The ‘official’ histories of Australian and British intelligence: lessons learned and next steps
Unclassified, official histories of ‘secret’ intelligence organisations, for public readership, seem a contradiction in terms. These ‘official’ works are commissioned by the agencies in question and directly informed by those agencies’ own records, thus distinguishing them from other, outsider historical accounts. But while such official intelligence histories are relatively new, sometimes controversial, and often challenging for historians and agencies alike, the experiences of the Australian and British intelligence communities suggest they’re a promising development for scholarship, maintaining public trust and informed public discourse, and more effective functioning of national security agencies. Furthermore, these histories remain an ongoing project for Australia’s National Intelligence Community (NIC).
A national strategic warning intelligence capability for Australia
Australia’s strategic warning time has collapsed—in response to profound geopolitical shifts. As the ADF is adapting to the hard implications of this change, so must the national intelligence community (NIC).
Australian Government decision-makers need time and insight to identify and prioritise threats (and opportunities) and devise effective responses. Strategic warning intelligence enables and empowers them to do so. But it must be done in a way that keeps up with the rapid pace of geopolitical and technological change, and a widening array of non-traditional strategic threats, and in a fashion best suited to Australia’s circumstances.
To meet this need the NIC should develop a discrete, institutional strategic warning intelligence function—an Australian Centre for Strategic Warning (ACSW). This would recognise the distinct skills, analytical focus and interface with decision-making entailed—and the vital national interests at stake. In implementing an ACSW, much can be learned from our own and other intelligence communities’ ongoing efforts to adapt to threats other than invasion—notably terrorism and pandemics. This will be especially pertinent in its application to grey-zone threats such as economic coercion.
Done right, an ACSW would be an important addition to the suite of Australia’s statecraft tools.
Australia’s 2024 Independent Intelligence Review: opportunities and challenges: Views from The Strategist
Australia has a recent history of intelligence community reform via independent intelligence reviews (IIRs) commissioned by government on a regular basis since 2004. The latest IIR is being undertaken by Dr Heather Smith and Mr Richard Maude.
In the lead-up to the announcement of the 2024 IIR, and afterwards, ASPI’s The Strategist has served as a valuable forum for canvassing publicly the most significant issues and challenges to be addressed by the reviewers.
This report draws together a selection of articles featured in The Strategist over the past year, with direct relevance to the review and its terms of reference. The articles cover topics from the broad to the specific but include:
- the review itself, including its scope and purpose
- the key capability challenge facing Australian intelligence—its future workforce
- the ‘how’ of intelligence now and into the future; more particularly, new tools such as intelligence diplomacy and offensive cyber operations
- the purposes for intelligence – from addressing global, existential risks to informing effective net assessment of Australia’s strategic circumstances.
In the lead-up to the expected public release of the IIR’s findings later this year, this compilation provides valuable background to the review and to the fundamental challenges and opportunities facing Australian intelligence in the decade ahead.
‘Doing good deeds quietly’: the rise of intelligence diplomacy as a potent tool of statecraft
‘Intelligence diplomacy’ – using intelligence actors and relationships to conduct, or substantially facilitate, diplomatic relations – is a potent tool for statecraft; useful in specific circumstances to either enhance conventional diplomacy or create subtler lines of communication. Intelligence diplomacy, its increasing utility and potential hazards, is the subject of Doing good deeds quietly, the latest report from ASPI’s Statecraft & Intelligence Centre.
The report finds that governments turn to intelligence diplomacy when a variety of circumstances – and critically those governments’ assessments of related capabilities and effectiveness of their intelligence services – makes use of intelligence actors or relationships attractive and advantageous.
Furthermore, Doing good deeds quietly finds that governments should use intelligence diplomacy selectively and purposefully, in concert and collaboration with other arms of policy, and with robust, agreed policy objectives and parameters. They should also be wary of over-use, for the effective utility of intelligence diplomacy depends in part on prudent and selective application.
For politicians, policymakers and the interested public, understanding the important role intelligence diplomacy can play in international relations provides a fuller sense of what it is that intelligence agencies actually do in their name.
An inflection point for Australian intelligence: revisiting the 2004 Flood Report
The 2003 Iraq war, and more particularly intelligence failure in relation to Iraqi WMD, led to a broad-ranging inquiry into Australian intelligence conducted by Philip Flood AO. Flood’s July 2004 report has proven an inflection point between the Australian Intelligence Community (AIC) of the immediate post–Cold War period and today’s National Intelligence Community (NIC).
Flood laid out an ambitious vision for Australian intelligence and forcefully advocated for sovereign intelligence capability. The scope of his review extended beyond more than ‘recent intelligence lessons’ – that is, Iraq’s WMD, the 2002 Bali bombings and the unrest that led to 2003’s Regional Assistance Mission Solomon Islands – to the effectiveness of oversight and accountability within the AIC (including priority setting), ‘division of labour’ between AIC agencies and their communications with each other, maintenance of contestability in intelligence assessments, and adequacy of resourcing (especially for the Office of National Assessments – ONA).
It was in addressing these matters that Flood laid the foundation for the future NIC, upon which would be constructed the reforms instituted by the L’Estrange-Merchant review of 2017.
Importantly, Flood’s recommendations significantly enhanced ONA’s capabilities—not just analytical resources but also the resources (and tasking) needed to address the more effective coordination and evaluation of foreign intelligence across the AIC. This was a critical step towards the more structured and institutionalised (if sometimes bureaucratic) NIC of 2023 and an enhanced community leadership role for, ultimately, ONI.
In addition, the Flood Report identified issues that remain pertinent and challenging today – including the vexed issue of the public presentation of intelligence for policy purposes, the central importance of the intelligence community’s people (including training, career management, recruitment and language proficiency), intelligence distribution (including avoiding overloading time-poor customers), the need to maximise collaborative opportunities between agencies, and how best to leverage intelligence relationships (including broadening relations beyond traditional allied partners).
Informing Australia’s next independent intelligence review: learning from the past
The Australian Government commissions a review of its intelligence community every five to seven years. With July 2023 marking six years since release of the last review’s report and, with funding already allocated in this year’s federal budget, the next one is likely to commence shortly.
The best starting place for the forthcoming review is the work that precedes it, so reflection on 2017’s Independent Intelligence Review proves valuable. This report, Informing Australia’s next independent intelligence review, reflects on the experiences of the 2017 review and the implementation of its recommendations, and draws lessons to inform the terms of reference, approach and suggested focus of the next review.
In doing so the report identifies three broad topics upon which the next review can most profitably ground its work: attracting, building and retaining a skilled workforce; adapting to rapid and profound technological change; and leveraging more, and closer, partnerships. It also highlights how the past six years have raised important and challenging questions in relation to each of those broad topics and identifies opportunities to further advance the future performance of the National Intelligence Community. In addition, specific recommendations are made to inform government’s planning and preparation for the new review.
Collaborative and agile. Intelligence community collaboration insights from the United Kingdom and the United States
The central aim of this report is to generate insights from the US and UK intelligence communities’ collaboration efforts. It identifies insights so that members of Australia’s national intelligence community, including the ONI, can use them to enhance the community’s collaboration and agility for the purpose of giving Australian decision-makers an insight edge over others. We acknowledge that agencies must contextualise those insights to Australia’s specific circumstances, and we’ve sought to do some of that in this report. The report isn’t intended as an academic think piece but as a guide-and goad-to actions that can advance and protect Australia’s wellbeing, prosperity and security.
This report doesn’t seek to second-guess the internal insights that it explores. Instead, it takes an external perspective, informed by experience in relevant agencies and by perspectives from intelligence-community partners and analysts in the UK and the US.
The ASIS Interviews
The ASIS Interviews is a series of interviews with the Director-General of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, Paul Symon – with bio, transcripts and videos.
For the first time in the 68 year history of Australia’s overseas spy service, the top spy has gone before the camera for a series of video interviews, conducted by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
Symon, a former Major General, talks about the purposes and principles of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service and spying in the 21st century.
The interviews were recorded in September & October 2020 and will be released weekly.
1: The formation of ASIS.
- The formation of ASIS – Transcript.
- The Australian Secret Intelligence Service speaks – article on The Strategist.
2: Purpose and principles.
- Purpose and principles – Transcript
- The Australian Secret Intelligence Service: purpose and principles – article on The Strategist.
3: Spying for Australia.
- Spying for Australia – Transcript
- The Australian Secret Intelligence Service: spying for Australia – article on The Strategist.
4: Australia’s James Bond: finding jewels for the country.
National security agencies and the cloud: An urgent capability issue for Australia
This new ASPI report, argues for the development of a national security cloud. If the community doesn’t shift to cloud infrastructure, it’ll cut itself off from the most powerful software and applications available, placing itself in a less capable position using legacy software that vendors no longer support.
The report’s authors argue that if this need isn’t addressed rapidly and comprehensively, Australia will quite simply be at a major disadvantage against potential adversaries who are using this effective new technology at scale to advance their own analysis and operational performance.
The report identifies four significant obstacles that stand in the way of Australia’s national security community moving to cloud infrastructure. These obstacles need to be crossed, and the change needs to be driven by ministers and agency heads. Ministers and agency heads have both the responsibility and perspective to look beyond the important current technical security standards and rules and think about the capability benefit that cloud computing can bring to Australia’s national security. They’re the ones who must balance opportunity and risk.
Podcast
Supporting the report, in a special episode of Policy, Guns and Money, we continue the important conversation on cloud computing. Michael Shoebridge and John Coyne, co-authors of ASPI’s recent report ‘National security agencies and the cloud: An urgent capability issue for Australia’, are joined by Oracle’s Kirsty Linehan and Nathan Cook, experts in cloud computing, for an in-depth discussion on cloud computing in Australia’s national security infrastructure.