This brief report explores the challenge of producing policy-relevant China research and analysis. Policy-relevant research is defined as work that drives action, affects decision-making, or both. It’s the kind of research think tanks seek to do, bridging the gap between academia and civil servants who work on policy.
This paper focuses on two key findings:
There’s a distinction between conducting policy-relevant research and the process of disseminating it in a way that will effectively shape and influence the policy process in particular places by particular policy- and decision-makers. In practice, the difference between the two isn’t always clearly understood and perhaps not clearly taught.
There’s limited training that prepares the China analytical community to deal with the challenges of producing policy-relevant research under conditions of restricted access to China. Researchers require more support in navigating the research environment and filling skill-set gaps.
https://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/14223233/China-research-and-analysis_banner-Feb22.jpg4501350nathanhttps://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/10130806/ASPI-Logo.pngnathan2022-02-28 06:00:002024-12-14 22:34:46Producing policy-relevant China research and analysis in an era of strategic competition
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:
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.
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.
https://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/14221637/IP58-End-to-End-Encryption_banner.jpg4501350nathanhttps://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/10130806/ASPI-Logo.pngnathan2022-02-23 06:00:002025-03-06 17:02:07The future of assistance to law enforcement in an end-to-end encrypted world
Opportunities for Australia–India cooperation to support the region in the post-Covid-19 context
What’s the problem?
Covid-19 and the subsequent public-health responses have disrupted social and economic lives across the globe. Fiscal support measures may have alleviated the initial fallout in some places, but one of the bigger shocks has been the accelerated adoption and integration of and reliance on digital technologies. While this is a positive contribution towards digital development, it has also accentuated the already large gap between those able to adopt digital technologies and those without sufficient means to do so.
For the many fragile democracies in the Indo-Pacific, this is creating conditions that could undermine democratic resilience. A central question for these democratic governments is how to drive accelerating digital transformation and ICT-enabled growth towards poverty reduction, sustainable economic growth and building social cohesion while maintaining resilience to cybersecurity threats.
Southeast Asians are exceptional consumers of online goods and services. The region is also home to a growing number of technology start-ups, and governments are pushing this ‘drive for digital’ through ambitious national strategies. Despite those positives, digital growth within the region and within individual economies is uneven.
Human capital is a central driver of poverty reduction, sustainable growth and social cohesion,1 but, in Southeast Asia, digital literacy and skills are lagging behind usage and infrastructure. The adoption of technology is progressing, but problems of affordability, connectivity and coverage remain. There’s a limit to the growth trajectory due to weak demand from micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) that don’t have the means, skills or opportunities to adopt or integrate digital technologies.
This is particularly affecting the livelihoods of non-metropolitan communities, women, MSMEs and those whose jobs may be affected by the introduction of technology and automation.
The digital divide and rising inequality are now the everyday bromides of earnest policymakers. But the phrases have become policy cliches, stripped of meaning, with no sense of the underlying dynamics at play, making the prospects for any viable solutions slim. The Covid-19 pandemic has offered a harsh look at the role of the digital divide in driving inequality and the unedifying future that lies ahead as major technological advances compound and permanently entrench inequality. — Huong Le Thu, ‘Investing in Southeast Asia’s tech future’, in The Sydney Dialogue: playbook, 20212
Since the outbreak of Covid-19 in early 2020, digital adoption has further accelerated and driven greater demand for online services in retail, education and health. However, the pandemic has also contributed to the further widening of pre-existing digital divides. Women have been disproportionately affected, as many are employed in the informal and ‘gig economy’ sectors, which were hit hard by lockdowns. The pandemic has also further exposed more users to cybersecurity and online safety risks in an environment in which practices of cyber hygiene are generally poor.
As a result, the region is now faced with a dual transformation challenge: how can we stimulate further digital development while ensuring that future growth is inclusive?
What’s the solution?
This report recommends Australia and India leverage their bilateral partnership in cyber and critical technologies to support inclusive digital development in Southeast Asia, and strengthen the foundations of Southeast Asia’s digital economy.
The governments of Australia and India should take a more coordinated approach to their digital engagements with Southeast Asian countries, and further consider establishing a Joint Working Group on Digital Engagement to bring together like-minded partners.
Given that India and Australia face digital development challenges that are similar to Southeast Asia, an Australia-India spearheaded cooperation should be approached through a troika-type collaboration with Southeast Asian partners. This collaboration should look to address the region’s digital skills shortage, improve cyber resilience and contribute to digital public infrastructure. This requires a multi-stakeholder effort involving governments, the private sector, civil society and the technical community.
A priority area for additional support are efforts that enhance the digital knowledge and digital business skills of the Southeast Asian workforce. International initiatives should seek to augment or connect with existing local digital skilling programs. Specific areas of focus for Australia and India could include support to female digital entrepreneurship, and improvement of access to online courses and training to upskill MSMEs.
To improve cyber resilience operationally, Australia and India could strengthen and deepen relationships with Southeast Asia’s national cybersecurity agencies and national Computer Emergency Response Teams by exploring ways to share collective resources, expertise and experiences more effectively and more widely across each country’s economic sectors and non-metro areas.
At a strategic level, through the Australia-India Joint Working Group on Cyber Security Cooperation, the two countries could consider the possibility of sharing strategic assessments of the regional cyber threat landscape with Southeast Asian partners.
Finally, India and Australia should explore regional marketplaces for digital public goods and infrastructure which could offer further business incentives to digital, technology and cybersecurity communities in Australia, India and Southeast Asia.
Introduction
Southeast Asia is home to one of the world’s fastest growing markets of internet users. Pre-pandemic, there was enormous optimism about the growth of Southeast Asia’s digital economy. Estimates from 2019 showed a trajectory that would triple its US$100 billion internet economy by 2025.3 During the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the region’s internet economy gained more traction, and even achieved double-figure growth in Vietnam and Indonesia.4
Today, the region continues to struggle with new and more contagious variants of the virus, as the majority of the region’s population remains unvaccinated.5 Economic hardship, overburdened health systems and, in some cases, repressive public-order responses are posing challenges to political stability and societal resilience. As a consequence, when combined with the effects of climate change, there’s uncertainty about the long-term economic and social effects and the shape and speed of economic recovery.
Digital technologies6 are playing an integral part not just for contact tracing or getting public-health messages out into the community but also as a driving force for post-pandemic economic recovery. For years, governments in Southeast Asia have been pursuing ambitious digital transformation agendas that have laid a foundation for their emerging digital economies. In a post-Covid world, international partnerships of governments, industry and civil society organisations, such as between India, Australia and Southeast Asia, could form a key element in the region’s digital economic recovery and help set digital standards and norms.
Focusing on Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, which are some of the region’s largest and emerging technology-enabled economies, this report explores what efforts can be made by an Australia–India collaboration to support Southeast Asia’s digital capacity and resilience in the aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis. Collaboration between Australia and India in the area of cyber and critical technology is an emerging partnership that brings opportunities for strengthening both countries’ digital cooperation with Southeast Asian partners.
What are the digital economy, digital transformation and Industry 4.0?
There’s no agreed definition or framework that defines the digital economy. Different frameworks highlight, to varying degrees, macro policy foundations (such as competition, trade, governance), digital enablers (infrastructure, platform policies, skills, finance) and sectoral transformation (such as ICT applications in key economic sectors such as public services).7
Digital economy frameworks rarely consider the whole digital ecosystem and its interaction with the rest of the economy. The Asian Development Bank, for instance, has introduced the term ‘core digital economy’,8 which it defines as the contribution to GDP of any economic transaction involving both digital products and digital industries. In this report, we also consider wider aspects within the digital economy, including gender and inclusion.
Digital transformation refers to the process of moving from analogue to digital processes, integrating technology into working processes and, in its most advanced stages, doing so under the guidance of a strategy.
Industry 4.0 or the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ (4IR) refers to the application in industry of the convergence of physical and digital technologies. This can include artificial intelligence, machine learning, ‘internet of things’ (IoT) devices, advanced robotics, augmented reality, cloud computing, big data and analytics, and 3D printing.
The first section of the report reviews the enablers and attendant challenges of Southeast Asia’s digital economy, such as the supply of infrastructure, demand for digital services and general uptake of technology by individuals and businesses. In addition, it looks at intersecting policy issues that enable, support and sustain digital transformation, such as inclusivity; skills and talent; online security and safety; and regulations and governance. It then touches upon the region’s adoption of advanced technologies such as 5G and artificial intelligence (AI) that could equally be enablers of the region’s next leap in digital transformation.
The second section offers an overview of the pandemic’s effects on Southeast Asia’s digital landscape. Although there’s been continued investment into digital infrastructure, it shows there are fundamental weaknesses in the rate of digital growth within MSMEs.
The third section looks at a troika type of collaboration between India, Southeast Asia and Australia. As the digital development challenges faced by Southeast Asia are equally relevant to Australia and India, we provide a selection of relevant skills, expertise and flagship programs that India and Australia could contribute to the region in a common effort to adapt to a digital future that’s free, open and secure.
Finally, this report concludes with a set of policy recommendations for Australia and India on areas in which they could extend meaningful and targeted support to Southeast Asia’s digital economic recovery.
Download Report
This report continues with chapters on;
The state of digital Southeast Asia in 2021
The impact of Covid-19 on Southeast Asia’s digital landscape
India-Australia and cyber and technology cooperation in Southeast Asia
ASPI and ORF would thank all of those who peer reviewed drafts of this report, including Arindrajit Basu and Akshay Mathur, for their valuable feedback. We would also like to acknowledge the contributions of Baani Grewal, Samyak Leekha, Antara Vats, Ariel Bogle, Karly Winkler and Albert Zhang to this report. We are also grateful to the individuals consulted across government, industry and academia, including participants at the Southeast Asia Internet Governance Forum and the ASPI-ORF-hosted Track 1.5 Dialogue on Digital Southeast Asia that helped to shape and focus this report.
This report was commissioned by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). The work of ASPI ICPC wouldn’t be possible without the support of our partners and sponsors across governments, industry and civil society.
A draft of this report was shared with DFAT and valuable comments were incorporated, but, as with all our research, ASPI remains fully independent in the editorial judgements and policy recommendations made by our authors.
About the Observer Research Foundation
ORF seeks to lead and aid policy thinking towards building a strong and prosperous India in a fair and equitable world. It sees India as a country poised to play a leading role in the knowledge age—a role in which it shall be increasingly called upon to proactively ideate in order to shape global conversations, even as India sets course along its own trajectory of long-term sustainable growth. ORF helps discover and inform India’s choices. It carries Indian voices and ideas to forums shaping global debates. It provides non-partisan, independent, well-researched analyses and inputs to diverse decision-makers in governments, business communities and academia and to civil society around the world. Our mandate is to conduct in-depth research, provide inclusive platforms and invest in tomorrow’s thought leaders today. ORF’s website is at https://www.orfonline.org/.
What is ASPI?
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute was formed in 2001 as an independent, non‑partisan think tank. Its core aim is to provide the Australian Government with fresh ideas on Australia’s defence, security and strategic policy choices. ASPI is responsible for informing the public on a range of strategic issues, generating new thinking for government and harnessing strategic thinking internationally. ASPI’s sources of funding are identified in our annual report, online at www.aspi.org.au and in the acknowledgements section of individual publications. ASPI remains independent in the content of the research and in all editorial judgements.
ASPI International Cyber Policy Centre
ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre (ICPC) is a leading voice in global debates on cyber, emerging and critical technologies, issues related to information and foreign interference and focuses on the impact these issues have on broader strategic policy. The centre has a growing mixture of expertise and skills with teams of researchers who concentrate on policy, technical analysis, information operations and disinformation, critical and emerging technologies, cyber capacity building, satellite analysis, surveillance and China-related issues.
The ICPC informs public debate in the Indo-Pacific region and supports public policy development by producing original, empirical, data-driven research. The ICPC enriches regional debates by collaborating with research institutes from around the world and by bringing leading global experts to Australia, including through fellowships. To develop capability in Australia and across the Indo-Pacific region, the ICPC has a capacity building team that conducts workshops, training programs and large-scale exercises for the public and private sectors.
We would like to thank all of those who support and contribute to the ICPC with their time, intellect and passion for the topics we work on. If you would like to support the work of the centre please contact: icpc@aspi.org.au
Important disclaimer
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in relation to the subject matter covered. It is provided with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering any form of professional or other advice or services. No person should rely on the contents of this publication without first obtaining advice from a qualified professional.
This publication is subject to copyright. Except as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of it may in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, microcopying, photocopying, recording or otherwise) be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted without prior written permission. Enquiries should be addressed to the publishers. Notwithstanding the above, educational institutions (including schools, independent colleges, universities and TAFEs) are granted permission to make copies of copyrighted works strictly for educational purposes without explicit permission from ASPI and free of charge.
First published February 2022. ISSN 2209-9689 (online). ISSN 2209-9670 (print). Cover image: Wes Mountain.
Funding Statement: Funding support for this publication was provided by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
World Bank, The Human Capital Index 2020 update: human capital in the time of COVID-19, World Bank, Washington DC, 2020, online. ↩︎
Huong Le Thu, ‘Investing in Southeast Asia’s tech future’, in: Fergus Hanson, Danielle Cave, Madeleine Nyst (eds), The Sydney Dialogue: playbook, ASPI, Canberra, 19 November 2021, online. ↩︎
Google, Temasek, Bain & Company, e-Conomy SEA 2019, 2019, online; Cybersecurity in ASEAN: an urgent call to action, AT Kearney, 2018, online. ↩︎
‘Share of people vaccinated against COVID-19, Jan 18, 2022’, Our World in Data, 2022, online. ↩︎
‘Digital technologies’ refers to the electronic tools, systems, devices and resources that generate, store or process data. Their use requires a level of understanding of how information and communication technologies work and a degree of skill to engage with and create technology applications. ↩︎
Nagy K Hanna, ‘Assessing the digital economy: aims, frameworks, pilots, results, and lessons’, Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 2020, 9(16), online. ↩︎
Asian Development Bank (ADB), Capturing the digital economy: a proposed measurement framework and its applications—a special supplement to Key Indicators for Asia and the Pacific 2021, ADB, Manila, August 2021, online. ↩︎
https://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/14153918/pb57-DigitalSEAsia_banner.jpg8231588nathanhttps://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/10130806/ASPI-Logo.pngnathan2022-02-10 06:00:002025-03-14 15:44:17Digital Southeast Asia
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.
https://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/12220446/AgendaForChange2022-banner.jpg4501350nathanhttps://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/10130806/ASPI-Logo.pngnathan2022-02-02 06:00:002025-03-06 15:15:30Agenda for change 2022: Shaping a different future for our nation
This report analyses two Chinese state-linked networks seeking to influence discourse about Xinjiang across platforms including Twitter and YouTube. This activity targeted the Chinese-speaking diaspora as well as international audiences, sharing content in a variety of languages.
Both networks attempted to shape international perceptions about Xinjiang, among other themes. Despite evidence to the contrary, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) denies committing human rights abuses in the region and has mounted multifaceted and multiplatform information campaigns to deny accusations of forced labour, mass detention, surveillance, sterilisation, cultural erasure and alleged genocide in the region. Those efforts have included using Western social media platforms to both push back against and undermine media reports, research and Uyghurs’ testimony about Xinjiang, as well as to promote alternative narratives.
In the datasets we examined, inauthentic and potentially automated accounts using a variety of image and video content shared content aimed at rebutting the evidence of human rights violations against the Uyghur population. Likewise, content was shared using fake Uyghur accounts and other shell accounts promoting video ‘testimonials’ from Uyghurs talking about their happy lives in China.
Our analysis includes two datasets removed by Twitter:
Dataset 1: ‘Xinjiang Online’ (CNHU) consisted of 2,046 accounts and 31,269 tweets.
Dataset 2: ‘Changyu Culture’ (CNCC) consisted of 112 accounts and 35,924 tweets.
The networks showed indications of being linked by theme and tactics; however, neither achieved significant organic engagement on Twitter overall—although there was notable interaction with the accounts of CCP diplomats. There were signs of old accounts being repurposed, whether purchased or stolen, and little attempt to craft authentic personas.
Twitter has attributed both datasets to the Chinese government, the latter dataset is specifically linked to a company called Changyu Culture, which is connected to the Xinjiang provincial government. This attribution was uncovered by ASPI ICPC in the report Strange bedfellows on Xinjiang: the CCP, fringe media and US social media platforms.
Key takeaways
Different strands of CCP online and offline information operations now interweave to create an increasingly coordinated propaganda ecosystem made up of CCP officials, state and regional media assets, outsourced influence-for-hire operators, social media influencers and covert information operations.
The involvement of the CCP’s regional government in Xinjiang in international-facing disinformation suggests that internal party incentive structures are driving devolved strands of information operations activity.
The CCP deploys online disinformation campaigns to distract from international criticisms of its policies and to attempt to reframe concepts such as human rights. It aligns the timing of those campaigns to take advantage of moments of strategic opportunity in the information domain.
Notable features of these datasets include:
Flooding the zone: While the networks didn’t attract significant organic engagement, the volume of material shared could potentially aim to ‘bury’ critical content on platforms such as YouTube.
Multiple languages: There was use of English and other non-Chinese languages to target audiences in other countries, beyond the Chinese diaspora.
Promotion of ‘testimonials’ from Uyghurs: Both datasets, but particularly CNCC, shared video of Uyghurs discussing their ‘happy’ lives in Xinjiang and rebutting allegations of human rights abuses. Some of those videos have been linked to a production company connected to the Xinjiang provincial government.
Promotion of Western social media influencer content: The CNHU network retweeted and shared content from social media influencers that favoured CCP narratives on Xinjiang, including interviews between influencers and state media journalists.
Interaction between network accounts and the accounts of CCP officials: While the networks didn’t attract much organic engagement overall, there were some notable interactions with diplomats and state officials. For example, 48% of all retweets by the CNHU network were of CCP state media and diplomatic accounts.
Cross-platform activity: Both networks shared video from YouTube and Douyin (the Chinese mainland version of TikTok), including tourism content about Xinjiang, as well as links to state media articles.
Self-referential content creation: The networks promoted state media articles, tweets and other content featuring material created as part of influence operations, including Uyghur ‘testimonial’ videos. Similarly, tweets and content featuring foreign journalists and officials discussing Xinjiang were promoted as ‘organic’, but in some cases were likely to have been created as part of curated state-backed tours of the region.
Repurposed spam accounts: Accounts in the CNCC dataset tweeted about Korean television dramas as well as sharing spam and porn material before tweeting Xinjiang content.
Potential use of automation: Accounts in both datasets showed signs of automation, including coordinated posting activity, the use of four letter codes (in the CNHU dataset) and misused hashtag symbols (in the CNCC dataset).
Persistent account building: ASPI ICPC independently identified additional accounts on Twitter and YouTube that exhibited similar behaviours to those in the two datasets, suggesting that accounts continue to be built across platforms as others are suspended.
The Chinese party-state and influence campaigns
The Chinese party-state continues to experiment with approaches to shape online political discourse, particularly on those topics that have the potential to disrupt its strategic objectives. International criticism of systematic abuses of human rights in the Xinjiang region is a topic about which the CCP is acutely sensitive.
In the first half of 2020, ASPI ICPC analysis of large-scale information operations linked to the Chinese state found a shift of focus towards US domestic issues, including the Black Lives Matter movement and the death of George Floyd (predominantly targeting Chinese-language audiences). This was the first marker of a shift in tactics since Twitter’s initial attribution of on-platform information operations to the Chinese state in 2019. The party-state’s online information operations were moving on from predominantly internal concerns and transitioning to assert the perception of moral equivalence between the CCP’s domestic policies in Xinjiang and human rights issues in democratic states, particularly the US. We see that effort to reframe international debate about human rights continuing in these most recent datasets. This shift also highlighted that CCP information operations deployed on US social media platforms could be increasingly entrepreneurial and agile in shifting focus to take advantage of strategic opportunities in the information domain.
The previous datasets that Twitter has released publicly through its information operations archive focused on a range of topics of broad interest to the CCP: the Hong Kong protests; the Taiwanese presidential election; the party-state’s Covid-19 recovery and vaccine diplomacy; and exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui and his relationship with former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. The datasets that we examine in this report are more specifically focused on the situation in Xinjiang and on attempts to showcase health and economic benefits of CCP policies to the Uyghur population and other minority groups in the region while overlooking and denying evidence of mass abuse. In both datasets, the emblematic #StopXinjiangRumors hashtag features prominently.
Traits in the data suggest that this operation may have been run at a more local level, including:
the amplification of regional news media, as well as Chinese state media outlets
the involvement of the Xinjiang-based company Changyu Culture and its relationship with the provincial government, which ASPI previously identified in Strange bedfellows on Xinjiang: the CCP, fringe media and US social media platforms by linking social media channels to the company, and the company to a Xinjiang regional government contract
an ongoing attempt to communicate through the appropriation of Uyghur voices
the use of ready-made porn and Korean soap opera fan account networks on Twitter that were likely to have been compromised, purchased or otherwise acquired, and then repurposed.
The CCP is a complex system, and directives from its elite set the direction for the party organs and underlings to follow. Propaganda serves to mobilise and steer elements within the party structure, as well as to calibrate the tone of domestic and international messaging. The party’s own incentive structures may be a factor that helps us understand the potential regional origins of the propaganda effort that we analyse in this report, and have identified previously. The China Media Project notes, for example, that local party officials are assessed on the basis of their contribution to this international communication work. It’s a contribution to building Beijing’s ‘discourse power’ as well as showing obedience to Xi Jinping’s directions.
The data displays features of the online ecosystem that the party has been building to expand its international influence. The networks that we analysed engaged consistently with Chinese state media as well as with a number of stalwart pro-CCP influencers. One strand of activity within the data continues attempts to discredit the BBC that ASPI and Recorded Future have previously reported on, but the real focus of this campaign is an effort to reframe political discourse about the concept of human rights in Xinjiang.
The CNHU dataset, in particular, offers a series of rebuttals to international critiques of CCP policy in Xinjiang. As we’ve noted, the network was active on issues related to health, such as life expectancy and population growth. CCP policies in the region are framed as counterterrorism responses as a way of attempting to legitimise actions, while negative information and testimonies of abuse are simply denied or not reported. The accounts also seek to promote benefits from CCP policies in Xinjiang, such as offering education and vocational training. The BBC and former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo—the former having published reports about human rights abuses in the region, and the latter having criticised the party’s policies in the region—feature in the data in negative terms. This external focus on the BBC and Pompeo serves to reframe online discussion of Xinjiang and distract from the evidence of systematic abuse. For the CCP, both entities are sources of external threat, against which the party must mobilise.
Methodology
This analysis uses a quantitative analysis of Twitter data as well as qualitative analysis of tweet content.
In addition, it examines independently identified accounts and content on Twitter, YouTube and Douyin, among other platforms, that appear likely to be related to the network.
Both datasets include video media. That content was processed using SightGraph from AddAxis. SightGraph is a suite of artificial-intelligence and machine-learning capabilities for analysing inauthentic networks that disseminate disinformation. For this project, we used SightGraph to extract and autotranslate multilingual transcripts from video content. This facilitated extended phases of machine-learning-driven analysis to draw out ranked, meaningful linguistic data.
Likewise, images were processed using Yale Digital Humanities Laboratory’s PixPlot. PixPlot visualises a large image collection within an interactive WebGL scene. Each image was processed with an Inception convolutional neural network, trained on ImageNet 2012, and projected into a two-dimensional manifold with the UMAP algorithm such that similar images appear proximate to one another.
The combination of image and video analysis provided an overview of the narrative themes emerging from the media content related to the two Twitter datasets.
Twitter has identified the two datasets for quantitative analysis as being interlinked and associated via a combination of technical and behavioural signals. ICPC doesn’t have direct access to that non-public technical data. Twitter hasn’t released the methodology by which this dataset was selected, and the dataset may not represent a complete picture of Chinese state-linked information operations on Twitter.
The Twitter takedown data
This report analyses the content summarised in Table 1.
Table 1: Twitter dataset summaries
In both datasets, most of the tweeting activity seeking to deny human rights abuses in Xinjiang appears to have started around 2020. In the CNHU dataset, accounts appear to have been created for the purpose of disseminating Xinjiang-related material and began tweeting in April 2019 before ramping up activity in January 2021. That spike in activity aligns with the coordinated targeting of efforts to discredit the BBC that ASPI has previously identified. While some accounts in the CNCC dataset may have originally had a commercial utility, they were probably repurposed some time before 19 June 2020 (the date of the first tweet mentioning Xinjiang and Uyghurs in the dataset) and shifted to posting Xinjiang-related content. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave his attention-grabbing anti-CCP speech in July 2020, and criticism of him features significantly in both datasets.
Previous ASPI analysis identified Twitter spambot network activity in December 2019 to amplify articles published by the CCP’s People’s Daily tabloid, the Global Times (figures 1 and 2). The articles that were boosted denied the repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang and attacked the credibility of individuals such as Mike Pompeo and media organisations such as the New York Times. It isn’t clear whether that network was connected to the CNHU and CNCC datasets, but similar behaviours were identified.
Figure 1: Tweets per month, coloured by tweet language, in CNHU dataset
Figure 2: Tweets per month, coloured by tweet language, in CNCC dataset[fig2]
An overview of the tweet text in both datasets shows that topics such as ‘Xinjiang’, ‘BBC’, ‘Pompeo’ and ‘Uyghur’ were common to both campaigns (Figure 3). While there were some tweets mentioning ‘Hong Kong’, specifically about the Covid-19 response in that region, this report focuses on content targeting Xinjiang-related issues.
Figure 3: Topic summary of tweet text posted between December 2019 and May 2021
In early 2021, the #StopXinjiangRumors hashtag was boosted by both networks. Accounts in the CNHU dataset were the first to use the hashtag, and many accounts potentially mistakenly used double hashtags (‘##StopXinjiangRumors’). Accounts in the CNCC dataset that were batch created in February 2021 appear to have posted tweets using the hashtag and tagged ‘Pompeo’ following the tweets posted by accounts in the CNHU dataset. The use of the hashtags may be coincidental, but the similarity of timing and narratives suggests some degree of coordination. #StopXinjiangRumors continues to be a hashtag on Twitter (as well as YouTube and Facebook).
The rest of this report presents the key insights from the two datasets in detail.
Dataset 1: CNHU
Dataset 1: CNHU – Key points
Nearly one in every two tweets (41%) contained either an image or a video. There were in total 12,400 images and 466 videos in the CNHU dataset.
This video and image content was aimed broadly at pushing back against allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, particularly by presenting video footage of ‘happy’ Uyghurs participating in vocational training in Xinjiang, as well as screenshots of state media and government events promoting this content.
The network promoted phrases commonly used in CCP propaganda about Xinjiang, such as ‘Xinjiang is a wonderful land’ (新疆是个好地方)—the eighth most retweeted hashtag in the CNHU dataset.
In total, 48% (1,308) of all retweets by the network were of CCP state media and diplomatic accounts. The Global Times News account was the most retweeted (287), followed by the account of Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) spokesperson Hua Chunying (华春莹) (108).
While the network shared links to state media, YouTube and Facebook, many videos shared in the CNHU dataset appeared to have originated from Douyin.
The network worked to promote state media. Of all the tweets, 35% had links to external websites—mostly to Chinese state media outlets such as the China Daily, the China Global Television Network (CGTN) and the Global Times.
The network showed potential indicators of automation, including coordinated posting, the appearance of randomised four-letter digit codes in some tweets, and watermarked images.
The network tweeted and shared content in a variety of languages, including using Arabic and French hashtags, suggesting that it was targeting a broad audience.
Dataset 2: CNCC
Dataset 2: CNCC – Key points
The CNCC dataset contained a considerable amount of repurposed spam and porn accounts, as well as content linked to Korean music and television.
While there was a small amount of content about Hong Kong and other issues, most of the non-spam content related to Xinjiang. Much of that content sought to present ‘testimonials’ from Uyghurs talking about their happy lives in China.
Some of this content may be linked to a company called Changyu Culture, which is connected to the Xinjiang provincial government and was funded to create videos depicting Uyghurs as supportive of the Chinese Government’s policies in Xinjiang.
The network had a particular focus on former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: @蓬佩奥 or @‘Pompeo’ appears 438 times in the dataset. Likewise, video content shared by the network referenced Pompeo 386 times.
Download Report & Dataset Analysis
Readers are encouraged to download the report to access the full dataset analysis.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the team at Twitter for advanced access to the two data sets analysed in this report, Fergus Hanson and Michael Shoebridge for review comments, and AddAxis for assistance applying AI in the analysis. ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre receives funding from a variety of sources, including sponsorship, research and project support from governments, industry and civil society. No specific funding was received to fund the production of this report.
What is ASPI?
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute was formed in 2001 as an independent, non‑partisan think tank. Its core aim is to provide the Australian Government with fresh ideas on Australia’s defence, security and strategic policy choices. ASPI is responsible for informing the public on a range of strategic issues, generating new thinking for government and harnessing strategic thinking internationally. ASPI’s sources of funding are identified in our annual report, online at www.aspi.org.au and in the acknowledgements section of individual publications. ASPI remains independent in the content of the research and in all editorial judgements.
ASPI International Cyber Policy Centre
ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre (ICPC) is a leading voice in global debates on cyber, emerging and critical technologies, issues related to information and foreign interference and focuses on the impact these issues have on broader strategic policy. The centre has a growing mixture of expertise and skills with teams of researchers who concentrate on policy, technical analysis, information operations and disinformation, critical and emerging technologies, cyber capacity building, satellite analysis, surveillance and China-related issues.
The ICPC informs public debate in the Indo-Pacific region and supports public policy development by producing original, empirical, data-driven research. The ICPC enriches regional debates by collaborating with research institutes from around the world and by bringing leading global experts to Australia, including through fellowships. To develop capability in Australia and across the Indo-Pacific region, the ICPC has a capacity building team that conducts workshops, training programs and large-scale exercises for the public and private sectors. We would like to thank all of those who support and contribute to the ICPC with their time, intellect and passion for the topics we work on. If you would like to support the work of the centre please contact: icpc@aspi.org.au.
Important disclaimer
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in relation to the subject matter covered. It is provided with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering any form of professional or other advice or services. No person should rely on the contents of this publication without first obtaining advice from a qualified professional.
This publication is subject to copyright. Except as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of it may in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, microcopying, photocopying, recording or otherwise) be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted without prior written permission. Enquiries should be addressed to the publishers. Notwithstanding the above, educational institutions (including schools, independent colleges, universities and TAFEs) are granted permission to make copies of copyrighted works strictly for educational purposes without explicit permission from ASPI and free of charge.
First published December 2021. ISSN 2209-9689 (online). ISSN 2209-9670 (print).
Cover image: Illustration by Wes Mountain. ASPI ICPC and Wes Mountain allow this image to be republished under the Creative Commons. License Attribution-Share Alike. Users of the image should use the following sentence for image attribution: ‘Illustration by Wes Mountain, commissioned by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s International Cyber Policy Centre.’
Funding Statement: No specific funding was received to fund production of this report.
Building an evidence base for an informed critical technologies strategy
Kitsch Liao, Dr Samantha Hoffman and Karly Winkler, with Baani Grewal, Cheryl Yu, Saki Kikuchi, Tilla Hoja, Matthew Page and Jackson Schultz.
What’s the problem?
Technology policy formulation has recently gained a renewed importance for governments in the era of strategic competition, but contextual understanding and expertise in deciding where to focus efforts are lacking. As a result, decision-makers might not understand their own national strengths and weaknesses. It’s difficult to judge whether a country’s R&D outputs, no matter how advanced, and its development of production capacity, no matter how significant, align with the country’s intended strategic objectives or can be used effectively to achieve them.
The ability to measure the relative strengths and weaknesses of a country by weighing specific strategic objectives against technical achievements is of paramount importance for countries.
This is especially true as nations seek to resolve supply-chain resilience problems underscored by the Covid-19 pandemic. China’s rejection of the Quad’s vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific, willingness to use economic coercion and the resulting strategic competition, call further attention to multiple technology sectors’ heavy reliance on a single source. A solution must be found that can exploit synergy across multiple technology sectors among collaborating countries while ensuring supply-chain resilience.
What’s the solution?
Governments’ ability to ensure that strategic objectives pertaining to critical technologies are both well articulated and achievable, and researchers’ and industry’s ability to collaborate in meeting those objectives, would be greatly enabled by the development of an objective and repeatable methodology for measuring technical achievements against clearly defined strategic goals for the critical technology sector. The most pressing challenge should be a relatively straightforward one to resolve: standardise metadata about national objectives and R&D efforts to enable business analysis.
The Quad Critical and Emerging Technology Working Group is an important step towards building collaboration in the research, development and production of critical technologies among like-minded governments. While in nascent stages, the group is gathering momentum and working towards addressing the September 2021 objective to monitor trends in critical and emerging technologies for cooperation, with an initial focus on biotechnology. We recommend as follows:
Conduct detailed analysis to understand current and emerging gaps in critical and emerging technologies, starting with biotechnology, among like-minded countries.
Develop a partnership between like-minded countries with advanced technological capabilities to deliver a secure technology supply chain for critical tech. This should include a commitment to a set of core principles for technology development and delivery, including ‘baking in’ democratic principles to the technology and agreeing to share any civilian advances on market terms and refrain from coercion.
Establish a Quad or Quad Plus critical technologies fund to which participating states pledge investment funds that are then disbursed to address current and emerging critical technologies gaps.
Introduction to the Benchmarking Critical Technologies Project
Benchmarking Critical Technologies is a pilot project at ASPI ICPC that examines the development of a handful of critical technologies in the context of strategic partnership and strategic competition.
‘Critical technologies’ broadly refers to strategically important technology areas.1 Australia, for example, defines ‘critical technology’ as ‘technology that can significantly enhance or pose risks to Australia’s national interests, including our prosperity, social cohesion and national security’.2 For this pilot study, we focus on the biotechnology and energy technology sectors in China and in the Quad— the quadrilateral Indo-Pacific diplomatic network consisting of Australia, India, Japan and the US.
This project will be expanded over the course of 2022 to include more technology areas and countries.
During the Quad Leaders’ Summit in March 2021, the Quad Critical and Emerging Technology Working Group was announced. The communiqué from the summit said that the working group was intended to ‘ensure the way in which technology is designed, developed, governed and used is shaped by the Quad countries’ shared values and respect for universal human rights’.3 The communiqué didn’t directly name China, but China was clearly implied in its pledge to recommit to ‘promoting the free, open, rules-based order, rooted in international law and undaunted by coercion, to bolster security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific and beyond’.4
It’s clear that China is the key strategic competitor that the Quad countries are hedging against. They’re technology and manufacturing powerhouses with strong geopolitical influence in the region, which makes the competition both more important and more difficult. As the Quad works to develop capabilities in a range of critical sectors, the Quad members will need to also understand how to leverage each other’s strengths and overcome collective weaknesses to guarantee supply-chain resilience, among other strategic objectives.5 They will also need to triangulate the effects of each nation’s digital enmeshment in Chinese supply chains and the net effects of that in particular sectors.
There’s a lack of empirical data to ground decision-makers’ advice on everything from capability gaps to priority investment areas. This project is an attempt to begin to bring additional empirical data to the decision-making process. Our intent is to offer improved clarity on each country’s strengths and weaknesses in each critical technology. After consultation with the Australian Government, we decided to focus on hydrogen energy and solar photovoltaic (solar PV) technologies from the energy sector, and genetic engineering and vaccines and medical countermeasures in the biotechnology sector.
The broader technology areas that these specific technologies sit within are of clear strategic importance. The Quad Leaders’ Summit communiqué established that biotechnology would be the starting point for the Critical and Emerging Technology Working Group’s collaboration. It also highlighted, in the context of the recent COP26 conference, that the Quad would coordinate to ‘establish responsible and resilient clean-energy supply chains’.6
To assess national capabilities, we measured each country’s R&D and infrastructure development efforts using patent and patent impact data and academic impact data, and compared those results against the country’s technology-specific policy goals. For patents, we collected two measures for each critical technology: the quantity and quality of the patents. IP Australia provided ASPI ICPC with patent data to analyse the quantity of patents for each critical technology. Additionally, using the commercial product PatentSight developed by LexisNexis, we assessed patent quality with the Patent Asset Index (PAI).7 The tool assesses patent quality across various measures in the overall ecosystem of a technology field. Those measures are technology relevance (TR), indicating how much future patents in the field depended upon the patent; market coverage (MC), indicating how much of the global market the patent offers protection of; and competitive impact (CI), the aggregate of TR and MC indicating the economic value of the patent. The aggregate economic value of all patents in the field then constitutes the field’s PAI. For academic impact factors, we used the CiteScore (CS) methodology for measuring impact factors embedded within Elsevier’s Scopus commercial database product.
We also drew on background interviews with industry specialists and senior officials in relevant government departments. Budget data was more challenging to collect, normalise and assess.
Consequently, it isn’t treated as a separate metric, but included with general policy analysis. (For more on our methodology, see the Appendix.)
We recognise that both the policies and technologies on which we base our assessments are evolving. Technology development doesn’t always move in a linear trajectory, and current capabilities aren’t the only indicator of future outcomes. Moreover, the strategic interests and desired policy outcomes one country seeks might not align simply or easily with those of another. Therefore, it isn’t possible to directly compare countries against each other. Rather than arbitrarily rating each country’s progress against the others, we’ve rated each country’s progress in achieving the strategic objectives that it has outlined for each technology area (Figure 1). The progress indicator’s location should be interpreted as being dynamic, given that both policies and technologies will evolve.
Figure 1: Rating scale—country progress in meeting national policy objectives
Rating scale legend
Some high-level policy objectives specific to the technology area have been set, but there’s little evidence of efforts making progress towards meeting those objectives.
Despite the articulation of some policy objectives pertaining to the technology area, those are still relatively unclear. The country’s R&D and production capabilities don’t appear to be sufficient to contribute to realising the country’s stated policy objectives.
There’s some evidence that the country is developing actionable policy in the technology area. There’s clear progress in the country’s ability to contribute to the R&D of the technology, or production capacity. It isn’t clear, however, whether this progress aligns with the country’s stated policy objectives.
There’s evidence that stated policy objectives, research and investment are beginning to translate into aligning capabilities.
There’s strong evidence that stated policy objectives, research and investment have already translated into aligning capabilities.
Source: Image produced by ASPI.
Overall assessment
Quantity doesn’t mean quality, at least in terms of the way patents and research shift global knowledge and capabilities in the overall ecosystem of a technology field. Our findings on patent impact—measured by how often a patent is cited or purchased—highlighted that China, with the highest number of patent applications filed, didn’t have a correspondingly high impact factor. Australia and India, and to a lesser extent Japan, filed far fewer patents, but those few patents had impact more on par with US patents, which were high in both number and impact. One patent can significantly influence the evolution of a technology; others might incrementally advance knowledge or create offshoot fields. Impact factors in these types of analysis can be an objective measure for determining scientific advances or commercial success but aren’t necessarily useful in indicating whether national capabilities support policy objectives. If the point of benchmarking critical technologies capabilities at a national level is to understand what makes a country capable of meeting national policy objectives, competitive in a strategic competition and well placed to work with like-minded partners, then the ability of individual researchers or organisations to advance a technology field doesn’t tell us how competitive a country is in translating concepts to capabilities that align with its strategic objectives. For example, ASPI ICPC believes that in China, the disproportionately large number of patents filed internally is most likely attributable to companies patenting specific applications of technology. In the Quad, countries such as Australia and India have been more impactful for a fewer number of patent applications filed and research papers significantly advance the field.
Success in connecting policy objectives to outcomes isn’t yet entirely measurable. Our comparison of national policies pertaining to each critical technology we research shows that China, followed by the US, tends to have more clarity about what it seeks to achieve by investing in R&D and production capabilities, and following that up with actions that will achieve those objectives. India, Japan and Australia don’t lack policy development or innovative capacity, but we believe they have been less effective at connecting concepts to capability. This assessment is no doubt at least partially because the development of policy objectives postdates most of our data.
Metrics don’t explain the context in which innovation is taking place, including incentive structures, and how that affects a country’s ability to meet specific objectives. In China, the incentive structure is designed so that researchers are working to meet specific policy objectives. In fact, companies closely collaborate with the state in technical standards development. According to the revised 2017 Standardisation Law,8 the Standardisation Administration of China (an agency under the State Administration for Market Regulation) is required to oversee standards initiation and implementation, and in practice technical committees for standards setting under the Standardisation Administration tend to consist of both companies and research institutes. We believe the knock-on effect of the incentive structure in China is that the R&D base is disadvantaged, while companies and researchers focus on implementing specific applications of technology that meet policy needs. China’s National Patent Development Strategy (2011–2020) was designed as a ‘long-term and comprehensive plan to use the patent system and patent resources to enhance the country’s core competitiveness’.9 The strategy document prioritises ‘encourag[ing] and supporting[ing] enterprises to upgrade the core technologies and key technologies with patent rights in China’s advantageous fields to national and international standards’.10 We believe companies are seeking to achieve those objectives by owning the market first, and patents support that approach. They’re adding economic value by increasing the quantity of applications, and owning the market comes before efforts to refine the product. Many PRC-originated technologies are being exported globally (see ASPI ICPC’s Mapping China’s Tech Giants project), no matter what the overall quality of the product in comparison to competitors, and that proliferation is probably achieving some market power and incumbency. It’s a cumulative and individual challenge for the Quad nations to move more rapidly from concept to capability in order to avoid the PRC leading in meeting strategic objectives with that technology
Download
Readers are warmly encouraged to download the full report to access the detailed sector by sector analysis.
The Patent Search Strategy used in the formulation of the report is available for review here.
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the assistance we have received from IP Australia, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources, and numerous interviewees and peer reviewers in policy and industry roles across the Quad.
Thank you to ASPI ICPC researcher Albert Zhang for assistance. We are grateful for the valuable comments and assistance provided by Fergus Hanson, Michael Shoebridge and Jocelinn Kang.
This project was supported through a $150,000 grant from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
What is ASPI?
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute was formed in 2001 as an independent, non‑partisan think tank. Its core aim is to provide the Australian Government with fresh ideas on Australia’s defence, security and strategic policy choices. ASPI is responsible for informing the public on a range of strategic issues, generating new thinking for government and harnessing strategic thinking internationally.
ASPI’s sources of funding are identified in our annual report, online at www.aspi.org.au and in the acknowledgements section of individual publications. ASPI remains independent in the content of the research and in all editorial judgements.
ASPI International Cyber Policy Centre
ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre (ICPC) is a leading voice in global debates on cyber, emerging and critical technologies, issues related to information and foreign interference and focuses on the impact these issues have on broader strategic policy. The centre has a growing mixture of expertise and skills with teams of researchers who concentrate on policy, technical analysis, information operations and disinformation, critical and emerging technologies, cyber capacity building, satellite analysis, surveillance and China-related issues.
The ICPC informs public debate in the Indo-Pacific region and supports public policy development by producing original, empirical, data-driven research. The ICPC enriches regional debates by collaborating with research institutes from around the world and by bringing leading global experts to Australia, including through fellowships. To develop capability in Australia and across the Indo-Pacific region, the ICPC has a capacity building team that conducts workshops, training programs and large-scale exercises for the public and private sectors.
We would like to thank all of those who support and contribute to the ICPC with their time, intellect and passion for the topics we work on. If you would like to support the work of the centre please contact: icpc@aspi.org.au
Important disclaimer
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in relation to the subject matter covered. It is provided with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering any form of professional or other advice or services. No person should rely on the contents of this publication without first obtaining advice from a qualified professional.
This publication is subject to copyright. Except as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of it may in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, microcopying, photocopying, recording or otherwise) be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted without prior written permission. Enquiries should be addressed to the publishers. Notwithstanding the above, educational institutions (including schools, independent colleges, universities and TAFEs) are granted permission to make copies of copyrighted works strictly for educational purposes without explicit permission from ASPI and free of charge.
First published November 2021. ISSN 2209-9689 (online). ISSN 2209-9670 (print). Cover image: Leslie Sharpe.
Funding Statement: Funding support for this publication was provided by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
‘What is a “critical technology”?’, in ‘Appendix A: National Critical Technologies List’, Clinton White House archives, online. ↩︎
Marise Payne, ‘Launch of the International Cyber and Critical Technology Engagement Strategy’, speech, 21 April 2021, online. ↩︎
Scott Morrison, ‘Quad Leaders’ Summit communique’, 24 September 2021, online. ↩︎
See, for instance, the Biden administration’s memorandum, ‘Multi-agency research and development priorities for the FY 2023 Budget’, August 2021, online; and the former Trump administration’s October 2020 list of critical and emerging technologies, online. ↩︎
For a more comprehensive definition and explanation of the methodology behind the Patent Asset Index, consult the product website, online. ↩︎
Standardisation Law of the People’s Republic of China, Standardisation Administration of China, 23 March 2018, online. The Standardisation Law was revised and adopted at a meeting of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress in November 2017 and came into force on 1 January 2018. ↩︎
‘National Patent Development Strategy (2011–2020)’ [‘全国专利事业发展战略(2011—2020年)’], China National Intellectual Property Administration, 18 November 2010, online. ↩︎
‘National Patent Development Strategy (2011–2020)’. ↩︎
This report provides a primer on the roots of the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) within China’s policy system, and sheds light on the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) intentions to use cyberspace as a tool for shaping discourse domestically and internationally.
The report details the position of the Cyberspace Administration of China in China’s propaganda system. Considering its origins in the former Party Office of External Propaganda, the authors argue that ‘countries that lack comprehensive cyber regulations should err on the side of caution when engaging with the CCP on ideas for establishing an international cyber co-governance strategy.’
By assessing the CCP’s strategy of becoming a ‘cyber superpower’, its principle of ‘internet sovereignty’, and its concept of ‘community of common destiny for cyberspace’, this report seeks to address how the CCP is working to build a consensus on the future of who will set the rules, norms and values of the internet.
The report also examines the World Internet Conference – a ‘platform through which the CCP promotes its ideas on internet sovereignty and global governance’ – and its links to the CAC.
Translated versions of this report are also available in Indonesian, Malaysian, Thai, and Vietnamese. The translation of these reports has been supported by the U.S. State Department.
https://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/14214444/Chinas-cyber-vision_banner.png4501350nathanhttps://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/10130806/ASPI-Logo.pngnathan2021-11-24 06:00:002024-12-14 21:48:04China’s cyber vision: How the Cyberspace Administration of China is building a new consensus on global internet governance
Since the mass internment of Uyghurs and other indigenous groups1 in China was first reported in 2017, there is now a rich body of literature documenting recent human rights abuses in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.2 However, there is little knowledge of the actual perpetrators inside China’s vast and opaque party-state system, and responsibility is often broadly attributed to the Chinese Communist Party,3 Xinjiang Party Secretary Chen Quanguo,4 or President Xi Jinping himself.5
For accountability, it is necessary to investigate how China’s campaign against the Uyghurs has been implemented and which offices and individuals have played a leading part. The current knowledge gap has exposed international companies and organisations to inadvertent engagement with Chinese officials who have facilitated the atrocities in Xinjiang. It has also prevented foreign governments from making targeted policy responses.
Finally, it is essential to carry out such an investigation now. Amid debate internationally about whether the recent events in Xinjiang constitute genocide,6 Chinese officials are actively scrubbing relevant evidence and seeking to silence those who speak out.7
Figure 1: A ‘resist infiltration, snatch the two-faced’ mass oath for school teachers in Hotan Prefecture in 2017. Many women are visibly crying.
Source: ‘Ten thousand teachers in Hotan Prefecture take part in ‘speak up and brandish the sword’ mass oath in Keriye County’ [和田地区万名教师集体发 声亮剑宣讲宣誓大会在于田举行], Keriye County official WeChat account [于田零距离], 16 June 2017, online.
What’s the solution?
This project maps and analyses the governance mechanisms employed by the Chinese party-state in Xinjiang from 2014 to 2021 within the context of the region’s ongoing human rights crisis. To that end, the authors have located and scrutinised thousands of Chinese-language sources,8 including leaked police records9 and government budget documents never before published. This archive of sources is made publicly available for the use of others.
For policymakers, this report will provide an evidence base to inform policy responses including possible sanctions. For the general public and anyone whose interests are linked to Xinjiang and China more broadly, this project can inform risk analysis and ethical considerations.
Finally, a detailed understanding of Xinjiang’s governance structures and processes and their relationship to wider national policies can contribute to a more concrete understanding of the Chinese party-state and its volatility.
Figure 2: American brand Nike was implicated in Xinjiang’s coercive labour transfer schemes. Uyghurs transferred from Xinjiang receive Chinese language and indoctrination classes at Nike’s contractor Taekwang factory in Qingdao, Shandong, around June 2019.
Source: ‘Municipal United Front Work Department conducts Mandarin training at Qingdao Taekwang “Pomegranate Seed” Night School’ [市委统战部’石榴 籽’夜校 走进青岛泰光举办普通话培训班], Laixi United Front official WeChat account [莱西统一战线], 1 July 2019, online.
Executive Summary
The project consists of two parts.
An interactive organisational chart of some 170 administrative entities that have participated in Xinjiang’s governance since 2014. The chart includes a brief profile of each party, government, military, paramilitary and hybrid entity at different bureaucratic layers, and more.10
This report, which highlights the governance techniques and bureaucratic structures that have operationalised the Chinese party-state’s most recent campaigns against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
The report is structured as follows.
Section 1: Background
This section is an introduction to the 2014 Counterterrorism Campaign and the 2017 Re-education Campaign in Xinjiang, which represent a top-down response to the perceived radicalisation of Uyghur society and a systematic effort to transform Xinjiang and its indigenous inhabitants.
Section 2: The return of mass campaigns
The crackdown against the Uyghurs has a striking resemblance to Mao-era political campaigns. ASPI can reveal that, in addition to mass internment and coercive labour assignments, Xinjiang residents are also compelled to participate in acts of political theatre, such as mass show trials, public denunciation sessions, loyalty pledges, sermon-like ‘propaganda lectures’, and chants for Xi Jinping’s good health. In doing so, they’re mobilised to attack shadowy enemies hiding among the people: the so-called ‘three evil forces’ and ‘two-faced people’.
Despite widespread recognition that mass political campaigns are ‘costly and burdensome’, in the words of Xi Jinping, the party-state has again resorted to them in Xinjiang. This section analyses the party-state’s reflexive compulsion for campaigns, and campaign-style governance, which is an intrinsic feature of the Chinese political system that’s often overlooked in the current English-language literature.
Section 3: Hegemony at the grassroots
ASPI researchers have gained rare and in-depth insights into Xinjiang’s local governance after analysing thousands of pages of leaked police files. This section focuses on the case of one Uyghur family in Ürümqi. Like at least 1.8 million other Uyghurs, Anayit Abliz, then 18, was caught using a file-sharing app in 2017. He was interned in a re-education camp and eventually ‘sentenced’ by his Neighbourhood Committee—a nominally service-oriented voluntary organisation responsible for local party control.
While he was detained, officials from the Neighbourhood Committee visited his family members six times in a single week, scrutinizing the family’s behaviours and observing whether they were emotionally stable.
Draconian control measures are typical of mass political campaigns, including those in Xinjiang.
During the crackdown against the Uyghurs, authorities implemented five key policies (including the ‘Trinity’ mechanism, which is first reported by ASPI here) that led to the unprecedented penetration of the party-state system into the daily lives of Xinjiang residents. Those policies gave Xinjiang’s neighbourhood and village officials exceptional power to police residents’ movements and emotions, resulting in the disturbing situation in which a Uyghur teenager’s social media posts about finding life hopeless were deemed a threat to stability and triggered police action.
Xinjiang’s community-based control mechanisms are part of a national push to enhance grassroots governance, which seeks to mobilise the masses to help stamp out dissent and instability and to increase the party’s domination in the lowest reaches of society.
Section 4: The party’s knife handle
Many Uyghurs become suspects after being flagged by the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP), which is a ‘system of systems’ where officials communicate and millions of investigations are assigned for local follow-up.
ASPI can reveal that the IJOP11 is managed by Xinjiang’s Political and Legal Affairs Commission (PLAC) through a powerful new organ called the Counterterrorism and Stability Maintenance Command,12 which is a product of the Re-education Campaign. One source states that a local branch of the command monitors the re-education camps remotely.
The PLAC is a party organ that oversees China’s law-and-order system, which is responsible for Xinjiang’s mass detention system. The PLAC’s influence tends to grow during times of mass campaigns, and the budget and responsibilities of the Xinjiang PLAC have expanded significantly in recent years— despite efforts by Xi Jinping to abate its status nationally. Two other factors may have contributed to the PLAC’s predominance in Xinjiang: its control over powerful surveillance technologies employed during the two campaigns, and a 2010 governance model in Ürümqi called ‘the big PLAC’, which was masterminded by Zhu Hailun, who is considered by some to be the architect of the re-education camp system.
Section 5: Weaponising the law
Law enforcement in Xinjiang is hasty, harsh and frequently arbitrary. Senior officials have promulgated new laws and regulations that contradict existing ones in order to accomplish the goals and targets of the campaigns; on the ground, local officers openly boast about acting outside normal legal processes, and their voices are sometimes amplified by state media. ASPI has found evidence that some neighbourhood officials in Ürümqi threatened to detain whole families in an attempt to forcefully evict them from the area.
Many Uyghurs have been detained for cultural or religious expressions, but police records reveal that low-level officials have also interned Xinjiang residents for appearing to be ‘dissatisfied with society’ or lacking a fixed address or stable income. In one case, Uyghur man Ekrem Imin was detained because his ‘neighbourhood police officer was trying to fill quotas’. As reported by Ürümqi police, he then contracted hepatitis B (which went untreated) as well as syphilis inside Xinjiang’s, and China’s biggest detention facility.13 This raises further questions about the conditions inside Xinjiang’s re-education facilities.
Efforts to weaponise the law in Xinjiang mirror wider legal reforms under Xi Jinping, where previous ideals about procedural accountability and judicial independence have been cast aside and the law is now openly used to tighten the party’s grip over society and eliminate social opposition.
Section 6: The frontline commanders
County party secretaries are the most senior officials at the local level in China, and their role is crucial to the regime’s survival, according to Xi Jinping. In Xinjiang, they oversee the day-to-day operations of the two campaigns. Researchers at ASPI have compiled a dataset of Xinjiang’s county party secretaries over the past seven years and found that the vast majority of these ‘frontline commanders’ are Han.
At the time of writing (September 2021), not a single county party secretary in Xinjiang is Uyghur, which speaks to the erasure of once-promised ethnic self-rule, and to deeply entrenched racism at the heart of the Han-dominated party-state system.
This section profiles three of the most celebrated county party secretaries in Xinjiang. Yao Ning, a darling of the Chinese media for his elite academic background at Tsinghua and Harvard universities.
Claiming absolute loyalty to the party-state from a young age, Yao now sits at the top of a chain of command over nine newly built or expanded detention facilities in Maralbeshi County.14 He has struggled with mounting pressure and the death of a close colleague due to exhaustion, but finds solace in quotes by both Mao and Xi.
Yang Fasen, who pioneered new governance tools during the campaigns, was recently promoted to vice governor of Xinjiang. His innovative propaganda templates—that the authorities dubbed the ‘Bay County Experience’—were copied by other counties in Xinjiang during the Counterterrorism Campaign. During a 2015 speech in front of Xi Jinping in Beijing, Yang claimed that subjecting undereducated Uyghur youth to labour reform (a practice that became commonplace later in the Re-education Campaign) can improve social stability.
Both Yao Ning and Yang Fasen are from the majority ethnic group in China, the Han. The third profile is of Obulqasim Mettursun, a Uyghur official, who like most Uyghurs serve in a deputy position under a Han overseer. He went viral after penning an open letter pleading with fellow Uyghurs to ‘wake up’ and actively participate in the party-state’s stability maintenance efforts. He represents an ideologically captured and dependent class of Uyghur officials committed to serving the party in largely ceremonial roles.
Section 7: ‘There is no department that doesn’t have something to do with stability’
During Xinjiang’s two campaigns, few offices or officials can escape the political responsibility of ‘stability maintenance’ work. At times, repressive policies have been carried out by the most innocent-sounding, obscure government agencies, such as the Forestry Bureau, which looked after Kashgar City’s re-education camp accounts for a year.
The final section highlights the astounding number of offices involved in key aspects of the Chinese party-state’s crackdown in Xinjiang: propaganda, re-education, at-home surveillance and indoctrination, forced labour and population control. Extra emphasis has been placed on propaganda as it has been the least reported aspect of the two campaigns, albeit highly important.
In Xinjiang, re-education work not only occurs in so-called ‘vocational education and training centres’, but is also front and centre in everyday life, as the party-state seeks to alter how people act and speak. Through more than seven years of intense propaganda work, Uyghurs and other indigenous groups now find themselves being assigned fictional Han relatives, and being taught how to dress and maintain their homes;15 their courtyards are ‘modernised’ and ‘beautified’16 while their ancient tombs and mosques are destroyed.17
Section 8: Conclusion
Xinjiang’s bureaucratic inner workings reflect a wider pattern of authoritarian rule in China. In fact, some governance techniques used in Xinjiang during the two campaigns were conceived elsewhere, and Xinjiang’s ‘stability maintenance’ tools are increasingly replicated by other Chinese provinces and regions including Hong Kong. Further research should be conducted on campaign-style governance in China in general, and its policy implications. Further studies on the cycle of collective trauma through China’s recurring campaigns may also be timely, taking into consideration that many senior Chinese officials, including Xi Jinping and Zhu Hailun, claimed that their personal experiences of being ‘re-educated’ through hard labour have been transformative.
Appendixes
ASPI researchers have curated three appendixes of key Xinjiang officials who have served in party, government, military, or paramilitary roles at the regional, prefecture and county levels from 2014 to 2021. In the sixth section of this report, the frontline commanders, the authors used the third appendix — the names and basic information about Xinjiang’s more than 440 county party secretaries over the last seven years — to generate data for analysis and visualisation. The appendixes have not been published but we will consider requests to access this research.
The authors would like to thank researchers Emile Dirks, Aston Kwok, Kate Wong, Nyrola Elima, Nathan Ruser and Kelsey Munro for their invaluable contributions to this project, and Fergus Hanson and Danielle Cave for their guidance and support.
Thank you to peer reviewers who provided excellent feedback, including Darren Byler, Timothy Grose, Sam Tynen, Samantha Hoffman, Peter Mattis, Michael Shoebridge and Edward Schwarck. Thank you also to Yael Grauer, who shared access to the Ürümqi Police Records. The opinions and analysis presented in this report are those of the authors alone, who are also responsible for any errors or omissions. The UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office provided ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre (ICPC) with a grant of A$116,770 for this project, of which this report is a key output. Other components of the project can be found at the Xinjiang Data Project website: https://xjdp.aspi.org.au/. Additional research costs were covered from ASPI ICPC’s mixed revenue base—which spans governments, industry and civil society. This project would not have been possible without 2020–21 funding from the US State Department, which supports the Xinjiang Data Project.
What is ASPI?
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute was formed in 2001 as an independent, non‑partisan think tank. Its core aim is to provide the Australian Government with fresh ideas on Australia’s defence, security and strategic policy choices. ASPI is responsible for informing the public on a range of strategic issues, generating new thinking for government and harnessing strategic thinking internationally. ASPI’s sources of funding are identified in our annual report, online at www.aspi.org.au and in the acknowledgements section of individual publications. ASPI remains independent in the content of the research and in all editorial judgements.
ASPI International Cyber Policy Centre
ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre (ICPC) is a leading voice in global debates on cyber, emerging and critical technologies, issues related to information and foreign interference and focuses on the impact these issues have on broader strategic policy. The centre has a growing mixture of expertise and skills with teams of researchers who concentrate on policy, technical analysis, information operations and disinformation, critical and emerging technologies, cyber capacity building, satellite analysis, surveillance and China-related issues. The ICPC informs public debate in the Indo-Pacific region and supports public policy development by producing original, empirical, data-driven research. The ICPC enriches regional debates by collaborating with research institutes from around the world and by bringing leading global experts to Australia, including through fellowships. To develop capability in Australia and across the Indo-Pacific region, the ICPC has a capacity building team that conducts workshops, training programs and large-scale exercises for the public and private sectors. We would like to thank all of those who support and contribute to the ICPC with their time, intellect and passion for the topics we work on. If you would like to support the work of the centre please contact: icpc@aspi.org.au
Important disclaimer
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in relation to the subject matter covered. It is provided with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering any form of professional or other advice or services. No person should rely on the contents of this publication without first obtaining advice from a qualified professional.
This publication is subject to copyright. Except as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of it may in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, microcopying, photocopying, recording or otherwise) be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted without prior written permission. Enquiries should be addressed to the publishers. Notwithstanding the above, educational institutions (including schools, independent colleges, universities and TAFEs) are granted permission to make copies of copyrighted works strictly for educational purposes without explicit permission from ASPI and free of charge.
First published October 2021. ISSN 2209-9689 (online). ISSN 2209-9670 (print)
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Funding Statement: This project was in part funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.
The Chinese party-state officially recognises 56 minzu (民族) groups in China: a single Han majority and 55 numerically much smaller groups that currently make up nearly 9% of China’s population. The term minzu is deeply polysemic and notoriously difficult to translate. Depending on the context of its use, the term can connote concepts similar to ‘nation’, ‘race’, ‘people’ and ‘ethnicity’ in English. Party officials initially used the English term ‘nationality’ to render the term into English. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the party gradually pivoted away from nationality, preferring the term ‘ethnic minorities’ for the non-Han groups and reserving the term ‘nation’ for the collective identity and name of the ‘Chinese nation-race’ (中华民族). See James Leibold, ‘The minzu net: China’s fragmented national form,’ Nations and Nationalism, 2016, 22(3):425–428. While party officials reject any assertion of indigeneity in China, Harvard historian Mark Elliott argues that China’s non-Han peoples are better thought of as indigenous communities rather than as ‘ethnic minorities’, which is a term widely used to refer to migrant populations in places such Canada or Australia, as these groups ‘continue to live on lands to which they have reasonably strong ancestral claims; in their encounter with the majority Other, all of them assume the status of “natives” vis-a-vis the representatives of a central (often formerly colonial or quasi-colonial) government from the outside; and all of them find themselves in positions of relative weakness as a result of an asymmetrical power structure, often the consequence of technological inferiority.’ Mark Elliott, ‘The case of the missing indigene: debate over a “second- generation” ethnic policy’, The China Journal, 2015, 73:207, online. Throughout this report and our website, we’ve used the terms ‘indigenous’, ‘ethnic minority’ and ‘nationality’ interchangeably to gloss the term minzu, depending on the context. When we refer to the Uyghurs generically, we’re also referring to other Turkic communities in Xinjiang: the Kazakhs, Tajiks, Kyrgyzs and Uzbeks who have also been targeted in China’s crackdown in Xinjiang. ↩︎
For two online repositories of this now vast literature see The Xinjiang Data Project, ASPI, Canberra, online, and The Xinjiang Documentation Project, University of British Columbia, online. ↩︎
‘China: Crimes against humanity in Xinjiang: Mass detention, torture, cultural persecution of Uyghurs, other Turkic Muslims’, Human Rights Watch, 19 April 2021, online; Sheena Chestnut Greitens, Myunghee Lee, Emir Yazici, ‘Counterterrorism and preventive repression: China’s changing strategy in Xinjiang’, International Security, Winter 2019–20, 44(3), online. ↩︎
‘“Eradicating ideological viruses”—China’s campaign of repression against Xinjiang’s Muslims’, Human Rights Watch, 9 September 2018, online; Chun Hang Wong, ‘China’s hard edge: the leader of Beijing’s Muslim crackdown gains influence’, The Wall Street Journal, 7 April 2019, online; Adrian Zenz, James Leibold, ‘Chen Quanguo: The strongman behind Beijing’s securitization strategy in Tibet and Xinjiang’, China Brief, 21 September 2017, 17(12), online. ↩︎
James Leibold, ‘The spectre of insecurity: the CCP’s mass internment strategy in Xinjiang’, China Leadership Monitor, 1 March 2019, online; Austin Ramzy, Chris Buckley, ‘“Absolutely no mercy”: Leaked files expose how China organised mass detentions of Muslims’, The New York Times, 16 November 2019, online; Adrian Zenz, ‘Evidence of the Chinese central government’s knowledge of and involvement in Xinjiang’s re-education internment campaign’, China Brief, 14 September 2021, online. ↩︎
Martin S Flaherty, ‘Repression by any other name: Xinjiang and the genocide debate’, The Diplomat, 3 August 2021, online; James Leibold, ‘Beyond Xinjiang: Xi Jinping’s ethnic crackdown’, The Diplomat, 1 May 2021, online; Joanne Smith Finley, ‘Why scholars and activists increasingly fear a Uyghur genocide in Xinjiang’, Journal of Genocide Research, 2021, 23(3):348–370. ↩︎
Lily Kuo, Gerry Shih, ‘China researchers face abuse, sanctions as Beijing looks to silence critics’, Washington Post, 7 April 2021, online; ‘China scrubs evidence of Xinjiang clampdown amid “genocide” debate’, The Washington Post, 17 March 2021, online; Rebecca Wright, Ivan Watson, ‘She tweeted from Sweden about the plight of her Uyghur cousin. In Xinjiang, the authorities were watching’, CNN, 17 December 2020, online. ↩︎
These sources include English and Chinese-language academic papers, local media reports and official party and state documents. ↩︎
The Ürümqi Police Records were provided to ASPI by journalist Yael Grauer, who wrote for The Intercept about the database, and has since left the outlet. See Yael Grauer, ‘Revealed: Massive Chinese police database’, The Intercept, 29 January 2021, online. ↩︎
It also walks the viewer through the offices involved in several key aspects of the crackdown against Uyghurs: propaganda, re-education, Fanghuiju, forced labour and population control. The chart isn’t meant to be a comprehensive picture of the vast Chinese bureaucracy but rather an illustrative snapshot of the different levels of the Chinese bureaucracy that played an active role in designing, coordinating or implementing the party’s policies in Xinjiang, from the central level in Beijing to the villages and neighbourhoods in Xinjiang. ↩︎
Counterterrorism and Stability Maintenance Command [反恐维稳指挥部]. ↩︎
This case was first publicised by the Xinjiang Victims Database (@shaitbiz), ‘Some months ago, XJ officials told visiting journalists that the Dabancheng facility in Ürümqi was never a camp [Tweet]’, Twitter, 27 August 2019, online. The Associated Press reported that the detention centre was the largest in the world. See Dake Kang, ‘Room for 10,000: Inside China’s largest detention center’, The Associated Press, 1 December 2018, online. ↩︎
See the map and dataset at The Xinjiang Data Project, ASPI, Canberra, online. ↩︎
‘“Home School” Initiative enters village households, “beautifying” the lives of villagers’ [“家庭学校”进农户活动让村民生活“靓”起来], Qingfeng Net [清风网], 20 November 2019, online. ↩︎
Timothy A. Grose, ‘If you don’t know how, just learn’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 06 July 2020, online. ↩︎
Nathan Ruser, ‘Cultural erasure: Tracing the destruction of Uyghur and Islamic spaces in Xinjiang’, ASPI, Canberra, 24 September 2020, online. ↩︎
https://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/18123506/pb51-repression_banner-scaled.jpg15392560nathanhttps://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/10130806/ASPI-Logo.pngnathan2021-10-19 06:00:002025-03-18 12:36:53The architecture of repression
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s The Sydney Dialogue is a world-first summit for emerging, critical and cyber technologies.
The inaugural dialogue will be hosted virtually from Australia and will begin on 17–19 November 2021.
The Sydney Dialogue will have an Indo-Pacific focus and will bring business, government and technology leaders together with the world’s best strategic thinkers, to debate, generate ideas and work towards common understandings of the challenges posed by new technologies.
The program will commence with an opening address from Australian Prime Minister the Hon Scott Morrison MP.
The Prime Minister of India – Narendra Modi – will also be giving a keynote address at the inaugural Sydney Dialogue.
Conversations about technology are currently taking place in silos – for example, on artificial intelligence, the use of surveillance technologies, quantum, space and biotechnology, disinformation and cyber-enabled interference, supply chain resilience and the future of cyberspace. The Sydney Dialogue provides a forum for the world to anticipate and respond to the challenges and opportunities presented by increasingly complex advances in technology.
The dialogue will span both public and private activities, including keynotes, panels, roundtables, podcasts, an annual publication and more. While the dialogue will start in November, the conversation will extend into early 2022 as we continue to launch new events.
Invitations will be issued to select delegates from around the world, with priority given to those in the Indo-Pacific region. This year, most plenary sessions will be broadcast live to the general public, others will be publicly available at a later stage and a small number will be closed-door.
New funding opportunities in the right-wing extremist online ecosystem
What’s the problem?
As mainstream social media companies have increased their scrutiny and moderation of right-wing extremist (RWE) content and groups,1 there’s been a move to alternative online content platforms.2
There’s also growing concern about right-wing extremism in Australia,3 and about how this shift has diversified the mechanisms used to fundraise by RWE entities.4 This phenomenon isn’t well understood in Australia, despite the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) advising in March 2021 that ‘ideological extremism’5 now makes up around 40% of its priority counterterrorism caseload.6
Research by ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre (ICPC) has found that nine Australian Telegram channels7 that share RWE content used at least 22 different funding platforms, including online monetisation tools and cryptocurrencies, to solicit, process and earn funds between 1 January 2021 and 15 July 2021. Due to the opaque nature of many online financial platforms, it’s difficult to obtain a complete picture of online fundraising, so this sample is necessarily limited. However, in this report we aim to provide a preliminary map of the online financial platforms and services that may both support and incentivise an RWE content ecosystem in Australia.
Most funding platforms found in our sample have policies that explicitly prohibit the use of their services for hate speech, but we found that those policies were often unclear and not uniformly enforced. Of course, there’s debate about how to balance civil liberties with the risks posed by online communities that promote RWE ideology (and much of that activity isn’t illegal), but a better understanding of online funding mechanisms is necessary, given the growing concern about the role online propaganda may play in inspiring acts of violence8 as well as the risk that, like other social divisions, such channels and movements could be exploited by adversaries.9
The fundraising facilitated by these platforms not only has the potential to grow the resources of groups and individuals linked to right-wing extremism, but it’s also likely to be a means of building the RWE community both within Australia and with overseas groups and a vector for spreading RWE propaganda through the engagement inherent in fundraising efforts. The funding platforms mirror those used by RWE figures overseas, and funding requests were boosted by foreign actors, continuing Australian RWEs’ history of ‘meaningful international exchange’ with overseas counterparts.10
What’s the solution?
The ways online funding mechanisms can be exploited by individuals and groups promoting RWE ideology in Australia are an emerging problem. Any response must include strong policies and programs to address the drivers of right-wing extremism. However, another strategy that Australian law enforcement, intelligence agencies, policymakers and civil society should explore involves undermining the financial incentives that can help sustain and grow RWE movements.
This response should include examining whether emerging online funding platforms have obligations under Australian laws aimed at countering terrorism financing, as well as enhancing the transparency of platform policies and enforcement actions related to fundraising activity by individuals and groups promoting RWE and other extremist content. The authorities could also explore whether the financial activities of RWE individuals in Australia may in some cases fall under legal prohibitions against the commercial exploitation of a person’s notoriety from criminal offending.
In addition, the Australian Government should create systems to better monitor hate crimes and incidents that can be used to assess linkages of crimes to extremist ideologies and groups, and to track trends to inform the formulation of policy responses related to RWE fundraising. Likewise, more research should be supported to examine the relationships between online content creation and fundraising by RWE influencers, radicalisation, mobilisation to violence, and the potential financial and social influence appeal of online funding and content-production mechanisms when disengaging people from RWE groups and movements.
Defining right-wing extremism
ASIO has said that ‘right-wing extremism is the support for violence to achieve political outcomes relating to ideologies, including but not limited to, white supremacism and Neo-Nazism’.11 That definition points to the central role of violence in defining RWE for law enforcement, but also highlights the role of supporting rather than perpetrating violence. For ASIO, it’s ‘an individual or group’s support for violence’ that triggers the agency’s interest.12
However, international attention is being paid to RWE content and activities that might not fit neatly within existing counterterrorism or violent extremism13 frameworks.14 That work also recognises a ‘post-organisational’ understanding15 of RWE that isn’t limited to membership of defined or static groups.16 This has brought a focus on how threats such as ‘lone wolf’ attacks can emerge from the broad environment of right-wing or other extremism, especially via online ecosystems that can operate as a culture of inspiration for violence.
In this report, we use the term ‘right-wing extremism’ in the following way, as described by Macquarie University’s Department of Security Studies and Criminology in its report on online right-wing extremism in NSW, to denote:
communities and individuals committed to an extreme social, political, or ideological position that is pro-white identity (the ‘in-group’), and actively suspicious of non-white others (the ‘out-group’).
It is characterised by individuals, groups, and ideologies that reject the principles of democracy for all and demand a commitment to dehumanising and/or hostile actions against out-groups.
RWE can be used as an umbrella phrase which incorporates a collection of terms that have been adopted internationally to describe this diverse social movement, including the ‘far-right’, ‘alt-right’, ‘extreme-right’ etc. RWE communities actively misappropriate the language of conservative, right wing political philosophy to reject democratic norms and values.17
This working definition is useful because of the difficulty in scrutinising right-wing extremism in Australia.18 Hate crime is rarely prosecuted here, and individuals who have committed crimes motivated by right-wing extremism may have been charged with other offences.19 Nor do we have any central open registry of ‘crimes motivated by offenders’ bias against race, gender, gender identity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, and ethnicity’ similar to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program that would allow us to better understand the issue and identify potential risks and escalations.20 So far, only one RWE group, the Sonnenkrieg Division, has been designated as a terrorist organisation by the Australian Government.21 And Australia lacks research entities that make hate group designations, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in the US. Our understanding is also complicated by volatile allegiances among people who hold and act on such beliefs and by their geographical dispersal.22
This vacuum in Australia could make right-wing extremism an attractive avenue for foreign adversaries seeking to exploit and exacerbate existing social cleavages, because any governmental response will be sluggish and probably politically fraught, further exacerbating the problem.23 Clearly, there’s also an important debate about how to approach these issues while ensuring that the expression of diverse beliefs and views, including views that other members of Australian society may find distasteful, remains possible.
Given these challenges, we also note other work tracking US RWE fundraising that has relied in part on the SPLC’s hate group designations and draw on those designations in our sample where they occur recognising that they may be imperfect when removed from the US context.24 However, content from US hate groups was shared among the report’s sample, and some channels declared direct affiliations.
The SPLC defines a hate group as:
an organization or collection of individuals that—based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities—has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.25
Those characteristics include race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity. However, the SPLC doesn’t consider the committing of violence to be a prerequisite for being listed as a hate group ‘because a group’s ideology can inspire hate violence even when the group itself does not engage in violent activity’.26 Of course, the SPLC is a private organisation, so its designation of hate groups carries no legal consequence (i.e. prosecution).
There’s evidence that some RWE figures and groups have intentionally toned down their more extreme rhetoric in order to reach a broader audience while avoiding the scrutiny of law enforcement.27 As the Macquarie University’s Department of Security Studies Studies and Criminology report found:
few, if any, groups explicitly and publicly advocate the use of violence against those considered part of the out-group such as Muslims, Jews or immigrants, but rather adopt a longer term opportunistic strategy.28
Likewise, the report of the New Zealand royal commission into the 2019 Christchurch terrorist attack discussed how many individuals and groups that use ‘dehumanising and divisive rhetoric’ against others ‘are careful to avoid direct engagement with, or endorsement of, violence’.29 Nevertheless, it suggested that such rhetoric can serve to normalise Islamophobia or anti-immigrant sentiment in a way that may encourage or legitimise the use of violence.30 ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess has also voiced concern about the internet’s role in this milieu, stating that ‘extremists are security conscious and adapt their security posture to avoid attention. In their online forums and chat rooms, they show that they’re savvy when it comes to operating at the limits of what is legal… The online environment is a force multiplier for extremism; fertile ground for sharing ideology and spreading propaganda’.31
Research methodology
For this analysis, we drew on a dataset of nine Australian Telegram channels that shared RWE content between 1 January 2021 and 15 July 2021. Due to the rapid evolution of online ecosystems, the use of encrypted platforms and the difficulties of tracking financial transactions, especially in cryptocurrencies, this snapshot is necessarily limited. The sample size is small; however, we seek to provide a preliminary survey of the online financial platforms promoted by RWE Telegram channels in Australia before a more comprehensive analysis of the ecosystem.32
The nine channels were chosen by a version of ‘snowball sampling’ (a technique, often used for studying specific groups that are hard to reach, in which research participants are asked to help researchers identify further subjects) adapted for a digital messaging platform built around forwarded messages and link sharing. The first Telegram channel was chosen because it shared RWE content such as posts that glorified Hitler as a martyr and called for a White Australia, and is connected to an individual who has a documented history of connection with Australian RWE groups. The next eight channels were chosen by following forwarded links from other channels (a function of the Telegram platform) to provide a sample (Figure 1).
Figure 1: How the nine Telegram channels were connected by forwarded links between 1 January and 15 July 2021.
Nine Telegram channels were chosen to form the sample based on the following characteristics:
An initial assessment of content (posts, images, videos, website links) shared in the channel revealed its ideological alignment with RWE, as defined above.
or
The channel shared content from or was affiliated with groups designated by the SPLC as hate groups, such as the Proud Boys, and the channel:
was linked to Australia
promoted at least one platform that offers online fundraising
had at least 100 subscribers as a baseline of audience reach.
This report seeks only to provide a preliminary mapping of where the Australian RWE ecosystem fundraises online. It doesn’t claim to be representative of the complete RWE ecosystem in Australia or assess the overall presence of certain ideologies. Nor do we attempt to analyse the scale or legality of RWE fundraising activity in Australia, how much is raised overall or how funds are ultimately used.
In recognition of work identifying the dangers of amplifying RWE and providing ‘breadcrumbs’ for the public into these ecosystems, only figures who are already well known to the public due to criminal charges and convictions highlighted in Australian media are named here.33 As shown in Figure 1, they include Thomas Sewell, whose affiliations with RWE groups have been covered extensively by Australian media and who is facing armed robbery, assault and violent disorder charges as recently as June 2021.34
This report examines the use of online funding platforms used by RWE Telegram channels in our sample but doesn’t analyse their broader uses and audiences. In general, those platforms weren’t intentionally built for RWE content; however, we note where platforms have purposefully taken a more laissez-faire approach to content moderation in stated opposition to more mainstream platforms.
Data collection and analysis included:
exporting the nine Telegram channels associated with our sample
examining channel files for terms including ‘donate’, ‘fund’ and ‘view’ to identify fundraising attempts and related platforms
mapping the funding ecosystem that stemmed from Telegram onto external platforms (Websites, YouTube, BitChute, DLive, Entropy, Odysee, Trovo, SubscribeStar, Patreon, cryptocurrency wallets, Buy Me a Coffee, Ko-fi, GoFundMe and PayPal, Represent)
examining websites related to channels in the sample using tools such as BuiltWith to identify advertising and ecommerce services such as Google AdSense, PayPal, Square and Amazon Associates Program
exporting and analysing Telegram JSON files using R packages tidyverse, lubridate and jsonlite to analyse how links were forwarded between channels.
Mapping the Australian RWE funding landscape
Introduction
We found at least 22 platforms, payment services, online tools and cryptocurrencies being used to solicit, process and earn funds linked to a sample of Telegram channels that shared RWE content in Australia between 1 January and 15 July 2021. Where we’ve been able to identify earnings in our sample, they appear to have been limited. This work establishes only that RWE-related fundraising activity is occurring and that the channels for it have been taken up in the Australian environment.
The sampled platforms include multiple emerging live-streaming websites such as DLive and Entropy, which are central to efforts aimed at building an audience for RWE content as well as the RWE community. Some of the platforms provide a means of soliciting donations or micropayments in cash or cryptocurrency. Fundraising was sometimes promoted via the sale of merchandise as well as on platforms such as Patreon, Buy Me a Coffee, PayPal and SubscribeStar. Others advertised various cryptocurrency wallets.
The range of platforms being used mirrors a recent review of the UK RWE online ecosystem published by Bellingcat.35 Likewise, Institute for Strategic Dialogue analysis in 2020 examined ‘73 US-based groups involved in promoting hatred against individuals on the basis of their gender, sexuality, race, religion or nationality’ and found similar online funding mechanisms.36 While global fundraising for RWE causes isn’t a new phenomenon, it’s arguably becoming a more complex one.37 Australia has domestic laws and is party to international taskforces concerning terrorism financing.38 However, there’s a ‘significant gap’ in knowledge internationally regarding the financial operations of groups that support acts of terrorism inspired by RWE ideology, or that support the broader ecosystem that creates content that could incite violence.39 The UN Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate has written that ‘money is often raised to fund a milieu – which may be accessed by those aspiring to carry out more violent acts – via event fees, merchandizing and donations.’ 40
The relationship between RWE material online, funding and acts of terrorism has been particularly scrutinised following the Christchurch terror attack. While in New Zealand, the Christchurch terrorist reportedly made at least ‘14 donations to RWE, anti-immigration groups and individuals’, 41 but his own attack was apparently self-funded.42 However, the Christchurch report said that it was ‘plausible to conclude’ that his exposure to RWE content online may have contributed to his actions on 15 March 2019.43 His donations formed a part of his engagement with that content. In an interview, professor of computer science at Elon University Megan Squire, who tracks RWE fundraising, described the use of online funding platforms that combine ‘tips’ and RWE live streams as the ‘monetisation of propaganda itself’.44
While RWE groups such as the US-based neo-Confederate group ‘League of the South’ historically solicited ‘dues’ or membership fees from members and sold merchandise,45 among other activities, requests for funds among the sample we examined were sometimes framed around individuals as RWE content creators rather than the activities of RWE groups specifically. This may mirror a social media ‘influencer’ model of patronage in which figures are rewarded for both the entertainment value and perceived credibility of the material they create online. Like wellness ‘influencers’, who use online platforms such as YouTube or Instagram to embody their health approach and build audiences ‘off the appeal of intimacy, authenticity and integrity’,46 RWE content creators may be supported for ostensibly ‘living’ the ideology they propagate.
Of course, the online funding ecosystem could also lead people to make RWE content simply to court money and attention rather than due to ideological commitment. However distinguishing between social harms caused by those who are dedicated to right-wing extremism and those who are simply exploiting a fundraising or profile-raising opportunity is not simple if both make RWE content. This ‘influencer’ model also demonstrates a potential impact of more leaderless or decentralised strategies on fundraising approaches,47 and a ‘borderless’ internet means that new funding strategies are quickly shared and emulated. As Dr Cynthia Miller-Idriss suggested in Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right:
The modern far right is working to build muscular warriors equipped with the physical capacity to fight, along with “alt-right” thinkers with the intellectual capacity to lead and the commercial ecosystems that help market, brand, and financially support these actions. Underpinning all of these activities, though, is the modern far right’s rapid adoption—and creation—of a broad new tech and media ecosystem for communication, dissemination, and mobilization.48
Where they can be identified, the funds raised by our Australian sample via live streams and crowdfunding appear limited in comparison to the significant amounts raised by high-profile individuals in the US who share RWE content. They shouldn’t be dismissed, however, as fundraising can spike alongside high-profile events, as we discuss below.49 Likewise, donating can have an impact on an individual’s ties and symbolic commitment to an organisation or cause. Activists who seek to build movements online sometimes discuss the ‘commitment curve’, in which new members begin by viewing and liking content but can shift to being supposedly more committed to the cause once they begin to donate.50
In addition, fundraising links were forwarded and promoted in more popular RWE British, Canadian and American Telegram public channels, helping to solidify ties between RWE influencers and groups in multiple countries. Similarly, some Australian figures in the sample channels were hosted on overseas podcasts and livestream shows, which offered another opportunity to raise a group’s or individual’s profile and promote fundraising efforts, while others created dedicated content for foreign media channels with links to right-wing extremism.
Funding platforms used by our sample
Table 1: The online platforms, payment processors and cryptocurrencies used by channels in our sample that offer the opportunity to raise funds.
Live streaming and video hosting
DLiveEntropyOdyseeBitChuteTrovoYouTube
Video platforms that allow various forms of monetisation, including tips paid to content makers during a live stream, or donations facilitated on the content maker’s video page or channel.
Subscription platforms
SubscribeStarPatreon
Platforms that allow users to make ongoing contributions to a content maker, or pay for access to exclusive content.
Cryptocurrencies with variable functionality, some of which may attempt to obscure the destination of funds. The publication of wallet addresses in public channels allows anyone to donate.
Micropayments and donations
Buy Me a CoffeeKo‑fi
Online platforms that allow users to make ongoing or one‑off contributions to a content maker or individual.
Crowdfunding
GoFundMe
Websites that allow users to request donations for a specific cause or activity.
Payment gateway
PayPal
An online payment system that allows users to accept tips and donations, as well as a payment gateway on websites.
Ecommerce website
Represent
An ecommerce website that allows users to set up an online store, largely through uploading designs that are then added to T‑shirts and other merchandise.
Ecommerce platform
WooCommerce
An open‑source ecommerce platform built on WordPress that allows users to offer goods or services for sale on their websites.
Ecommerce service
Square
A web solution that helps users set up online retail stores as well as payment processing.
Donation widget
Donorbox
Software that allows users to create donation forms that are embedded on their websites.
Online advertising
Google AdSenseAmazon Associates Program
Online advertising programs that allow website owners to potentially earn revenue by showing ads alongside online content. Amazon Associates Program allows web‑page owners to recommend Amazon products and earn revenue if a purchase occurs, among other customer actions.
Platform analysis
Telegram
The chat app Telegram plays an important role in the online funding ecosystem among our sample, while not itself being a mechanism for raising money. The platform did briefly attempt to set up a cryptocurrency before shutting it down after pushback from the US Securities and Exchange Commission, indicating a potential crossover between fundraising and content creation on the app if such a scheme were to ever go ahead.51
In our sample, Telegram was used by individuals who shared RWE content appeared to act as a central guide and point of communication with followers—potentially because channels in the sample feel their channels are less likely to be removed than on platforms such as YouTube or Facebook, as well as the perception of security offered by encryption and its ‘self-destruct’ function.52 Fundraising links were often shared across the channel’s online presence, creating a network that provided a plethora of funding options (Figure 2). For example, one channel in our sample used the video description section on its YouTube videos to provide a link to its Telegram channel, as well as offering a range of funding mechanisms, including PayPal.
Figure 2: Links to fundraising platforms stemming from one Telegram channel in our sample (some social platforms are omitted).
Within the broader ecosystem, there are also Telegram channels dedicated to acting as ‘guides’ to RWE audio and video content, and particularly live streams on sites such as YouTube and DLive,53 including those in Australia that discuss extremist content (Figure 3). Those channels post times and links to such content with the goal of helping followers find and engage with it. This ostensibly helps channels find more viewers and potentially financial supporters for their content. This ecosystem is particularly facilitated by Telegram’s forwarding function, which allows links from one public channel to be forwarded into another, creating a road map for users to expand the range of channels they follow.
In this way, like a channel using hyperlinks to connect a YouTube profile to a website or Facebook page, it builds ‘large propaganda networks with multiple entry points’.54
Figure 3: The top 20 channel links forwarded into a Telegram channel that appears to act as a guide for largely RWE and conspiracist videos and live streams on DLive, YouTube and other platforms between 1 December 2020 and 15 July 2021.
DLive
DLive.tv is a live stream video platform with an inbuilt ‘rewards’ system and is largely used for gaming content. Viewers can donate ‘lemons’ to content creators (a reward point system that creators can cash out, while DLive takes 20% on all transactions on the platform) and take part in live chat rooms.55 DLive was embraced by a number of extremist figures in the US in 2020, including American RWE figure Nick Fuentes, who earned around US$61,655 on the platform in April–October 2020, according to estimates by Dr Megan Squire.56 The SPLC also found that some extremists used the site to ‘supplement’ offline fundraising efforts.57
The platform came to global attention after several figures streamed on DLive during the 6 January 2021 breach of the US Capitol building.58 While DLive accounts linked to the Australian Telegram channels in our sample don’t appear to be raising similar levels of revenue to US figures, they’re making use of the platform and could expand both usage and income generation. Some have a regular weekly streaming schedule, while others use the website more sporadically.
While the platform appealed to RWE figures due to its lax moderation compared to more mainstream live-streaming sites, DLive has since cracked down on some white supremacist channels following the Capitol Hill storming. In a statement following the riot, DLive said it had ‘suspended 3 accounts, forced offline 5 channels, banned 2 accounts from live streaming and permanently removed over 100 past broadcasts’ … ‘for content that violated its Terms of Service and Community Guidelines on or about January 6th.’ 59 Also in January 2021, DLive announced restrictions on what kind of content could raise money on the platform—including streams under its ‘X-tag’ section for mature audience content.60
However, Australian RWE channels in our sample are still collecting donations on the site and regularly live streaming. For example, one live stream in our sample following the DLive announcement was tagged as being about the video game Fortnite but instead discussed race using terms such as ‘pure blood’ and ‘mongrels’.
Entropy
Entropy is a video platform that allows users to port their streams from other platforms, including YouTube, Twitch and DLive, in what it calls a ‘censorship free environment’.61 That means that, even if their channel is stripped of the ability to run advertising or accept tips on those platforms, they can keep collecting donations on Entropy. On Entropy, viewers can make ‘paid chats’, in which they post a comment or question by donating in multiple currencies, including US and Australian dollars. The site takes 15% from paid interactions.62
YouTube also performs a similar function, allowing users to pay for ‘Super Chats’ that make their chat messages stand out during a live-stream chat session. However, YouTube has cracked down on some RWE figures monetising their channels after outlets such as BuzzFeed News reported on their use of the platform for fundraising.63 One channel in our sample specifically cited YouTube’s demonetisation of his account as a reason why financial support was required. In a statement provided to ASPI on 16 June 2021, Google said: ‘Channels that repeatedly brush up against our hate speech policies will be suspended from the YouTube Partner program, meaning they can’t run ads on their channel or use other monetization features like Super Chat.’64
As an example of how Entropy is used, one Telegram channel in our sample regularly posts links to live stream content on sites such as YouTube and DLive while encouraging users to ask questions via Entropy. Earlier this year, this channel featured Thomas Sewell, who is associated with Australia’s National Socialist Network and the European Australia Movement,65 and who is facing a number of charges, as described earlier in this report.66 During the stream, which also took place on YouTube, the channel claimed that viewers paid between US$3 and US$50 on Entropy to ensure their questions were posed to Sewell.
Odysee
The video platform Odysee was launched at the end of 2020 by chief executive Jeremy Kauffman, who said he wanted to recapture what he saw as the early internet where ‘anyone could speak and anyone could have a voice’.67 It hosts a variety of content, but it does in some cases appear to operate as a backup archive for videos that appear on other sites from which clips expressing extremist rhetoric are more likely to be removed.68
Odysee claims to be built on blockchain technology,69 which potentially makes it more difficult to remove videos. It also offers different ways to monetise content, including earnings per view, tips from viewers and site promotions.70 The company is also introducing live streaming.71 At least four channels in our sample used Odysee, including channels that hosted anti-Semitic videos but it’s unclear if or how much they had earned. Their pages displayed a button that allows viewers to ‘support this content’ either by paying a tip or paying to ‘boost’ the channel (Figure 4).72 Those contributions are in LBRY credits, which is a cryptocurrency currently being scrutinised by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.73
Figure 4: A channel seeking LBRY credits.
BitChute
BitChute is a British video hosting website that hosts a range of content.74 It has been widely used by extremists and figures from conspiracist communities, including QAnon and anti-vaccination activists, largely as a means of backing up videos removed from other sites.75 Some channels in our sample used it to share anti-Semitic material, among other content. BitChute provides integration with a number of third-party payment providers, including SubscribeStar, CoinPayments, Patreon and PayPal (Figure 5).76 In our sample, two of the five channels with BitChute pages had ‘monetised’ it as of 15 July 2021: one with PayPal, and the other with PayPal and Patreon.
Figure 5: BitChute account seeking payments via PayPal.
Trovo
Three channels in our sample promoted live streams on the site, but it’s unclear whether they were able to earn any income from the platform. A video streaming service, Trovo is owned by TLIVE LLC, which is an affiliate of the Chinese technology giant Tencent. Trovo offers various opportunities to earn revenue,77 but it’s unclear whether the channels are monetised on the platform.
PayPal, Patreon and SubscribeStar
A number of channels in our sample offered direct ways to donate: four used PayPal.Me pages that allow people to send money, and two offered Patreon subscriptions. Patreon is a membership platform that allows content creators to offer different subscription levels with varying levels of content and access. One Patreon account belonging to an Australian RWE content creator in the sample offered six support levels, ranging from under $2 per month up to almost $300 per month for exclusive content and ‘follow backs’ on social media. Two channels also used SubscribeStar, which similarly allows users to sign up for various levels of membership offering content and access, for which the site takes a 5% service fee.78
Donorbox
One channel also used Donorbox on its related website. Donorbox allows a user to include a donation embed or widget on their website that prompts visitors to make one-time or monthly donations (Figure 6).
Figure 6: A Donorbox donation widget.
GoFundMe
Another channel attempted to use crowdfunding website GoFundMe to raise money for a project, but didn’t appear to have attracted any donors via the website as of 15 July 2021. The channel also claimed that donations to the program were ‘tax deductible’, but we couldn’t locate the company on the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission register or on state-based community organisation registers.
This is an important mechanism to monitor, however, as RWE groups overseas have obtained charity status. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue’s 2020 report, Bankrolling bigotry: an overview of the online funding strategies of American hate groups, found that 32 (44%) of the 73 hate groups examined had some form of charity tax status in the US.79 ‘This potentially helps legitimise hate groups and provides them with avenues through which to raise money’, the report said.
Buy Me a Coffee and Ko-fi
Channels in our sample used microdonation sites such as Buy Me a Coffee and Ko-fi—platforms that allow content creators to solicit donations and subscriptions by buying ‘coffees’. On Buy Me a Coffee they start at around US$3.39 (A$4.60). One channel, for example, shared several Buy Me a Coffee pages in 2021, ostensibly for Thomas Sewell’s legal fees (see Figure 7 below) for the charges described earlier in this report. It’s unclear, however, whether Sewell was able to withdraw those funds, as his pages have been repeatedly removed by the website. However, a post in the channel said ‘it doesn’t do anything to the money when it gets taken down’. A Buy Me a Coffee spokesperson declined to say why the pages were removed.80
Figure 7: Buy Me a Coffee posts raising funds for Thomas Sewell’s legal fees.
Merchandise
Two channels in our sample offered merchandise associated with their branding and ideology, including clothing and books via linked websites, which were examined using the online tool BuiltWith.
One used the ecommerce widget WooCommerce on its website, as well as payment facilitator PayPal.
The other used the online marketplace Represent, which allows people to customise clothing and offer it for sale on dedicated branded pages, as well as via the website builder and payment processor Square.81 The volume of sales is unclear, but counterterrorism financing expert Jessica Davis has written that ‘propaganda sales are unlikely to generate significant profit for terrorists and extremists, but generate a small source of funds, create loose networks of likeminded individuals and serve to keep propaganda available to potential new recruits.’82
Online advertising
Of the five channels in our sample that directed viewers to associated websites, three of those websites appeared to use Google AdSense (an online advertising program that could allow them to earn revenue when ads are seen or clicked), based on analysis using the BuiltWith website analytics tool. One also used Amazon Advertising and appeared to be part of an Amazon Associates Program, which allows web-page owners to recommend and link to Amazon products and earn money if a sale occurs, among other functions.83 Links from the website to a number of products on Amazon’s webstore included Store ID tags.
Cryptocurrencies
We observed wallet addresses for cryptocurrencies including bitcoin, monero, ethereum, ripple and litecoin promoted in Telegram channels and on associated accounts as a means of soliciting funds.
John Bambeneck, a computer security researcher who has tracked donations to RWE figures in Europe and the US, said in an interview that such figures still mostly use bitcoin ‘because that’s the easiest for people to get their minds around for low dollar donors’. Nevertheless, while money may be accepted in bitcoin, it can be converted to another cryptocurrency and moved to another wallet in an attempt to ‘create a break in traceability’.84
The use of cryptocurrencies can also be seen as part of a distrust of traditional financial institutions by RWE actors, and, in some cases, the developers of these ‘coins’ have explicitly cultivated that perception.85 Monero, in particular, has been embraced by overseas RWE channels due to its emphasis on privacy and lack of traceability. Notorious white supremacist website the Daily Stormer has announced that it accepts only monero donations after having been pushed off other funding platforms.86 While it can’t promise complete anonymity, monero claims to ‘hide the sender, amount, and receiver in the transaction’, making it difficult for third parties to track.87 It does it by mixing the wallet address with others when the coin is transferred.88
In contrast, researchers were previously able to track bitcoin sent to a range of RWE figures in the US.89
In one case, according to a 14 January 2021 Chainalysis report, American RWE figure Nick Fuentes was gifted bitcoin worth around US$250,000 from a donor in December 2020.90 ‘Previously, the most he had ever received in a single month was $2,707 worth of Bitcoin,’ according to the report.
A monero wallet address was also shared on a Telegram channel associated with Thomas Sewell, describing the funds raised as being used for Sewell’s legal fees. Likewise, a channel linked to Sewell’s former associate Blair Cottrell similarly advertised a number of cryptocurrency addresses, described as a means of supporting his content. Cottrell was convicted of ‘inciting hatred, contempt and ridicule of Muslims’ in 2017.91
Despite the increasing difficulty of tracking some types of cryptocurrency transactions, Bambeneck emphasised that there are still relatively few platforms on which money can be turned into cryptocurrency and donated, and vice versa, and that this provides a potential point of scrutiny by authorities where appropriate. ‘They can be sitting on a bunch of monero, but eventually they’re going to want to cash it out, so they’re going to want to use regulated exchanges,’ he said.92
Table 2 shows the highest balances over the 12 months to 15 July 2021 in some of the cryptocurrency wallet addresses shared in our sample.
Figure 8 is a post on Telegram highlighting Thomas Sewell’s donation request in monero.
Table 3 summarises the use of funding platforms by the channels in our sample.
Table 2: Highest balance over the 12 months to 15 July 2021 in some of the cryptocurrency wallet addresses shared in our sample, as per walletexplorer.com and etherscan.io. (Conversion as of 12 August 2021).
Cryptocurrency
Highest balance over past 12 months
Bitcoin
0.11813704 (A$7,280.84)
Bitcoin
0.01294395 (A$797.74)
Litecoin
0
Ethereum
0.120330393 (A$514.83)
Ethereum
0.009916 (A$42.43)
Note: We can’t confirm who controls the wallet, whether funds in the wallet were raised by donation solely or in part, or whether funds were cashed out or transferred to another wallet. Monero and ripple aren’t included.
Figure 8: A post on Telegram highlighting Thomas Sewell’s request seeking donations in monero.
Table 3: Summary of funding platforms in our sample of nine Telegram channels.
Platform
Presence in sample
Bitcoin (BTC)
Two channels
Monero
Two channels
Litecoin (LTC)
One channel
Ripple (XRP)
Two channels
Ethereum (ETH)
Two channels
DLive
Five channels
Entropy
Three channels
Odysee
Four channels
BitChute
Five channels
Trovo
Three channels
Platform policies and demonetisation
All but two of the platforms and services we examined had terms of service for users that explicitly prohibited hate speech or threatening behaviour in some way (Table 4). In general, however, online content and payment platforms grant themselves considerable flexibility when it comes to interpreting and enforcing their own rules and typically operate with limited independent oversight and disclosure.93 Efforts to remove individuals and groups that share RWE content from funding platforms have often been prompted by public pressure on private companies to enforce their existing terms of service. For example, following the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017, which left one woman dead, PayPal was pushed to remove accounts used by figures involved in the event.94 Activist groups have also pressured payment providers such as Mastercard and Visa to remove what they called ‘white supremacist groups’ from their platforms.95 Bringing significant challenges for freedom of expression as well as social risks, the enforcement of terms of service by funding platforms has been described as ‘reactive and arbitrary’.96
Table 4: The policies on hate speech of platforms used by a sample of 9 RWE channels in Australia as of 15 July 2021.
Platform
Policy on hate speech and extremist groups
DLive
DLive prohibits activities and material (including live streams, videos and comments) that: ‘Constitute or encourage hate speech that directly attacks a person or group on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, medical or mental condition, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender, or gender identity’.
Entropy
No policy on website.
Odysee
No specific policy on hate speech, but prohibits using the service to ‘Stalk, intimidate, threaten, or otherwise harass or cause discomfort to other users’ or ‘for any illegal or unauthorized purpose or [to] engage in, encourage, or promote any illegal activity’.
Trovo
Prohibits conduct that would ‘promote or advocate for terrorism or violent extremism’ or ‘is threatening, abusive, libelous, slanderous, fraudulent, defamatory, deceptive, or otherwise offensive or objectionable’.
Buy Me a Coffee
Prohibits content that’s ‘threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, libelous, tortious, obscene, profane, or invasive of another person’s privacy’.
Ko-fi
Prohibits ‘hate speech, intimidation or abuse of any kind targeting any individual, group or institution’.
PayPal
Prohibits use of the service for activities that involve ‘the promotion of hate, violence, racial or other forms of discriminatory intolerance or the financial exploitation of a crime’.
BitChute
Prohibits activities that contain incitement to hatred ‘as defined in section 368E subsection (1) of the UK Communications Act 2003. This applies to any material likely to incite hatred against a group of persons or a member of a group of persons based on any of the grounds referred to in Article 21 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union’ and ‘any act of violence or intimidation carried out with the intention offurthering a religious, political or any other ideological objective’. BitChute maintains and publishes a prohibited entities list that contains entities that BitChute has independentlyidentified and explicitly prohibited on the platform under this guideline.
GoFundMe
Users agree not to use the service for ‘User Content or reflecting behavior that we deem, in our sole discretion, to be an abuse of power or in support of hate, violence, harassment, bullying, discrimination, terrorism, or intolerance of any kind relating to race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, serious disabilities or diseases’.
SubscribeStar
Prohibits use that would ‘harass, abuse, insult, harm, defame, slander, disparage, intimidate, or discriminate based on gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, race, age, national origin, or disability’.
Patreon
Prohibits ‘projects funding hate speech, such as calling for violence, exclusion, or segregation. This includes serious attacks on people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability or serious medical conditions.’
Represent
Prohibits material that is ‘hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable’ or is ‘advocating persecution based on gender, age, race, religion, disability or national origin, containing explicit sexual content or is otherwise inappropriate for Represent production’.
WooCommerce
No policy. A spokesperson told ASPI ‘WooCommerce, just like WordPress, is a free and open‑source software (as opposed to a platform/SAAS) distributed under GPL V2 license which means that anyone is free to use and modify it without any restrictions or supervision from our side. There isn’t a way for us to force any sort of policies on WooCommerce users, or monitor any sort of compliance.’97
Square
Prohibits the upload or provision of content that ‘is false, misleading, unlawful, obscene, indecent, lewd, pornographic, defamatory, libelous, threatening, harassing, hateful, abusive, or inflammatory’.
Donorbox
Prohibits ‘engaging in, encouraging, promoting, or celebrating unlawful violence toward any group based on race, religion, disability, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, or any other immutable characteristic’.
Google AdSense
Prohibits content that ‘incites hatred against, promotes discrimination of, or disparages an individual or group on the basis of their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability,age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or othercharacteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization’.
Amazon Associates Program
Unsuitable sites include those that ‘promote or contain materials or activity that is hateful, harassing, harmful, invasive of another’s privacy, abusive, or discriminatory (including on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, or age)’.
Indeed, the approach of payment platforms to RWE content wasn’t consistent among our sample.98 Buy Me a Coffee fundraisers posted to a Telegram channel associated with Thomas Sewell appeared to be repeatedly suspended, but the company declined to say why.99 However, some of the sites used by our sample that allow donations or tips, such as the live-streaming platform DLive, have announced crackdowns on ‘violent extremists’.100 Nevertheless, we found Australian RWE DLive channels circumventing the platform’s policies, potentially due to their lack of international prominence, limited monitoring or a lack of focus from those platforms on Australia.
The definitional difficulties surrounding the sharing of RWE content, as explored above, may also play a role. The platforms rarely define, at least in publicly available documentation, what they mean by terms such as ‘hate speech’ or how a determination is made. One exception was Patreon, which provided a list of questions it may consider when reviewing an account for a potential hate-speech violation, such as ‘Does the creator glorify a group that is known to support ideologies that would be classified as hate speech under this policy?’101
The history of public pressure leading to RWE deplatforming from funding platforms has arguably fuelled what Cynthia Miller-Idriss has called an ‘entrepreneurial spirit within the far-right’.102 RWE groups and figures in the US and Europe have moved to fundraising platforms with fewer restrictions or those purpose-built for them. The now inactive crowdfunding site Hatreon is one example of this attempt to supplant more mainstream funding sources.103 However the demise of Hatreon (Visa reportedly suspended its processing support for the site) shows how funding platforms remain vulnerable to the decisions of major payment processors.104
Cryptocurrencies offer an increasingly popular alternative that’s seen as less vulnerable to deplatforming, as indicated by their use among our sample.105 Nevertheless, pressure points may emerge where cryptocurrencies are converted into or out of fiat currencies. Coinbase, a popular cryptocurrency exchange, reportedly shut down accounts attempting to make bitcoin transfers to RWE website the Daily Stormer in 2017.106 The company’s user agreement prohibits uses that ‘encourage hate, racial intolerance, or violent acts against others’.107 Reasearch fellow with the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, Dr Eviane Leidig has also proposed that cryptocurrency exchanges like Coinbase and Bittrex become members of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, which is a collection of technology companies that works to counter terrorist and violent extremist activity online.108
International case study
RWE figures in the US have raised significant amounts using crowdfunding tied to high-profile events such as the Million MAGA Marches in late 2020 and the 6 January 2021 Capitol riots. While the US political and media ecosystems are unique, they nevertheless provide an example of the scale of fundraising possible using online platforms. We don’t attempt to assess the legality of that activity in this report.
Various militia groups, as well as the Proud Boys (labelled a hate group by the SPLC109 and designated as a terrorist entity in Canada),110 appear to have raised thousands of dollars on the Christian crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo in December 2020 and January 2021, as revealed by a website data breach. Shared with ASPI ICPC by transparency group Distributed Denial of Secrets,111 the GiveSendGo dataset shows that the site was used to raise at least $172,000 in support of activities with claimed links to Proud Boy chapters in the two-month period, with the stated goal of covering expenses such as costs of travel and materials. As noted by The Guardian, ‘Two separate fundraisers asked patrons to fund protective gear and communications equipment for regional Proud Boys chapters, raising $4,876 and $12,900 respectively’.112 Analysis by the Washington Post found that at least $247,000 was raised on the site for 24 people looking to cover ‘travel, medical or legal expenses connected to “Stop the Steal” events’.113
GiveSendGo was also used to raise at least $164,399 as part of ‘legal defense’ funds as of February 2021, including funds ostensibly for high-profile figures in the Proud Boys, including Enrique Tarrio (at least $113,000, according to the DDoSecrets data and a cached GiveSendGo page)114 and Nick Ochs (two funds appear in his name, amounting to at least $22,899, according to the DDoSecrets data and cached GiveSendGo pages),115 as well as members of militia groups (Figure 9). These are likely to be a conservative estimates, given that we included only individuals and funds in our dataset with alleged links to events leading up to and including the 6 January riot and to the Proud Boys or the militia group Oath Keepers, as verified by cached records of the GiveSendGo website, media reports and other sources. In addition, some fundraisers captured in the DDoSecrets dataset are still accepting funds.
Figure 9: Funds raised on GiveSendGo as of February 2021 that are claimed to be linked to the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, drawn from Distributed Denial of Secrets data.
‘Breadcrumbs’ and ties to the international RWE ecosystem
The online funding mechanisms described in this report also serve as an additional point of connection between the Australian RWE milieu and those who share their views internationally.
Funding techniques and strategies developed in one country or ecosystem are copied and refined, and vice versa. As Tom Keatinge, Florence Keen and Kayla Izenman wrote in 2019:
While there is no international struggle under which these actors currently unite (in contrast to the threat posed by Islamist actors), RWE terrorist and extremist groups are increasingly connected, sharing and emulating best practices, which may include financial methodologies and the transferring of funds.116
Public channels on Telegram, in particular, allow messages to easily be forwarded into other groups – a mechanism that helps build the RWE community domestically and internationally. For example, we observed pleas for support for Thomas Sewell’s legal fund, which the associated Telegram channel said could be provided in the cryptocurrency monero or via Buy Me a Coffee, forwarded into North American RWE Telegram channels—some with more than 50,000 members (Figure 10). Video clips of his alleged confrontation with a security guard, which resulted in an assault charge, were also highly shared across a variety of local and foreign Telegram channels alongside the financial support request.117
Figure 10: Calls for funding created in March 2021 in a Telegram channel associated with Tom Sewell and forwarded into a sample of Australian and overseas RWE and conspiracy theory channels (channel subscriber numbers recorded in July 2021).
We also observed channels in our sample and associated individuals solidifying connections to the international RWE ecosystem by appearing on British, South African and American podcasts and live-stream shows, which were sometimes used to promote fundraising efforts and posted back on their associated Telegram channels (Figure 11). In some cases, such exchanges appear to be formalised: individuals associated with at least two channels in the sample have regular shows and contribute to overseas media channels that sometimes share RWE content, although it isn’t clear what or whether they earn from those relationships financially.
Figure 11: The top 20 Telegram channels forwarded into a Telegram channel that shares content from a North American RWE figure between 1 January and 15 July 2021; a channel associated with Australian Thomas Sewell is among the top 10.
Recommendations
The ways online funding mechanisms can be exploited by individuals and groups sharing RWE material in Australia are an emerging problem. Strong policies and programs to address the drivers of right-wing extremism are important for undermining both the popularity of online extremist content and for disengaging people from RWE movements. However, another strategy that Australian law enforcement, intelligence agencies, policymakers and civil society should explore involves addressing and undermining the financial incentives that can help sustain and grow such movements. This report makes recommendations for government, companies and civil society. These recommendations are grouped into six categories:
1. Reporting obligations for online platforms that allow fundraising
Some financial platforms have obligations under Australia’s Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (AML/CTF Act) if they reach the benchmark of providing a ‘designated service’ with a ‘geographical link’ to Australia, among other requirements.118 While that may be unlikely or complex for some foreign entities that do not have a permanent establishment in Australia, for example, the AML/CTF Act requires a variety of customer identification and verification processes, as well as the reporting of suspicious transactions and record keeping.
Government and regulators should:
consider whether some of the emerging financial platforms discussed in this report have obligations under the AML/CTF Act
consider new processes to ensure that emerging online financial platforms are recording and reporting suspicious transactions, among other obligations, even if the service is not located in Australia.
2. Hate crime monitoring
As this report notes, Australia lacks a central registry of hate crimes and related incidents similar to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Hate Crime Statistics program. Some organisations, such as Islamophobia Register Australia, track incidents. However, data is collected using different criteria, verification and methodologies and isn’t centralised, frustrating an overarching understanding of such crimes.119 As Professor Greg Barton has written, ‘we are flying blind’.120 Such a registry would provide considerable benefit in understanding the prevalence of RWE-motivated incidents and crime in Australia and provide a better framework to understand related financial activity.
The government should work with civil society and other groups to create a unified national hate crime and incidents statistics database.
3. Prohibitions against the commercial exploitation of a person’s notoriety from criminal offending
In Australia, various legal jurisdictions have varying and at times controversial laws aimed at preventing criminals from benefiting from their crimes,121 including in some cases from ‘selling’ their story.122 For example, the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 has provisions that aim to deprive people of ‘literary proceeds derived from the commercial exploitation of their notoriety from having committed offences’.123 Commercial exploitation can be by any means, including visual media.124
Law enforcement should consider whether the online fundraising of RWE figures in Australia who have gained notoriety from criminal activity falls under the Proceeds of Crime Act or similar state provisions.
4. Enhanced transparency reporting
Many of the platforms in our sample have been co-opted by groups and individuals that share RWE content, even if they weren’t built for that purpose. In general, however, few offer governments, researchers, civil society or the public significant transparency about who is using their platforms, how much is being raised or whether funds are successfully ‘cashed out’—all of which necessarily raise privacy considerations, among other civil liberty concerns. Nor do they typically share detailed reports on how many accounts have been closed or removed from their platforms for sharing hate speech or otherwise breaking platform policies. This is also an issue when it comes to ‘false positives’, or when users are inappropriately removed—and especially when there are no meaningful avenues for appeal.
It’s important to note that ‘arbitrary and reactive’ action on the use of such platforms to fund RWE individuals and movements allows private companies considerable latitude over serious social issues, and government and civil society groups must play a role in defining platform regulatory responsibilities, thresholds and safeguards.125 Civil society is already pushing for change in this space.126 In June 2021, for example, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and 21 other digital rights organisations wrote to PayPal and its subsidiary Venmo calling on the companies to ‘ensure due process, transparency, and accountability’ for users.127 To that end, the letter broadly called for the companies to:
Publish regular transparency reports
Provide meaningful notice to users
Offer a timely and meaningful appeal process.
Non-governmental bodies such as the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism are also playing a role in the moderation of extremist content,128 although not without scrutiny concerning the transparency and accountability of their activities.129 Founded in 2017 by Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube, the forum aims to build tools and processes that counter the use of technology platforms by terrorists and violent extremists. Likewise, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is developing a Voluntary Transparency Reporting Framework for Terrorist and Violent Extremist Content Online.130
Government agencies, companies and civil society should:
examine multilateral mechanisms to ensure greater platform transparency and accountability on policy and enforcement
come together with the platforms and services mentioned in this report, where possible, to discuss opportunities for enhanced transparency and accountability regarding the application of those platforms’ terms of services and opportunities for greater clarity and information sharing
examine opportunities to promote a ‘safety by design’ approach that puts user safety and rights at the centre of the design, development and release of online funding products and services.
5. Further research on the relationships between online content creation and fundraising by RWE influencers, radicalisation and mobilisation to violence
More research is needed to better understand how online funding platforms may incentivise or help sustain the growth of RWE entities in Australia, and the symbiotic relationship between the two.
Government agencies and civil society should fund and support work that examines, among other topics:
further themes, tools and narratives of RWE fundraising in Australia
whether law enforcement agencies have sufficient capability and expertise to investigate these online ecosystems, and identify potential training to overcome any gaps
how the RWE funding ecosystem may overlap with other online movements, such as groups that espouse conspiracy theories concerning Covid-19
how the broader online ecosystem (for example, video platforms, chat apps, social media services and hosting services) amplifies, distributes or conducts traffic to the funding platforms mentioned in this report.
6. Countering violent extremism
While more work needs to be done to understand the role of online funding mechanisms in the RWE ecosystem, countering violent extremism early-intervention providers in government agencies and NGOs should be aware that those funding mechanisms could be a factor when they’re working to disengage people from the RWE community.
Government agencies and NGOs that provide countering violent extremism services should investigate whether income from online platforms could be influential or appealing for radicalised or at-risk individuals, and build the ability to identify that potential influence.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Danielle Cave, Dr Jacob Wallis and Albert Zhang for all of their work on this project. Thank you also to all of those who peer reviewed this work and provided valuable feedback, including anonymous reviewers and Dr John Coyne, Michael Shoebridge, Fergus Hanson, Dr Debra Smith, Lydia Khalil, Dr Kaz Ross and Levi West. ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre receives funding from a variety of sources including sponsorship, research and project support from across governments, industry and civil society. No specific funding was received to fund the production of this report.
What is ASPI?
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First published August 2021 ISSN 2209-9689 (online) ISSN 2209-9670 (print)
Cover image produced by Claudia Chinyere Akole
Funding Statement: No specific sponsorship was received to fund production of this report.
As an example, in June 2020, Facebook designated ‘boogaloo’ a ‘violent US-based anti-government network as a dangerous organization’ and banned it from the platform under its under Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, online. ↩︎
Gerrit De Vynck, Ellen Nakashima, ‘RWE groups move online conversations from social media to chat apps—and out of view of law enforcement’, Washington Post, 18 January 2021, online. ↩︎
The 2021 Lowy Institute Poll found that 42% of those surveyed saw ‘right-wing extremism as a critical threat to the vital interests of Australia in the next ten years’, online. ↩︎
Will Carless, ‘Crowdfunding hate: how white supremacists and other extremists raise money from legions of online followers’, USA Today, 4 February 2021, online. ↩︎
In March 2021, ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess announced the organisation’s new preference to categorise violent extremism as ‘religiously motivated’ or ‘ideologically motivated’, rather than as ‘Islamic’ or ‘RWE’, for example—a change that was challenged by some terrorism experts and political figures. ‘Ideological extremism’ includes right-wing extremism. Burgess told The Guardian that he would still say ‘extreme rightwing terror … when it matters and when that is sensibly there’. Daniel Hurst, ‘Australia’s spy chief vows to call out rightwing terrorism when there’s a specific threat’, The Guardian, 20 March 2021, online. ↩︎
Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), Director-General’s annual threat assessment, Australian Government, 17 March 2021, online. ↩︎
Telegram is a messaging application. For more discussion of Telegram, please see the section titled ‘Telegram’ under the ‘Platform analysis’ section on page 10. ↩︎
Report: Royal Commission of Inquiry into the terrorist attack on Christchurch masjidain on 15 March 2019, Part 4, Chapter 7, paragraph 17, New Zealand Royal Commission, 21 December 2020, online. ↩︎
‘Posing as patriots: Graphika exposes an active campaign by suspected Russian actors to covertly target RWE US audiences on alternative platforms’, Graphika, 7 June 2021, online. ↩︎
Kristy Campion, ‘A “lunatic fringe”? The persistence of right wing extremism in Australia’, Perspectives on Terrorism, April 2019, online. ↩︎
https://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/19142059/PB49-BuyingSellingExtremism_banner.jpg4501350nathanhttps://aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/10130806/ASPI-Logo.pngnathan2021-08-19 06:00:002025-03-19 14:27:55Buying and selling extremism
