South Korea and Australia in space: Towards a strategic partnership

Space cooperation between Australian and South Korea remains stuck in its infancy and, to some extent, is treated as an end in itself. This report argues that the time is ripe for both Australia and South Korea to embark on joint projects and initiatives that would deliver tangible and practical outcomes for both countries.

For South Korea and Australia, space cooperation and space development serve as key pillars of the bilateral relationship. The two nations elevated their relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership in December 2021, incorporating space development into core areas of cooperation in the fields of economics, innovation and technology. As a part of that elevation, the leaders of both countries agreed to strengthen joint research and cooperation between space research institutes and industries. Following that, in 2022, South Korea and Australia established a Space Policy Dialogue.

A greater bilateral focus on expanding the scope and opportunities for space cooperation could deliver foreign-policy, national-security, defence and economic outcomes for South Korea and Australia. This report argues that there are opportunities in the bilateral relationship to boost both space cooperation (the collaborative efforts between nations to leverage space advancements for mutual benefit and to foster diplomatic ties and intergovernmental collaboration) and space development (the advancement of space-related technologies, infrastructure and industries) and is pivotal in areas such as national security, economic growth and resource management.

This report first analyses the space development strategies of South Korea and Australia and examines the environmental factors that can increase the potential for cooperation. It then proposes areas where the two countries can combine their technologies and resources to maximise mutual benefits and offers eight policy recommendations to the governments of both countries.

Scott Pace, former Executive Secretary of the US National Space Council, has emphasised that ‘International space cooperation is not an end in itself, but a means of advancing national interests.’ The South Korea – Australia partnership aligns with that principle, and it’s time to realise the opportunity.

Indonesia in 2035: Climate risks to security in the Indo-Pacific

The Indo-Pacific region is particularly exposed to climate impacts, and Indonesia, like many countries, will be severely affected by climate impacts in the decade to come. The effects of climate-amplified disasters, combined with the political, social and economic consequences of climate impacts originating from within and across the region, will strain Indonesia’s economic and national-security interests.

This report presents the findings of a narrative-driven scenario to stress-test Indonesia’s climate risks emerging by 2035. Its objective is to identify opportunities for Indonesia and its economic and strategic partners to prepare for and mitigate the risks.

While Australian policymakers have devoted significant attention to the existential risks that Pacific island countries face, Southeast Asian countries are also highly exposed and often face similar risks. Within Southeast Asia, Indonesia’s climate risks have received very limited attention despite its high exposure to climate hazards, its very large population (over 10 times larger than all Pacific island countries combined) which is densely concentrated in vulnerable coastal areas and small islands, and its history of political unrest associated with disruptions to food and energy security. It’s also one of the closest neighbouring countries to Australia. Figure 1 on page 5 provides a visual summary of the interacting hazards, risks and consequences highlighted in this report.

The population size of Southeast Asian countries and their often-close proximity to one another means that climate impacts in one country will often have consequences beyond their borders and for their neighbours across the region. Gaining a better understanding of how Indonesia, as the largest country in Southeast Asia, will be affected by climate developments is vital, given both the domestic and regional consequences.

Even below the ‘safe’ threshold of a 1.5°C rise in global average temperature—the aspirational target set in 2015 by the signatories to the Paris Agreement—countries around the world are already experiencing serious, record-setting, climate-driven disruptions on a large scale. The era of climate-induced disruption is clearly already upon us—and it will intensify rapidly.

Building resilience while preparing for future disruption requires an enhanced appreciation of climate risk that goes beyond adapting to more frequent and severe natural hazards, such as floods and fires.

Development-assistance and defence communities have embraced the importance of treating climate change as a threat to human, economic and traditional military security. The challenge is to build the capacity and tools to assess the broad suite of security-related risks of climate change—and to translate that information into measures to mitigate the risks. Understanding the complexity and uncertainty associated with climate trends is a daunting task, greatly complicated by the need to incorporate the many ways climate change affects social, political and economic systems.

The scenario developed in this report isn’t a prediction of the future, but rather a description of a possible future. It identifies many climate impacts, but suggests three primary pathways through which Indonesia may face compounding and destabilising climate disruptions:

  • Significant food insecurity from losses to domestic production due to shifting precipitation timing and extremes across the wet and dry seasons, heightened sensitivity to shocks in global food prices, and reduced government ability to absorb economic shocks, such as food-price hikes.
  • Large-scale coastal population displacement driven by Indonesia’s high coastal population density and the significant exposure of that population to sea-level rise and climate-induced coastal flooding.
  • Slowed economic growth from lost agricultural output, declining revenues from stranded fossil-fuel assets, rising disaster costs at home and abroad affecting economic infrastructure and supply chains, and rising challenges in responding to domestic crises driven by food insecurity and population displacements.

A major finding of this research is that, in little more than a decade, Indonesia is likely to experience major climate disruptions that also amplify climate and security risks in the region, resulting in a range of additional and cascading risks for Australia. A second overarching finding in the report is that Indonesia may be underestimating the likely scale of the climate risks and should devote greater attention to analysing them. It’s in Australia’s interests to do the same and, as a good neighbour, to coordinate an Australian whole-of-government effort to support Indonesia to mitigate the risks, including cross-border risks.

National food security preparedness Green Paper

Australia’s agriculture sector and food system produce enough food to feed more than 70 million people worldwide. The system is one of the world’s least subsidised food systems. It has prospered under a global rules-based system influenced by Western liberal values, but it now faces chronic challenges due to rising geopolitical tensions, geo-economic transitions, climate change, deteriorating water security and rapid technological advances. The world is changing so rapidly that the assumptions, policy approaches and economic frameworks that have traditionally supported Australia’s food security are no longer fit for purpose. Potential conflict in the Indo-Pacific is driving enhanced preparedness activity in Australia’s defence force, but that isn’t being replicated across the agriculture sector and food system in a coordinated manner. Food hasn’t featured as a priority in the public versions of the Defence Strategic Review or the National Defence Strategy. This has created a gap in Australia’s preparedness activities: if Australia’s national security and defence organisations are preparing for potential conflict, then Australia’s agriculture sector and food system stakeholders should also be preparing for this period of strategic uncertainty.

Food security is a pillar of whole-of-nation preparedness for an uncertain future. While current targeted preparedness efforts and resilience mechanisms are valuable, they aren’t sufficient. Stakeholders are calling for stronger, proactive national coordination from the government to empower and support private-sector action. Meeting that demand is essential to strengthening overall resilience. So, too, is understanding that Australia’s food security relies on a holistic and interconnected ecosystem rather than a fragmented supply chain. Australia is a heavily trade-exposed nation that exports 70% of production, so any disruption to maritime and other transport corridors or to the infrastructure needed to move food risks undermining both national food security and Australia’s standing as a reliable global supplier.

This work has been written and constructed as a Green Paper, not an academic publication. Informed by six months of consultations with government, the private sector and civil society, the paper combines applied policy analysis and real-world insights to promote deliberate conversation about protecting Australia’s food security with the same priority as protecting Australia’s national security. The Green Paper is divided into four parts. It also includes three case studies in the Appendix, which use a threat and risk assessment to analyse three critical inputs to the food security ecosystem—phosphate, glyphosate and digital connectivity—to help stakeholders evaluate the vulnerabilities in Australia’s food security ecosystem.

The intention of this Green Paper is to deepen understanding of food security as a key public policy issue, stimulate public discussion, inform policymaking and provide both government and key stakeholders with policy options for consideration. This Green Paper’s 14 recommended policy options have been designed to equip governments and the private sector with structured national-security-inspired assessment tools and a framework to continuously identify, prioritise and mitigate vulnerabilities. That includes options to centralise the coordination and decentralise delivery of preparedness activities, establish accountability and embed food security as a national security priority and a key element of Australia’s engagement across the Indo-Pacific.

Pressure points: China’s air and maritime coercion

Pressure Points Website

New research from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute reveals a range of nations are increasingly willing to challenge China’s excessive claims in the South China Sea than they were previously.

The analysis, detailed in Pressure points—a world first online resource tracking the activity and behaviour of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the South China Sea and beyond.

The website highlights almost a dozen recent incidents of unsafe military behaviour by China against countries including the United States, Australia, Canada, the Philippines, the Netherlands and others, and finds these unsafe incidents have ramped up in recent years, after first beginning in 2021.

The research also analyses the Chinese military’s use of air and maritime coercion to enforce Beijing’s excessive claims and advance China’s security and defence interests in the Indo-Pacific.

As outlined on the website, the PLA employs a variety of risky and dangerous tactics to try to deter others from operating in areas of the South China Sea and East China Sea, including through the release of flares, the use of lasers, sonar bursts and other dangerous manoeuvres.

Through a detailed examination of which countries do or don’t use their military forces to challenge China’s excessive claims, the research also finds that not all countries are regularly publicising the challenges they are engaged in.

While the US, Canada, France and the United Kingdom regularly publicise their challenges, Australia, Japan and New Zealand are among the countries that do not.

The project also provides governments, as well as regional and global militaries, with policy recommendations to help push back against China’s ambitions to reshape the regional order.

These focus on enhancing transparency through regular public statements to reinforce the importance of their military actions, building and strengthening networks between like-minded countries and demonstrating perseverance.

This new ASPI project fills an information gap regarding the PLA’s regional activity, and through greater data-driven transparency the project aims to deepen and inform public discourse on important defence and security issues.

It provides the public with a reliable and accurate account of the PLA’s regional activity by highlighting and analysing open-source data, military imagery and satellite footage and official statements. Future expansions of the work will occur in 2025-26.

British public opinion on foreign policy: President Trump, Ukraine, China, Defence spending and AUKUS

Results snapshot

President Trump

  • Britons support an open and engaged foreign policy role for the United Kingdom. In light of the re-election of President Donald Trump, 40% believe Britain should continue to maintain its current active level of engagement in world affairs, and 23% believe it should play a larger role.
  • Just 16% of Britons support a less active United Kingdom on the world stage.
  • When asked what Britain’s response should be if the United States withdraws its financial and military support from Ukraine, 57% of Britons would endorse the UK either maintaining (35%) or increasing (22%) its contributions to Ukraine. One-fifth would prefer that the UK reduces its contributions to Ukraine.

UK–China relations

  • Just a quarter (26%) of Britons support the UK Government’s efforts to increase engagement with China in the pursuit of economic growth and stabilised diplomatic relations.
  • In comparison, 45% of Britons would either prefer to return to the more restricted level of engagement under the previous government (25%) or for the government to reduce its relations with Beijing even further (20%).
  • A large majority of Britons (69%) are concerned about the increasing degree of cooperation between Russia and China. Conservative and Labour voters share similarly high levels of concern, and Britons over 50 years of age are especially troubled about the trend of adversary alignment.

Defence and security

  • When asked whether the UK will need to spend more on defence to keep up with current and future global security challenges, a clear two-thirds (64%) of the British people agree. Twenty-nine per cent of Britons strongly agree that defence spending should increase. Just 12% disagree that the UK will need to spend more.
  • The majority of Britons believe that collaboration with allies on defence and security projects like AUKUS will help to make the UK safer (55%) and that partnerships like AUKUS focusing on developing cutting-edge technologies with Britain’s allies will help to make the UK more competitive towards countries like China (59%).
  • Britons are somewhat less persuaded that AUKUS will succeed as a deterrent against Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific, although the largest group of respondents (44%) agree that it will.

Brief survey methodology and notes

Survey design and analysis: Sophia Gaston

Field work: Opinium

Field work dates: 8–10 January 2025

Weighting: Weighted to be nationally and politically representative

Sample: 2,050 UK adults

The field work for this report was conducted by Opinium through an online survey platform, with a sample size of 2,050 UK adults aged 18 and over. This sample size is considered robust for public opinion research and aligns with industry standards. With 2,000 participants, the margin of error for reported figures is approximately ±2.3 percentage points at a 95% confidence level. Beyond this sample size, the reduction in the margin of error becomes minimal, making this size both statistically sufficient and practical for drawing meaningful conclusions with reliable representation of the UK adult population. For the full methodological statement, see Appendix 1 of this report.

Notes

  1. Given the subject matter of this survey, objective and impartial contextual information was provided at the beginning of questions. There are some questions for which fairly substantial proportions of respondents were unsure of their answers. All ‘Don’t knows’ are reported.
  2. The survey captured voters for all political parties, and non-voters; however, only the findings for the five largest parties are discussed in detail in this report, with the exception of one question (6C), in which it was necessary to examine the smaller parties as the source of a drag on the national picture. The five major parties discussed in this report are the Conservative Party, the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, Reform (formerly the Brexit Party and UKIP), and the Green Party.
  3. This report also presents the survey results differentiated according to how respondents’ voted in the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union, their residency within the UK, their age, their socio-economic status, and whether they come from White British or non-White British backgrounds. The full methodological notes are found at the end of the report.
  4. Some of the graphs present ‘NET’ results, which combine the two most positive and two most negative responses together – for example, ‘Significantly increase’ and ‘Somewhat increase’ – to provide a more accessible representation of the balance of public opinion. These are presented alongside the full breakdown of results for each question for full transparency.

Introduction

There’s no doubt that 2025 will be a consequential year in geopolitical terms, with the inauguration of President Donald Trump marking a step-change in the global role of the world’s largest economy and its primary military power. The full suite of implications for America’s allies is still emerging, and there will be opportunities for its partners to express their agency or demonstrate alignment. For a nation like the United Kingdom, whose security and strategic relationship with the United States is institutionally embedded, any pivotal shifts in American foreign policy bear profound ramifications for the UK’s international posture. The fact that such an evaluation of America’s international interests and relationships is taking place during a time in which several major conflicts – including one in Europe – continue to rage, only serves to heighten anxieties among policy-makers and citizens alike.

Public opinion on foreign policy remains an understudied and poorly understood research area in Britain, due to a long-held view that the public simply conferred responsibility for such complicated and sensitive matters to government. Certainly, many Britons don’t possess a sophisticated understanding of the intricacies of diplomatic and security policy. However, they do carry strong instincts, and, in an internationalised media age, are constantly consuming information from a range of sources and forming opinions that may diverge from government positions.

The compound effect of a turbulent decade on the international stage has made Britons more perceptive to feelings of insecurity about the state of the world, which can be transposed into their domestic outlook. At the same time, their belief in the efficacy of government to address international crises, or their support for the missions being pursued by government, isn’t guaranteed. This creates a challenging backdrop from which public consent can be sought for the kind of bold and decisive actions that may need to be considered as policy options in the coming months and years.

This study provides a snapshot of the views of British citizens at the moment at which President Donald Trump was inaugurated for a second time. It shows a nation which, overall, continues to subscribe to clear definitions of its friends and adversaries, carries a sense of responsibility to Ukraine, and greets the rise of a more assertive China with concern and scepticism. Underneath the national picture, however, the data reveals some concerning seeds of discord and divergence among certain demographic groups and political parties. The UK Government must build on the good foundations by speaking more frequently and directly to the British people about the rapidly evolving global landscape, and making the case for the values, interests, and relationships it pursues.

Sophia Gaston

March 2025

London

State-sponsored economic cyber-espionage for commercial purposes: Governmental practices in protecting IP-intensive industries

Introduction

This report looks at measures that governments in various parts of the world have taken to defend their economic ‘crown jewels’ and other critical knowledge-intensive industries from cyber threats. It should serve as inspiration for other governments, including from those economies studied in State-sponsored economic cyber-espionage for commercial purposes: Assessing the preparedness of emerging economies to defend against cyber-enabled IP theft. Despite accounting for the bulk of GDP growth, innovation and future employment, such intellectual property (IP)-intensive industries aren’t held to the same levels of protection and security scrutiny as government agencies or providers of critical infrastructure and critical information infrastructure (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Various layers of cybersecurity protection regimes

Source: Developed by the authors.

Since 2022, an increasing number of governments have introduced new policies, legislation, regulations and standards to deal with the threat to their economies from cyber-enabled IP theft. Most prominently, in October 2023, the heads of the major security and intelligence agencies of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US (also known as the ‘Five Eyes’) appeared together in public for the first time, in front of a Silicon Valley audience, and called out China as an ‘unprecedented threat’ to innovation across the world.1 That was followed up in October 2024 with a public campaign called ‘Secure Innovation’.

There is, however, variation in how governments frame their responses. Countries such as the UK and Australia take a national-security approach with policy instruments that seek to monitor the flow of knowledge and innovation to and from specific countries (primarily China). Other countries, such as Malaysia and Finland, take a due-diligence risk approach with a focus on awareness building and providing incentives to organisations to do their due-diligence checks before engaging with foreign entities. Countries such as Japan and Singapore, by contrast, take an economic-security approach in which they focus on engaging and empowering at-risk industries proactively.

This report is the third in a compendium of three. The first report, State-sponsored economic cyber-espionage for commercial purposes: tackling an invisible but persistent risk to prosperity, published in 2022, looked at the scale, scope and impact of state-sponsored cyber-espionage campaigns aimed at extracting trade secrets and sensitive business information. The second report, State-sponsored economic cyber-espionage for commercial purposes: Assessing the preparedness of emerging economies to respond to cyber-enabled IP theft, looks at the extent to which agreed norms effectively constrain states from conducting economic cyber-espionage and also examines the varying levels of vulnerability experienced by selected major emerging economies.

This third report complements those diagnoses by offering policymakers an action perspective based on good practices observed across the world. Various practices and examples have been selected, drawing from a multi-year capacity-building effort that included engagements in Southeast Asia, South Asia and Latin America and consultations with authorities in developed economies such as the US, Australia, Japan, Singapore and the Netherlands. Many of the practices covered in this report were presented at the Track 1 Dialogue on Good Governmental Practices that ASPI hosted during Singapore International Cyber Week 2023.

International guardrails

The issue of economic cyber-espionage2 is inherently international. It’s an issue caused by malicious or negligent behaviour of other states. Accordingly, international law and norms are as critical as domestic responses in countering the threat posed. This section offers a review of the most relevant international initiatives that touch on the governance of cyberspace and the protection of IP.

Through the UN First Committee process, states have introduced a set of voluntary and non-binding norms (Figure 2). That has included the following provisions:

  • States should not knowingly allow their territory to be used for internationally wrongful acts; that is, activities that constitute (serious) breaches of international obligations, inflict serious harm on another state or jeopardise international peace and security.
  • States should not conduct or support cyber activities that damage critical infrastructure or impair the operation of critical infrastructure that provides services to the public.
  • States should offer assistance upon request and respond to requests to mitigate ongoing cyber incidents if those incidents affect the functioning of critical infrastructure.

Figure 2: UN norms of responsible state behaviour in cyberspace


The G20 norm complements the work of the UN First Committee, providing that:

  • States should not engage in cyber-espionage activities for the purpose of providing domestic industry with illegitimately obtained commercially valuable information.

The extent to which states accept that economic cyber-espionage without commercial intent is an acceptable tool of statecraft remains a live debate. In 2017, the authors of the Tallin Manual 2.0 asserted that although ‘peacetime cyber espionage by States does not per se violate international law, the method by which it is carried out might do so’.3 Other states, however, such as the members of MERCOSUR (the trade bloc comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela [currently suspended]) and China hold the view that ‘[n]o State shall engage in ICT-enabled espionage or damages against other States’.4 Austria recently (2024) added to this debate, arguing that ‘cyber espionage activities, including industrial cyber espionage against corporations, within a state’s territory may also violate that state’s sovereignty.’5

The Budapest Convention on Cybercrime and the new UN Cybercrime Convention don’t address the theft of IP or offer mechanisms to deal with state-sponsored cyber activities.6 Both frameworks merely offer mechanisms for the harmonisation of legal regimes to enable states to collaborate on investigations and prosecutions of cyber-related crimes.

The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), administered by the World Trade Organization (WTO), sets minimum standards for IP protection. Article 39 provides perpetual trade-secret protection, provided that the secret is not ‘generally known or readily accessible’ to the general public, has ‘commercial value because it is a secret’, and the owner has taken reasonable precautions to protect the secret.77 However, TRIPS doesn’t take into account any cyber-related threats to IP protection; nor does it provide dispute-settlement mechanisms to address state-sponsored or state-supported acts of theft.

Finally, there are international agreements that regulate certain technology transfers. For instance, the Wassenaar Arrangement—a voluntary export-control regime established to promote responsible transfers of conventional arms and dual-use technologies and goods—offers a list of technologies that are considered sensitive and ought to be subject of additional layers of review before being approved for export. While it doesn’t address cyber-enabled IP theft, it does regulate the trade in technologies that could facilitate such theft, such as intrusion software and surveillance tools.

However, despite the serious impact of IP theft, there’s a clear gap in current international law and norms that would otherwise offer national governments guardrails for introducing measures that would help states to prevent, deter, detect and recover from economic cyber-espionage. Therefore, the onus for protection presently lies on national governments taking ownership and responsibility within their own borders.

References

  1. Zeba Siddiqui, ‘Five Eyes intelligence chiefs warn on China’s “theft” of intellectual property’, Reuters, 19 October 2023, online.
    ↩︎

  2. ‘Economic cyber-espionage’ is the unauthorised collection of commercially valuable assets, through compromises of digital systems and communication channels, by one state against another or by one state against a private entity. ‘Industrial or commercial cyber-espionage’ is the unauthorised collection of commercially valuable assets, through compromises of digital systems and communication channels, by one private entity against another private entity. ↩︎
  3. Michael N Schmitt, Tallinn manual 2.0 on the international law applicable to cyber operations, 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press, 2017.
    ↩︎
  4. On China, see “China’s views on the application of the principle of sovereignty in cyberspace,” United Nations, online; on Mercosur, see “Decision rejecting the acts of espionage conducted by the United States in the countries of the region,” United Nations, 22 July 2013, online.
    ↩︎
  5. Przemysław Roguski, “Austria’s Progressive Stance on Cyber Operations and International Law,” Just Security, 25 June 2024, online.
    ↩︎
  6. See, for instance, Brenda I Rowe, ‘Transnational state-sponsored cyber economic espionage: a legal quagmire’, Security Journal, 13 September 2019, 33:63–82.
    ↩︎
  7. ‘Article 39 of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights’, World Trade Organization, online.
    ↩︎

State-sponsored economic cyber-espionage for commercial purposes: Assessing the preparedness of emerging economies to defend against cyber-enabled IP theft

Introduction

Strategic competition is deepening existing tensions and mistrust between states and prompts nations to develop capabilities that they consider central to sovereign national power. Technological capabilities sit at the centre of this. It’s therefore not surprising that governments around the world are seeking technological advantage over their competitors and potential adversaries. In this context, safeguarding intellectual property (IP) has become necessary not just because it’s an essential asset for any modern economy—developed or emerging—but because it’s also increasingly underwriting national and regional security.

Today, middle-income countries1 ‘World Bank country and lending groups’, World Bank, 2024, online. that are seeking to progress in the global value chain are home to vibrant knowledge-intensive sectors. Some of the world’s largest science and technology clusters are located in São Paulo and Bengaluru, for example.2 Other exemplars include the biochemical industry in India, information and communication technology (ICT) firms in Malaysia and petroleum processors in Brazil. In fact, countries such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico and Vietnam have emerged as increasingly major producers of knowledge and innovation.3

Perhaps reflecting that changing reality, it’s middle-income countries that are confronted by increasing attempts to deprive them of their economic crown jewels. In our report State-sponsored economic cyber-espionage for commercial purposes: tackling an invisible but persistent risk to prosperity, ASPI estimated that the number of state-sponsored cyber incidents affecting private entities in Southeast Asia, South Asia, Latin America and the Middle East increased from 40% in 2014 to nearly 60% in 2020.4 To be clear: economic espionage isn’t new. But it’s the growing scale and intensification of economic cyber-espionage for commercial purposes—and as an integrated tool of statecraft—that is a cause for concern.

The promise of 2015

In September 2015, a bilateral summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and then US President Barack Obama laid the foundation for an international norm against cyber-enabled theft of IP for commercial gain. The joint communique produced at the end of the summit highlighted that China and the US had reached an understanding not to ‘conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of IP, including trade secrets or other confidential business information, with the intent of providing competitive advantages to companies or commercial sectors’. This—critically—recognised a distinction between hacking for commercial purposes and hacking for national-security purposes. Building on that apparent progress, the 2015 G20 Antalya leaders’ communique on ICT-enabled theft of IP established bounds for responsible state behaviour in cyberspace—what was described at the time as a landmark moment.

However, the promise of that seemingly historic moment has not been realised since. Rather than seeing this practice stop, cyber-enabled theft of IP quadrupled between 2015 and 2023. Higher barriers to market access across China, the US and Europe—the result of tit-for-tat behaviour seeking to bolster local technological capabilities, reduce dependence on high-risk vendors, achieve greater strategic autonomy and/or counter unfair advantage—have combined to incentivise irresponsible behaviour by malign states.

China’s and the US’s adherence was always going to be critical to the continued strength and legitimacy of any international norm against cyber-enabled economic espionage. However, bilateral relations between Beijing and Washington devolved in the period after 2015. During the first Trump administration, the US drew a clearer connection between economic and national security. That included explicitly calling out in 2020 China’s theft of American technology, IP and research as a threat to the safety, security and economy of the US. The Trump administration also established the China Initiative, which investigated and prosecuted perceived Chinese spies in American research and industry. While the Biden administration closed the China Initiative, it has continued efforts to protect American IP. That includes through the passing of the Protecting American Intellectual Property Act of 2022, which empowers the US President to sanction entities seen to benefit from or sponsor trade-secret theft.5

For its part, China may never have intended to uphold its commitment to the norm over the long term. China may have endorsed a commitment against economic cyber-espionage as a strategic move to accelerate domestic initiatives, such as rooting out corruption in the People’s Liberation Army and refining Chinese hacking methods to be more sophisticated and less conspicuous.6 Alternatively, the lack of a clearly articulated distinction between hacking for competitive advantage and hacking for national-security purposes under Obama and Xi’s agreement may have contributed to the current situation. In any case, the threat of economic cyber-espionage continues to spiral rapidly, increasingly affecting emerging economies as well.

Emerging economies in the Global South, including members of the G20, have been the most vulnerable to that backsliding. India, Vietnam and Brazil have become important and impactful IP-producers, but their means to protect that innovation have lagged—unfortunately creating an expanded attack surface without the commensurate resilience. Still coming to terms with the scope and nature of the threat, they and other similar governments have so far introduced higher-end requirements and support arrangements for their own systems, and for operators of critical infrastructure and critical information infrastructure. However, most other industries—even when they’re substantial contributors to national GDP, high-value IP holders and the enablers for economic advancement—have been left out.

Building capacity to defend against cyber-enabled theft of IP

This report is a first-ever analytical exercise that examines the vulnerability of emerging economies in the face of economic cyber-espionage. It’s a culmination of two years of research and stakeholder engagement across the Indo-Pacific and Latin America. The focus has been on investigating perspectives on the threat of economic cyber-espionage and the degree to which major emerging economies are prepared to respond. The first of the three reports in the compendium—published in late 2022—examined state practices of cyber-enabled theft of IP. It found that, since 2015, the number of reported cases of economic cyber-espionage had tripled. Further, it found that the scale and severity of incidents had grown proportionally with the use of cyber technology as a tool of statecraft for securing economic and strategic objectives.

This specific report is the second in the compendium of three. It considers Chinese and US perspectives in the first instance—recognising their criticality to the effectiveness of any international norm. It goes on to assess the level of vulnerability across Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. This is because it’s those economies in South Asia, Southeast Asia and Latin America that are experiencing some of the world’s most rapid knowledge and innovation production. Each country has been assessed and given a risk label indicating its vulnerability based on a diagnostic tool developed by ASPI.

The third of the three reports in the compendium goes beyond analysing the problem. Through a mapping of responses, it identifies and presents a capture of best practice. The purpose is to support vulnerable states in defending their economic ‘crown jewels’—that is, critical knowledge-intensive industries. It offers a capacity-building checklist intended to help policymakers make sense of the cyber-threat landscape and respond to protect private entities from economic cyber-espionage.

References

  1. ‘World Bank country and lending groups’, World Bank, 2024, online. ↩︎
  2. ‘Science and technology cluster ranking 2023’, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), online.
    ↩︎
  3. ‘2023 Global Innovation Index’, WIPO, online.
    ↩︎
  4. Gatra Priyandita, Bart Hogeveen, Ben Stevens, State-sponsored economic cyber-espionage for commercial purposes: tackling an invisible but persistent risk to
    prosperity, ASPI, Canberra, 2022, online. ↩︎

  5. ‘Protecting American Intellectual Property Act of 2022’, US Congress, online. ↩︎
  6. Jack Goldsmith, ‘US attribution of China’s cyber-theft aids Xi’s centralization and anti-corruption efforts’, Lawfare, 21 June 2016, online. ↩︎

The future of US Indo-Pacific policy

How might US policy in the Indo-Pacific change over the next four years? In anticipation of a new US administration and Congress in 2025, ASPI USA held an “alternative futures analysis” exercise in mid-October 2024 to explore the drivers of US policy and how they might evolve through to November 2028. The workshop involved seven Indo-Pacific experts, who discussed a range of factors that could determine US policy and assessed how key factors could drive different outcomes.

The participants determined that the two key drivers affecting the US role in the Indo-Pacific over the next four years that are simultaneously most uncertain and most determinative for US policy are:

  1. Washington’s perception of China’s strength in the Indo-Pacific
  2. the level of US attention to the region.

The former is a key determinant of Washington’s threat perception, and the latter is a key determinant of Washington’s capacity to sustainably engage in the region. The nexus of those drivers produced a skeleton of four potential scenarios:

  • Failing to walk and chew gum: Perceived high China power and a low level of US attention. In this scenario, Beijing continues to advance its interests across the region while Washington fails to prioritise imperatives in the Indo-Pacific amid ongoing conflicts in Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere.
  • Follow US: Perceived high China power and a high level of US attention. In this scenario, the possibility of Chinese regional hegemony is growing, but the US adopts a focused, harder-edged security strategy and leads like-minded states to confront the challenge.
  • The Peaceful Pivot: Perceived low China power and a high level of US attention. In this “stars align” scenario, the perception of diminishing competition and conflict with China couples with the US implementing the decade-old promise of a pivot to Asia.
  • Leading from behind: Perceived low China power and a low level of US attention. China’s capacity to project power falters in this scenario, but the US—pulled into global events elsewhere and distracted by its own domestic politics—does not provide forceful leadership in the region and leans on allies and partners to carry the load.

The Pacific cocaine corridor: A Brazilian cartel’s pipeline to Australia

Australia faces an emerging national security threat from Brazilian transnational crime groups. Once a domestic concern, Brazilian organised crime has evolved into a powerful narco-insurgency with transnational reach, making Brazil the world’s second-largest player in the cocaine trade after Colombia.

While Brazilian organised crime previously posed little threat to Australia, this report, The Pacific cocaine corridor: A Brazilian cartel’s pipeline to Australia, examines how Brazil’s expanding role in global cocaine supply, rising criminal network sophistication, and growing demand in Australia’s lucrative cocaine market are increasing the presence of Brazilian organised crime on Australian shores.

The report highlights how Brazil’s Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) has become a major transnational criminal threat, exploiting weaknesses in political, legal, and economic systems. It explores Brazil’s geography and criminal networks with South American cocaine producers and examines the PCC’s global distribution networks, with a focus on how the Pacific is increasingly used to transport drugs destined for Australia. A recent case study demonstrates the prioritisation of the Australian market in these operations.

The report concludes with recommendations for strengthening police cooperation, enhancing financial surveillance, and proactively detecting and disrupting PCC activities. By addressing key enablers of the PCC’s resilience and closing gaps in international information exchange, a coordinated approach will not only mitigate the immediate threat but also bolster Australia’s long-term defences against transnational organised crime.

Cyclone Tracy: 50 years on

This year marks a powerful milestone in Australia’s history: the 50th anniversary of Cyclone Tracy, a disaster that reshaped the nation’s approach to resilience and recovery. When the cyclone struck Darwin on Christmas Day in 1974, it killed 66 people, displaced thousands, and left the city in ruins. Yet, it also sparked an extraordinary national response that redefined how Australia prepares for and recovers from natural disasters. Darwin, once devastated, now stands as a modern, resilient city—built not just to recover, but to withstand the worst.

ASPI’s new report, released in honour of this anniversary, takes a deep dive into Cyclone Tracy’s lasting impact on Australia’s disaster management. It explores how the event prompted major shifts in urban planning, building codes, and national security frameworks. From the pivotal role of the Australian Defence Force in the immediate response to the Whitlam government’s establishment of the Darwin Reconstruction Authority, Tracy set a blueprint for modern disaster recovery. But the legacy goes beyond infrastructure. The report also highlights the resilience of First Nations communities and the growing role of the private sector in disaster preparedness—elements that continue to shape Australia’s response to climate risks.

As we face increasingly frequent and severe climate events, the anniversary of Cyclone Tracy serves as a sharp reminder: resilience is not just about bouncing back—it’s about building forward. The report argues that northern Australia must go beyond traditional recovery strategies, urging a renewed focus on proactive resilience measures that address not only infrastructure but governance, community involvement, and climate adaptation. Tracy’s lessons are not just historical—they are essential to ensuring Australia’s future readiness.