Australia needs to spend more on defence—and it needs to do so immediately. The strategic imperative has been firmly established in the government’s own major defence documents.
The Albanese government and the Coalition opposition agree that we are in the gravest geopolitical period in generations and this is only going to intensify.
But as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s latest Cost of Defence report finds, the rhetorical urgency is not being matched by action in the form of defence investment. The May budget is the latest demonstration of this mismatch, lacking spending for swift increases in capabilities that the Australian Defence Force would need if our region were to deteriorate quickly.
In particular, this year’s budget priorities are not directed towards strengthening the Australian Defence Force’s ability to fight in the next decade.
This is not doom-mongering; the government has acknowledged that the warning time before any conflict, which had long been set at 10 years, has shrunk to effectively zero time.
We have war in Ukraine and the Middle East, aggression and increasingly dangerous and unprofessional behaviour from China causing instability and confrontation in the South China Sea and across the Taiwan Strait, erosions of the rule of law and revisionist agendas from authoritarians. Instability is heightened by foreign interference, economic coercion and artificial intelligence-enabled dangers such as cyber attacks and disinformation.
If war were to break out at any time in the next 10 years, our military would essentially fight with the force it has today. Based on current resourcing, nothing significant will change over the decade.
Most of the major new capabilities in the government’s defence investment blueprint are two decades away from being fully fielded. That blueprint does contain some shorter-term enhancements, but these will not be fielded until the 2030s.
The welcome $5.7 billion in new defence spending over the four-year forward estimates period is devoted to just three priorities: the AUKUS submarines, the next fleet of surface warships and investment in long-range strike, targeting and autonomous systems. But two thirds of this funding doesn’t arrive until 2027-28. The relatively impressive longer term plan leaves us vulnerable in the immediate period ahead. More money immediately is not a silver bullet, and ambition must be balanced with how much Defence can actually spend each year. But the nation’s security requires a two-pronged strategy of enhancing our existing force to meet threats within the decade while investing in long term capabilities.
Other countries are furiously pursuing new capabilities that can be put into action quickly—such as creating masses of small drones and prototyping and developing new technologies.
We talk about technology and asymmetric advantage—playing to your strengths and finding effective means to exploit an opponent’s weaknesses–yet we lack a credible pathway to bring them into operation to bolster the force we have today.
Over the longer term, the picture starts gradually to improve. The $50 billion in additional spending over the next decade is an important commitment, even if far away. The plan for a complete recapitalisation of the surface combatant fleet will eventually give us the biggest and most capable navy Australia has had since World War Two.
But, so far, we are failing to grasp the opportunity to link our traditional large platforms such as submarines and warships to more modern developments in warfare—drones and various small uncrewed and smart capabilities. AI, robotics, electronic warfare and space capabilities remain aspirational, without any pathway for inclusion and integration into a truly focused force capable of meaningful deterrence and warfighting. That is why it is so important to realise AUKUS Pillar II, which is dealing with these capabilities.
It’s easy to criticise; harder to do. All governments are grappling with tight budgets amid competing demands and the unremitting expectations of voters and taxpayers. As a nation, we need to accept the need for higher defence spending. Hoping that conflict won’t come is not a viable strategy. If we are prepared for war, we have a better chance of deterring and hence averting it.
Europe is living that lesson now, having put all hope in the judgment that global trade and economic entanglement would bring security. Now it is clear that military investment is imperative to deter war or best prepare nations for it.
The government has a vital responsibility to speak plainly to the nation about the geopolitical risks and the possibility of conflict.
We need to grasp the challenge that is in front of us today, not in three or five years’ time. Otherwise, we risk delivering on Macarthur’s famous two word warning: “The history of failure in war can almost always be summed up in two words: “Too late.” Too late in comprehending the deadly enemy. Too late in realizing the mortal danger. Too late in preparedness. Too late in uniting all possible forces for resistance.”
Why take the risk of only acting after a crisis and saying better late than never? The world in turmoil demands we act in real time to both deter crises and be best prepared for them.
In 2003, Australia became the proud owner of the last of six new-build Collins-class submarines. Less than a decade later, the fleet was in a poor state of repair, and at times only one or two of the boats were available to the Royal Australian Navy. This account by Andrew Davies explains how the situation was remediated by bringing in a team of highly experienced naval professionals to take an uncompromising look at the arrangements in place to manage a vital national defence asset.
Despite a public perception that the submarines were inherently defective, the problems were in fact almost entirely due to dysfunctional and often rancorous organisational dynamics between the key players. In the space of just a few years, and with remarkably little required in the way of additional funding, the situation took a dramatic turn for the better.
As with earlier ASPI case studies on defence projects, Nobody wins unless everybody wins is designed to help those in Defence, industry and parliament and other interested observers to better understand the complexities of the business, all with the aim of improving how Australia equips and sustains its defence force.
https://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/12204818/Nobody-wins-unless-_everybody-wins-Banner_0.png335692nathanhttps://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/10130806/ASPI-Logo.pngnathan2024-05-28 06:00:002024-12-12 20:50:16Nobody wins unless everybody wins: The Coles review into the sustainment of Australia’s Collins-class submarines
To build an effective deterrence strategy, Australia needs urgently to improve its skills and understanding of deterrence, and raise the topic’s profile in our public and policy discussions. Despite having previously been a global thought leader on nuclear weapons and deterrence half a century ago, Australia today doesn’t have a strong grasp of the basics of modern deterrence.
Knowledge of and literacy in deterrence are vital for adapting and applying such concepts to meet today’s extraordinarily complex, multidomain and multidimensional requirements. A lack of understanding of deterrence can critically undermine the ability to get strategy and policy right. The implications for Australia’s national interests are urgent and serious. The limited debate in Australia about what good deterrence strategy looks like and its key components can’t be advanced without better understanding of key terms and ideas that are fundamental to deterrence theory and practice.
There are, of course, obvious limits to what Australia can achieve alone. Our ability to integrate and combine our military capabilities with those of the US and other critical partners is fundamental to our ability to achieve our security objectives, but some of our partners are working more closely together on building deterrence strategies. We have some catching up to do.
This report explains what deterrence is and why it matters. It looks at Australian deterrence policy in practice and at deterrence efforts by some of our partners and allies and it highlights a number of gaps in Australia’s strategic and deterrence planning.
The report makes a series of policy recommendations for government, and especially for the Department of Defence, to rebuild Australia’s position as a thought leader on deterrence.
The AUKUS trilateral partnership presents Australia with an unprecedented opportunity to achieve national-security goals that have eluded it for decades. It could offer access to cutting-edge technologies. It can further integrate Australian, US and UK military forces, allowing more unified action to maintain deterrence against national and transnational actors who threaten the global rules-based order. Perhaps most importantly, AUKUS—in particular its Pillar.2 objectives—is an opportunity for Australia to pursue the long-sought industrial capacity necessary to defend its borders and its interests across a range of probable conflict scenarios.
A vision for Pillar 2 success
AUKUS partner nations implement operational and regulatory frameworks to co-produce, co-field and continuously enhance world-leading national defence capabilities in critical technology areas. Governments will provide leadership and resources to drive effective multinational collaboration among government, industry and academic contributors, leveraging competitive advantages from across the alliance to deliver collective capability.
Whatever the rhetoric, however, the benefits are far from assured. While the effort has had successes, including cooperative artificial intelligence (AI) / autonomy trials and landmark legislation, most of the hard work remains. Strategies and principles are only the beginning. Success or failure will hinge on the translation of those strategies and principles into the regulations, standards and organisational realignments necessary to operationalise the vision. The challenges are significant—from skills and supply to budgets, leadership and bipartisanship. But the benefits from this three-nation enterprise are worth the hard work to sustain political will and financial investment and to combine aspirational ambition with suitable risk tolerance to overcome obstacles.
Past debate has contributed valuable insight into problems that can threaten the full realisation of the AUKUS arrangement including for example, problems like outdated and dysfunctional export-control regulations, struggles with integrating complicated classified information systems and differing regulations and frameworks among the AUKUS partners. Yet, when it comes to fixing those problems, regulators and industry participants often talk past one another. Governments claim that mechanisms are in place to facilitate cooperation. Businesses counter that waiting six months or more for necessary approvals is an unreasonable impediment to innovation. Both sides have a point. So far, reform efforts have been unable to break the logjam.
In this study, ASPI takes a different approach. Rather than wade once more into the morass of trade regulations to identify obstacles and recommend fixes, we interviewed the regulators and businesses that implement and operate under those regulations. Our data collection involved engaging more than 170 organisations as well as key individuals. Our intent here is to provide an operational perspective on practical barriers to cooperation as envisaged under AUKUS—particularly under Pillar 2—and offer the Australian Government detailed and actionable recommendations that we believe would help AUKUS Pillar 2 succeed.
A constant challenge has been policymakers’ lack of understanding of the daily challenges faced by businesses striving to keep Australia, the US and the UK at the forefront of defence innovation. Similarly, myths abound among industry participants about the degree of restrictions imposed by regulations such as the US’s International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). Officials make the claim that all necessary exemptions exist for AUKUS partners to cooperate, and that only minor adjustments are required to turbocharge transnational innovation. Businesses reply that narrowly tailored exemptions buried in mountains of rules are useful only for the lawyers required to make sense of them. This report aims to bridge that gap.
AUKUS is a generational opportunity for Australia. Its focus on critical Pillar 2 technologies has the potential to bring Australian champions to the world stage and lift the nation’s defence industry up to the state of the art in a range of modern capabilities. Done right, that can help to realise the robust industrial capacity that Australia needs.
https://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/12210804/AUKUS-Pillar-2-critical-pathways-Banner.png553836nathanhttps://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/10130806/ASPI-Logo.pngnathan2024-05-09 06:00:002025-03-06 10:31:13AUKUS Pillar 2 critical pathways: A road map to enabling international collaboration
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is leveraging its propaganda system to build a toolkit to enable information campaigns. Its objective is to control communication and shape narratives and perceptions about China in order to present a specific version of truth and reality, both domestically and internationally. Ultimately, the CCP aims to strengthen its grip on power, legitimise its activities and bolster China’s cultural, technological, economic and military influence.
The CCP seeks to maintain total control over the information environment within China, while simultaneously working to extend its influence abroad to reshape the global information ecosystem. That includes not only controlling media and communications platforms outside China, but also ensuring that Chinese technologies and companies become the foundational layer for the future of information and data exchange worldwide.
This research report finds that the CCP seeks to harvest data from various sources, including commercial entities, to gain insights into target audiences for its information campaigns. We define an information campaign as a targeted, organised plan of related and integrated information operations, employing information-related capabilities (tools, techniques or activities) with other lines of operation to influence, disrupt, corrupt or manipulate information — including the individual or collective decision making based on that information — and deliberately disseminated on a large scale. The party also invests in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and immersive technologies that shape how people perceive reality and engage with information. The aim is to gain greater control, if not dominance, over the global information ecosystem.
To understand the drivers, tools and outcomes of that process, this report and its accompanying website (ChinaInfoBlocks.aspi.org.au) examine the activities of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the information domain, particularly its investments in technology and research and development (R&D) companies that might serve as ‘building blocks’ for the party’s information campaigns.
Specifically, this research comprehensively maps the CCP’s propaganda system, highlighting the linkages between the Central Propaganda Department, state-owned or -controlled propaganda entities and data-collection activities, and technology investments in Chinese companies, many of which now operate globally.
This research illustrates the various ways in which the party-state is leveraging the propaganda system and commercial entities to gain access to data that it deems strategically valuable for the propaganda system and its ongoing information operations. It also shows how the propaganda system uses new and emerging technologies, including generative AI, mobile gaming and immersive technologies, to establish and maintain control of the narrative and continuously refine its toolbox and techniques.
It’s imperative that policymakers develop robust defences and countermeasures against future disruptive information campaigns from Beijing and to ensure an open and secure global information environment. In mapping those companies linked to China’s propaganda system that are seeking market dominance in key technologies, and how their activities may support CCP efforts to shape the global information environment, this project aims to inform government and industry decisions on digital supply-chain security, supporting policies for safer and more secure digital technologies.
The first section of this report lays out the fundamentals of CCP theory that have, over decades, defined the party-state’s strategy in the information domain. A theoretical understanding of how the CCP conceptualises its goals is important in unpacking the different tools used to achieve them. The second section outlines the CCP’s complex and vast propaganda system and how it works. Later sections expand on the ways in which CCP theory underpins the propaganda system and its activities, including through practical examples and case studies.
This report is accompanied by a website that offers detailed network diagrams of the relationships between China’s propaganda system and the companies associated with it: directly, through a state-ownership structure linking back to the propaganda system, or indirectly, through significant state support. The website also hosts case studies relevant to the report findings. The map can be explored on the website, Identifying The Building Blocks of China’s Information Campaigns (ChinaInfoBlocks.aspi.org.au).
The CCP’s propaganda efforts on social media have been widely studied, enabling a baseline understanding of common narratives and tactics. Previous ASPI research, for example, has tracked a persistent, large-scale influence campaign linked to Chinese state actors on Twitter and Facebook.1 Several other research institutes have published important research on how the Chinese party-state attempts to control the information environment globally.2
China’s propaganda system is a vast structure. Under its direct control or with its direct support are a web of additional entities whose portfolio contributes to the party’s ability to meet its strategic aims in the information environment. Countries that understand the ‘invisible architecture’ of the CCP’s propaganda system and technologies will be better able to address and respond to its global efforts to skew the information environment.
Important research questions remain understudied. In particular, research on the building blocks that need to be in place to support and inform successful efforts to shape the information environment is limited. What’s the Chinese party-state doing to build its capacity to control ‘truth’ and influence how external audiences perceive, engage with and question reality?
To bridge that knowledge gap, this project examines how the party-state is leveraging the propaganda system:
through commercial entities, by collecting data or gaining access to datasets that it deems strategically valuable that could be used for propaganda purposes, including potentially for current or future information operations (for example, undertaking data-collection activities that build the party-state’s capacity to generate insights on current or potential targets of information operations)
through state support, by investing in R&D and access to new and emerging technology to shape or distort the information environment both domestically and globally.
Our project is based on ASPI’s 2019 report, Engineering global consent. That report first identified Global Tone Communications Technology (GTCOM), a machine-translation company that’s controlled by the CCP Central Propaganda Department. GTCOM claims that it accesses data from social media and has downstream access to datasets of the internet of things (IoT) and software products that it supplies, mainly to other PRC technology companies, to generate insights to support China’s state security and propaganda work.3
Building on Engineering global consent, we’ve sought to identify and explain how the Chinese party-state’s expansive propaganda system exploits new and emerging technologies and seeks to shape or distort the information environment both domestically and globally. To answer these questions, we generated network graphs describing the relationships between companies in our dataset, which are mostly Chinese state-owned or backed by state funds, with direct links to the propaganda system and other entities. We used that research to better understand areas of business activity associated with the PRC’s propaganda system, especially when such activity is related to data collection, aggregation and processing.
Our research effort involved identifying entities linked to the Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee (‘the Central Propaganda Department’), provincial-level propaganda departments, or other party-state bodies linked to the propaganda system, such as the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. This project began with a months-long effort to build a network graph of companies that were directly and indirectly linked to the Central Propaganda Department. Our research included looking for subsidiaries, shareholders and strategic cooperation and MoU partners of the companies we identified. Our information sources focused on PRC-based company databases and shareholders, and included company websites, company press releases and corporate disclosure documents. We then narrowed the scope of our research to focus on the specific case studies covered in this report.
Party-state news and publishing outlets were included in our research because the Central Propaganda Department is responsible for the supervision of news and publishing work, and those outlets are key platforms for disseminating information. However, rather than simply mapping out the names of media and publishing outlets, and their publication outputs domestically in China and overseas, our research emphasis was on identifying where those outlets are establishing branches or partnerships that expand their business activity into areas of business related to new and emerging technology.
While this research has revealed large amounts of previously inaccessible information on Chinese companies with links to the CCP’s propaganda institutions, it relies on publicly available information sources that are accessible outside mainland China. Continued research on these connections, as well as on connections between these types of companies and other parts of the party-state bureaucracy, is required.
Key findings
The report places the PRC’s propaganda system in the context of the CCP’s overall strategic frameworks, which are filtered down to specific policy outputs. Key findings are as follows:
The Chinese party-state sees data as central to its ability to modernise its propaganda efforts in the global information environment. Unlike the legislation of other state actors, China’s 2021 Data Security Law clearly articulates a vision for how data and data exchanges contribute to an overall national strategy (see ‘The propaganda system and its feedback loop’ at page 13). It prioritises data access and the regulation of data flows as part of its efforts to ensure control. – That data is global. For example, China’s People’s Public Opinion Cloud combines about half a million information sources across 182 countries and 42 languages to support the Chinese Government’s and PRC enterprises’ international communication needs.4 The platform has both government and corporate applications and provides tools for public-security agencies to monitor the information environment and public sentiment on sensitive events and topics.5
The CCP sees emerging technology, such as e-commerce, virtual reality and gaming, as a means to promote a CCP-favoured perspective on truth and reality that supports the official narrative that the CCP seeks to project (even if those technologies may also be potentially hazardous to the party’s interests). This is especially true in relation to the CCP’s ability to conduct information campaigns and shape global information standards and foundational technologies. – The CCP’s national key cultural export enterprises and projects lists (both the 2021–22 and 2022–2023 versions), name dozens of mobile gaming companies and mobile games that receive state support (see ‘The perception of reality’ at page 19), including subsidies, so that they can continue to enjoy global success and help advance the mission to boost China’s cultural soft power. – In e-commerce, for example, companies such as Temu (which became the most-downloaded free iPhone app in the US in 20236) also collect large amounts of data that’s likely to be shared with the PRC’s propaganda system.7 In gaming, popular video games such as Genshin Impact, the developers of which receive Chinese state support linked to the propaganda system, create similar security risks due to the strategic value of the user data that they generate and collect.
Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, the CCP has renewed its emphasis on a national strategy of media convergence that brings together traditional and ‘emerging’ media across various dimensions—content, channels, platforms, operations and management—to enhance the agility of propaganda initiatives in responding to real-time shifts in public sentiment.8 Media convergence is directly linked to the perception that an absence of guidance on public opinion risks China’s security and stability. The party uses digital media, particularly the data resources that digital media help to generate, to improve its ability to use media effectively in its communications strategy and to create feedback loops in China and internationally.9
Policy recommendations
Policymakers face two key challenges: first, to apply the CCP’s way of thinking to efforts to counter information campaigns, before they’re conducted; and, second, to resist China’s efforts to shape global information standards and core foundational technologies for Web 2.0 and beyond.10
Informed by the findings contained in this report, we make the following recommendations for governments, civil society, social-media platforms and hardware and software developers and vendors:
Governments should exert pressure on technology companies to conduct more thorough reviews of their digital supply chains to ensure that their Web 2.0 and future Web 3.0 foundations, and the companies and technologies that they rely on, are transparent and secure. Improving due diligence, transparency, trust and security by design in the digital supply chain, at both the technology and systems/applications layers, must be considered, especially for companies engaged in government procurements. That can be achieved by imposing more stringent reporting requirements, developing high-risk vendor frameworks, imposing and enforcing privacy and data requirements, and developing consistent data-minimisation approaches. Already the US and partner nations have sought to enhance software security by requiring companies working with governments to provide software ‘bills of materials’. The Quad Cybersecurity Partnership’s ‘joint principles for secure software’11 is an excellent template for considering enhanced transparency regulation. – Technology companies, including vendors, platforms and developers should commit and adhere to the Cybersecurity Tech Accord, develop security by design standards, and impose greater moderation and fact-checking standards across online platforms, social media, etc. to reduce the potential for attacks on the availability, confidentiality, and integrity of data, products, services, and networks and highlight mis- and dis-information and propaganda. As China’s information campaigns seek to weaponise truth and reality, increasing vigilance, verification and veracity must be asserted to ensure information consumers are offered the best chance of identifying mis- and dis-information influences.
Governments must exert significantly more policy attention to the regulation of technologies used for surveillance and related immersive technologies. Few governments have developed broad definitions of those technologies or studied their privacy and data-security impacts. As a consequence, their regulation hasn’t been effective or focused on their future societal and national-security implications. More specifically: – Governments should define machine learning and cloud data as surveillance or dual-use goods. For example, the European Union has identified dual-use applications of AI systems as an area of concern in their assessment process as part of the Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI.12 The Council of Europe has also raised concerns with the Pegasus surveillance software.13 The US has identified cloud data as an export under the Export Administration Regulations that may attract dual-use controls. While these efforts are significant, regulation still lags the use of machine learning and cloud data by companies and governments, resulting in inconsistent application, a situation rife for exploitation by authoritarian regimes. Governments should standardise and tighten regulation on the technologies and services not traditionally understood as surveillance or dual-use (data) products, including data-generating products and services in e-commerce gaming industries. Doing so would enable them to apply traditional tool sets for preventing access to goods of that nature, such as export controls, technologies and services not traditionally understood as surveillance or dual-use (data) products, including data-generating products and services in e-commerce gaming industries. – Additionally, increased transparency in regard to which technology actors and entities, whether they’re involved in R&D activities or product sales, are acting on behalf of state interests could clarify what data is used for surveillance purposes and what data can be used to undermine another state’s sovereignty.
To further increase transparency, governments should also more clearly define which individual actors and entities are required to register under foreign-agent registration schemes. That includes Australia’s Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme, the US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and emerging equivalents elsewhere, such as the UK’s upcoming foreign influence registration scheme. The US, for example, used FARA to force PRC state-owned media companies such as Xinhua and CGTN to register as state agents.14Based on the same logic, any technology company linked directly to China’s propaganda system or receiving state support to facilitate the party-state’s propaganda efforts could be required to register.
Internationally, governments should work to standardise the ways in which data is shared, and proactively regulate how it can be produced and stored. Efforts thus far have failed to reach accord, and many have been siloed within specific functional domains (such as meteorological data, social services, food and agriculture, finance and so on). Such efforts can reduce opportunities for authoritarian regimes to collect, use and misuse data in ways that harm ethnic communities, disparage and denigrate alternative perspectives and silence dissent in the global information environment. The International Organization for Standardization, together with the UN Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business, among others, should establish joint government–industry standardisation mechanisms.
Multilaterally, democratic governments should work together to develop a stronger institutional understanding of the future vulnerabilities and risks of new technologies, particularly in the digital technology ecosystem. That understanding should guide the development of new standards for emergent technologies and assist industry to commercialise those technologies with the goal of safety and security by design. The Quad Principles on Critical and Emerging Technology Standards are a good example of work that needs to occur on the future vulnerabilities and risks of new technologies.
Locally, governments and civil society should establish guardrails against the negative impacts of CCP efforts to shape the information environment, including through information campaigns such as media literacy and critical thinking campaigns targeting individuals and communities. Efforts should not only help users understand what’s ‘real’ and what’s ‘fake’, but also ensure that they have broader awareness of how entities supporting foreign information campaigns may be present in their supply chains, so that risks associated with them are identified and more reliably controlled.
Tom Uren, Elise Thomas, Jacob Wallis, Tweeting through the Great Firewall, ASPI, Canberra, 3 September 2019, online; Jacob Wallis, Tom Uren, Elise Thomas, Albert Zhang, Samantha Hoffman, Lin Li, Alexandra Pascoe, Danielle Cave, Retweeting through the Great Firewall, ASPI, Canberra, 12 June 2020, online; Albert Zhang, Tilla Hoja, Jasmine Latimore, Gaming public opinion, ASPI, Canberra, 26 April 2023, online. ↩︎
Freedom House, for example, found in its survey of CCP media influence in 30 countries that ‘the Chinese government and its proxies are using more sophisticated, covert, and coercive tactics—including intensified censorship and intimidation, deployment of fake social media accounts, and increased mass distribution of Beijing-backed content via mainstream media—to spread pro-CCP narratives, promote falsehoods, and suppress unfavourable news coverage.’ See ‘Beijing’s global media influence 2022: Authoritarian expansion and the power of democratic resilience’, Freedom House, 8 September 2022, online; ‘New report: Beijing is intensifying its global push for media influence, turning to more covert and aggressive tactics’, Freedom House, 8 September 2022, online. The National Endowment for Democracy’s work on sharp power has similarly examined how the PRC and authoritarian states engage in activities that undermine media integrity; see Christopher Walker, Jessica Ludwig, A full-spectrum response to sharp power the vulnerabilities and strengths of open societies, Sharp Power and Democratic Resilience series, National Endowment for Democracy, June 2021, online; Sharp power: rising authoritarian influence, National Endowment for Democracy, December 2017, online. ↩︎
Samantha Hoffman, Engineering global consent: the Chinese Communist Party’s data-driven power expansion, ASPI, 14 October 2019, online. ↩︎
‘People’s Public Opinion Cloud’ [人民舆情云], People’s Cloud, no date, online. ↩︎
‘People’s Public Opinion Cloud’ [人民舆情云], People’s Cloud, no date, online. ↩︎
Sarah Perez, ‘Temu was the most-downloaded iPhone app in the US in 2023’, TechCrunch, 13 December 2023, online. ↩︎
Temu has also reportedly engaged in controversial business practices, such as forced and exploitative labour practices, and copyright infringement. See Nicholas Kaufman, Shein, Temu, and Chinese e-commerce: data risks, sourcing violations, and trade loopholes, US–China Economic and Security Review Commission, 14 April 2023, online. ↩︎
Patrick Boehler, ‘Two million “internet opinion analysts” employed to monitor China’s vast online population’, South China Morning Post, 3 October 2013, online. ↩︎
‘CMP dictionary: media convergence’, China Media Project, 16 April 2021, online. ↩︎
Web 2.0 refers to a shift in the way websites and web applications are designed and used, characterised by user-generated content, interactivity and collaboration, marking a departure from static web pages to dynamic platforms facilitating social interaction and user participation. See Ashraf Darwish, Kamaljit Lakhtaria, ‘The impact of the new Web 2.0 technologies in communication, development, and revolutions of societies’, Journal of Advances in Information Technology, November 2011, online. ↩︎
Quad Senior Cyber Group, ‘Quad Cybersecurity Partnership: joint principles for secure software’, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Australian Government, 20 May 2023, online. ↩︎
High Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence, ‘Ethics guidelines for trustworthy AI’, European Union, 8 April 2019, online. ↩︎
‘Pegasus spyware and its impacts on human rights’, Council of Europe, 20 June 2022, online. ↩︎
National Security Division, ‘Obligation of CGTN America to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act’, Department of Justice, US Government, 20 December 2018, online; National Security Division, ‘Obligation of Xinhua News Agency North America to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act’, Department of Justice, US Government, 18 May 2020, online. ↩︎
https://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/12112115/Truth-and-reality-with-Chinese-characteristics_-The-building-blocks-banner.png376794markohttps://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/10130806/ASPI-Logo.pngmarko2024-05-02 11:20:552025-03-13 09:17:23Truth and reality with Chinese characteristics
The security and stability of the South Pacific and Australia are deeply intertwined. Australian Government policies have for more than a decade consistently prioritised the Pacific for international engagement, including in defence, development and diplomacy. The Australian Government’s ‘Pacific Step-up’, first announced in 2016, delivered a heightened level of effort by Canberra in the region, as did Australia’s strong support for the Pacific Islands Forum’s Boe Declaration. The Albanese government’s increased policy focus on the region, and on a coordinated whole-of-government approach to the Pacific, demonstrates the centrality of our immediate region to the Australian Government’s strategic planning.
Australia’s 2023 Defence Strategic Review (DSR) outlined the need for innovative and bold approaches to recruitment and retention in the Australian Defence Force (ADF), which is seeking to grow by 30% by 2040 but is not yet hitting existing recruitment targets. Budget figures released for 2023 show that ADF personnel numbers dropped by more than 1,300, or more than 2% of the total force. The Budget projections for 2024 to 2026 indicate that the government requires more than 6,000 additional personnel—in addition to replacing those lost through attrition in the next three years—to meet stated growth requirements. In the context of a competitive recruitment environment in Australia, especially for skilled labour, that trend indicates that the Defence organisation will struggle to meet forecast requirements using existing recruitment options and will need to seek alternatives. This challenge of competition for talent and to retain skilled workers is not limited to defence nor Australia. It is an economy wide issue, and global.
As a result, there has been an ‘on-again, off-again’ public debate about whether the Australian Government should consider the recruitment of foreigners into the ADF, with a specific focus on Pacific islanders. Obviously, such an initiative could help the ADF’s recruitment numbers, but, importantly, it could open up economic, skills and training opportunities for Pacific islanders. It could also provide a powerful cultural and practical engagement opportunity for the ADF, while also providing Australia with avenues to help shape the region’s security environment in positive and culturally relevant ways. Such recruitment—especially if it involves bilateral agreements between governments—would also put Pacific Island governments in a unique position to inform Australia’s security assessments and contribute to shared outcomes. Those outcomes could include enhanced regional interoperability, especially for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) and supporting combined stability operations, and stronger two-way cultural and social engagement, bolstering familiarity and understanding between the ADF and Pacific Island countries (PICs). There are, of course, arguments against such recruitment. For example, the recruitment of Pacific islanders to fight for Australia could be viewed by some as ‘colonialist’ in a region understandably sensitive to that history. But this concern could be addressed through PICs retaining agency through bilateral arrangements. In addition, any scheme seeking to relocate workers to Australia could be seen as taking skills from a much smaller nation, and risking brain and skills drains. We look at these, and other, considerations in this report.
Below, we identify and assess the key recruitment and retention problems faced by the ADF that foreign recruitment, particularly the recruitment of Pacific islanders, may help to resolve. Our report then delves into various arguments for and against the recruitment of Pacific islanders into the ADF including background information that contextualises the current debate. Ultimately, there are many benefits to opening up pathways for Pacific islanders to serve in the ADF, with the clear caveat that any process to formally establish a program must be culturally and politically sensitive, be informed by detailed risk and impact assessment, and have strong monitoring and evaluation mechanisms in place.
We then explore three options for the recruitment of Pacific islanders:
Direct recruiting from the Pacific region into the ADF
Closer integration and operation between existing Australian and PIC forces
A broader partnership model drawing on lessons from the US’s ‘compacts of free association’ and from the UK’s defence recruitment initiatives.
We analyse key impacts that those options may have, both in the Pacific and for the ADF. The potential policy options offered aren’t exhaustive. However, they are plausible and represent different approaches (which could be combined) to achieve outcomes related to ADF recruitment and retention as well as to improved regional collective security.
A critical consideration in developing these options was a two-way flow of benefit: from the Pacific to Australia and from Australia back to the region. For example, we recommend that, where possible, Pacific recruits receive focused training in HADR, which would help build sovereign PIC capabilities and facilitate the application of learned skills upon recruits’ return to their home countries.
An important part of this research was ensuring that PIC military and security personnel were engaged and could feed into and shape the development of this research report, including the three options put forward for potential recruitment. This occurred in multiple ways. We collected feedback and perspectives through a dedicated roundtable discussion, in a series of interviews and then during the research process to ensure that this report was informed by regional, cultural and local considerations (see details regarding some of that data collection on page 16). The report captures five specific insights from the Pacific island military and security community that are relevant in considering the implementation of any of the three recruitment options.
Finally, we acknowledge that further research is needed to resolve the complexity of some of the policy and legal issues associated with the options suggested. We nominate some specific areas that warrant further investigation.
https://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/12190337/Regional-security-and-Pacific-partnerships-Banner.png540742nathanhttps://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/10130806/ASPI-Logo.pngnathan2024-04-25 06:00:002025-04-14 14:35:07Regional security and Pacific partnerships: Recruiting Pacific Islanders into the Australian Defence Force
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.
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Climate policy, geopolitics and market forces are coalescing to deliver Australia a global leadership opportunity in critical minerals. To grasp that opportunity, Australia needs both to utilise its domestic mineral endowment and its mining knowledge and technology and to leverage the global footprint of Australian companies to help build a global supply chain network.
How Australia responds will not only determine economic benefits to the nation but will also affect the world’s ability to achieve minerals security and the sustainability required for the global energy transition and inclusive economic growth.
The global energy transition and other high-technology applications have increased demand for critical minerals, particularly in countries that have strong complex manufacturing industries. At the same time, the concentration of production of many critical minerals, the dominance of China in supply chains and its actions to restrict supply and influence markets, are disrupting both minerals production and availability.
In response, developed nations have formulated critical minerals strategies and entered into bilateral and multilateral agreements, involving supplier nations and customer nations, to build alternative supply chains that are more diverse, secure and sustainable. Australia has committed in multiple agreements to work with like-minded nations to achieve this.
This report is intended to provide the government with a road map to ‘step up’ to (re)activate Australia’s global mineral leadership.
https://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/12212559/Reclaiming-leadership_-Australia-and-the-global-critical-minerals-race-Banner.png638755nathanhttps://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/10130806/ASPI-Logo.pngnathan2024-04-17 06:00:002025-03-06 16:59:09Reclaiming leadership: Australia and the global critical minerals race
A recurrent theme in Australia’s defence strategy has been our reliance on and need to defend Australia’s trade routes in a globalised world. The vulnerability of Australia’s limited stockpiles of critical goods and its concentrated sources of supply have driven military capability and planning for decades and remain a justification for strategic investments.
The 2023 Defence Strategic Review argued that the danger of any power threatening to invade the Australian continent was remote, but that an adversary could implement military coercion at a distance with threats against our trade and supply routes. With limited resources and finite defence capability, yet vast interests at sea, it’s important that Australian security and economic planning is trained on the most critical pain points in our sea lines of communication. Strategy and planning must derive from up-to-date and accurate data about what we trade, via which routes, and to and from which specific locations.
We also need to understand the factors that contribute to our resilience. They include the depth of supply options, the availability of alternative routes and the sheer strength in numbers which our shipping enjoys when it enters the mighty flow of commerce through the waters of our Asian trading partners. This report explores our trading routes in peace-time. Any conflict would bring sharper focus on what shipping and what trade is truly necessary and on what can be done to secure it. However, the strengths and vulnerabilities of our linkages to the world are evident now and are the focus of this report.
Concerns have been sharpened by the assaults by Houthi militias on commercial shipping through the Bab al-Mandab Strait at the entrance to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, disrupting the 12% of global trade that passes through those waters.2 In addition, drought has slashed the capacity of the Panama Canal, which in normal seasons handles a further 5% of world trade.
Surprisingly, the course and operation (who is moving what) of Australia’s trade routes has received extraordinarily little analysis. The last significant public paper on the topic was conducted by the Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics (now the Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics, BITRE) in 2007 and was based on data from 2001 to 2004. The profile of Australia’s trade has changed radically since then. This report makes five key policy recommendations and the first of these is that the government fund BITRE to update its 2007 study of trade routes so that Defence can make assessments of how best to secure Australia’s trade routes.
A dangerous combination of complacency and tolerance could be born of a view that conflicts are in faraway locations. The reality is that few saw either of the current wars as imminent when they started, and we mustn’t make the same mistake in our region. A central finding in this report is that the greatest risk to the security of our trade routes lies relatively close to home, in the narrow channels through the Indonesian archipelago through which more than half Australia’s maritime trade must pass. Another strong conclusion is that trade has a surprising resilience in the face of conflict: it is important to understand the sources of that strength and develop plans to maximise it.
https://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/11144236/The-trade-routes-vital-to-Australias-economic-security-Banner-1.png2411130nathanhttps://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/10130806/ASPI-Logo.pngnathan2024-03-28 06:00:002024-12-12 19:01:24The trade routes vital to Australia’s economic security
India has a vital role to play in deterring China from unifying Taiwan by military force, a new Australian Strategic Policy Institute report finds, highlighting New Delhi’s significant economic, diplomatic, legal and strategic narrative levers.
The report looks beyond traditional thinking on military preparations to dissuade Beijing from taking the island by force and offers six ways for India, with its great strategic and economic weight, to “help shape Beijing’s calculus away from the use of force”.
The author writes that the use of such long-term measures is vital to New Delhi’s own interests, as the economic and regional security impacts of a major war would be devastating for India itself. India and other “non-belligerent states” could apply a range of measures to persuade Beijing that the time is not right for a military attack. The aim would be to convince Beijing that “its ducks aren’t quite in a row… so that it defers military action to some uncertain point in the future”.
The report states that China remains deterrable. While it is determined to assume control of the island as a paramount strategic priority, it knows a military invasion would be enormously costly and uncertain.
https://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/12213313/SR202-Deterring-an-attack-on-Taiwan_banner.png8261144nathanhttps://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/10130806/ASPI-Logo.pngnathan2024-03-21 06:00:002024-12-12 21:41:03Deterring an attack on Taiwan: policy options for India and other non-belligerent states
