Australia's Intelligence Agency: Foreign Spying at Unprecedented Levels

The Diplomat

3 days ago

The Australian Security Intelligence Organization chief said that the agency 'is seeing more Australians targeted – more aggressively – than ever before.'
A report released by the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) on August 1 measured that foreign espionage is costing the country at least US$8 billion annually. During a speech launching the report in Adelaide, the head of the domestic intelligence and national security agency, Mike Burgess, also declared that his organization had disrupted 24 'major espionage and foreign interference' operations in the last three years.
Unsurprisingly, Burgess named China, Russia, and Iran as the three main countries involved in espionage operations in Australia. Yet he highlighted that a number of other countries are also engaged in spying within Australia. 'Nation states are spying at unprecedented levels, with unprecedented sophistication,' the ASIO chief noted, adding that the agency 'is seeing more Australians targeted – more aggressively – than ever before.'
As the global contest for power has shifted to the Indo-Pacific, more countries have become interested in Australia. Burgess stated that this strategic competition within the region was creating a 'relentless hunger for strategic advantage and an insatiable appetite for inside information.' The AUKUS agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States has become a particular target for spying operations.
Burgess stated that 'Australia's defense 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 noted that these foreign actors were 'proactive, creative, and opportunistic' in their attempts to contact and coerce present and former defense employees.
Australia's spy chief issued a warning to defense personnel to stop making it easy for foreign intelligence operatives by posting about their work on significant projects on sites like LinkedIn. 'I get that people need to market themselves,' Burgess said, 'but telling social media you hold a security clearance or work on a highly classified project is more than naïve; it's recklessly inviting the attention of a foreign intelligence service.'
Yet, alongside these obvious defense projects, foreign intelligence services were also targeting science and technology and private sector investments. This included Australia's Antarctic research, renewables technology, and critical minerals and rare earth mining and processing. The advantages that these actors have been seeking to obtain increasingly concern geoeconomics.
The report Burgess was launching explained that while it has provided itemized calculations of the cost of these activities, the figures underestimate the true cost of espionage. 'Espionage, by definition, is difficult to detect, and many of its most serious impacts cannot be assigned a dollar value,' the report stated. 'We have chosen to be conservative in our calculations.'
These threats identified by the Institute of Criminology include: cybersecurity incidents involving state or state-sponsored actors impacting federal government agencies and public universities; cyber-enabled theft of IP and trade secrets from government, businesses, the nonprofit sector, and universities; and insider threats involving state or state-sponsored actors impacting Australian businesses and universities.
The costs related to these attacks are varied. But they include the extra resources required by the public and private sectors to respond to, and seek to mitigate, espionage. For the federal government this includes the identification, investigation, disruption and prosecution of espionage incidents, as well as the development and enactment of new policies and legislation required to tackle espionage. Alongside this, there is the need for community outreach, public education and greater awareness raising.
There are also a series of additional costs due to the risks involved with espionage. These include having to replace or update technology, or use technology that is less optimal for an organization's operations but more difficult for foreign adversaries to penetrate. Then there are missed economic opportunities due to more stringent foreign interference laws, and potential missed opportunities for international research and collaboration for universities.
In his speech, Burgess stated that spying is now at unprecedented levels – far more than during the Cold War. There are, obviously, now a range of new tools that are available for foreign espionage. A far more integrated world offers new and complex methods through which to engage in subterfuge and gain access to information. But he was also keen to highlight that the ASIO also has sophisticated tools at its disposal for tracking, exposing and expelling foreign agents. As Burgess concluded, ' The people conducting espionage are sophisticated, but not unstoppable.'