other one is that, as we said, we do this on a monthly basis. So you can also study the risk evolution for a specific product category and specific hazard over the next two months. And this pretty much covers our approach as far as ingredient predictions go. Some things to keep in mind, based on the slides that we've already seen is that we're talking about a forecasting technique using as input data coming from incidents, food recalls and water rejection, historical food recalls and water rejections over the years for a specific ingredient. The analysis forecasting can take place on either a monthly interval or on a weekly interval. And of course, based on this data, you can dive in deeper either on a specific hazard or a specific geography that is of interest to you, where you may be sourcing your ingredients. And again, keep in mind at any point the ingredient prediction dashboard is focused has as a starting point the ingredients and products available within food again. Based finally, based on our models outcomes, we're able to perform risk assessment in the future using what our models believe will take place over the next 12 months. And that's it about ingredient predictions. Let's switch our attention to our hazard prediction dashboard. As you will see in the slides to come, we're talking about a very similar approach. Again, this is a forecasting technique using historical data coming out of recall and water rejection announcements. However, the main difference here is that we are using a specific hazard or hazard category as a starting point. So you can also investigate what are the hazards that are expected to have an increase over the next 12 months or which are the products that are likely to be affected by specific hazard over the next period of time. The analysis is very, very similar. So first up, you can identify what our models outcomes are for a specific hazard or hazard category. In the examples to follow, we have selected the chemical hazard as an example. And you see here, what our most accurate models believe will take place for chemical recalls and border rejections over the next 12 months. And we've compared this number the 12 months before, we're able to calculate the respective tendency. And again, similar to the approach that we follow for ingredient predictions, we do this on a monthly basis. Highlighted here with the red dotted line, you see the monthly distribution of forecasted incidents for chemical hazards. So what do our most accurate models believe will take place on a monthly basis over the next 12 months for chemical hazard. You can identify peaks or low points easily. And again, keep in mind that you can also use the validation period. We launched our hazard prediction, our hazard prediction dashboard back, I think in June, 2022. And you can see what our models believe back then will take place for chemical hazards, compared with what actually took place, this blue line here, and evaluate the results yourself. Similarly to what we do in our ingredient prediction dashboard, you can also dive in deeper on a specific geography or region. In order, and you can see this on the chart on the left, in order for this place, we are training our models specifically for data coming out of these regions and chemical hazards in this case. So you can quickly identify a stronger red color, means more cases, lighter red means less, all of them based on our most accurate models outcomes. Another interesting thing on our hazard prediction dashboard is the outbreak block. This is one of the two places within Foodacire where you can encounter outbreak data. There is a dedicated block within our hazard prediction dashboard that outlines and showcases chemical related outbreaks announced worldwide. And you can either study them in detail, study the counters that have been affected by this outbreak or see the daily distribution of them. Apart from that, and similarly to what we are doing in our ingredient prediction dashboard, you can identify increasing and emerging cases for specific products. So first up, let's start with the increasing cases. So out of all of the products that have been affected by chemical hazards, which are the ones that our models believe will showcase an increase in terms of tendency over the next 12 months? You can see them highlighted in a dedicated block. Again, we're saying here that tendency is based on what our most accurate models believe will take place over the next 12 months and we're comparing this number to what actually took place 12 months ago. Combined with numbers, here you will see identified the ones that are having an increasing tendency. And I'm sure some of you have already guessed it, the next block is dedicated on products and ingredients that have been affected by chemical hazards for the first time ever over the past month, as opposed to the roughly 40 years of data that we have. There's a dedicated block for that and you will see this in your dashboard that it's highlighted with the new keyword here. Before we move on to our tailor-made approach, we'll spend a moment to discuss what we've seen so far for the hazard prediction dashboard. Again, we're stressing out here that we are talking about a forecasting technique. We are using time series data, historical incidents and border rejections for a specific hazard. And even though it's a similar approach to ingredient prediction, for an ingredient prediction dashboard, the main difference is that the starting point is a hazard category or a specific hazard. The rest of the analysis is pretty similar so you can perform a deeper geographic analysis on the predicted incidents for a hazard, identify any products that have been affected for the first time and so on, and keep in mind again that this is a place where you can also see an outbreak data for a specific hazard. And this pretty much covers our forecasting techniques as far as Fudakai goes, but this does not conclude the predictive analytics offered by Fudakai. Another dashboard that we have is the tailor-made prediction one in which the approach is quite different than the forecasting techniques that we're using. Before we dive into the specifics, keep in mind that in here we are talking about a correlation approach. And by correlation, we mean attempting to identify connections, links between different types of data. You will see in the slides to come that in order for a tailor-made prediction dashboard to be generated, many more data points, data records, and many different data types, and types of data are used in order to generate the final outcome. You will see some differences in terms of risk assessment. The actual formula used by a tailor-made prediction dashboard is different than what's used anywhere else within Fudakai. And it can be applied to a specific use case either on a specific product, or a specific hazard, or a combination of them. As you can see, we have dedicated blocks to identify outliers or emerging cases, and the final thing to keep in mind in everything that we will see in the slides to follow, we are talking about the implementation of a dedicated model per use case. Specifically, what we're about to see in the next slides is the model, the tailor-made model, we believe to identify fraud cases happening in beef. As we said at the start, it all starts with data. And indeed, our tailor-made prediction dashboard takes into account many more different types of data. Specifically, in order for the tailor-made dashboard on fraud in beef, beef to be generated, we are using production data, trade data, price, animal disease, news or media references, and finally, lab tests. You can see them quickly highlighted on the chart on the right. And just a small note here that in order for a tailor-made dashboard to be generated, specifically for fraud cases happening in beef, more than three million data records were used, combined, correlated, and then fed into our model in order for the final predictions to take place. As we said, we're talking about correlation approach. So the first step would be to ingest the data, harmonize them, process them, but then we need to identify relationships in the data. And this is what the correlation step takes care. By correlation, we're talking how strong is the relationship between data types. So for example, if one increases, what does another data type do? Does it decrease as well? Does it decrease? And we have, for instance, a specific example here, you can see the tailor-made case correlation example here. And for instance, you can see that the correlation between trade and price. So it's an inverse correlation, meaning that if more trade takes place, then the price is lowered, and the other way around. Whereas as the production increases, so does the trade. Important thing to keep in mind is that this is the second step to our tailor-made prediction approach, attempting to identify hidden relationships between the data. And now let's move on to the risk assessment that we follow. As we said, the introductory slide for tailor-made prediction dashboard is that the risk assessment formula we're using here is a bit different than what we are using anywhere else within Fudakai. As you can see, the actual formula is highlighted here on the slide. You will see two different things that are of interest. First up, the actual risk assessment formula does not take into account at all incidents. So incidents for the risk assessment within our tailor-made approach is a variable that does not affect the risk at all. And this is what we're trying to show in case, and you will see this in the later slide, we're trying to identify relationships between the risk assessment as calculated by our tailor-made prediction approach. We ask what actually took place, which is the incidents. This is one thing to keep in mind. The other one is that this custom risk assessment formula takes into account changes in data, so outliers and out of the ordinary behavior. How does it actually work? We have historical data at our disposal for any of the parameters and of the drivers that we're using in order to perform the tailor-made predictions. So we have historical data, and based on the historical data, for each one of them, we are training a different forecasting model in order to be able to move 12 months into the future and forecast what the value, what the behavior for each of these drivers will be over the next 12 months. Having all these data at our disposal, then we are executing the tailor-made prediction dashboard risk formula in order to assess what's the actual risk assessment on each point in time. In terms of validation, it's a bit different than what we're using in our ingredient, hazard prediction dashboards, and in order to validate the outcomes of this tailor-made model, we are using known outbreaks. Specifically, in this case, we have highlighted for floating brief, we have highlighted the horse mid-scandal, and you can see at the left side of your screen the validation period we are using here. The interesting thing is that an increase in the risk assessment as calculated by a tailor-made prediction approach was able to identify roughly a year earlier the actual outbreak. And this is something very interesting because as we said, incidents are a variable that does not affect the risk at all directly. Apart from that, of course, there are dedicated places where we have emerging risks. And by emerging risks, in the case for tailor-made predictions, we're talking about outliers or something out of the ordinary taking place. On the right of your screen, you will see an actual screenshot taken just a couple of days ago from our system, where specifically for flood cases in brief, our models believe there is a high risk for the presence of veterinary medicinal residues for brief originating in Uruguay expected to take place during api. And finally, a demonstration on how does a risk assessment, as we do this within our tailor-made prediction approach, how does it compare with what actually took place, our incidents? You can see this chart on the right. That's our cases with red, the evolution of a risk assessment based on this approach that we described. With orange, you are seeing the incident trend line. And the interesting thing here is that as you can see, in many cases, the increase in risk is observed six to 12 months earlier than what actually took place in terms of incidents. So in the case of this tailor-made approach for fraud happening in brief, the model was quite accurate enough to be able to predict what will take place and identify these changes in risk almost a year before something actually took place. And at various places, as you can see this happening in this chart. And now, as we wrap up, our tailor-made prediction dashboard approach, what we are using and what you have to keep in mind is that it's a different approach as opposed to our ingredient or hazard prediction dashboard. It's a correlation approach that uses many more data other than incidents. We're talking about correlation. So there is this step of correlating the data, doing one another, identifying these relationships that we talk about. We're applying a specific risk assessment formula different than Fudakai, so the risk assessment is performed in a custom way. In terms of success cases and validations, there are many points in time it was able to identify outbreaks almost a half or a complete year before they actually took place. However, you need to keep in mind that in order for this to be implemented, apart from the actual technology involved in this and the dedicated work training and developing this model, there's also domain expertise required in order to identify which are the data that are most likely to play a factor to play an important role in identifying early on these changes in risk. And with that in mind, I think enough about us. Time to hear from Rebecca Farrell, Senior Manager of Global Food Safety at PepsiCo. What's their use case in using predictive analytics in their line of work? Thank you, Mahalis. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to your presentation. You're part of the presentation because it affirms for me yet again how Agrino continues to be at the forefront of using data science to really help us in this food safety area. What I'd like to talk to the group today about is how PepsiCo is using Agrino for a few use cases. One, to support our food safety intelligence surveillance. Two, to help us understand how we can better improve our starter hazard assessment for ingredients and commodities. And how we can specifically enrich the hazard analysis for specific ingredients using the information that we get in food archive. But first, let me give a little background about PepsiCo because while I feel the company is large enough, what you may not realize is how large we really are. And this is why having a tool like Agrino is so helpful for us. So each day, there are over a billion occasions where consumers are enjoying PepsiCo products in over 200 countries and territories. In our value chain, we work with over 6,000 suppliers and we procure, manage and use over 15,000 different ingredients. And so looking at a global food safety function from the perspective of a global food safety function, we understand that we play a really important part in what PepsiCo is trying to do to create a positive value chain. So our mission is to create more smiles with every sip and every bite and at a billion opportunities per day, we really need to maintain the trust of our consumers. So food safety is very integral to PepsiCo's code of conduct. We need to understand what hazards are present in our starting material, the material that we use to make the products that our consumers love. So first, I'll talk about our food safety intelligence process. So we have associates in each sector who are continuously sort of doing the monitoring and response to food safety risks. We go into several tools, including FoodiKai to understand what incidents have occurred and we use some of those predictive models to anticipate what is coming ahead. We really need to be in a proactive stance when it comes to managing food safety risks. Our partners, our stakeholders are relying on us to identify what's coming ahead in terms of food hazards. What is it that we can do? Do we need to take action within our supply chain? Do we need to communicate to our suppliers about emerging risks? Do we need to do additional surveillance testing? All of these things are really important and we rely on the data, the insights that we get through our food safety intelligence process. So, and when there is a severe action that needs to be taken, we're able to respond to that very quickly because we have our internal teams in place who are working with their cross-functional partners to ensure that necessary steps occur. With our large ingredient base too, it would be a monumental task if each of our food safety and compliance experts would have to review each and every single ingredient basis, ingredients and conduct the hazard analysis. I think in a historical context, this would have been done in our company and other companies by researching lots of different portal sites, scientific references, scientific literature and agronel is able to condense all of this into the food archive platform. So, we have a process by which we have a starter hazard analysis in place for different types of ingredients, different types of commodities. But we want to make sure in this ever-changing world that that starter assessment is continuously updated, that it's kept dynamic. What we know today isn't necessarily what we're going to know tomorrow and that information has to be kept up to date. So, to support that food safety, that initial hazard assessments, we are collecting and reviewing the hazard data that we see through agronel on a continuous basis. And then specifically for ingredients, our starter hazard analysis can do so much. But we know that particularly for chemical hazards, there are incidents that are specific to a region, specific to a geography. And where we really appreciate to the partnership with agronel, is that as a global supplier, as a global procurer of foods, a lot of the commonly used data sources do tend to be North America-centric and Europe-centric, but we challenged our agronel associates to see what other databases, what other sources of data could we get from countries in Asia and Africa and Latin America to make sure that we really have as much of a global and holistic approach to our ingredient hazard analysis. So, by incorporating those additional sources of data, we have a more comprehensive perspective of what's going on in our supply chain. So all in all, I think having this better data does lead us to be in a position of better food safety and better compliance. And so that is, those are a couple of the key use cases in how we use FoodiKai and the services from agronel. Thank you. Thank you, Rebecca. And thank you, Michalis, both for your presentation and for sharing the use case. We do have some questions. So I think we should dive into those. And Michalis and Costadinos will help us with those. And also please feel free to share questions you have on the Q&A. And we'll make sure to respond to them. So to start, the first question is, in which case should we choose a data or made model comparing with the global ingredient and hazard predictions? Okay, Martina. Thank you very much for the question to whoever posed it. Now it's an interesting one because at least in my mind, but Rebecca or Costadinos, please feel free to check in. I think it's been, at least in my mind, it's not that having one cancels the use of the other. I think the scope for each one of our prediction dashboards covers a different scope. So for instance, with our global prediction dashboards ingredient and hazard, you can quickly identify based on past trend and seasonality what is expected to take place for a specific hazard or a specific ingredient on geography or country of your interest. Our tailor-made approach though, goes to add on top of that other kinds of data because our global prediction dashboards only take into account historical incidents. Our tailor-made approach can take into account different kinds of data, correlate them together and be able to signify changes in risk or expected behavior early on. So at least in my mind, it's not about using one or the other, it's about knowing when to use one or the other. Excellent. Thank you, Michalis. The next one is to include new testing methods or technologies in the variables that help us develop and improve the models algorithm over time. That's an interesting question and I'm not sure I fully understand this, but in case it has to do with actual technology, so AI methods out there, the quick answer is yes. Our data science team led by Costa Dinos constantly looping, incorporating the newest technology out there, tested with our data and make sure that what's available in Fudoka and its dashboards, make sure that it states up to date with the latest advancements in technology and AI genre. However, if the question has to do with technologies in the sector of food safety, so let's say that the new analytical method is found and tested on specific ingredients, this is something that could potentially be caught by our tailor-made approach that uses more kinds of data. I'll give an example. A kind of data, a dataset used in our tailor-made prediction approach could be literate review, for instance, where these bleeding edge technologies are announced and then incorporating them with other historical data, correlating them together, we'd be able to perform predictions in the future. Great. Another question here is more of a request. It would be useful to see how the predictions are tested or performed to develop a level of confidence. What type of... Sorry, go ahead. No, no, please. If there was another part of the question. Thanks, Marina. Yes, and there was one more. What kind of statistic, scientific model we use for predictions? Mm-hmm. I guess that this refers to our global prediction dashboard, so we created a prediction dashboard that has a prediction dashboard. The way that we're validating our data, it was covered in the slide that talked about the accuracy perhaps we can... We'll go over there just to also demonstrate this as well. The way that we're calculating the accuracy is by training our model twice. The first time, the model does not know what has happened over the past 12 months and attempts to predict what to place. Comparing the two values between one another, we're able to calculate the accuracy and then adding the data back into the mix where we train our model in order to move 12 months into the future. This is how we're calculating the accuracy, the actual validation and can be seen wherever you encounter these yellow dotted lines. This is the validation period and you can perform the validation yourself using our tool. And the last part of the question of how to do the statistical methods or models I think specifically, what we're currently using is a forecasting model developed by Facebook, more specifically, and in the next months we will incorporate also an LSTM as well. Great, thank you. And one last question we have here is as the algorithm develops and considers new variables, how can they be informed about the model's updates and improvements? Yeah, so the way one can be informed for the outcomes of our models is in various ways. The obvious solution would be to log into our system once a day, go through each of our dashboards and quickly identify what are the peaks of data, what are the new hazards or the emerging hazards or the increasing and so on. So one way would be logging into our system and going through the specific blocks in your dashboards that are highlighting these changes. It's one way. The other one is through our weekly insights email, is how we call them and these are emails that are done once a week that are sent out once a week highlighting the major outcomes, outlines of data and we saw using the past weeks of data. So basically either logging into our system whatever this increasing or emerging risks exist or through our email through the email alerts that you receive using Fudokai. Perfect, and I think there was one more if we can go back to the graphs with the predicted values and the past predicted values and explain the difference between them. Of course. I think this, for instance, refers to this one. Basically there are two places where you can see these kind of graphs in our system. In the ingredient prediction dashboard in the hazard prediction dashboard the moment you select a specific ingredient or hazard a similar chart will be generated. This chart contains three different lines. So blue line, historical incidents what took place over the past years and the chemical hazards in this case. Yellow dotted line what are models believed back in the past will take place in this specific period of time. As we said during the presentation we launched for instance our hazard prediction dashboard back in June 2022 and ever since June 2022 up until today it's been performing these forecasts and you can see the actual forecasted values over the months the historical forecasted values over the months appearing in this yellow dotted line and this is what we call the validation period. So comparing between the blue line and the yellow dotted one you can actually assess the validation yourself see places in time where our model did pretty good but also cases in time where our model was not accurate enough. This is as far as historical assessment and validation goes and finally the last part of the chart you will see is this red dotted line that shows the predicted the expected forecasted incidents for chemical hazards you can use them to identify peaks in time or lower points in time over the next few months and one more we have here how do you select the drivers in the tailored made predictions okay it's a question actually and the first part in order to generate the data that are likely to have an effect in this tailored made approach would be through domain expertise so the first step that we do when we're about to launch a new tailored made prediction dashboard is sit with experts companies that are of interest to this tailored made prediction dashboard discuss together what are the data types that are most likely to play an effect in a tailored made prediction approach after identifying the data this is where the second step in a tailored made prediction approach takes place the correlation step and this is where actually mathematically we're able to calculate how strong does one data type correlate with another so for instance disease cases or disease deaths have a very strong correlation you can see this in these numbers here very strong red other data types may not correlate that strongly so basically to identify important data types in a tailored made prediction approach is a two step process first with domain expertise knowledge identify potential data types that may be of interest and then using the mathematical approach of correlation identify which are the ones that are actually showing a strong correlation between one another strong relationship between one another thank you and with that we'll conclude our Q&A thank you so much to our speakers and for the visitation and for the Q&A and thanks all for joining today the webinar we hope you had a chance to get a better understanding of our AI models and the value they could bring to your organization I just want you to keep in mind that following the webinar you will receive a separate email with the recording of the session you also receive an email with a two minute survey that would really like your input on if you have the time would really appreciate it and finally on the same email you also have a link where you can request a four week free trial of any of the predictive dashboards that might be of interest to you and you can try them out thank you all for joining thank you so much thank you very much everyone


Helman Tennis Stadium with CalTV behind the hype and I'm here with Maria Smith from the Cowlemans Tennis Team. Maria, thank you so much for being with us. Thank you for having me. So I know you're going into your senior season as a Golden Bear and so I just wanted to walk walk through a little bit of what you've accomplished the past three years at Cal. So your freshman year you contributed to Cal's first-ever national team title and last year you won 14 matches in a row during the dual season. So can you tell me just a little bit about what it means to contribute so much to this team? Well I can tell you it means a lot to be able to give my all to the program and to my teammates and coach Amanda and coach Zach. It's been a lot of hard work and dedication and I'm honored to be able to be on the team. So I know you have a very aggressive game style with a strong serve and strong forehand. Are there any professional players that you get your inspiration from? Well my top two are Serena Williams and Roger Federer. I mean they have amazing games like there's some of the best to ever play the game and I like to watch them and you know try to model my game after them somewhat. Yeah. So I know tennis is like more of an individual sport but you know playing in this college tennis team format that just gives a different dynamic to it. So can you talk to us a little bit about what it means to play next to your teammate? Yeah so I mean yeah growing up and playing junior tennis and it definitely was just more about myself and my game and now being on the team for the past few years it's definitely a different dynamic and a dynamic that I've really embraced my love you know because it's you're competing for more than yourself and it just means so much more to be able to slide alongside of your teammates and to be able to like win championships and win matches for your team and for Cal. So you're known to have big celebrations after big points so can you tell me what's going through your mind when you're in those really intense situations on the court? So I'm really focused on my game and tactics and you know when I'm celebrating it's a big release for me my teammates and I we work really hard you know in practice and when it comes time to play matches I want to put it all out there so basically I'm celebrating I am it's an emotional you know roller coaster and I'm just I'm super always super excited to play for Cal. So I understand that you right left-handed and you do almost everything with your left hand but you play tennis right-handed so can you tell me like how does that work? Well so yeah I'm left-handed but I play tennis right-handed because one of my first coaches he basically just let me play right-handed I came on the court and my dad was like oh she's actually left-handed but my coach was like no just let her play let her play so I started playing tennis right-handed and I've never stopped and I mean it would be cool to play left-handed but I mean there's no regrets so. So this summer you're balancing playing professional tournaments with interning at a law office in San Francisco and I know you're gonna be a senior next year so what are your plans after graduation if you have any? So yes I'm having a great time interning in San Francisco but I definitely have professional aspirations for tennis as well so I'm gonna work hard over the next year and see what happens. Maria well thank you so much for being with us today we're really excited we got the chance to talk to you and we're really really looking forward to what you have in store for next year so let's have a go Bears on the count of three okay one two three go Bears!