Engineering global consent: The Chinese Communist Party’s data-driven power expansion

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The Chinese party-state engages in data collection on a massive scale as a means of generating information to enhance state security—and, crucially, the political security of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—across multiple domains. The party-state intends to shape, manage and control its global operating environment so that public sentiment is favourable to its own interests. The party’s interests are prioritised over simply the Chinese state’s interests or simply the Chinese people’s interests. The effort requires continuous expansion of the party’s power overseas because, according to its own articulation of its threat perceptions, external risks to its power are just as likely—if not more likely—to emerge from outside the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) borders as from within.

This report explains how the party-state’s tech-enhanced authoritarianism is expanding globally. The effort doesn’t always involve distinctly coercive and overtly invasive technology, such as surveillance cameras. In fact, it often relies on technologies that provide useful services. Those services are designed to bring efficiency to everyday governance and convenience to everyday life. The problem is that it’s not only the customer deploying these technologies—notably those associated with ‘smart cities’, such as ‘internet of things’ (IoT) devices—that derives benefit from their use. Whoever has the opportunity to access the data a product generates and collects can derive value from the data. How the data is processed, and then used, depends on the intent of the actor processing it.

Designing for resilient energy systems: Choices in future engineering

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Areality of modern times is the public expectation that not only will flows of potable water from their taps and home sewage systems simply always be there, but their lights will always turn on at the flick of a switch. An enabler that underpinning all these expectations is an effective and efficient electricity supply.

These services along with transport, and telecommunication systems are universally considered to be essential for raising the quality of life for humans. Access to these services is also a central factor in the productivity of firms and thus of entire economies, making them a key enabler of economic development.

What do young Australian engineers who have inherited our present world think about the challenges of designing resilient energy systems within the parameters of new and emerging technologies? Commissioned by Engineers Australia in partnership with ASPI, this report presents the thoughts of four young engineers on innovative energy design projects they are currently working on, as well as their views on the challenges they foresee for the design of future energy systems. These four sections are bookended by the views of two established leaders within the engineering profession.

From board room to situation room. Why corporate security is national security

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Corporations are making valiant efforts to protect their assets and capabilities from attacks in the physical and cyber environments. But such attacks are not just matters of commercial concern to companies and their shareholders. They have significant potential to weaken national resilience.

There exists a void between business and national security agencies when it comes to understanding each other’s capabilities and limitations. There are already in place some mechanisms, established by both the Australian government and state governments, for security agencies to “hook up” with business. But the structures are fragmented between and within government departments and agencies and are often based on sector-specific silos.

Developing a secure and resilient nation can only be ensured through mutual obligation whereby both government and business understand and are committed to developing and maintaining the measures required to safeguard Australia. The threats we face don’t recognise the walls that exist between Australian businesses and national security agencies. To safeguard Australia, we need to put more doors in those walls. Today, corporate security is national security.

The post-caliphate Salafi-jihadi environment

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In 2019, the global Salafi-jihadi architecture is very different from the one that emerged in September 2001, when transnational terrorism burst on to the international scene, or July 2014, when ISIL controlled more than 34,000 square miles in Syria and Iraq and thousands of young men and women were flocking to be part of its ‘caliphate’.

Many of the leaders of the Salafi-jihadi movement are gone. Some, like Osama bin Laden and Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, have been killed, and many others have been captured or are in hiding. And yet, despite having no territory and having lost many of their leaders, both al-Qaeda and ISIL continue to pose a threat to the maintenance of international peace and security. In fact, one could argue that they pose more of a threat today, as the structure of the groups has moved from integrated to fragmented, making command and control more tenuous.

In 2018, there were at least 66 Salafi-Jihadi groups around the world, the same number as in 2016 and three times as many as there were in 2001. The Center for Strategic and International Studies has pointed out that in 2018 there were at least 218,000 Salafi-jihadis and allied fighters around the world—a 270% increase.1 These figures indicate that, despite 18 years of combat and the spending of trillions of dollars, we’re nowhere near ending the jihadist threat, as the ideology continues to resonate with people.

This Strategic Insight reviews the post-caliphate Salafi-jihadi environment, focusing on two issues: the franchising strategy of al-Qaeda and Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the evolving threat of online messaging. I highlight a change in the threat posed by Salafi-jihadis to Australia; it’s now less a ‘top-down’ threat than a ‘bottom-up’ one and emanates from homegrown individuals whose links with and understanding of Salafist-jihadism are minimal. Consequently, I offer three sets of recommendations for how Australia’s official counterterrorism community should change its strategies.

Evolution of the protection of civilians in UN peacekeeping

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This year marks twenty years since the Security Council added the ‘protection of civilians in armed conflict’ to its agenda and authorised the first UN peacekeeping mission to explicitly protect civilians. Yet efforts to carry forward that mandate in the field over the last two decades have been mixed. While there is consensus among the member states within the UN that peacekeeping missions should protect, there remain different views among the various stakeholders on the limits and expectations of peacekeepers when it comes to implementing this mandate. And the consequences for the civilians on the ground—which expect protection from the UN—can be dire.

The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has called upon member states ‘to find consensus around the language and implications of peacekeeping tasks’ on the protection of civilians. This Special Report includes contributions from leading experts in the field examining some of the contemporary challenges facing UN peacekeeping missions and the actions that can be taken by member states to strengthen consensus on some issues of contention, including the role of the Security Council, managing host state consent, addressing performance and accountability, and identifying the potential limits of UN peacekeeping.

Additionally, the report explores the evolution in discussions taking place over the last decade, identifying some of the highlights and findings emerging from a series of ten workshops co-hosted by the Permanent Missions of Australia and Uruguay to the United Nations as one example of member state engagement on the issue.

With contributions from Richard Gowan, Aditi Gorur, Victoria K Holt and Lisa Sharland, this new report by ASPI’s International Program draws together analysis on the challenges faced by UN peacekeeping missions in their efforts to protect civilians over the last two decades, while offering some reflections on a way forward.

North of 26 degrees south and the security of Australia: views from The Strategist

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North of 26° south and the security of Australia’, a new report by ASPI’s The North and Australia’s Security Program, presents a series of articles by a range of trusted and up and coming authors exploring the continued importance of Northern Australia to national security and defence strategy.

The last time real attention was paid to what our regional environment means for defence in the north of Australia was in Paul Dibb’s 1986 Review of Defence Capabilities and the 1987 Defence White Paper. Following that work, the Australian government invested billions of dollars in bases and bare base infrastructure in the north, with a real focus on the Northern Territory.

The strategic environment since then has changed dramatically.

First, regional nations continue to get richer and more capable, including in their ability to project military power within and beyond their own territories—meaning that near-region partners like Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore are becoming more important in Australia’s security and diplomacy.

Second, great-power competition and potential conflict have returned to the forefront of world affairs. China and the US are now actively engaged in deep strategic competition and arm-wrestling over political, economic and strategic relationships and technological dominance across our Indo-Pacific region.

There are credible prospects of a major military conflict between these great powers over the next couple of decades, which, if it happens, will most likely spill beyond a bilateral conflict into a wider regional war.

Northern Australia’s dispersed critical infrastructure and primary resources remain vulnerable to traditional and non-traditional national security threats. Modern weapon systems put these resources within striking distance of conventional weapons, and they’re also susceptible to hybrid warfare strategies like that used by Russia in Ukraine.

While Australia has a long-term defence capability plan, we need to continue to test our assumptions about the defence of northern Australia and the north’s significance to national security. On paper, government has made a strong declaratory commitment to northern Australia. But there is evidence of a widening gap between declaratory policy and Defence’s activities in the North.

This report provides much needed contemporary analysis of the criticality of the North to Australia’s national security and defence.

Women, peace and security: Defending progress and responding to emerging challenges

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This is the third year ASPI has run a series on The Strategist to coincide with International Women’s Day and examine Australia’s approach to women, peace and security (WPS).

The series offered a timely opportunity to assess progress and identify some of the challenges that need further examination as the international community prepares to mark twenty years since the adoption of the first UN Security Council resolution on women, peace and security, and as Australia approaches the release of its second National Action Plan on WPS.

The range of topics and themes canvassed in this year’s collection of articles reminds us that we cannot afford to be complacent. There have been significant challenges to the agenda in high-level multilateral fora over the past year, which risk reversing some of the normative and practical gains that have been made in recent decades. Considering this, several of the contributors note that it is important we not only respond to emerging challenges but also revitalise the agenda moving forward. This Strategic Insights paper subsequently offers insights and recommendations for the Australian government, private sector, civil society and other interested stakeholders to address some of the emerging challenges in women, peace and security.

Last years report is available here: Women, peace and security: Addressing the gaps and strengthening implementation.

Australia-China law enforcement cooperation

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Australia and China have an extensive and growing economic relationship underpinned by diverse people-to-people connections. China is Australia’s largest two-way trading partner in goods and services (A$195 billion in 2017–18). Chinese investment into Australia’s real estate industry increased by 400% in the five years to 2015, to A$12 billion in 2014–15. Money flows from China into Australia almost doubled between 2011–12 and 2015–16, from A$42 billion to almost A$77 billion. China is Australia’s largest source of overseas students (over 157,000 studied in Australia in 2016) and second largest and highest spending inbound tourism market (with 1.2 million visits in 2016).

This economic relationship is mutually beneficial, but it also creates opportunities for criminals. The large volume of money, goods and people moving between the two countries makes it easier to conceal crimes, such as trafficked drugs or laundered money. Much activity also takes place online, making the cyber realm a major vector for cross-border criminal activity. It’s therefore important that the two governments work together to fight transnational crime where there are links between Australia and China, or where either’s citizens play key facilitator roles.

Huawei and Telefunken: Communications enterprises and rising power strategies

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This Strategic Insight, examines Huawei through a historical lens. It identifies strong parallels between the industrial policy adopted by Germany in the early twentieth century to cultivate a ‘national champion’ in communications – Telefunken – and the Chinese party-state’s support for Huawei since its formation in 1987.

It demonstrates that Huawei and Telefunken both benefitted from guaranteed government orders for their hardware, protected domestic markets, long-term backing from national financial institutions, and diplomatic support for overseas expansion. These policies increased the firm’s competitiveness on the world market, facilitating the development of national capacity in advanced communications. The development of capacity in communications brings strategic benefits for a rising power – allowing it to escape dependence on the outside world for vital infrastructure, build capabilities with potential military applications, and build geostrategic influence in key regions.

18 years and counting

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This report provides a general overview of what successive Australian governments have done since 9/11 to counter the threat posed by Salafi-jihadi to the maintenance of international peace and security, to regional security and to domestic security.

Since 2014, the threat level in Australia has been assessed as ‘Probable’, which means that credible intelligence exists to indicate that individuals or groups continue to possess the intent and capability to conduct a terrorist attack in Australia. Both Melbourne and Sydney have featured in jihadist videos and publications.