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What a difference a year can make, so the saying goes. In August 2019, ASPI published Strong and free? The future security of Australia’s north. Since then, Australia has battled bushfires, wild storms and a global pandemic, and the defence strategic update has made fundamental changes to our strategic thinking. Today ASPI launches the North and Australia’s Security program’s latest report, ‘Thinking big!’ Resetting Northern Australia’s national security posture.

The 2019 report argued that more federal government policy attention was needed if northern Australia was to be ready to support future defence operations and contingencies. It also argued that there’s a need to reconceptualise northern Australia—defined as those areas north of 26° south of the equator—as a single, scalable defence and national security ecosystem.

The report called the concept ‘FOB (forward operating base) North’ and outlined in broad brushstrokes the requirements for developing an ecosystem to deliver integrated support to current and future defence and national security operations. The FOB North concept focused on creating a vision of northern Australia and its defence infrastructure being in a state of readiness to support a range of defence contingencies with little warning.

By late 2019, Australia was already key political, military and economic terrain in a new era of major-power competition that spans security, technology, economics and politics.

At the same time, as highlighted by ASPI’s Robert Glasser, climate change has continued to drive increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events and natural disasters domestically and regionally. We’ll need to be prepared, on short notice, to provide disaster response and humanitarian assistance to support our neighbours. At the same time, we need to be ready to evacuate our citizens from across the region, if not the world, in the face of more frequent natural disasters and political turmoil.

Over the past seven months, the Covid-19 pandemic has rocked the world, with effects and implications that reinforce the strategic value of our north. Beyond the successes of our direct pandemic response and the rapid, large economic stimulus that has cushioned people and businesses from the worst of the economic damage, Covid-19 has brought some painful lessons for Australian policymakers.

In addition to its immediate health challenges, the virus’s second-order social, economic and geopolitical impacts have exposed numerous fault lines in Australia’s national security arrangements, across our economy, our infrastructure and the industry that we would need in future crises—health and natural disasters as well as military crises and conflicts.

While the full economic, health, social and geopolitical impacts of the pandemic (and indeed their duration) are yet to be realised, there are already many national resilience and security lessons. Australia’s 30 years of economic growth have led to an almost religious belief in globalisation and good luck—a dangerous combination.

In the meantime, without a socially and economically prosperous northern Australia, there will be insufficient industry and infrastructure support for future defence operations, including regional engagement and power projection.

Alternatively, we can act to ensure that the north contributes to building the more regionally active, more offensively capable ADF that Prime Minister Scott Morrison envisaged when he launched the defence strategic update, and so use our strategic geography to help deter conflict and support regional prosperity and security.

While this latest report focuses primarily on the need to ‘think big’ about nation-building in northern Australia, it also engages with the reality of Covid-19 and the lessons that this pandemic has provided.

Defence’s real and financial commitments to northern Australia are critical to Australia’s broader national security and economic development, and an economically and socially prosperous northern Australia is essential for our national security. The second- and third-order impacts of defence spending serve to inoculate against the social implications of economic recession, reduce the possibility of foreign interference and contribute to social cohesion.

The report makes the case that while defence spending is vital to northern economies and nation-building, it’s focused more on the defence organisation’s more narrowly conceived portfolio of capital investments in bricks and mortar rather than on much-needed broader national security and economic decisions.

Northern Australia needs people, infrastructure and investment. It needs a critical population mass that will allow it to become sustainable and grow further. While defence spending has a place here, it ought not be considered the sole source of national security investment in the north.

Defence can’t, of course, be the sole designer of the kind of nation-building investment that’s needed. While Defence isn’t the only answer, there is room for consideration of how defence spending can assist national security and nation-building. It should be part of a broader strategy, which shouldn’t end up solely promoting sugar hits of economic investment that have little impact on underlying resilience and prosperity.

A paradigm shift in policy thinking on northern Australia is necessary to achieve the kind of national security and resilience we need.

The report argues that there’s a need for the federal government and the Northern Territory, Queensland and West Australian governments to take a more holistic perspective on northern Australia’s critical economic and national security role. The Australian government needs an integrated national and economic security strategy that encourages collaboration and synchronisation with state and territory governments.

For defence officials and diplomats, digital media, and specifically social media, have become an unavoidable aspect of their operations, communications and strategic international engagement. But the use of those media isn’t always understood or appreciated by governments.

Facebook has become crucial. With some notable exceptions (such as China), in many places (like some Southeast Asian countries), Facebook is so popular that it’s often roughly synonymous with the internet. Facebook pages provide opportunities for defence forces to communicate with the public and, at least as importantly, for the public to express their gratitude, admiration and affection for their defence forces. In contrast, diplomatic Facebook pages are targeted at, and receive attention from, foreign publics.

In my new ASPI report, Winning hearts and likes: How foreign affairs and defence agencies use Facebook, I argue that the Australian government should use social media far more strategically to engage international audiences—particularly in the diplomatic and defence portfolios. In order to generate lessons, my report makes comparisons between Australian government pages and their counterparts in the US, the UK, New Zealand and Canada.

While the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Department of Defence both use social media, including accounts managed by diplomatic posts overseas and by units of the Australian Defence Force, both departments can improve how they reach and engage online. More importantly than the content, online engagement is dependent on the strength of the ties between the senders or sharers and the recipients of the content. For both departments, improving those online ties is vital as they seek to influence.

It’s important to note, however, that their use cases and audiences are different. DFAT’s audience is primarily international and varies by geographical location. Defence has a more local audience and focus.

The data shows that things like geography, population size and per capita GDP matter. An important finding of this research, for example, is that for Australian officials Facebook appears to be more useful for public diplomacy in developing countries that are small, young and geographically close to Australia. Also, countries that are closer to one another or more strategically intertwined are more likely to follow embassy and consulate Facebook pages (for Australia, Timor-Leste; for the US, Mexico and Iraq).

Both DFAT and Defence should review outdated digital strategies, cross-promote more content and demonstrate transparency and accountability by articulating and publishing social media policies. Both departments should create more opportunities for training and the sharing of skills and experiences of public diplomacy staff. They should refrain from relying solely on engagement metrics as success measures (that is, as a measure of an individual’s, usually senior staff’s or heads of missions’, level of ability or achievement).

DFAT should remove the direction for all Australian heads of mission overseas to be active on social media. While this presence is indeed useful and boosts the number of global government accounts, if our ambassadors aren’t interested in putting resources into those efforts, the result can be sterile social media accounts that don’t engage and that struggle to connect with publics online. Instead, both departments should encourage those who are interested in and skilled at digital diplomacy to use openness, warmth and personality to engage.

My report also highlights and recognises the value of social media for the defence community— especially as a means of providing information and support for serving personnel and their families—by supporting the use of Facebook for those purposes by all defence units.

Australian security and defence experts now grudgingly acknowledge that the world has never been so uncertain strategically since the end of World War II. What’s not as widely acknowledged is that our major security ally, the United States, has drastically reduced its military capability. In the absolute best case, it will take a decade for the US to regain its military strength. Its ability to come to the rescue of all of its allies, as it could until the end of the Cold War, no longer exists. New regional threats and weak allies—a dramatic change indeed for the Australian defence and security environment.

Australia’s implied national security strategy has been to support allies so that, in some unspecified future crisis, they might support us. That approach is demonstrably inadequate. We must prepare ourselves for the possibility of conflict. In many ways the nation is in denial, but, to its credit, the Coalition government is leading and has embarked on the largest peacetime rearmament program in the nation’s history, worth some $200 billion over the next decade.

But how do we know if that’s too much or too little, and if it will produce a national capability that can deter conflict against Australia by being able to win? As our F-35 joint strike fighters arrive at RAAF Base Williamtown and join other recent military procurements, the biggest need now is for Australia to state its national security strategy, something far wider than just defence.

Defence is not the province of the military alone—it is a whole-of-nation obligation led by the government. Australia must be strong and every nation must know it. What good are 72 magnificent joint strike fighters if we don’t have the required infrastructure, spare parts, liquid fuel, industrial base, contingency plans, political leadership, national resolve and support from the nation?

Last week the ABC ran a story claiming there were significant problems with Australia’s future submarines, a key part of that rearmament program. It suggested, on the basis of leaks from the Department of Defence, that the submarines would likely arrive late and cost more than anticipated. The claims have been emphatically denied by the defence minister.

This particular case illustrates a problem with how parliamentary oversight of defence is handled in Australia. As things currently stand, decisions of national importance are made behind closed doors. The public, and even parliamentarians, must rely on promotional releases or leaked details for information about major programs.

Naturally, there are many good reasons for secrecy. But secrecy doesn’t have to take precedence over accountability and good standards of governance.

Last month, as chair of the defence sub-committee of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, I tabled a report in the Senate titled Contestability and consensus: a bipartisan approach to more effective parliamentary engagement with Defence. Based on the bipartisan judgement that the sub-committee cannot do its job as it is currently structured, the report recommended the establishment of a new statutory committee with an exclusive focus on defence—a joint parliamentary committee on defence.

Based in particular on the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS), the proposed committee would have the ability to review defence planning, strategy development, administration and expenditure on behalf of the parliament after a referral by the minister or the parliament, and would have access to classified information from the Defence Department and other security agencies for reviewing purposes.

This might sound all very bureaucratic and ‘inside the Beltway’, but it is sensible and critically important. The problem is that on the major issues of defence which parliament should have oversight of, the sub-committee is impotent because it cannot receive classified information. And anything worth knowing in defence is classified.

This would be a major reform and would focus defence issues, particularly national security strategy, within the parliament where it should be. The PJCIS as a point of comparison may not be perfect, but it is valued and functional; I am also a member of that committee and I see its benefit. Why is it that intelligence and security are considered more worthy of effective parliamentary oversight than is defence? Those days have passed.

Strategy should be its focus because nothing is more important than strategy. In the absence of a national security strategy, the sub-committee at its last meeting has resolved that, regardless of who is in government, its task during 2019 will be to hold an inquiry into the need for a national security strategy. The sub-committee can do this sub-optimally by using unclassified sources such as think tanks and academia. But imagine how much more effective parliament could be if it could also receive classified information from officials.

With effective oversight, the parliament and the nation would not have to rely on leaked, potentially sensitive, details to the media. Points of contention could be debated while maintaining the appropriate level of secrecy about sensitive programs. And, perhaps most importantly, such a parliamentary committee could assist in bringing the nation to a realisation of the relative importance of defence and security, compared with other demands on the nation’s purse and attention.

A good government that runs the largest rearmament program in Australia’s peacetime history may not see the need for more oversight or for stressing the strategic environment in the run-up to the next election. But those of us who were in the Defence Department in 2007 remember that the last major investment in defence under the Howard government that tried to overcome years of neglect was blown away by an incoming government that placed no importance on defence expenditure compared with pink batts, school halls and increased welfare, and ran down defence to historically low levels. We may have been able to survive that in 2007, but the world has changed dangerously and parliament and governments must carry the people with them.

The need for Australia to have a navy (indeed an integrated defence force) to protect its supply routes, set out so directly in John Saunders’ excellent article, is worth examining as part of a broader discussion about the nation’s changing strategic circumstances.

Australia’s defence has long been based on two basic premises. The first is that we’re a long way from anyone with the capability and intent to do us harm. The second is that we’re closely allied to the world’s predominant global maritime power. Those fundamentals underpin discussions about the growth of China’s military power and global strategic weight, the US response and the implications for Australia’s strategic position.

Both Malcolm Davis and Stephan Frühling have offered compelling analyses of the potential consequences for Australia’s nuclear weapons policy and the US doctrine of extended deterrence. Both contend that China would need bases in the Indonesian archipelago to use ‘overwhelming conventional forces to invade Australia or to otherwise coerce us into submission’ or ‘to threaten Australia, at least in a sustained and substantial way’.

In many possible contingencies, this is a reasonable premise on which to base a defence force. However, as Saunders’ article demonstrates, there are also contingencies in which the traditional ‘fortress Australia’ approach would no longer work. It remains necessary, but is in no way sufficient.

Modern global trading and communications systems mean that Australia has vulnerabilities that are located well north of the archipelago. We need to consider if force could be used against those in a way that could coerce or threaten Australia without the need to directly attack our territory.

Uniquely and easily identifiable Australian interests—particularly shipping and communications—are located far beyond the archipelago to our north. Or they’re accessible via physical supply chains or cyber means from locations well beyond the archipelago. In many cases our neighbours, friends and allies share similar concerns, but in others their worries are quite different or don’t have the same level of importance. The relatively small number of finger‑width submarine cables connecting Australia is one example.

Shipping is another. Ocean passages of the world shows the routes most commercial shipping uses. Port websites such as Yokohama or Melbourne and shipping apps using automatic identification system information provide even more detailed, accurate and near real-time information about our national economic arteries. An aggressor wouldn’t have to come south of the archipelago to target them.

Australia’s commitment to global trade means that disruptions to the trading system have significant effects on us. In some cases we’re very sensitive to even short disruptions. Australia’s dependence on petroleum imports is well known. In 2016–17, Australia had stocks of unleaded, diesel and aviation turbine fuel to meet demand for 23, 17 and 20 days.

Given our dependence on global communications, finance and trade, conventional forces could put enormous pressure on Australia from great distances beyond the archipelago. The effects could be rapid, targeted, scalable and sustained over weeks and months. Such pressure might not engage the interests of other nations sufficiently for Australia to be able to depend on their assistance.

Put simply, we are much closer to the rest of the world (both in a physical sense and in cyberspace), and disruption to our connections would affect us faster and harder than in the past.

Direct assault on a fortress was and is never a first preference. Siege tactics of various types—bypassing, isolating, island-hopping—are preferable. So while we must be prepared to defend the Australian fortress, we must also understand the vulnerabilities that could lead to the fortress submitting without direct assault.

This isn’t to suggest that Australia’s alliance with the United States is diminished in any way. If anything, I believe the contrary. But it does mean that the traditional first premise of Australian defence strategy—that we are a long way away—is no longer true in many circumstances.

This has implications for the way in which we conduct our diplomacy in the region, and in the way that we structure the Australian Defence Force (ADF). The basic approach is emerging—an integrated defence force across sea, land, air, cyber, space and industry. But many of the cultural, doctrinal and familiar approaches will need to evolve if the ADF is to be as effective as necessary.

It might be that our cyber capabilities will need to feature much more prominently. Or that our land forces will need to be far more comfortable operating at and from the sea. Or that our submarines will have to be more closely integrated into other Defence elements to achieve greater effects at the strategic, operational and tactical levels. Or that we need to revisit the discussion about fixed-wing aircraft at sea, perhaps as part of what Richard Menhinick suggests should be a larger, more potent maritime force.

More likely still, we will need to do all of these things and more. We must challenge ourselves to avoid the pre–World War I malaise of Great Britain’s military leaders described by Max Beloff:

But their service training had not inculcated that rare kind of imagination which enables men to plan not just for the exploitation of the existing state of their art but for its future developments also … It was then neither intelligence nor character that failed Britain, but imagination, the ability to see facts afresh without professional blinkers.

In an assessment of military effectiveness, Paul Kennedy concluded that if an organisation—or country—shrinks from encouraging imagination, ‘it is unlikely to maintain its military effectiveness for long, or even to be very effective in the first place’.

There’s been a lot of press in the past few years about the potential impact of quantum technologies. The casual observer exposed to the more breathless sort of reporting could be forgiven for thinking that the widespread adoption of revolutionary new technologies is just around the corner. Since there are plenty of applications of quantum technologies in the defence area, we thought it was worth taking a look at the developmental status of some of the more promising ones in our new ASPI report From little things: quantum technologies and their application to defence.

Before setting out our conclusions, it’s worth noting that any future ‘quantum revolution’ won’t be setting a precedent. Two devices with quantum effects at their heart have already impacted just about every facet of modern life. When the transistor replaced valves in electronic devices, it enabled the development of microcircuitry, now ubiquitous in communication, computing, sensor and navigation systems. There would be no smartphones if electrons couldn’t quantum-mechanically tunnel their way through ‘impassable’ barriers. Similarly, millennials would have to be able to read maps if atomic clocks hadn’t made GPS possible. So, to some extent the quest for new practical quantum technologies is really a search for the next big little thing.

We examined four technology areas that we judged to be the most likely to produce useful devices in the foreseeable future. Perhaps surprisingly, given that it gets the lion’s share of popular exposure, we found that quantum computing was the least likely of them to become a practical reality in the short term. That’s not to say that quantum computing research isn’t important; in our judgement it’s the technology with the biggest potential impact. The speedups that are theoretically possible from quantum computing, if realised in a practical machine, could provide a performance boost equivalent to the past 40 years of developments in computing power and speed. Unlike the hardware, the rhetoric is certainly running at full speed, and terms like ‘quantum supremacy’ have hyped up expectations.

But that’s all based on a big ‘if’. No large-scale reprogrammable quantum computer exists today. There are small-scale ‘proof of concept’ demonstrations, and theoretical work has shown that no law of nature precludes the development of a universal quantum computer. That’s the good news. The bad news is that so far there’s no indication that the laws of nature have conspired to make it easy to build such a device. As an analogue, we’d point to the generation of controllable energy from nuclear fusion. That’s also well understood from a theoretical point of view. No law of nature rules out a fusion reactor, and there have been (fleeting) proof-of-concept demonstrations of net energy generation in laboratories. But, despite a lot of effort and investment, it has proven to be prohibitively difficult to implement as a practical means of energy production. Fusion power has been ‘a few decades away’ for much more than a few decades. Some engineering problems are just really hard. Quantum computing might also be one of those.

Quantum communication seems to be much easier to implement, to the point where practical systems are already in use, including China’s launch of the first quantum communication satellite. We categorise this technology as ‘useful but not game-changing’. The maturation of quantum communication will ensure that secure communication channels will be available in the future, even if classical cryptographic methods become vulnerable to attack—from quantum computers, for example. But there are many cryptographic systems in use today that are secure to all intents and purposes, and some are ‘quantum’ proof. So, in a sense, quantum communication is a ‘conservative’ technology in that it will help preserve existing practices by future-proofing them against technology developments. It’s probably no coincidence that China is leading the push, as it allows it to offset the likely advantage the US has in cryptanalytic techniques.

When quantum radar makes it into the popular press, it’s usually accompanied by headlines declaring the imminent demise of stealth technology. Not everyone is convinced about that, but we found that quantum radars (there are two broad classes) are likely to deliver useful performance boosts against all classes of targets. But, again, there are lots of technical obstacles to be overcome before a practical system can get near the theoretically attainable gains. Even then we wouldn’t predict the end of stealth. After all, being hard to see is always going to be preferable to being easy to see.

We were most impressed by a class of technologies we lump together as quantum sensors. The source of most of the problems of the technologies described is a requirement to keep systems isolated from the wider world to get the best performance. But for some sensors, that tendency to interact with the external world is a positive feature and makes possible quantum devices that are sensitive to tiny changes in magnetic, electric and gravitational fields, allowing them to make precise measurements of those quantities. Along with advances in atomic clocks, which will allow for much more precise positional measurements, we think that a new generation of sensors and navigational devices will improve the performance of almost every significant military system. But our judgement is that it’s improbable that any one technology will deliver a war-winning ‘silver bullet’ effect. And the measure–countermeasure battle will continue apace. For example, a swarm of small drones capable of generating a submarine-like magnetic signature could be deployed to foil sensitive quantum magnetometers forming part of an anti-submarine screen.

Finally, we make some judgements about the strategic impact of these new devices. The bottom line is that nobody has a monopoly on the good ideas or the required expertise, so we think it’s unlikely that any one country will take a big lead and stay there.