On 19 June, Prime Minister Scott Morrison, in concert with Defence Minister Linda Reynolds, announced: ‘Australian organisations are currently being targeted by a sophisticated state-based cyber actor.’ This was occurring ‘across a range of sectors, including all levels of government, industry, political organisations, education, health, essential service providers, and operators of other critical infrastructure’, they said.

Morrison avoided using the word ‘attack’, and in the related advisory the Australian Cyber Security Centre stated that its investigation had ‘identified no intent by the actor to carry out any disruptive or destructive activities within victim environments’.

ASPI International Cyber Policy Centre staff Danielle Cave, Tom Uren and Jocelinn Kang discuss and debate this development.

What was the significance of the government’s briefing?

Tom: Given the sensational nature of the announcement—reported as the nation being under cyberattack—it was a remarkably content-free press conference. It was really designed to send a message to two different audiences.

To all Australians, particularly those involved in decisions regarding cybersecurity, the message was: ‘Cybersecurity is important, we need to improve, and we all need to be wary of capable and determined adversaries.’ Chief information security officers should be using this press conference to push for more resources.

To the nation-state conducting these activities, the message was: ‘Our government is concerned about these activities at the highest levels and we want them to stop.’ Although Morrison carefully avoided naming a culprit, his language was far tighter than in the past and he noted that ‘there aren’t too many state-based actors who have those capabilities’. The government is in no doubt about who’s responsible, and is foreshadowing the possibility of directly naming them.

Danielle: The statement was significant because it was public. That hasn’t always been the case, and it’s an important shift that is long overdue. Cybersecurity threats—particularly those involving nation-states—haven’t always been well articulated to the public.

Some of this has been due to a lack of whole-of-government coordination. We’ve seen an uptick in cyber and technology-related policy activity in Canberra over the past few years, across a range of departments. But the architecture that drives strategy and coordination, and that decides who leads on and announces what, is still settling.

Other times, the lack of public messaging is deliberate, as when governments have tried to balance the complicated mix of cybersecurity, geopolitics and diplomacy. Historically, it’s meant we’re far more comfortable calling out Russia for cyber intrusions occurring far from our shores, while going to great lengths to avoid the ‘C’ word. But it’s China that has long dominated this space in Australia.

And to gain insight into what this threat looks like, the Australian public is currently reliant on snippets provided by former politicians and senior intelligence officials. Such as this passage from former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s autobiography:

[W]hat’s become increasingly apparent over the last decade is the industrial scale, scope and effectiveness of Chinese intelligence gathering and in particular cyberespionage. They do more of it than anyone else, by far, and apply more resources to it than anyone else. They target commercial secrets, especially in technology, even where they have no connection with national security. And, finally, they’re very good at it.

Jo: The announcement was made in response to not a single incident but an increase in malign cyber incidents, across the board. This indicates that there’s a persistent and ongoing campaign targeting Australia.

Our growing reliance on digital communications means that we must all be aware of the threats to the technology and take steps to protect it if we want to continue to use it comfortably and securely. This is a whole-community effort: it includes individuals and businesses, as well as our government agencies, which hold a wealth of personal data on Australians and operate an increasing number of digital services that .

We need only to look at the situation the Covid-19 pandemic has thrown our society into. Even in these times of crisis, there’s an expectation that government services will continue to operate. In fact, especially during a time of crisis, our society looks to the government for support.

Who is responsible and how do we know?

Danielle: Immediately after the government’s press conference, journalists across the country were reporting that China was believed to be behind the activity, citing government sources. In my mind, that’s still an attribution—it’s just an attribution to the media rather than directly to the public.

This type of attribution is far less complicated. It won’t lead to demands to make the full suite of evidence public (which you don’t want to do because it reveals capabilities), and it doesn’t require wrangling allies to take the world stage with you.

The Chinese state is the only ‘sophisticated state actor’ with the combination of skill, capacity and motivation and an extensive track record of conducting widespread malicious cyber activity in Australia. Russia, North Korea and Iran tick some of those boxes, but only some. Importantly, most others lack the motivation—Australia just doesn’t make their shortlist of priorities for intelligence collection and foreign interference.

No one should be surprised to see that analysts and academics—whose job it is to publicly examine such developments—make their own assessments based on these facts.

Tom: There’s an army of analysts in both private industry and government who work to understand the nuts and bolts of a breach or compromise. Over time, analysts collect clues about the people behind the compromises and that mass of information can lead to high-confidence attribution. Government intelligence agencies can use secret methods to achieve perfect attribution, but commercial entities can also achieve very high confidence.

From a geopolitical point of view, it can only be China. Although many countries have cyberespionage capabilities, very few have it at the scale the government described. And only China has an extensive recent history of cyberespionage across all the sectors that the prime minister mentioned, coupled with the motivation to focus on Australia.

Jo: Over the past six months, reporting from cybersecurity companies has associated a Chinese military cyber threat group, Naikon, and a state-sponsored group, APT41, with a lot of cyber campaign activity, including the targeting of Australian entities. Both groups have a history of conducting cyberespionage, and APT41 also conducts cybercrime.

Is attribution a diversion?

Jo: The main message that all Australians—individuals, businesses and government—should take away from the prime minister’s announcement is that Australia faces a persistent cybersecurity threat and the number of incidents is only increasing. All of us need to take immediate action to better protect digital assets and engage in a culture of cybersecurity.

Although discussions of attribution can be a distraction from the information security issue, it’s still an important, although admittedly difficult, political issue. Actions by states in cyberspace should be seen as similar to actions taken in the visible, physical space. If there was a foreign warship making its presence known off Australia’s shores, and the government knew which nation it belonged to, wouldn’t the Australian public also want to know?

Without attribution, how can there be retribution for these actions? Or at least an incentive for the perpetrator to cease.

Danielle: I’m sympathetic to the argument that the key message the public should take away is that we must all invest in lifting our cybersecurity, rather than focus on who did it or why. However, that argument holds less relevance in this case. Why? Because government officials told journalists immediately that China was behind this activity, so if it’s a diversion, it was one of the government’s own making, given it was part of the strategy.

Also, this isn’t just about cybersecurity—and when nation-states are involved, it never is. Some of the activity, for example, described by the prime minister and detailed in media reporting goes far beyond standard intelligence collection and spills over into foreign interference. This activity is about multiple things–including international relations—that force many, both within and outside of government, to work on the why and the who.

What I thought was an interesting diversion was the one created by the Chinese government’s chief propagandist, Lijian Zhao, who claimed ASPI was behind any accusation that China was the source of cyberattacks against Australia. This year, the Chinese government, including Zhao, have increasingly turned to disinformation and fringe media outlets to push propaganda and conspiracy theories, including when attacking journalists, NGOs and research institutes.

Australians are savvy enough to recognise outright propaganda and disinformation when they see it, but few in the media provided this context when reporting Zhao’s accusations related to ASPI. Such public attacks and smears on civil society organisations that report and conduct research on China consistently fail to engage with or rebut the work and research of these groups. But such attacks on civil society will continue to escalate and we will need to get wiser to them.

Tom: From a business sector point of view, understanding whodunnit after the fact is a waste of time. Better to spend the effort fixing security. But understanding the motivations of those who might want to compromise you beforehand is useful in prioritising security effort. From a government point of view, understanding who is conducting particular cyber activity is key. We can’t respond at all if we don’t know who to respond to.

I’m not sure that officially naming China would be productive—a coalition of countries including Australia called out China for widespread hacking of IT service providers (Operation Cloudhopper), but that doesn’t seem to have deterred further operations.

On the other hand, our default strategy of avoiding formally naming China has failed, so it might be worth trying a different approach. Ironically, as our relationship with China deteriorates we’ll have less to lose, so it might make a formal attribution more likely.

There is, however, tremendous value in reasonable voices explaining the reality of the situation. Most cybersecurity practitioners can’t speak about these issues for diplomatic or commercial reasons, so we’ve been in the ridiculous situation where the Australian government knows we’re being hacked, the Chinese government knows we’re being hacked, and it’s only Australian companies and people who are kept in the dark.

To take advantage of the economic opportunities of China, all Australians need to understand the risks so that we avoid being robbed blind. We might have reached some happy place where there’s no formal attribution, but there’s also no doubt about who is responsible.

Should the Australian government do more? What would be the next step?

Danielle: The government needs to be consistent here and it needs a strategy (and the 2020 cybersecurity strategy is due out soon). Australia public cyber attribution has been patchy. It has also been poorly communicated, with information hosted on different government websites and often disappearing as the ministers who were involved in these announcements move on to other portfolios. This could be easily streamlined and rectified.

The prime minister’s press conference should spark the beginning of an ongoing conversation that the government has with the Australian public on the breadth and depth of malicious cyber behaviour that has long occurred in Australia, but too rarely been talked about by our parliamentarians and senior officials. If the government has knowledge about the threats we face, including how certain actors—state and non-state—are targeting critical infrastructure, industry and civil society, they have a duty of care to provide the public with information about what these threats look like, and where they are coming from.

Heads of government departments have a vital role to play here. A lesson to be learned from the government’s August 2018 decision to ban ‘high-risk vendors’ from the 5G network should be this: if you put out a media release on a big policy decision, but fail to follow up and publicly explain the decision, don’t be surprised to find the decision rehashed and reanalysed over and over as the media tries to make sense of what just happened. By saying so little at the time, the government only had itself to blame for keeping the spotlight on a sensitive policy issue for the rest of 2018 and most of 2019.

Here, the government should learn from that and change tack: talk to the public now and explain what’s happening. Senior officials like the director-general of the Australian Signals Directorate and the head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre (also under ASD) are expertly placed to flesh out the government’s 19 June announcement. This also provides them with the opportunity to add further context about the changing nature of the global landscape in which malicious actors are operating. It would add enormous value to hear more from them.

Tom: This event resets expectations around the 2020 cybersecurity strategy and I expect it will be a lot more robust than the 2016 version. Why spend $50 billion-plus on the future submarines if we can’t protect the intellectual property that will underpin the economy we need to afford those subs?

National security agencies can be surprisingly risk-averse organisations and have been historically slow to adopt new technologies outside times of crisis.

Within these agencies, chief information and technology officers may be less effective champions of change, partly because they can be stuck making incremental adjustments within budgetary constraints and focused on the day-to-day demands of keeping existing systems running.

When it comes to cloud computing, this creates a problem. The cloud offers new technological capabilities, although its adoption by the national security community has so far been protracted and fragmented. Ministers and agency heads need to drive the transition to the cloud as a matter of sheer capability advantage for Australia.

Our new ASPI special report, National security agencies and the cloud: An urgent capability issue for Australia, released today, argues for rapid, large-scale investment in secure cloud infrastructure for Australia’s national security community, with the intelligence agencies an early focus. The report seeks to shift perceptions of new technology as capabilities, rather than as business enablers, and calls on agency executives to drive the required change.

In 2014, Australia announced the ‘cloud first’ policy, which evolved into the secure cloud strategy. These were positive first steps, but the policies haven’t sufficiently managed the take-up of and spending on cloud services and infrastructure in the public sector.

Under existing policy, agencies are expected to develop their own cloud strategies and risk assessments. This siloed approach is unlikely to maximise the government’s purchasing power or encourage agency cooperation in an area in which a critical mass of investment is likely to be necessary.

The policy also suggests public clouds as the preferred deployment model, but many global cloud providers are based offshore and public clouds involve organisations’ data and cloud applications being managed for them on providers’ systems alongside those of myriad other customers with which they have no working relationships.

So, when determining what type of cloud system to adopt, decision-makers have to seriously consider issues of data sovereignty, trust, risk and supply-chain resilience with providers. As an example, government research shows that 93% of Australians are concerned about organisations sending their personal information overseas. Reliance on undersea cables connecting to offshore servers may also leave core government services and systems vulnerable to sabotage and disruption unless the risks are assessed and mitigated.

In the world of intelligence and national security, public cloud solutions seem less viable. Agencies should consider a range of alternatives such as hybrid cloud, community cloud or private cloud to maintain the level of control over data and functionality they need. But choices that maximise capability outcomes don’t include a set of separate ‘agency clouds’ without interoperability as a defining design principle to maximise the power of the datasets that the Australian national security community holds.

Regardless of which provider agencies choose, the paradigm shift in computing has occurred. Many businesses and organisations know that the powerful processing, big-data analytics and versatile resource configurations that cloud systems provide are simply essential to their success. They have already shifted from traditional on-premises computing to on-demand cloud services or to private cloud systems that give them more control. The industry is also designing new applications and software that take advantage of the technical power of cloud infrastructure.

If change doesn’t occur rapidly and comprehensively within Australian national security agencies, they will fall behind and be stuck with platforms that vendors only support as legacy activities (think Windows 7). Meanwhile, allies and adversaries will continue to take advantage of the new technology to scale up their operations and analysis and get the capability advantages from cloud systems.

US national security agencies already have at least five years’ lead time over their Australian partner agencies. Decisions in the US now are not about whether to adopt cloud infrastructure and functionality, but how best to orchestrate and manage what has become a reasonably crowded and chaotic multi-cloud environment.

A major investment in secure national cloud capabilities must be made by at least the intelligence organisations, with big defence and other less agile agencies following suit. Our report identifies four obstacles that agencies will need to overcome.

First, they haven’t planned or budgeted for a move like this. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said he has already kicked in to raise the defence budget and is hesitant to increase government spending further.

Second, agencies usually function independently. Cloud infrastructure, however, will be most effective as a joint initiative, at least between the intelligence agencies and defence organisations. This will require massive organisational and cultural shifts to greater collaboration and interdependence. In addition, by leveraging the purchasing power across the national security community, Australia can get the best bang for its buck and share the responsibility for security.

Third, there’s a lack of knowledge and skills in cloud computing in Australia—part of a broader shortage of skills in science, technology, engineering and maths. To be able to operate cloud infrastructure efficiently and effectively in the long term, agencies will need to be able to build and retain expertise in the area.

Last, establishing trust and assessing risk will be key issues. The number of providers that could work with the Australian national security community to build a cloud foundation is relatively limited. This includes global providers, as well as credible Australian cloud providers that have designed their approaches with security and sovereignty in mind.

To succeed, organisational and cultural changes to overcome these obstacles need to be driven by ministers and agency heads. Chief information and technology officers and security staff have important and useful internal roles to keep systems and services running and identify new risks. Security, however, is merely one important factor in the decision-making process. The capability benefits of cloud infrastructure and services that we all understand when looking at the world’s tech giants must weigh heavily in the decision-making.

This shift requires looking beyond current technical security standards and rules to achieve the capability benefit that cloud computing can bring to Australia’s national security.

Not acting wouldn’t avoid risk; it would simply mean that the information advantage that comes from the most capable systems and analytical tools wouldn’t be available to Australian national security agencies—and that’s not the future we need.

The global spread of Covid-19 has highlighted the importance of having a health security strategy that extends way outside of Australia.

The Indo-Pacific Centre for Health Security in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade demonstrates Australia’s commitment to preparedness for health emergencies in the Indo-Pacific. The centre was established in 2017 to build capacity in laboratory surveillance and field-based epidemiology and to drive research that enhances pandemic preparedness and response and supports Australia’s biosecurity priorities.

The centre works closely with national and regional bilateral and multilateral partners to deliver on the International Health Regulations 2005, which lay out the core capacities that all World Health Organization member states are required to have. Progress on meeting the core capacities is assessed through independent joint external evaluations that identify gaps and support states to develop work plans to fill the gaps.

One core capacity that’s consistently evaluated as poor in almost all countries in the Indo-Pacific is the linking of public health and security authorities during a suspected or confirmed biological event. Linking is evidenced by the development and formal acceptance of a memorandum of understanding or other agreement or protocol between a country’s public health and security authorities and by the development of country-specific training curriculums. While a supporting national and international partner is identified for many of the core capacities, the regulations and guidance don’t say who is responsible for resourcing activities related to building capacity in the public security sector and driving formal partnerships between public health and public security.

In response to Covid-19, the Chinese government mobilised its Public Security Bureau to lock down Wuhan and the surrounding Hubei Province for over two months. It’s doubtful that many countries could (or would want to) implement the extreme control measures taken in Wuhan, which have included using the mass surveillance capacity of the Chinese state and strict door-to-door enforcement.

While the Wuhan approach drew praise from the WHO, it didn’t involve public security playing a ‘partnership’ role with public health. Neither do many of the various Covid-19 responses being rolled out across the globe. In fact, we’re seeing the sort of securitisation of health that global health and human rights experts have traditionally rallied against.

As geopolitical dynamics continue to change in the Indo-Pacific region and states’ influence becomes increasingly contested, reshaping and reinvigorating what Australia can offer in our security sector engagement presents a significant opportunity.

While Covid-19 is the virus of the moment, infectious disease outbreaks are common in the Indo-Pacific. From African swine fever in China to measles in the Pacific, it’s clear that the region’s infectious disease surveillance and response capacity is under pressure. Finding ways to build the knowledge and capacity of workers in the frontline security sector would boost disease surveillance, preparedness and response. It would also begin to diversify Australia’s traditional offers to those sectors.

Now is the time to shape how our security sector partners in regional countries engage with their public health sectors. Supporting them to partner in public health will create a safe and apolitical environment in which we can innovate and re-energise our engagement.

We need to bring in new partners at the operational intersection of public health and public security. Conversations spanning organisational boundaries could explore how capabilities can be effectively realigned in times of crisis, without challenging existing organisational power structures. It would also be an opportunity to look at the potential of soft power in the region to provide an alternative to the training offered by China’s Public Security Bureau and make use of the excellent relationships and reach of our defence and policing networks.

Since 2018, the Australian Federal Police has included pandemic preparedness in the curriculum for the regional executive leadership program, which is delivered through the Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Cooperation. The role of police in pandemic preparedness now accounts for 20% of the program. Indo-Pacific law-enforcement leaders who attended the program in 2018 and 2019 have reportedly been heavily involved in shaping police engagement in the Covid-19 response in many countries in the region.

Discussions in Canberra in December 2019 explored the potential for a multiagency security sector platform to enhance pandemic preparedness in the Indo-Pacific by developing the capacity of security sector personnel in a range of countries.

A trial of such an initiative would involve Australian agencies collaborating with regional partners to design, test and evaluate capacity-building opportunities, including training, developing cross-sector policies and protocols, improving baseline knowledge about infectious disease, and using technical platforms developed by Australian scientists and researchers. Personnel from Australia’s defence, police, customs, immigration and border agencies as well as military–civilian entities would identify country-level opportunities. Such an approach would allow lessons to be learned quickly and disseminated at scale. It would also signal our intention to build the core capacities of security sector personnel right across the breadth of an agency.

Australia’s experiences in the recent bushfires and in the Covid-19 crisis have demonstrated how difficult it can be to redeploy agencies in roles that aren’t their traditional core business and to bring agencies together to create a larger capability—but it is critical work. Surely it’s worthwhile to support security sector partners and build their capacity to act as partners in public health and play an instrumental role in protecting it.

Civil societies are in part defined by the interaction between citizens and state security agencies. Focusing a partnering public health lens on the role of the security sector would be a risk-free opportunity to boost our engagement in the Indo-Pacific and help shape the operational cultures of security agencies in the region while reinforcing global health. It would be a win–win for all involved.

The world

One couldn’t be blamed for believing that the end of the world is nigh as the World Health Organization declares a coronavirus pandemic and coverage of the outbreak takes over just about every news outlet around the world. However, this Foreign Policy piece outlines how the risk of panic far exceeds that posed by the virus, highlighting some of the extreme ways people are reacting. And on that note, keep on top of the conspiracy theories surrounding Covid-19 with a Wikipedia page just for misinformation relating to the virus.

The Atlantic Council highlights the benefits of a global system in which everyone collaborates to stop the virus, and the dangers when we don’t. The economic impact of the virus is fairly evident when looking at stock markets around the world. The International Institute for Strategic Studies dives into this, looking at the economic vulnerabilities of China and the world amid the outbreak. And while countries have been dealing with the virus with differing degrees of strictures, how is North Korea reacting to the crisis? A major joint NATO exercise, meanwhile, has been cancelled over fears it would hasten the spread of Covid-19 in Europe.

Some good news has emerged on another disease front, with the Democratic Republic of the Congo declaring on 3 March it had discharged its last Ebola patient. As UN News explains, officials are cautiously optimistic that that will mark the end of this Ebola outbreak. However, the news comes at the same time as the DRC confirmed a Belgian citizen as its first case of coronavirus. In this piece in The Guardian, an Ebola researcher outlines why the social and economic impacts of the coronavirus crisis shouldn’t be ignored.

In light of International Women’s Day last Sunday, here are a few women, peace and security stories from the past two weeks that you may have missed.

A recent Foreign Policy piece highlights the positive growth of female participation in labour and entrepreneurship in Japan after the effects of the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, which happened nine years ago this week. It is heartening to read the growing recognition of women’s needs in these communities, especially in the area of disaster prevention and recovery. The World Economic Forum, meanwhile, released an article which looks at empowering female entrepreneurs in Africa, who in fact form the majority of entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Interpreter ran an article last week which emphasised the need for a feminist Australian foreign policy that recognises gendered perspectives, areas of discrimination, inequalities and the need for inclusion. As the piece explains, such a policy would enable Australia to better meet its strategic goals of promoting gender equality in the Asia–Pacific.

An article in Policy Forum argues that women’s participation in peacekeeping roles creates an extra level of trust in military forces. However, the author emphasises the numerous barriers to women joining and staying in these roles, including cultural and societal disapproval of women in the military, discrimination, harassment and a lack of information. Chatham House highlights the benefits of involving female peacekeepers in conflict zones, from providing positive role models to younger women, to having a less threatening presence which can improve civil society rebuilding.

To end on a good note or two, Good News Network has the story of an American company that is helping to alleviate the world’s plastic problem by going back to the concept of the ‘milkman’. And global carbon emissions from energy production in 2019 fell by the largest amount since at least 1990 with a 2% drop.

Tech geek

Starting in space, in a really thought-provoking article in The Diplomat, Abhijnan Rej discusses China’s large radio telescope, called FAST [‘Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope’]. He considers the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and poses the question, ‘What happens if China makes first contact before the US?’ The article considers the geopolitical implications of such a scenario.

In a world first, two commercial satellites have docked in geosynchronous orbit, 36,000 kilometres out from earth. This proves the concept for on-orbit servicing, which could open up a lucrative new commercial space activity in the 2020s.

As Boeing develops its ‘loyal wingman’ airpower teaming system here in Australia, the US Air Force is planning to integrate a similar platform—the Kratos XQ-58A Valkyrie—with manned platforms like the F-35A and the F-15EX.

Bad news for the US Navy’s goal to achieve a 355-ship fleet by 2030. It’s not going to happen, now that plans to extend the service lives of the Arleigh Burke–class guided-missile destroyers have been cancelled. That means the US Navy is likely to slip further behind China’s navy, which will emerge as the largest navy in the world.

Japan is looking to build its next-generation F-3 fighter as a clean-sheet design, with US assistance, but with Tokyo covering the cost. This replaces earlier plans for a hybrid of the F-22 and F-35.

And if the coronavirus pandemic isn’t bad enough, consider the prospect of solar superstorms. Scientific American has an interesting piece on this particular black swan scenario, looking at the possibilities and how it would affect humanity.

This week in history

This week in 1945, around 100,000 Japanese citizens were killed when the US dropped 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs on Tokyo over three hours. In total, 334 B-29 Superfortresses were used, and the death toll exceeds some estimates of the number of people killed in the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. Here is the story of one man who won’t let the world forget what happened on that day.

Multimedia

What can the 1918 Spanish flu teach us about Covid-19? This episode of the ABC’s Coronacast podcast has the answers. [10:37]

Not to be missed is this episode of the Policy Forum Podcast which focuses on the changes required to get more women into leadership positions. [35:00]

The BBC has published some incredible images this week of locust swarms devastating crops in East Africa and South Asia.

The world

Global defence spending is on the rise, mostly due to the US and China, which both increased their budgets by 6.6% in 2019. The BBC explains the cause of the increase, namely, the challenges to the rules-based order like the demise of some arms-control treaties. Defense News reports European military budgets are being boosted due to widespread doubt about US President Donald Trump’s commitment to the region. This report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies defines the security landscape in Europe that has prompted the increase in defence spending, from the Russian annexation of Crimea to the challenges posed by a rising China. Finally, which nation has the highest defence expenditure per capita? The US? China? Saudi Arabia? Guess again. With annual defence spending of more than US$2,500 per person, Oman takes the crown. See Forbes for more.

This week Eric Campbell reported for the ABC that Germany has been managing the shift from coal to renewable energy without yet losing a single job. Campbell explains this transition has been occurring gradually since 2007, with support from the government and relevant industries. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has visited South Africa and, as the New York Times notes, renewable energy was a point of discussion as the country seeks to follow Germany’s example. However, Germany was criticised by Volkswagen’s chief executive as having a paradoxical approach to the issue in a recent Financial Times article. Herbert Diess says that’s shown by the country’s decision to approve a new coal-fired power plant despite its efforts to phase out coal by 2038. Worth reading is Robert Glasser’s Strategist piece on the cascading effects of climate change in Australia and the need for better disaster-preparedness.

The Guardian this week highlighted the difficult conditions faced by female migrants from South Asia in Gulf countries, where employers of domestic workers have legal control over their freedom of movement and ability to change jobs. Meanwhile, the New York Times outlines the history of one family’s migration to the US after facing various generations of persecution around the world. The article, which is worth reading in its entirety, presents a view that recent changes to US immigration and asylum policies run counter to the American value of freedom.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies argues that the international community should encourage Venezuela to hold a free and fair general election this year on top of its scheduled legislative election. The article highlights five requirements for effective international oversight of such an election. The economic struggles facing Venezuelans are significant, with The Guardian reporting parents are leaving their children to migrate to nearby countries in order to earn enough money to support their families. The Financial Times writes that the situation is adversely affecting neighbouring countries, as Colombia struggles to cope with an influx of more than 1.6 million Venezuelan migrants. The article says that the crisis could become a larger refugee emergency than the one in Syria.

Australia’s future submarines have been the subject of debate this week, with arguments suggesting their planned lead–acid batteries may soon be obsolete and that the project timeline really puts the ‘future’ in future submarines. Former Royal Navy rear admiral Chris Stanford backs the nuclear option, claiming the benefits of a nuclear-powered submarine far outweigh the cons. Defence Connect explores Stanford’s argument, claiming Australia needs to ‘remove the ego’ and be prepared to re-examine some of the decisions made. Naval News reports on the joint statement released by the Defence Department and Naval Group reaffirming their commitment to the French-designed subs.

Tech geek

In an article for Defense One, former Defense Intelligence Agency officer Patrick Collins outlines why the level of US defence spending is still sustainable, reminding readers that Department of Defense spending covers not only the military, but also veterans’ affairs and intelligence. While some of the candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination have called for a decrease in US defence spending, Collins explains why an increase is more likely.

In this War on the Rocks piece, Safi Bahcall argues that investing in new technologies won’t be enough to meet the threat posed by emerging technologies developed by China and Russia. Bahcall says the US needs to separate the adoption and creation of new technologies into two different areas of responsibility. It’s in this context that Bahcall calls for the creation of a unified future warfare command to support the US’s adoption of new technologies.

How do states determine which foreign tech investments will undermine national security? It’s been a hot topic in Australia, but also in the US where, according to Justin Sherman, the answer to this question is still not clear.

This week in history

This week in 1962, John Glenn became the first American astronaut to orbit the earth (and did so three times in five hours). Although he was preceded by Russia’s Yuri Gagarin, Glenn’s accomplishment provided the fuel behind President John F. Kennedy’s call to put an American on the moon by the end of that decade.

Multimedia

This ABC interactive article highlights the enormity of the destruction caused by Australia’s devastating bushfires through infrared and satellite imagery.

Sitting in a different hemisphere makes it difficult to picture what is happening in those regions of China most affected by coronavirus, but The Atlantic brings it to you in this photo series.

Pod Save the World this week discusses the worsening humanitarian crisis in Syria, the impact coronavirus is having on the global economy and much more. [1:29.26]

CSIS’s podcast, Babel, looks at US and China’s cooperation in the Middle East region in part 5 of its ‘China in the Middle East’ series. [20.28]

Events

Canberra, 25 February, 12.30–1.30 pm, Australian National University: ‘A different kind of weapon? Rethinking force, nonviolence, and the protection of civilians in violent conflict’. Register here.

Sydney, 25 February, 6–7.30 pm, Australian Institute of International Affairs: ‘The coming global upheaval over the policy and politics of climate change’. Register here.