North of 26 degrees south and the security of Australia: Views from The Strategist, Volume 5

The Northern Australia Strategic Policy Centre’s latest report is a series of articles published in The Strategist over the last six months, building on previous volumes by identifying critical intersections of national security, nation-building and Australia’s north.

This issue, like previous volumes, includes a wide range of articles sourced from a diverse pool of expert contributors writing on topics as varied as biosecurity, infrastructure, critical communications, cyber-resilience, maritime infrastructure, foreign investment, space, and Indigenous knowledge-sharing. It also features a foreword by ASPI’s new Executive Director, Justin Bassi.

The 19 articles propose concrete, real-world actions for policy-makers to facilitate the development, prosperity and security of Australia’s north. The authors share a sense that those things that make the north unique – its vast space, low population density, specific geography, and harsh investment environment – are characteristics that can be leveraged, not disadvantages.

The transnational element of a ‘domestic’ problem: Policy solutions to countering right-wing violent extremism in Australia

The rise of right-wing violent extremist (RWE) ideas bursts to the forefront of public attention in flashes of violence. Shootings and vehicular attacks perpetrated by individuals motivated by hateful views stun the public. They have also sharpened government attention to and galvanised action on addressing such violence.

These incidents of violence and these disturbing trends call for renewed vigilance in confronting RWE, which ASIO has since classified as ‘ideologically motivated violent extremism’ (IMVE), in Australia’s security agencies’ policy and law enforcement responses. As governments respond to IMVE, it is important to nuance how they conceptualise the challenges posed by RWE and, therefore, scope their solutions.

This report looks at four case studies, qualitative interviews, and expert literature to highlight important transnational dimensions of RWE, as well as expand the way governments understand the RWE threat and craft policy responses to it.

The result shows a clear need for governments to take a broader lens when understanding and responding to RWE. While governments may conventionally see terrorism in ‘domestic’ versus ‘international’ terms, RWE attackers and their sources and legacies of inspiration are not bound by national borders. Efforts to address RWE, then, should take into account these transnational dimensions while examining the challenge at hand and developing and implementing solutions.

The report’s recommendations point to early steps Australia can take to improve international collaboration and coordination on countering RWE. Our approaches and solutions must recognise this threat to democracy and include efforts to bolster resilience in democratic institutions and processes. Public trust and confidence in these institutions and processes is a critical element of this resilience to mis/disinformation broadly, and the violent extremism it enables. This report shows that it’s not only important for governments to take RWE seriously, it matters how governments do so.

Artificial intelligence and policing in Australia

ASPI’s Strategic Policing and Law Enforcement Program is delighted to share its new Strategic Insights report, Artificial intelligence and policing in Australia by Dr Teagan Westendorf.

Digital technologies, devices and the internet are producing huge amounts of data and greater capacity to store it, and those developments are likely to accelerate. For law enforcement, a critical capability lagging behind the pace of tech innovation is the ability and capacity to screen, analyse and render insights from the ever-increasing volume of data—and to do so in accordance with the constraints on access to and use of personal information within our democratic system.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are presenting valuable solutions to the public and private sectors for screening big and live data. AI is also commonly considered and marketed as a solution that removes human bias, although AI algorithms and dataset creation can also perpetuate human bias and so aren’t value or error free.

This report analyses limitations, both technical and implementation, of AI algorithms, and the implications of those limitations on the safe, reliable and ethical use of AI in policing and law enforcement scenarios. This publication closely examines usage of AI by domestic policing agencies to model what success looks like for safe, reliable and ethical use of AI in policing and law enforcement spaces. It also explores possible strategies to mitigate the potential negative effects of AI data insights and decision-making in the justice system; and implications for regulation of AI use by police and law enforcement in Australia.

AI ‘algorithms’ or ‘models’ promise to: enable high volumes of data processing at speed, while identifying patterns human judgement is not capable of; supercharge knowledge management while (supposedly) removing human bias from that process; and operate with ethical principles coded into their decision-making.

This ‘promise’, however, is not a guarantee.

The geopolitics of climate and security in the Indo-Pacific

Climate change is much more than an environmental crisis—it’s a systemic crisis that will transform the geopolitical landscape. And the consequences for the Indo-Pacific, already the most exposed region in the world to climate hazards and home to the world’s fastest growing populations, economies and geopolitical rivalries, will be profound.

In this volume, leading experts explore the impacts of this rapidly emerging climate threat on regional systems by interrogating a 1.5°C 2035 climate change scenario developed by the ASPI Climate and Security Policy Centre.

The chapters here attempt to understand the unpredictable effects of climate change on the region’s already fragile human systems, from great-power competition and militaries, governance and politics, food and water insecurity, and ethnic separatism, to energy and trade systems, sovereign risk and digital disinformation.

What emerges is a vivid demonstration of the dangers of underestimating the systemic connections between those factors, including how risks in one thematic area amplify risks in others, completely reshaping the regional security picture.

Watch the publication launch event.

The future of assistance to law enforcement in an end-to-end encrypted world

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Domestic telecommunications companies assist law enforcement by the lawful interception of otherwise private communications when presented with a valid warrant.

This has been a powerful tool to combat crime. In the 2019–20 financial year, for example, 3,677 new warrants for telecommunications interception were issued, and information gained through interception warrants was used in 2,685 arrests, 5,219 prosecutions and 2,652 convictions. That was in the context of 43,189 custodial sentences in the same year.

But law enforcement and security officials assert that the usefulness of ‘exceptional access’, as it’s called in this paper, has declined over time as strong encryption has become increasingly common.

Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) Director-General Michael Burgess has stated that encryption ‘damages intelligence coverage’ in 97% of ASIO’s priority counter-intelligence cases.

The problem of increasingly powerful encryption degrading the usefulness of exceptional access is often referred to as ‘going dark’.

The Australian Government has committed to the reform of Australia’s electronic surveillance legislative framework.5 Although its discussion paper mentions encryption only in passing,6 we can expect that encryption and going dark will be a topic of debate as reform is considered. This paper contributes to that debate by examining how firms that provide digital communications services can provide assistance to law enforcement even as strong encryption is increasingly common.

Although exceptional access is primarily concerned with evidence collection, it may be better in some cases to focus on crime prevention, when it comes to achieving society’s broader aim of safety and security. This may be especially true for serious offences that cause significant harms to individuals, such as child exploitation and terrorism.

Accordingly, in this paper I divide assistance to law enforcement into two broad types: 

  1. Building communications services so that criminal harm and abuse that occur on the service can be detected and addressed, or doesn’t even occur in the first place. Examples of harms that might be avoided include cyberbullying or child exploitation that occur online.
  2. Assisting law enforcement with exceptional access for crimes that are unrelated to the communications service. Examples of such crimes might include an encrypted messaging service being used to organise drug smuggling or corruption.

I start by exploring the justification for exceptional access and then examine how encryption has affected assistance to law enforcement, as well as the differences between transport encryption and end-to-end (E2E) encryption and the implications those differences have for law enforcement.

I examine encryption trends and discuss the costs and benefits of exceptional access schemes.

I then examine some of the approaches that can be used by service providers to provide these two different forms of assistance as E2E encryption becomes increasingly common. I also summarise some of the advantages and disadvantages of those different approaches.

A number of initiatives seek to embed safety and security into the design, development and deployment of services. They encourage industry to take a proactive and preventive approach to user safety and seek to balance and effectively manage privacy, safety and security requirements. Those initiatives have relatively few big-picture privacy or security drawbacks, but there are many issues on which there isn’t yet consensus on how to design platforms safely. Such initiatives may also need extensive resources for employee trust and safety teams.

Providing law enforcement access to E2E encrypted systems is very challenging. Proposals that allow access bring with them some potentially significant risks that exceptional access mechanisms will be abused by malicious actors.

Watch the launch webinar here.

Taking the low road: China’s influence in Australian states and territories

In November 2020 a Chinese official passed a list of 14 grievances to Australian journalists, highlighting what Beijing regarded as missteps in the Australian government’s relations with China. A striking feature of the list is that many concern Australian Government attempts to limit Chinese engagement with the states and territories, or state-based institutions such as universities.

Why did state and territory relations with China concern Canberra? This study explores the changing nature of China’s engagement with Australian states and territories, local governments, city councils, universities, research organisations and non-government organisations, all nested in Australian civil society. What emerges is the astonishing breadth and depth of China’s engagement, much of it the welcome outcome of Australia’s economic and people-to-people engagement with China over many decades. But it’s equally apparent that China has made covert attempts to influence some politicians and overt attempts to engage states, territories and key institutions in ways that challenge federal government prerogatives and have brought the two levels of government into sharp public dispute.

Here we provide a detailed analysis of how China has worked to build its political influence and build dependence through trade and economic ties with each Australian state and territory. In addition, unique cross-cutting chapters review the impact of Chinese engagement with Australian universities and show how Beijing’s ‘United front’ organisation is designed to build influence. We assess the impact on Australian businesses and the constitutional challenges presented by Chinese engagement with the states and territories.

The study methods and analytical approaches adopted in this book will be a model for similar research in many parts of the world. Understanding the nature of Chinese engagement with subnational jurisdictions is an important way for national governments to shape their security policies and to resist covert and, indeed, unwanted overt interference.

This book provides original insights into the scale of the challenge and distils practical policy recommendations for governments at all levels to consider and adopt.

Launch Webinar

Agenda for change 2022: Shaping a different future for our nation

In line with previous Agenda for Change publications from 2016 and 2019, this piece is being released in anticipation of a federal election as a guide for the next government within its first months and over the full term. Our 2022 agenda acknowledges that an economically prosperous and socially cohesive Australia is a secure and resilient Australia.

ASPI’s Agenda for change 2019: strategic choices for the next government did, to a great extent, imagine a number of those challenges, including in Peter Jennings’ chapter on ‘The big strategic issues’. But a lot has changed since 2019. It was hard to imagine the dislocating impacts of the Black Summer fires, Covid-19 in 2020 and then the Delta and Omicron strains in 2021, trade coercion from an increasingly hostile China, or the increasingly uncertain security environment.

Fast forward to today and that also applies to the policies and programs we need to position us in a more uncertain and increasingly dangerous world.

Our Agenda for change 2022 acknowledges that what might have served us well in the past won’t serve us well in this world of disruption. In response, our authors propose a smaller number of big ideas to address the big challenges of today and the future. Under the themes of getting our house in order and Australia looking outward, Agenda for change 2022 focuses on addressing the strategic issues from 2021 and beyond.

Northern sovereign maritime sustainment

This special report explores the future of maritime sustainment in northern Australia through the lens of regional maintenance centres proposed under the Department of Defence’s Plan Galileo. Included in the report is consideration of the strategic environment and implications for the north, overview of the Australian Navy maritime sustainment, Plan Galileo, and discussion of US maritime sustainment model.

Maritime sustainment in Australia’s north presents far-reaching opportunities and new challenges for the Department of Defence, industry and local governments. Traditional Defence and industry models used in Australia’s southern states have less utility in the north if they aren’t adapted to the region’s unique economic context. As such, a deeper understanding of industry capability in the north coupled with greater collaboration and partnering is needed to overcome those challenges and take advantage of the opportunities.

In developing the report, the authors consulted a wide range of stakeholders. They included representatives from the Department of Defence, people representing the interests of the state, territory and local governments in northern Australia, port operators in Australia’s north, business organisations and the defence industry.
The report highlights opportunities that could arise from improved collaboration between Defence, local governments, defence industry and SMEs. This report has again reinforced the need for the Australia government to articulate how it will utilise northern Australia’s strategic geography as a strength both now and in a future conflict if deterrence fails.

The Australian Government needs to consider how to harness interests from different fields and identify points where the government may have to intervene with policies—and investments—that shape and enhance market forces. That’s a big shift from just thinking through how it ‘might’ take advantage of market forces and existing capacity and capability as circumstances change.

North of 26 degrees south and the security of Australia: Views from The Strategist, Volume 4

The 27 essays in the collection demonstrate that Australia’s north—that great sweep of territory from Rockhampton in the east to Onslow in the west, taking in Townsville, Bamaga, Darwin and Broome—is about a whole lot more than even what makes its way into the national debate (borders, quarantine facilities, mining, agricultural and energy projects, and small but key defence facilities).

Between them, the authors of this volume cover proposals for an Indigenous civil defence force to work domestically and in our near region, the opportunities for processing critical minerals and producing rare-earth magnets, a broader way of thinking about and doing nation-building that gets beyond waiting for one big first-mover investor or entrepreneur before anything happens, and, of course, the ways that Australia can better use this huge chunk of the globe’s strategic geography—along with key partners like Japan and the United States.

As thinkers who understand the austere environment of our north, the authors are all distinguished by a sense of opportunity, optimism and even that much-maligned, now neglected word ‘vision’—which history shows is what’s needed to advance the development and prosperity of the north of our continent.

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.