Shoal’s insights to inform Security & Defence PLuS Seed Grant project

Shoal Group is proud to share that our Head of Strategy, Graeme Dunk PhD, is a contributing team member on a successful Security & Defence PLuS Seed Grant project. The project, ‘Fortifying Defence: A Strategic Blueprint for Trusted Semiconductor Supply Chains in AUKUS’, will investigate supply chain vulnerabilities in the US, UK and Australia, and their implications for national security, and set forth recommendations for supply chain resilience.

Semiconductors and critical minerals are core enablers of military technologies. Secure sourcing is integral to defence and sovereign capability in all three of the AUKUS nations, with supply chain disruptions potentially devastating to national security. Australia is particularly vulnerable, having minimal domestic semiconductor capability and is almost entirely reliant on foreign controlled microchip technology. Building a resilient supply chain, with an ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from shocks, is fundamental to national security, particularly in the current geopolitical context.

Dr Dunk joins the project team in recognition of his ongoing research and thought leadership on national resilience and defence industry sovereignty. His latest publication, ‘Australia and a Plan for National Resilience’, a Shoal Group Report, has informed strategic dialogue across government, industry, and academia. The Report outlines a systems thinking approach to building a framework to guide national preparedness against a broad range of risks; be they supply chain, economic, cyber, natural disasters, social cohesion, physical attacks, or threats to the democratic process.

“Shoal has long applied systems thinking to explore complex, real-world challenges,” said Dr Dunk. “This grant-funded research collaboration is a vital step in building national resilience, and I’m pleased to contribute to a team that is bringing multidisciplinary perspectives to an issue of growing strategic importance.”

Dr Dunk is an experienced business leader, researcher, and published author on defence and strategic industry topics. He completed his PhD on defence industry sovereignty and formerly held the position of Senior Fellow in the Practice of Defence Industry Policy at the Australian National University.

As Head of Strategy at Shoal, he works with a team of systems engineering professionals to shape strategic initiatives that apply systems engineering, modelling, simulation, and analysis to some of the most complex challenges facing Australia’s future capability development in defence, space, transport, energy and infrastructure.

Security & Defence PLuS is a flagship program of the PLuS Alliance, a global partnership between Arizona State University, King’s College London and University of NSW Sydney. It aims to strengthen research that supports the security and defence objectives of the US, UK and Australia, aligned with but not limited to AUKUS priorities.

About Shoal

Shoal is complex systems design company. We use Systems Engineering combined with Modelling, Simulation and Analysis to help our clients define, analyse, decide, optimise, and deliver technology-intensive projects in complex environments across Defence, Space, Transport, Energy and Infrastructure.

More: shoalgroup.com

Media contact

Shaun Wilson
CEO and Founder, Shoal Group
+61 438 394 288
[email protected]

Canberra, 30 June 2025