ASIO boss Mike Burgess gives chilling address on foreign espionage which has cost Australia $12.5 billion in a single year

Sky News AU

a day ago

ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess has given a chilling address concerning "unprecedented" foreign espionage, telling an audience in Adelaide spies had cost Australia at least $12.5 billion in one year.
In an address in Adelaide on Thursday, the spy chief relayed instances of foreign agents stealing research and innovation secrets, as well as strategic and tactical information.
Mr Burgess released an inaugural "cost of espionage" report prepared by ASIO which detailed the threats to the public and private sector.
He said the report was believed to be the "first and certainly most comprehensive public analysis of its kind in the world".
'You would be genuinely shocked by the number and names of countries trying to steal our secrets,' Mr Burgess said.
'The obvious candidates are very active – I've previously named China, Russia and Iran – but many other countries are also targeting anyone and anything that could give them a strategic or tactical advantage, including sensitive but unclassified information.'
Australia's top spy said it made his "head spin" that hundreds of Australians who had a security clearance publicly advertised that information on social media.
"On just one professional networking site, the profiles of more than 35,000 Australians indicate they have access to sensitive and potentially classified information. Around 7,000 reference their work in the defence sector, including the specific project they are working on, the team they are working in, and the critical technologies they are working with," he said.
"Close to 400 explicitly say they work on AUKUS, and the figure rises above 2,000 if you include broader references to 'submarines' and 'nuclear'.
"Nearly two and a half thousand publicly boast about having a security clearance and thirteen hundred claim to work in the national security community. While these numbers have fallen since I first raised the alarm two years ago, this still makes my head spin."
Mr Burgess said the "unprecedented" level of espionage had eclipsed the Cold War era and had shown foreign intellience services were taking a "very unhealthy interest in AUKUS and its associated capabilities'.
"Australia's defence sector is a top intelligence collection priority for foreign governments seeking to blunt our operational edge, gain insights into our operational readiness and tactics, and better understand our allies' capabilities," he said.
"With AUKUS, we are not just defending our sovereign capability. We are also defending critical capability shared by and with our partners."
Mr Burgess said the $12.5 billion figure included the direct costs of "known espionage incidents" such as theft of intellectual property, as well as the indirect costs of countering and responding.
"As just one example, the Institute estimates foreign cyber spies stole nearly $2 billion of trade secrets and intellectual property from Australian companies and businesses in 2023-24," he said.
Mr Burgess said while cyber spying was a serious focus of ASIO, in-person espionage was still a major threat and relayed a story involving a rare fruit tree.
"Several years ago, a delegation from overseas visited a sensitive Australian horticultural facility," he said.
"During an official tour of the site, a member of the delegation broke away, entered a restricted area and photographed a rare and valuable variety of fruit tree. An alert staff member discovered and deleted the images but it later emerged photos weren't the only things taken that day – several of the tree's branches were missing.
"The delegate had snapped them off and smuggled them out of Australia."
Mr Burgess said it was almost certain the stolen plant material allowed scientists in their home country to reverse engineer and replicate two decades of Australian research.
"In another case, an Australian defence contractor invented, manufactured and marketed a world-leading innovation. Sales boomed for a while but suddenly collapsed, for no apparent reason," the spy chief said.
"Customers began flooding the company's repair centre with faulty products. While the returns looked genuine, closer examination revealed they were cheap and nasty knock offs. An investigation uncovered what happened.
"One year earlier, a company representative attended a defence industry event overseas and was approached by an enthusiastic local. She insisted on sharing some content via a USB, which was inserted into a company laptop. The USB infected the system with malware allowing hackers to steal the blueprints for the product.
"Almost certainly, the 'enthusiastic local' worked for a foreign intelligence service."
Mr Burgess aid security was a "shared responsibility" and that all Australians had a role to play.
The ASIO chief said there were three people currently before Australian courts on espionage-related charges and that he was confident there could be more if anyone tried to compromise AUKUS.