The recent Red Alert series, published on the front pages of Australia's Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, wants their audience to believe that war is at their doorstep. The real "red alert", however, is the dangerous warmongering propaganda being fed to the Australian people.

Behind these 8,000-word articles is a panel of five "independent" experts, brought together by the notorious China hawk Peter Hartcher, the newspapers' international editor. The experts include Peter Jennings, Mick Ryan, Lavina Lee, Lesley Seebeck, and Alan Finkel. None of these people possess expertise on China or China's military, but almost all of them have connections to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASIP).

Peter Jennings was executive director of the ASPI for 10 years. The notorious ASPI gets 98% of its funding from a combination of the Australian Defense department, weapons manufacturers, the US government, and Taiwan Island authorities.

Mick Ryan is a Retired Australian Army major general who served in the Australian Defense Department for 35 years. He is a pro-war pundit who appears often in Australian media manipulating Australians into accepting a war with China. Even his Twitter handle is called "war in the future". Ryan is an Adjunct Fellow at the CSIS, which is funded by military industrial complex entities like Raytheon and Boeing as well as the US government, Australia and the Taiwan Island. He has also been an occasional guest lecturer for the ASPI.

Lavina Lee is an academic who serves as a council member in the ASPI and as an adjunct fellow with the CSIS. Lesley Seebeck is the chair of the warmongering think tank, the National Institute of Strategic Resilience, she is also a regular contributor to the ASPI. Finally, Alan Finkel is a scientist who works for the Australian government.

The warmongering ASPI has been churning out "China threat" stories for years. Every month it churns out at least one story hyping up tensions in the South China Sea. The frequency of their Taiwan-related articles has recently increased dramatically.

Days after the article series was published the AUKUS, the US-UK-Australia security pact, unveiled details of a plan to provide Australia with nuclear-powered attack submarines. This plan will cost Australia (not the UK or the US) over $350 billion for nine submarines, only three of which will be able to be at sea at any one time "protecting" Australia's vast coastline.

Australia has become a propaganda battleground for the US. The majority of all media in Australia is owned by either Nine Entertainment or a Murdoch-owned News Corporation. Both have regularly put out anti-China, "war is coming" propaganda to the Australian people, despite China being Australia's largest trading partner by far and despite conflict in no way being in Australia's national interest. News media agencies are even using social media like TikTok, which they claim is a "Chinese spy app", to amplify the war propaganda.

Sensible Australian people responded to the articles by canceling their subscriptions, and joining in the debate, that is, until the SMH shut down social media comments and hid replies. Stories like these are not simply there to sell newspapers; instead, they sell mass murder, human suffering, and ecological disaster.