Intelligence; Optimised Podcast

#67 The 'Australian Made' Battery Illusion | Dominic Spooner - Part 2

Intelligence; Optimised Podcast

Show Notes

Australia commissioned more grid-scale battery storage in 2025 than the previous eight years combined. Most of those systems have no cell-level visibility, no long-term support plan, and no answer to what happens when the supply chain that feeds them gets cut.

In Part 2, Todd Crowley and Dominic Spooner move from diagnosis to decisions. What sovereign battery manufacturing actually requires. Why defence and infrastructure planners are still catching up while sodium-ion is already commercially available. Why batteries rarely fail because of chemistry — and what they actually fail because of. And the three questions every procurement officer should answer before the decision gets made for them.

What is your actual exposure. Why it matters to your specific operation. What you do before the disruption forces the answer.

Find deeper analysis inside Vaxa Bureau.

More from Intelligence; Optimised Podcast

Jun 30, 2026

Picture a cable roughly the diameter of a garden hose lying on the ocean floor, 3,500 metres down. It carries 95% of international data traffic, including classified military communications, financial transactions, and the digital nervous system of the Second Island Chain. Now consider this: a recent CSIS report confirms that China has already demonstrated the capability to sever these cables at extreme depths silently and with plausible deniability.

Jun 9, 2026

Australia produces some of the cleanest, highest-quality food on the planet. But less than two percent of global venture capital flows into agriculture and food technology, a sector that represents roughly twelve to thirteen percent of Australian GDP. That gap is not a minor inefficiency. It is a structural vulnerability.

Jun 2, 2026

Australian food is 13 per cent of GDP. It gets less than 2 per cent of venture capital. That gap is not an accident. It is where the entire conversation starts.

May 20, 2026

What happens when the officer commanding Australia's forward-deployed surgical unit runs the same mission on her own time - faster, leaner, and without a joint logistics unit behind her?

May 6, 2026

Australia feeds the region, but the mineral that makes that possible is almost entirely imported, processed offshore, and held in supply chains that break on a predictable cycle.

See all episodes →