The future of digital identity in Australia

What’s the problem?

Digital identity was a key part of the Australian Government’s Digital Economy Strategy: a further $161 million was committed in the 2021 mid-year budget update, bringing total investment since 2015 to more than $600 million. Over that period, the government has developed the Trusted Digital Identity Framework, established the Digital Identity System and, in late 2021, published draft legislation to govern and regulate the system. Although there’s been little apparent progress in the past 10 months, if the potential microeconomic benefits (estimated at $11 billion in the previous government’s Digital Economy Strategy) aren’t sufficient incentive, the September 2022 data breach at Optus, and the subsequent run of data breaches on companies in October should supply new impetus. This is because digital identity offers an opportunity to allow organisations to reliably validate customer identities without collecting the sort of sensitive personal information that Optus held, the loss of which has exposed more than 10 million Australians to the risk of identity theft.

Without intervention, the current scheme is on a trajectory to fail. If the government wants to revive the Digital Identity System, it will need to attract state and territory governments and commercial organisations to participate in the system as well as getting the public to sign up—aiming for a critical mass of users to create a ‘network effect’.

However, to build the trust and confidence required to achieve that outcome, the government needs to address three key areas of concern. First, governance arrangements currently give the federal government final decision-making authority on future changes to the rules of the system. Second, there are potential cybersecurity and identity-fraud risks due to gaps in the currently proposed arrangements; although the Optus data breach should help to demonstrate the need for such a system, it means that users will require reassurance of the security of any new system before they’re willing to participate in it. Third, there’s a need for better privacy protections to avoid a situation in which commercial relying parties use the Digital Identity System to build even more valuable profiles of citizens.

What’s the solution?

The Australian Government should recognise that, although its Digital Identity System is only one of many possible digital identity systems in Australia, it could become the dominant system due to network effects, spanning both the government and the private sectors. The current proposals give final decision-making authority, including over detailed technical specifications, to the relevant government minister. This report instead recommends a formal independent oversight authority governed by a board that includes representatives from all groups—the federal government, civil society, the states and territories and the private sector. The oversight authority should also create a formal public reporting mechanism for potential vulnerabilities, and transparency on how such reports have been assessed and acted on, to improve the actual and perceived security of the system.

Security measures should be mandated, the oversight authority should be funded to put in place key controls, and the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) should work with the Department of Home Affairs to secure some of the vulnerabilities in existing non-digital identity systems upon which the digital systems will rely. Other recommended safeguards include centralised security monitoring and robust management of multiple identity risks.

Finally, privacy will be the key to public acceptance of the system, and a stronger regime is needed to ensure true informed consent to the use of digital identity data by commercial relying parties when building up and monetising profiles of their customers.

The cost of Defence ASPI defence budget brief October 2022-2023

Executive summary

Shortly before the recent election, the previous government released a defence budget that continued its record of delivering the funding it promised in the 2016 Defence White Paper (DWP) and subsequent 2020 Defence Strategic Update (DSU).

The Albanese government’s first budget was not designed to focus on Australia’s security situation or defence spending. Tasked with sharing Australia’s difficult economic situation with the Australian public, the budget has more immediate fish to fry.

For those Australians who want to see increased defence spending, this was not going to be that budget as it would have directly undercut existing defence reviews due within months. Certainly, the Prime Minister has stated that the government will do whatever is necessary to ensure Australia has the defence force it needs in these strategically uncertain times.

But this budget gives no indication of how much the government is willing to spend to do that. With the Defence Strategic Review (DSR) under Stephen Smith and Angus Houston conducting its work and not due to report until March next year, the government has stuck with the existing funding line it inherited from its predecessor. That’s an artefact of the 2016 Defence White Paper—a document developed in a different era and quickly overtaken by events.

So Defence is in a holding pattern while the government keeps its powder dry and waits for Smith and Houston (noting their interim report has recently been handed to the government). No doubt it has had conversations with the DSR leads indicating its comfort zone for additional spending, but that hasn’t been made public.

What we can say from the information set out in this budget is that any increase to defence spending will require difficult reprioritisation. While the government received a revenue windfall this year due to high commodity prices, those are forecast to return to normal. And with the government committing to deliver the tax cuts agreed by its predecessor, its income is under further pressure. At the same time, it’s facing five growing spending pressures: interest on the growing debt, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, health care, aged care, and defence—and that’s before any increase to the existing defence funding line. The result is a forecast for deficit spending for the next 10 years.

That’s not a good situation for the DSR leads. They’re tasked with delivering new military acquisitions faster in the next decade, but the existing acquisition plan is probably already unaffordable (without increased spending), with many entirely new capabilities or expensive replacement projects. And with nuclear-powered submarines and frigates on the untouchable list, the challenge of delivering more sooner gets even harder, as those two programs will consume tens of billions of dollars over the coming decade even before they deliver their first vessels.

Moreover, inflation is rapidly eroding Defence’s buying power by billions of dollars every year. By the end of the forward estimates, Defence may have lost around $18 billion in buying power even if inflation rapidly returns to the Reserve Bank of Australia’s target rate. That’s the budget papers’ predictions, but those predictions haven’t been very accurate in recent years.

This year, despite nominal growth of over 7% in defence spending, real growth is under 1% once inflation is taken into account (although, with inflation difficult to predict, it’s also difficult to reliably quantify real growth). It’s hard to see Defence affording its ambitious acquisition program with a budget that’s essentially static in real terms.

Inflation is also driving nominal GDP growth at a predicted 8% this year. That means that defence spending is falling as a percentage of GDP for the second year in a row despite the government delivering the funding set out in the 2016 Defence White Paper and 2020 Defence Strategic Update. Predicted defence spending has also fallen significantly just since the March budget, from 2.11% to 1.96%, despite the funding line remaining fundamentally unchanged.

In summary, there is no pot of gold available to cover increased defence spending. That doesn’t mean the government can’t or won’t increase defence spending, but any increase will require either higher taxes (which appears unlikely, since the government is proceeding with its predecessor’s planned tax cuts), greater borrowing (accelerating the vicious cycle of debts and deficits), or cuts to other priorities that have constituencies of their own.

When we look at Defence’s big three areas of spending—capital acquisitions, people and sustainment—there have been no significant changes since the March budget. With the Australian dollar at a 20-year low against the US dollar, the Defence budget has received a large automatic top-up to maintain its purchasing, but there’s no adjustment to compensate for inflation.

There are a few changes to spending, but they’re broadly consistent with what we would see in a mid-year budget update. For those who follow capability, the top 30 acquisition projects and sustainment products hold some interesting information, but the lists are quite consistent with previous plans. We’ll have to wait for the outcomes of the DSR to see anything new.

Similarly there’s been no adjustment to Defence’s personnel allocation since March. But that still means the ADF needs to find roughly 13,000 more people this decade to operate the capabilities on its shopping list, even though it’s only managed to grow by an average of 300 per year since the 2016 White Paper. Smith and Houston may need to consider whether it makes sense to acquire capabilities that the ADF can’t crew, or at least how the ADF can maximise its combat power without many additional people. Of course, another HR strategy is one based on ‘if you build it, they will come.’

The situation is also difficult with Defence’s civilian and external workforce. To deliver its ambitious capability program, Defence has relied on growing numbers of contractors. They’ve helped Defence spend record amounts in its acquisition programs in recent years, despite the impact of Covid-19; however, they come at a cost. That growth may be over; in the October budget, the government is seeking $144.6 million in ‘savings from external labour and savings from advertising, travel and legal expenses’. That’s not a large percentage of Defence’s total budget but, if it means the organisation can’t hire the people it needs to manage the acquisition program, it’s hard to see how Defence will deliver more capability sooner.

Overall, while there were no surprises, the October budget hasn’t made the job any easier for Smith and Houston.

The 2022 US midterm elections and what they might mean for Australia

On 8 November, Americans will vote in midterm congressional elections to determine all 435 voting seats in the House of Representatives and one-third of the 100 seats in the Senate. This ASPI commentary outlines what the midterm election outcomes could mean for Australia’s strategic interests by examining the role of congressional committees in US foreign, security and defence policymaking. While most core elements of the Australia–US relationship are bipartisan and enduring, changes to the congressional committees can influence policy areas that overlap with or are vital to Australian interests. Even small changes in the way Congress works could determine how much priority Australian strategic interests receive. Canberra should therefore be highly attuned to the changes in committee structure and membership. 
 
Once the new Congress settles in, the Australian Government will have a brief window of opportunity to feed into and influence outcomes in US foreign, security and defence policymaking. After that point, campaigning will consume Congress, making it harder for Australian diplomats, politicians and other officials to be heard leading up to the 2024 US presidential election. AUSMIN in December 2022, the outcomes of the Defence Strategic Review and AUKUS pathway review (both expected March 2023) along with major Quad meetings held in the first half of 2023, all fall within this window and provide opportunities for senior Australian Government representatives visiting Washington to engage with both their Administration counterparts and with members of Congress including, for example, the strong friends of Australia in the AUKUS Working Group. 
 
This analysis of the midterms and their implications for Australia is informed by a series of meetings with congressional committee staff members (policy analysts and researchers). Those individuals serve both Democratic and Republican members of Congress and work in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Frontier influencers: the new face of China’s propaganda

Executive summary

This report explores how the Chinese party-state’s globally focused propaganda and disinformation capabilities are evolving and increasing in sophistication. Concerningly, this emerging approach by the Chinese party-state to influence international discourse on China, including obfuscating its record of human rights violations, is largely flying under the radar of US social media platforms and western policymakers.

In the broader context of attempts by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to censor speech, promote disinformation and seed the internet with its preferred narratives, we focus on a small but increasingly popular set of YouTube accounts that feature mainly female China-based ethnic-minority influencers from the troubled frontier regions of Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia, hereafter referred to as ‘frontier influencers’ or ‘frontier accounts’.

Despite being blocked in China, YouTube is seen by the CCP as a key battlefield in its ideological contestation with the outside world, and YouTube’s use in foreign-facing propaganda efforts has intensified in recent years. Originally deployed on domestic video-sharing platforms to meet an internal propaganda need, frontier-influencer content has since been redirected towards global audiences on YouTube as part of the CCP’s evolving efforts to counter criticisms of China’s human rights problems and burnish the country’s image.

Alongside party-state media and foreign vloggers, these carefully vetted domestic vloggers are increasingly seen as another key part of Beijing’s external propaganda arsenal. Their use of a more personal style of communication and softer presentation is expected to be more convincing than traditional party-state media content, which is often inclined towards the more rigid and didactic. For the CCP, frontier influencers represent, in the words of one Chinese propaganda expert, ‘guerrillas or militia’ fighting on the flanks in ‘the international arena of public opinion’, while party-state media or the ‘regular army’ ‘charge, kill and advance on the frontlines’.

The frontier accounts we examine in this report were predominantly created in 2020–21 and feature content that closely hews to CCP narratives, but their less polished presentation has a more authentic feel that conveys a false sense of legitimacy and transparency about China’s frontier regions that party-state media struggle to achieve. For viewers, the video content appears to be the creation of the individual influencers, but is in fact what’s referred to in China as ‘professional user generated content’, or content that’s produced with the help of special influencer-management agencies known as multi-channel networks (MCNs).

For the mostly young and female Uyghur, Tibetan and other ethnic-minority influencers we examine in this report, having such an active presence on a Western social media platform is highly unusual, and ordinarily would be fraught with danger. But, as we reveal, frontier influencers are carefully vetted and considered politically reliable. The content they create is tightly circumscribed via self-censorship and oversight from their MCNs and domestic video platforms before being published on YouTube. In one key case study, we show how frontier influencers’ content was directly commissioned by the Chinese party-state.

Because YouTube is blocked in China, individual influencers based in the country aren’t able to receive advertising revenue through the platform’s Partner Program, which isn’t available there. But, through their arrangements with YouTube, MCNs have been able to monetise content for frontier influencers, as well as for hundreds of other China-based influencers on the platform. Given that many of the MCNs have publicly committed to promote CCP propaganda, this arrangement results in a troubling situation in which MCNs are able to monetise their activities, including the promotion of disinformation, via their access to YouTube’s platform.

The use of professionally supported frontier influencers also appears to be aimed at ensuring that state-backed content ranks well in search results because search-engine algorithms tend to prioritise fresh content and channels that post regularly. From the CCP’s perspective, the continuous flooding of content by party-state media, foreign influencers and professionally supported frontier influencers onto YouTube is aimed at outperforming other more critical but stale content.

This new phenomenon reflects a continued willingness, identified in previous ASPI ICPC reports,11 by the Chinese party-state to experiment in its approach to shaping online political discourse, particularly on those topics that have the potential to disrupt its strategic objectives. By targeting online audiences on YouTube through intermediary accounts managed by MCNs, the CCP can hide its affiliation with those influencers and create the appearance of ‘independent’ and ‘authoritative’ voices supporting its narratives, including disinformation that it’s seeking to propagate globally.

This report (on page 42) makes a series of policy recommendations, including that social media platforms shouldn’t allow MCNs who are conducting propaganda and disinformation work on behalf of the Chinese party-state to monetise their activities or be recognised by the platforms as, for example, official partners or award winners. This report also recommends that social media platforms broaden their practice of labelling the accounts of state media, agencies and officials to include state-linked influencers from the People’s Republic of China.

  1. Fergus Ryan, Ariel Bogle, Nathan Ruser, Albert Zhang, Daria Impiombato, Borrowing mouths to speak on Xinjiang, ASPI, Canberra, 7 December 2021. Fergus Ryan, Ariel Bogle, Albert Zhang, Jacob Wallis, #StopXinjiang Rumors: the CCP’s decentralised disinformation campaign, ASPI, Canberra, 2 December 2021,https://www.aspi.org.au/report/stop-xinjiang-rumors. ↩︎

Deciding the future: the Australian Army and the infantry fighting vehicle

Introduction

The aim of this report is to inform government decision-makers and the public on the ability of Project LAND 400 Phase 3—the infantry fighting vehicle (IFV) acquisition—to meet the needs of Australia. I examine a number of factors that provide context for the government’s upcoming decision, whenever that may take place. Those include how IFVs fit into the Australian strategic environment, the ease with which the ADF can deploy them, their vulnerability to threats, and the ongoing utility of armour in the light of lessons unfolding from the ongoing Russian–Ukrainian War.

To set the information into a useful context, this report explains the nature of contemporary land warfare and speculates how the Australian Army is likely to fight in a future conflict. To further assist those making the IFV decision, this report offers a number of scenarios that outline potential operations that the government may direct the ADF to undertake. It also identifies current gaps in ADF capability that will need remediation if the IFV is to achieve its potential, as well as the other opportunities that might not be taken up because of the focus on this investment.

The report’s analysis results in some key questions for decision-makers to consider as they decide on the infantry fighting vehicle acquisition:

  1. Does the government believe that its IFV investment will deliver an appropriate balance of protection, lethality and mobility (both tactical and operational)?
  2. Does the government agree with the requirement for an infantry vehicle with STANAG 4569 Level 6 force protection and equipped with an active protection system?
  3. Is the government confident that the number of the IFVs obtained will generate a deployable and sustainable force that represents a sufficient return on the investment?
  4. Does the government accept that the IFV options under consideration will enable the ADF to offset existing gaps in capability and allow it to conduct operations in a contested maritime environment, including sea and airlift, long-range fires and logistics?
  5. Is the government confident that the Army’s combined arms system is deployable in contested environments, particularly in a maritime scenario?
  6. Does the government believe that the IFV will provide utility in the range of contingencies that the government envisages the ADF will need to meet?
  7. Does the government agree that the IFV will contribute to the requirement that the ADF be able to shape, deter and respond to threats as mandated in the 2020 Defence Strategic Update (DSU)?

Suppressing the truth and spreading lies

How the CCP is influencing Solomon Islands’ information environment

What’s the problem?

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is attempting to influence public discourse in Solomon Islands through coordinated information operations that seek to spread false narratives and suppress information on a range of topics. Following the November 2021 Honiara riots and the March 2022 leaking of the China – Solomon Islands security agreement, the CCP has used its propaganda and disinformation capabilities to push false narratives in an effort to shape the Solomon Islands public’s perception of security issues and foreign partners. In alignment with the CCP’s regional security objectives, those messages have a strong focus on undermining Solomon Islands’ existing partnerships with Australia and the US.

Although some of the CCP’s messaging occurs through routine diplomatic engagement, there’s a coordinated effort to influence the population across a broad spectrum of information channels. That spectrum includes Chinese party-state media, CCP official-led statements and publications in local and social media, and the amplification of particular individual and pro-CCP content via targeted Facebook groups.

There’s now growing evidence to suggest that CCP officials are also seeking to suppress information that doesn’t align with the party-state’s narratives across the Pacific islands through the coercion of local journalists and media institutions.

What’s the solution?

The Australian Government should coordinate with other foreign partners of Solomon Islands, including the US, New Zealand, Japan and the EU, to further assist local Pacific media outlets in hiring, training and retaining high-quality professional journalists. A stronger, more resilient media industry in Solomon Islands will be less vulnerable to disinformation and the pressures exerted by local CCP officials.

Social media companies need to provide, in national Pacific languages, contextual information on misinformation and label state affiliations on messages from state-controlled entities. Social media companies could encourage civil society to report state affiliations and provide evidence to help companies enforce their policies.

Further government funding should be used to support public research into actors and activities affecting the Pacific islands’ information environment, including foreign influence, the proliferation of disinformation on topics such as climate change, and election misinformation. That research should be used to assist in building media resiliency in Pacific island countries by providing information and targeted training to media professionals to assist in identifying disinformation and aspects of coordinated information operations. Sharing that information with civil-society groups and institutions across the region, such as the Pacific Fusion Centre, can also help to improve regional media literacy and understanding of information operations as a cybersecurity issue.

Pacific island countries will need support as great-power competition intensifies in the region. The US, for example, can do more to demonstrate that the CCP’s narratives are false, such as proving Washington’s genuine interest in supporting the region by answering the call of the local Solomon Islands population to do more to clean up remaining unexploded World War II ordnance on Guadalcanal. ASPI has also previously proposed that an Indo-Pacific hybrid threats centre would help regional governments, business and civil society to understand the threat landscape, develop resilience against online harms and counter malign activity.1 It would contribute to regional stability by promoting confidence-building measures, including information-sharing and capacity-building mechanisms.

Introduction

This report explores how the CCP is using a range of influence channels to shape, promote and suppress messages in the Solomon Islands information environment. Through an examination of CCP online influence in the aftermath of the Honiara riots in late 2021 and in response to the leaked security agreement in March 2022, this report demonstrates a previously undocumented level of coordination across a range of state activities. As part of a wider shift in ASPI’s research on foreign interference and disinformation, this report also seeks to measure the impact of those efforts in shaping public sentiment and opinion, and we welcome feedback on those methods. The data collected in this project doesn’t provide an exhaustive record of all CCP influence tactics and channels in Solomon Islands but provides a snapshot of activity in relation to the two key case studies.

In this paper, we use the term ‘China’ to refer to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as an international actor, ‘Chinese Government’ or ‘Chinese state’ to refer to the bureaucracy of the government of the PRC, and ‘Chinese Communist Party’ or ‘party-state’ to refer to the regime that monopolises state power in the PRC.

Methodology

Data collection for this case study covered two discrete periods. The first collection period was for 12 weeks from the beginning of the riots on 24 November (referred to in tables and charts as the Honiara riots case study), and the second period was for six weeks from the leaking of the China – Solomon Islands security agreement on 24 March (referred to as the security agreement case study).2 The analytical methods used included quantitative analysis of publicly available data from a range of sources, including articles from Solomon Islands media outlets, articles from party-state media and Facebook posts in public groups and local media pages based in Solomon Islands. For the purpose of the analysis, any article with more than 80% of its content derived from local or foreign government official sources (direct quotes or statements from diplomatic officials, ministers or embassies, for example) was categorised as an ‘official-led’ article. Examples of such content included editorials, media releases and articles that prominently relied on direct quotes. This data was collected systematically for quantitative and qualitative analysis and was strengthened by deeper investigation into some public Facebook groups and activity. This approach drew upon a previously published framework, titled ‘information influence and interference’, used to understand strategy-driven, state-sponsored information activities.33

We conducted a simple categorical sentiment analysis of social media posts as a measure of the effectiveness of CCP influence efforts. We analysed comments from Facebook posts published by three leading media outlets in Solomon Islands (The Solomon Star, The Island Sun and the Solomon Times) for the two events investigated for this research report. We also analysed comments from posts by the Chinese Embassy in Solomon Islands’ Facebook page, as well as posts in public Pacific island Facebook pages and groups that shared links to party-state media. Relevant comments were categorised as being positive (pro) or negative (anti) towards a particular country or group, such as ‘the West’, which had to be explicitly stated in the comment. Comments that referred to more than one grouping (China, the West, or the Solomon Islands Government) were categorised for analytical purposes based on the dominant subject of the comment. Our initial data collection also sought to analyse information relating to New Zealand, the UK and Japan, but that was prevented by the lack of reporting and online discussion focused on those countries (in this data-collection period, only one article each from New Zealand and Japan were identified).

  1. Lesley Seebeck, Emily Williams, Jacob Wallis, Countering the Hydra: a proposal for an Indo-Pacific hybrid threat centre, ASPI, Canberra, 7 June 2022. ↩︎
  2. Anna Powles, ‘Photos of draft security agreement between Solomon Islands and China’, Twitter, 24 March 2022. ↩︎
  3. Miah Hammond-Errey, ‘Understanding and assessing information influence and foreign interference’, Journal of
    Information Warfare, Winter 2019, 18:1–22. ↩︎

Assessing the groundwork: Surveying the impacts of climate change in China

The immediate and unprecedented impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly apparent across China, as they are for many parts of the world. Since June 2022, China has been battered by record-breaking heatwaves, torrential downpours, flooding disasters, severe drought and intense forest fires.

In isolation, each of those climate hazards is a reminder of the vulnerability of human systems to environmental changes, but together they are a stark reminder that climate change presents a real and existential threat to prosperity and well-being of billions of people. 

Sea-level rise will undermine access to freshwater for China’s coastal cities and increase the likelihood of flooding in China’s highly urbanised delta regions. Droughts are projected to become more frequent, more extreme and longer lasting, juxtaposed with growingly intense downpours that will inundate non-coastal regions. Wildfires are also projected to increase in frequency and severity, especially in eastern China. China’s rivers, which have historically been critical to the county’s economic and political development, will experience multiple, overlapping climate (and non-climate) impacts.

In addition to these direct climate hazards, there will also be major disruptions to the various human systems that underpin China, such as China’s food and energy systems as are discussed in this report. These impacts deserve greater attention from policy analysts, particularly given that they’ll increasingly shape China’s economic, foreign and security policy choices in coming decades.

This report is an initial attempt to survey the literature on the impact that climate change will have on China. It concludes that relatively little attention has been paid to this important topic. This is a worrying conclusion, given China’s key role in international climate-change debates, immense importance in the global economy and major geostrategic relevance. As the severity of climate change impacts continue to amplify over the coming decades, the significance of this gap will only grow more concerning.

Australia’s semiconductor national moonshot

Foreword

Australia has recently been forced to cross a Rubicon. Its wholehearted embrace of global free trade and just-in-time supply chains has had to confront the hard reality of geopolitics. In many parts of the world, geopolitics is choking free trade, and China—Australia’s largest trading partner—has shown itself particularly willing to use trade coercively and abrogate its free trade commitments, not just with Australia, but with countries all around the world.

Advanced technologies are at the centre of this geopolitical struggle, because of the risk that withheld supply poses to national economies and security. As Covid-19 disruptions have demonstrated, the risks are not even limited to deliberate coercion.

In this environment, bold action is warranted. Continuing to do what we did before is not an option because it will undermine the national interest. A new approach is needed that’s in part heretical to our old market-based approach but is driven by necessity: government intervention that works in tandem with industry expertise and drive.

In this important policy brief, Alex Capri and Robert Clark lay out a vision for Australia to secure its place in the global semiconductor industry—an industry they describe as ‘the single most important technology underlying leading-edge industries’.

Their proposal is to stimulate A$5 billion of semiconductor manufacturing activity through A$1.5 billion of government investment and financial incentives. Those subsidies and tax concessions would mirror similar initiatives such as the US ‘CHIPS’ and ‘FABS’ Acts, but are focused on Australia’s interests.

They identify a logical niche for Australia that would initially establish a distributed commercial compound semiconductor foundry capability across Australia via a public–private partnership. In the longer term, they propose establishing a commercial silicon complementary metal-oxide semiconductor foundry at mature process scale.

Government intervention in a market shouldn’t be made lightly, but Capri and Clark make a compelling case to do so. If policymakers agree that Australia needs access to semiconductors and that their supply from elsewhere can’t be guaranteed, then intervention is imperative.

This policy brief lays out a ‘moonshot’ to get Australia there.

Fergus Hanson
Director, International Cyber Policy Centre

What’s the problem?

Semiconductors (also known as ‘microchips’ or ‘chips’) are the single most important technology underpinning leading-edge industries. They’re essential for the proper functioning of everything from smartphones to nuclear submarines and from medical equipment to wireless communications.

Australia’s notable lack of participation in the global semiconductor ecosystem has put it at a geopolitical disadvantage. As a nation, with some niche exceptions, it’s almost entirely dependent on foreign-controlled microchip technology, making it increasingly vulnerable to global supply-chain shortages, shutdowns and disruptions. Such occurrences have become all too common, either because of events such as the Covid-19 pandemic or because of other governments’ attempts to weaponise supply chains for geopolitical reasons.

Having unfettered access to microchips is a matter of economic and national security, and, more generally, of Australia’s day-to-day wellbeing as a nation. In an increasingly digitised world, policymakers must treat semiconductors as a vital public good, almost on par with other basic necessities such as food and water supplies and reliable electricity—a reality that would become immediately apparent in a time of international crisis resulting from, for example, wars or natural disasters.

What’s the solution?

Australia must conceive, develop and execute a national plan that will enable capacity building in the semiconductor space. To do this, leadership must embrace bold thinking and adopt its own version of a 21st-century ‘moonshot’. Instead of landing astronauts on the Moon, however, as the Americans did in their own original moonshot in a Cold War space race against the Soviet Union, Australia faces an equally daunting task: from a low base, breaking into the world’s most complex, expensive and strategic technology ecosystem.

To achieve that, the Australian Government must do four overarching things.

First, it must embark on an epic technology-transfer initiative. To be successful, Australia must attract and absorb leading-edge technology, human capital (talent) and investment through a range of strategic partnerships with world-class companies, universities and friendly governments. The good news is that Australia already has a wealth of resources and building blocks to which it can turn to bring this to fruition.

Second, it must leverage its security partnerships and alliances with the US, Britain, Japan and others to tether the development of its semiconductor capabilities to evolving mutual defence needs and related innovation. Security alliances such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad), AUKUS and the Five Eyes network must double up as enablers of Australia’s semiconductor sector (and other critical technology) advancement. The spillover to Australia’s commercial sector will be immense.

Third, Australia’s firms and local talent must become enmeshed in global value chains. Not just any value chains, however. Australia’s strategic industries must seek to secure supply-chain arrangements via bilateral, minilateral and multilateral agreements, and government should continue to participate in high-quality multilateral free trade agreements, assuming those agreements actually enforce rules and standards reflective of Australia’s core values.

Countries such as the US, the UK, Japan and South Korea, along with various EU nations, India, Taiwan and Singapore, show good potential for ‘friend-shoring’, meaning that they could provide safe havens for the ring-fencing of Australia’s strategic value chains. For example, Australia could join Washington’s ‘secure’ (‘China-free’) supply-chain arrangements with Taiwan, Japan and South Korea as part of the US Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors and Science Act (CHIPS Act) or pursue similar agreements with the EU’s nascent supply-chain security agreements as part of the EU’s European Chips Act. Bilateral and minilateral agreements are preferred. Such an outcome would be mutually advantageous to all parties, given the benefits of rationalised global value chains for the world’s most complex sector.

Highly specialised slices of the semiconductor value chain require a dizzying range of materials, processes, equipment and technologies from trading partners that must be relied upon to deliver the goods without the risk of sanctions, blacklists and export bans—or any other geopolitically motivated weaponisation of supply chains. Every niche player in Australia’s microchip ecosystem, therefore, must keep its critical production activities ring-fenced within ‘friendly’ geopolitical and geographical value chains.

Strategic friend-shoring and home-shoring must cover everything from localised rare-earth and critical-materials processing at the bottom of supply chains to the production of specialised microchips at the top end.

Fourth, Australia’s public sector must step up to facilitate the right kinds of public–private partnerships (PPPs), provide targeted funding for semiconductor R&D and education, and create commercial incentives for foreign and local investments. This will require adept ‘techno-diplomacy’ with foreign partners, as well as a deft touch regarding the local technology landscape, as too much government interference could impede Australia’s tremendous entrepreneurial spirit. This is a moonshot: big and bold actions and expenditures are needed, not overly cautious gradualism.

Executive summary

In this report, we set out to make specific recommendations underpinning an Australian semiconductor national plan. This is an urgent task, which is presented in a global context, with special emphasis given to the geopolitical complexity of semiconductor supply-chain issues and Australia’s important strategic alliances and partnerships.

Our analysis emphasises the centrality of a commercial semiconductor chip manufacturing capability, which is nearly absent in Australia. Developing other aspects of the semiconductor ecosystem is important, including critical minerals and microchip design, but those areas must be addressed concurrently, as part of a larger, decisive plan, not through a gradualist approach. Opting out of semiconductor manufacturing will severely constrain Australia’s growth as a technological nation and consign it to second-tier status.

International examples, and recent substantial incentives formalised by governments worldwide for this critical industry, such as the US and European ‘Chips’ Acts, are highlighted and provide guidance.

Australia has an R&D semiconductor fabrication foothold upon which it can build its new capabilities. Viable investment streams via the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF) network under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Scheme must be increased substantially.

A sufficiently funded ANFF, with capability increased to pilot production in key nodes, could underpin closely located foundries via public–private partnerships (PPPs) with commercial manufacturing firms. As is the case for PPP developments in the US and UK, it’s proposed that Australia attract appropriately tailored foundry capability in compound semiconductors, and also in complementary metal-oxide-semiconductors (silicon CMOS) at mature process scale. The endgame is to address these key markets with a sovereign talent pipeline.

We provide a dollar amount estimate for that outcome, indicating a pathway to some A$5 billion of semiconductor manufacturing activity, stimulated by A$1.5 billion of government investment and financial incentives, including direct subsidies and tax offsets, which are part of that total.

As well as financial estimates, we address the issue of focus and the scale of an Australian semiconductor ‘moonshot’. We also map the four overarching actions that we’ve outlined under ‘What’s the solution?’ to quite specific recommendations. That mapping considers the current Australian semiconductor status quo to outline an existing foothold that Australia can sensibly build on. We also take note of significant US and UK government incentive schemes recently announced to strategically define and boost those countries’ semiconductor industries and supply chains, which Australia could proportionately finetune to its comparative stage of development.

In a geopolitical context, we focus on the task of creating and executing an Australian national semiconductor plan. At its heart, and notwithstanding the importance of microchip design and marketing, the central and most complex issue that will define such a plan is building a sustainable, appropriately scaled, strategic market-penetrating, trusted commercial semiconductor fabrication capacity across Australia. With this focus, in laying out an analysis of the semiconductor landscape, we highlight topics that should be at the forefront of the national discussion.

Those topics include:

  • concentrating on different business models and capacity-building scenarios, including the medium-term consideration of ‘pure play’ manufacturing of compound semiconductors as well as connected ‘fabless’ activities in research, design and innovation
  • over the long term, exploring the merits of the ‘integrated device manufacturing’ model and silicon chip fabrication at an appropriate entry point
  • focusing on specialised chip production for a growing range of sectors, including the automotive, medical, communications, energy and defence sectors
  • recognising the importance of so-called ‘trailing-edge’, ‘mature’ chip technologies and why they’re as important as ‘leading-edge’ semiconductors, in an economic and geopolitical context
  • understanding the enabling role of trusted PPPs involving Australian and other leading universities and public-sector technology agencies, semiconductor companies and governments
  • understanding the importance of technology transfer via defence-related alliances such as AUKUS and the Five Eyes and the role of government-funded research agencies in that transfer.

ASPI AUKUS update 2: September 2022—the one-year anniversary

Introduction

Consistent with a partnership that’s focused on the development of defence and technological capability rather than diplomatic grandstanding,1 there have been few public announcements about the progress of AUKUS. That’s an observation we made in our first AUKUS update in May,2 and one we make again in this latest update, one year on from the joint unveiling of the partnership in mid-September 2021.

Periodic press releases note meetings of the three-country joint steering groups—one of which looks at submarines and the other at advanced capabilities—but provide little hint about what was discussed.3 On Submarines, we shouldn’t expect to hear anything concrete until the 18-month consultation phase concludes in March 2022.

What’s changed, however, is that the strategic environment that gave birth to AUKUS has worsened markedly, most notably in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s escalating pressure on Taiwan and other parts of the Indo-Pacific. Those developments are making the advanced technologies AUKUS aims to foster even more relevant.

Image: iStockphoto/sameer chogade

While the political landscape across the three AUKUS partners has also changed (of the three leaders that announced AUKUS just one year ago, only one, US President Biden, remains in office), bipartisan support for AUKUS appears to be undiminished in all three capitals.

In Australia, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Labor government has made clear its commitment to AUKUS alongside the announcement of an ambitious Defence Strategic Review (DSR). Albanese has simultaneously worked to restore good relations with France, which temporarily withdrew its ambassador and some forms of cooperation because of the loss of the Attack-class submarine contract and what it said was a lack of Australian sincerity about AUKUS.

Britain’s new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, was a staunch advocate for AUKUS as Foreign Secretary, and all the signs are that she’ll continue in that vein as Prime Minister. Truss has kept Ben Wallace, a strong supporter of AUKUS, as Defence Secretary. Truss’s government has also moved former National Security Adviser Stephen Lovegrove into a new role focused on nuclear defence industry partnerships. If that becomes a permanent position, it could add capacity to deliver AUKUS over the long term.4

This update begins by reviewing the worsening strategic context one year on from the AUKUS announcement. Next, it summarises what more we have learned about progress in the nuclear-powered submarine (SSN) program, which is at the heart of AUKUS. It then assesses how think tanks across a selection of key countries are covering AUKUS to gauge trends in the public debate. The final section of the update assesses the importance of advanced technological cooperation through AUKUS to develop capability and reinforce deterrence rapidly in the face of the strategic challenges we face. The update makes some recommendations for the best way forward.

  1. Michael Shoebridge, What is AUKUS and what is it not?, ASPI, Canberra, 8 December 2021. ↩︎
  2. Marcus Hellyer, Ben Stevens, ASPI AUKUS update 1: May 2022, ASPI, Canberra, 5 May 2022. ↩︎
  3. ‘Readout of AUKUS Joint Steering Group meetings’, The White House, 31 July 2022. ↩︎
  4. ‘Sir Tim Barrow appointed as National Security Adviser’, media release, UK Government, 7 September 2022. ↩︎

The geopolitical implications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

The geopolitical implications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Background

The eminent Harvard University professor of Ukrainian history, Serhii Plokhy, observed that Russia’s occupation of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk in 2014 raised fundamental questions about Ukraine’s continuing existence as a unified state, its independence as a nation, and the democratic foundations of its political institutions.1 This created a new and dangerous situation not only in Ukraine but also in Europe as a whole. For the first time since the end of World War II, a major European power made war on a weaker neighbour and annexed part of the territory of a sovereign state. This unprovoked Russian aggression against Ukraine threatened the foundations of international order—a threat to which, he said, the EU and most of the world weren’t prepared to respond.

Two years later, Plokhy published a book called Lost kingdom: a history of Russian nationalism from Ivan the Great to Vladimir Putin 2 in which he observed—correctly, in my view—that the question of where Russia begins and ends, and who constitutes the Russian people, has preoccupied Russian thinkers for centuries. He might have added that Russia has no obvious or clear-cut geographical borders. Plokhy also stated that the current Russo-Ukrainian conflict is only the latest turn of Russian policy resulting from the Russian elite’s thinking about itself and its East Slavic neighbours as part of their joint historical and cultural space, and ultimately as the same nation. He asserts that the current conflict reprises many of the themes that have been central to political and cultural relations in the region for the previous five centuries. Those include Russia’s great-power status and influence beyond its borders; the continued relevance of religion, especially Orthodox Christianity, as defined in Russian identity and the conduct of Russian policy abroad; and, last but not least, the importance of language and culture as tools of Russian state policy in the region. Moreover, the conflict reminds the world that the formation of the modern Russian nation is still far from complete. Plokhy concludes that this threat is no less serious than the one posed in the 19th and early 20th centuries by the German question—the idea of uniting all the German lands to forge a mighty German Empire.

Since those words, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has already become the worst international crisis since the end of the Cold War. Plokhy worried that a new and terrible stage in the shaping of European borders and populations was emerging. He said that it all depends on the ability and readiness of the Russian elites to accept the post-Soviet political realities and adjust Russia’s own identity to the demands of the post-imperial world. The alternative, he concluded, might be a new Cold War—or worse.

For many of us today, we face the spectre of not only a new Cold War but the prospects of a wider general war in Europe erupting if Russia persists with its post-imperial expansion objectives at the same time as an increasingly authoritarian China is working with its strategic partner in Moscow to remake the international order. This deeply disturbing picture is made all the worse by Putin’s now frequent references to the potential use of nuclear weapons.

I have deliberately begun these introductory words with reference to the deeply entrenched historical context of Russia’s relations with Ukraine, which extend over more than nine centuries. For much of that time—and particularly throughout the more than 70 years of Bolshevik power—Russia’s long history has been consistently reinvented.

As the Soviet-era quip goes: ‘The future is certain. It’s only the past that is unpredictable’, which is applicable to history as remade and retold by Russia’s leadership. And for the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, today’s past is being continually reinvented, along with his reasons for his ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine. Fake news and fake facts are the key tools of his huge propaganda offensive to reinforce Russian popular support for his ‘limited military operation’.

The structure of this paper is as follows:

  1. Why did Putin decide to attack Ukraine?
  2. Why have Russia’s military forces performed so woefully?
  3. What are the geopolitical implications for the world order, including for Australia?
  4. Key policy and intelligence recommendations.

The policy background to this assessment is that Russia’s outright invasion of Ukraine is an extremely dangerous moment for global security because Europe’s security order is now being fundamentally challenged with the real risk of escalation into a major war involving Russia and the US. The ugliest days of this war are in front of us, not behind us.

Moreover, the war is occurring at a time in world history when relations between Moscow and Washington have never been so fraught, and the Moscow–Beijing relationship has never been so close in the past half-century. In comparison, throughout much of the Cold War, senior Soviet and American defence, foreign policy and intelligence officials and nuclear arms control experts engaged in prolonged and deeply informed discussions about each other’s nuclear weapons capabilities and the risks of nuclear war. That involved mutual on-site inspections to confirm the numbers and characteristics of each side’s most advanced strategic nuclear weapons, as well as what the late Professor Coral Bell described as a comprehensive array of measures to signal to each other and engage more closely in times of tension.

Certainly, that wasn’t a foolproof method of avoiding—let alone managing—global nuclear conflict. But the fact remains that the outright use of nuclear weapons (as distinct from their threatened use) was avoided even when towards the end of the Cold War both sides possessed more than 12,000 strategic nuclear warheads on high alert. These days, there are no such confidence-building measures or frequent high-level meetings to signal concerns to each other. That should be a matter of grave strategic worry, given the current state of high tension between Russia and the US.

  1. Serhii Plokhy, The gates of Europe: a history of Ukraine, Basic Books, London, 2015. ↩︎
  2. Serhii Plokhy, Lost kingdom: a history of Russian nationalism from Ivan the Great to Vladimir Putin, Penguin, London, 2017. ↩︎