Paul Myler

Founder and Managing Director, StratQ / Strategic Advisor, Austal

Ambassador (Rtd.) Paul Myler is the Founder and Managing Director of StratQ, a geopolitical risk advisory firm focused on Australia's national resilience and geopolitical risk in the Indo-Pacific. Based in Perth, StratQ has a clear focus on four core national resilience missions with deep significance to Western Australia:

• Defence – delivering AUKUS and defence capabilities
• Digital resilience - building a resilient AI, data centre and submarine cable ecosystem
• Energy resilience - ensuring energy security and transition, including through trusted critical minerals supply chains
• Democratic resilience - working with government, media, academia and think tanks on evidence-based decision-making and countering misinformation

Ambassador Myler is also a Senior Counsellor with the Cohen Group, the international strategic advisory firm founded by former US Secretary of Defence and Senator William S Cohen; a Distinguished Advisor to the National Security College at the Australian National University; and chair of the Advisory Board for the National Resilience and Security Program at Curtin University. He continues his connection with AUKUS, serving as the Australian Submarine Agency’s AUKUS Advocate.

Ambassador Myler returned to Perth in 2024 from Washington DC where, as Deputy Chief of Mission at the Australian Embassy in Washington, Ambassador Myler managed 300 embassy staff through an executive team of twenty, representing the full breadth of Australian Government agencies. From 2019-2024 he supported Ambassadors Hockey, Sinodinos and Rudd through the major geopolitical and economic shifts of the last five years including: COVID19; China’s economic coercion of Australia; strengthening the Quad; prioritisation of trusted supply chains including for critical minerals; designing Australia’s response to the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act; and the re-emergence of the threat of major power conflict. He was closely involved in establishing AUKUS and shepherding it through the US Congress.

Prior to Washington, Ambassador Myler held a variety of senior positions in the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade covering North Asia, India, Strategic Issues and Intelligence, Eastern Europe, and the G20. He is an experienced trade negotiator, serving as senior legal counsel on the Australia-US FTA and representing Australia at the WTO. From 2013-15 he was Australia's Ambassador to Russia and the countries of Central Asia.

Ambassador Myler also served as Chief of Staff to the Hon. Martin Ferguson AM MP, Australia’s Minister for Resources and Energy and Minister for Tourism during the Gillard Government (2010-11).