Tag Archive for: intelligence reform

Reviewing the intelligence reviews (so far)

With the report of the recent intelligence review by Heather Smith and Richard Maude finally released, critics could look on and wonder: why all the fuss? After all, while the list of recommendations is substantial, the review overall recommends only incremental change. To understand what’s happened here, it helps to reflect on the historical context. This article provides a review of previous intelligence reviews that predated this one and what they mean for today.

Two things to note upfront. First is the incremental and spasmodic shift for intelligence organisations from operating under often secretive prime ministerial executive edicts last century to operating today under formalised and publicly available legislation that can be scrutinised by practitioners, pundits and critics alike.

Second is the expansion in the number of intelligence organisations and the number and consequence of the various oversight mechanisms that have accrued over the years. These mechanisms include a range of parliamentary, executive and independent accountability oversight mechanisms as captured in the below diagram of the NIC Structure and Accountability Arrangements (compiled by the author). The end result is a range of government instrumentalities intended to provide accurate reliable and timely intelligence support to government decision makers coupled with parliamentary, executive and independent accountability mechanisms that are unmatched internationally. But first, let’s review how we got there.

World War II Legacy

The intelligence organisations that emerged following World War II were different from their wartime antecedents. Back then, the combined arrangements working with the United States under General Douglas MacArthur had spawned collaborative agencies in 1942 in which Americans and Australians worked hand in hand. The Central Bureau (for signals intelligence) and the Allied Intelligence Bureau (for espionage, or human intelligence, sabotage and special operations), as well as the Allied Translator and Interpreter Services and Allied Geographical Section are the better known entities. When the Americans left at the end of the war, though, they took with them much of the organisational apparatus, people and equipment behind these organisations.

Source: author.

Early Cold War Arrangements

The Australian remnants of these once combined US-Australian entities were gathered at Victoria Barracks in Melbourne until a post-war plan was formulated. By 1947 a national signals-intelligence agency, the Defence Signals Bureau had emerged; this was the precursor to the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD). Also by 1947 there was an analytical arm, the Joint Intelligence Bureau, precursor to today’s Defence Intelligence Organisation (DIO). By 1949 the wartime domestic security service was seen as unreliable and compromised. It was replaced by prime ministerial edict with the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). By 1952 Alfred Brookes was commissioned to establish a foreign human intelligence collection agency, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS). None of these agencies had any media profile to note.

The Petrov Royal Commission

The defection in 1954 of KGB officer Vladimir Petrov, and his wife, Evdokia, who was the embassy cipher clerk, was a major coup for ASIO and led to national and global headlines that put ASIO in the spotlight. A Royal Commission on Espionage followed which looked at espionage, but not at ASIO or other intelligence organisations. The commission was engulfed in controversy as the Labor Party saw it as a ploy launched by prime minister Robert Menzies on the eve of a federal election. As David Horner writes in his official ASIO history, The Spy Catchers, the truth was less dramatic. Yes, Menzies capitalised on the opportunity, but the defection was genuine. In the end, ASIO was placed under legislation. No one was prosecuted, because much of the corroborating evidence of the so-called nest of spies came from what was then a still highly sensitive source, decrypted Soviet diplomatic messages pointing to Australians supplying secrets to the Soviets. The ASIO Act 1956 followed. This was the first time an Australian intelligence agency was placed under legislation, although it would be some time before ASIO was made accountable to parliament.

The first Hope Royal Commission

Two decades would pass before another royal commission probed into the workings of Australia’s intelligence apparatus. In 1974 prime minister Gough Whitlam commissioned Robert Marsden Hope, a New South Wales judge and civil libertarian, to undertake the Royal Commission on Intelligence and Security (RCIS). Hope reviewed the post war intelligence arrangements and recommended a series of reforms, most implemented by Whitlam’s successor, Malcolm Fraser. This included establishing the Office of National Assessments (ONA) in 1977 as well as pushing through parliament a revised and expanded ASIO Act 1979. A Security Appeals Tribunal was established and later absorbed into the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT), recently rebadged as the Administrative Review Tribunal.

Protective Security Review

Shortly after completing the RCIS, Hope was tasked to undertake a Protective Security Review (PSR) in February 1978. This followed the explosion of a bomb at the Hilton Hotel in downtown Sydney, which coincided with the Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional meeting chaired by Fraser. Hope was not tasked to identify the culprit (the bombing was linked to the Ananda Marga sect), but his review led to closer coordination of intelligence and policing, both at state and federal levels, and the prioritisation of organising to counter acts of terrorism.

Second Hope

In March 1983, newly appointed prime minister Bob Hawke commissioned Hope once again, this time to review progress of the intelligence community (AIC) had made since Whitlam had commissioned him a decade earlier. The Royal Commission on Australia’s Security and Intelligence Agencies (RCASIA) coincided with revelations of KGB shenanigans with former ALP National Secretary David Combe, which led to the expulsion of KGB officer Valery Ivanov. The review was then expanded to also consider a bungled ASIS exercise conducted at the Sheraton Hotel in Melbourne. In the public hearings that followed, Hawke took the stand and defended the efficacy and significance of Australia’s intelligence community. Hope subsequently recommended, and Hawke approved, the creation of an Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS), with enduring powers of a royal commissioner. The IGIS office holder still has these powers.

First Richardson, Holloway and Cook

Hawke’s successor as prime minister, Paul Keating, commissioned Dennis Richardson in 1992 to review ASIO and consider where a peace dividend following the Cold War could be harvested. Mindful of the searing cross-examination Hawke had experienced with the RCASIA a decade earlier, this review was managed behind closed doors and went largely uncontested. But it dealt with weighty issues, including reports of penetration by Soviet spies. It did so by downsizing and clearing out personnel. Also, Sandy Holloway was commissioned to review shortfalls in Australia’s foreign intelligence collection. A former director-general of ONA, Michael Cook, is widely seen as associated with internal security reviews as well. He would have been pleased with Richardson’s work.

Samuels and Codd

By the mid-1990s reports were emerging of further inappropriate behaviour in ASIS. Justice Gordon Samuels and Michael Codd were commissioned to review the matter and make recommendations. Their mid-1995 report proposed that ASIS come under legislation (as ASIO had in 1956 and again in 1979). This led to a drawn-out process as parliamentarians debated over how to respond. Reports in 1999 of a surveillance network run by the Five Eyes partners, Echelon, accelerated the momentum for reform not just for ASIS. Eventually ASIO, ASIS and the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD, later ASD) came under what would become the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS).

By the end of September, parliament passed the Intelligence Services Act of 2001. This saw ASIS and DSD come under legislation for the first time. In addition, the powers of the IGIS would come to cover all six agencies of the intelligence community. These were ASIO, ASIS, DSD, DIO, ONA and the nascent Defence Intelligence and Geospatial Organisation (DIGO), which later became the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation (AGO).

Flood

Following the East Timor crisis of 1999, the first Bali bombing in 2002, and a scandal revolving around the unfounded claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in 2003, the former ONA director Philip Flood was appointed to conduct a fresh review in 2004. His Report on the Inquiry into Australia’s Intelligence Agencies identified weaknesses in the analytical reporting process and reinforced the need for separation of intelligence analysis from policy formulation. He also called for a bolstering of resources and a reinforcing of ONA’s central role of AIC coordination.

Cornall and Black

In line with a recommendation by Flood for periodic intelligence reviews, Robert Cornall and Rufus Black were appointed to conduct an Independent Review of the Intelligence Community (IRIC) in 2011. In addition to commissioning the IRIC that year, prime minister Kevin Rudd established the National Security College (NSC) at the Australian National University (ANU) and appointed an Independent National Security Legislation Monitor (INSLM).

AustraliaUnited StatesCanadaBritainFranceIndonesia
Overarching Inspector-General/Commissioner✓✓✓
Agency-specific Inspector-Generals✓
Ministerial oversight✓✓✓✓
Parliamentary oversight✓✓✓✓✓
Executive oversight✓✓✓✓✓✓
Independent reviews or bodies✓✓

Oversight and accountability mechanisms of Australia, compared with allies and partners. Source: author.

L’Estrange & Merchant

In 2017, a former secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and first NSC director, Michael L’Estrange, along with a former Defence deputy secretary of intelligence and security, Stephen Merchant, were commissioned to undertake the next periodic review, the 2017 Independent Intelligence Review (IIR), aided by Sir Iain Lobban from Britain. Their review identified the expansion of the Australian intelligence community with the emergence of intelligence functions within the Australian Transactions Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, the intelligence arm of the Australia Federal Police (AFP) and the intelligence function within the then Department of Immigration and Border Protection (now Home Affairs). This called for the renaming of ONA as the Office of National Intelligence (ONI), headed by a director-general of national intelligence (DGNI) with more resources and a remit to more closely coordinate and manage this expanded National Intelligence Community (NIC).

The L’Estrange Merchant report was written separately from the plan to establish a more expansive Home Affairs portfolio that would, in addition to ASIO, encompass the four latecomers to the NIC: AUSTRAC, ACIC, AFP Intel and Home Affairs Intel. This construct would in part be reversed under Prime Minister Antony Albanese, who returned ASIO, AUSTRAC, ACIC and AFP to the Attorney-General’s portfolio.

Second Richardson

After having overseen the culling and later rebuilding of ASIO, Dennis Richardson was called back to review the growing body of intelligence legislation, mindful that the Home Affairs arrangements had been announced at the same time as the 2017 IIR report was released. With a wealth of historical insights into the functions performed, in a lengthy report Richardson and his team outlined where significant streamlining of legislation would be useful.

And now Maude and Smith

With all of this before them, Smith and Maude, no doubt, would have realised that in conducting their Independent Intelligence Review, they were following a well-worn path of review and reform that’s been summarised here. The incremental and periodic reforms undertaken over more than half a century have seen Australia bequeathed an intelligence apparatus of state with high levels of accountability.

In the espionage business the secret of success is often enough in keeping one’s successes secret, there are always limits in how transparent these agencies can be. Mindful of this, successive reviewers and governments have recognised the need to bolster accountability mechanisms, including parliamentary, executive and independent ones as well as periodic reports to parliament and the Australian people. In an age of heightened foreign interference, misinformation and disinformation, the importance of these oversight mechanisms is more important than ever.

Intelligence review is strong on workforce issues. Implementation may be harder

The 2024 Independent Intelligence Review offers a mature and sophisticated understanding of workforce challenges facing Australia’s National Intelligence Community (NIC). It provides a thoughtful roadmap for modernising that workforce and enhancing cross-agency and cross-sector collaboration.

But overcoming entrenched barriers—such as institutional resistance, rapid action alongside careful implementation, and investing in change while delivering core responsibilities—will require careful planning, strong leadership and a phased approach to ensure sustainable change.

The 2024 review builds on previous reviews, addressing persistent workforce issues in the NIC. These include security clearance process inefficiencies, inadequate resourcing, difficulties in attracting and retaining specialised skills, a need for greater workforce diversity, and leadership development and agency mobility.

The report acknowledges progress made since the 2017 review, including establishment of the Office of National Intelligence (ONI) and introduction of the Top Secret–Privileged Access (TSPA) Vetting Authority. It notes that recruitment and retention strategies have evolved, highlighting some agencies’ innovative approaches.

The latest review addresses the rapidly evolving workforce landscape and mounting pressures on intelligence agencies in increasingly competitive environments—both geopolitical and the labour market. It considers emerging dynamics such as the expectations of younger generations, increasing demand for remote and flexible work arrangements, disparate allowance structures and constrained intra-community mobility.

The review argues for a more sophisticated approach to workforce data collection and bolstering the collective elements of workforce management, such as by developing a NIC-wide employee value proposition, adopting talent management and mobility programs, and introducing a NIC chief people officer role.

Overall, the 2024 review continues to push the thinking about Australia’s intelligence workforce. People and skills are presented not as individual agency concerns, but as an enterprise-wide challenge requiring improved collective action and a stronger focus on modern workforce expectations.

But translating the review’s recommendations into concrete changes is easier said than done. The review itself notes differences across the NIC in work practices, allowance structures, security requirements and workforce data reporting. Alongside a reluctance to commit to workforce mobility, these findings hint at the potential for deeper resistance to centralised action by agencies accustomed to managing their own staffing functions.

Underlying constraints may mean some NIC agencies are not on board with taking a collective approach to building the skills and commitment needed to keep pace with shifting national security threats.

The first constraint is institutional resistance to centralisation. Until the establishment of ONI in 2018, NIC agencies had operated independently in almost all functions. Staffing and workforce planning were no exception. Those accustomed to control over their own processes may resist centralisation—for example, recommendations of a new NIC chief people officer, continued use of a single TSPA clearance and a NIC-wide employee value proposition.

To overcome this, the benefits of centralisation should be emphasised as a complement to agencies’ own efforts. These include enhanced efficiency, consistency, shared purpose, and the ability to meet workforce shortages through collective strength instead of individual action. The proposed chief people officer will need to be a facilitator, not an enforcer, driving alignment while respecting individual agency needs.

The second constraint is the balance between speedy action and rigorous security and procedural practices. The challenge lies in ensuring that necessary processes, such as security clearances and formalising shared programs, do not become bottlenecks that slow down the implementation of key initiatives.

The key to balancing speed with rigor is agile execution. This means having an effective implementation plan where smaller scale initiatives are implemented quickly and adapted iteratively, within the security and process parameters of the day. The NIC should focus on quick wins that demonstrate progress while laying the groundwork for longer-term changes.

Finally, there is the challenge of committing time and funding to achieving collective action on workforce issues, which are already stretched by core responsibilities. Intelligence agencies today address a wider range of security challenges and threats than ever before. Without committed resources, the move towards greater centralisation and optimisation of workforce processes risks detracting from core duties or lacking follow-through.

The government’s allocation of $44.6 million over four years to ONI is a good, but initial, start on implementing the many recommendations, which range from intelligence support for ministers and leveraging collective capabilities to legislative reform and oversight, alongside workforce management.

Australian intelligence work is more important than ever, as we face evolving global security threats highlighted in the review’s focus on conflict preparedness. Successfully implementing the review’s recommendations will not be a quick or simple process. It will require substantial investments of time, resources and goodwill from across the NIC and external partners.

The success of these reforms will ultimately depend on the NIC’s ability to embrace flexibility, innovation and collaboration. And to commit to a community that exists in more than name only.

We can do better with OSINT. It needs structured training and careers

Before the end of World War II, intelligence was an informal craft with a barely structured career path. Talented individuals were recruited from the military or elite schools, honed skills on the job, and if they excelled, rose through the ranks. Over time, disciplines such as signals intelligence and geospatial intelligence evolved, adopting structured training, career pathways and institutional frameworks.

Open-source intelligence (OSINT) work, however, remains in its early days—unstructured and thus undervalued. It needs standardised training, career paths and perhaps even a government-led centre of excellence if it is to be properly valued.

Professionalising OSINT would improve practitioner skills, elevate its credibility and encourage agencies to take it more seriously. However, care must be taken not to lose the diversity and creativity that are among the great strengths of this form of intelligence.

Historically, intelligence careers were loosely defined, with entry points through the military or elite institutions. Even talented journalists and writers often flowed in and out of intelligence work.

Today, intelligence is a recognised profession with structured pathways. Universities offer undergraduate and postgraduate programs in security studies and intelligence analysis. Agencies such as the Australian Signals Directorate and the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation (AGO) provide rigorous training programs for graduates, ensuring consistency and quality.

Graduate analysts at AGO undergo foundational training covering topics such as topography, sensor systems, imagery analysis and critical thinking. This is followed by on-the-job mentorship, ensuring practical application of knowledge. Military pathways, such as the Royal Australian Air Force’s Air Intelligence Analyst program, mirror this structure, blending formal education with field experience.

This systematic approach ensures that intelligence practitioners meet high standards.

In contrast, OSINT lacks this structure. Many practitioners are self-taught, or they transition from other intelligence fields, adapting skills to OSINT’s unique demands. While commercial organisations—such as Janes, SANS Institute and OSINT Combine—offer valuable courses, these remain standalone efforts without an integrated career pathway.

Recent events have demonstrated OSINT’s value. During the Covid-19 pandemic, when classified systems were less physically accessible, analysts could use OSINT to help meet intelligence requirements working remotely.

During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, OSINT, such as commercial satellite imagery, provided troop movements and real-time intelligence that shaped global understanding of the conflict. And volunteer efforts, such as Stanford students uncovering atrocities using geolocation tools, showed OSINT’s ability to deliver actionable insights at speed.

Washington also publicly released a blend of declassified and OSINT reports on false-flag attacks the Kremlin would use to justify the invasion.

Despite these successes, OSINT is often dismissed as just Googling. It lacks the credibility of disciplines reliant on classified sources or costly sensors, leaving it seen as outside the secret club.  Critics such as Joseph Hatfield argue it overlaps with other fields and lacks a clear framework, making it seem like a junk drawer for miscellaneous information. While these criticisms have merit, they risk undervaluing OSINT’s operational strengths.

A centralised OSINT agency or centre of excellence could standardise tradecraft, developing specialised tools and creating a formal career pathway. However, this approach would require significant investment and coordination.

While some agencies are developing internal OSINT capabilities, the absence of standardisation means these programs provide no recognised qualifications. Without formal accreditation, these internal training programs function similarly to the commercial courses, rather than as part of a structured intelligence career pathway.

Training should cover core skills such as data scraping, navigating hidden information, overcoming targets’ denial and deception efforts, verifying open-source data and integrating OSINT into broader analytical processes.

Expanding in-house OSINT programs would allow practitioners to develop expertise while maintaining flexibility in their roles. This flexibility is particularly important because OSINT operates across various domains, including cyber threat intelligence, counterterrorism, corporate security and law enforcement. By providing structured training within agencies, OSINT analysts could specialise in areas relevant to their operational needs while ensuring a consistent standard of tradecraft.

Additionally, employing OSINT analysts in unclassified roles would allow agencies to make productive use of personnel while they undergo the often lengthy security vetting process. This would help address workforce shortages and ensure a steady pipeline of trained analysts ready to transition into higher-security roles when required.

One of OSINT’s greatest strengths is diversity. Practitioners from varied backgrounds bring unique perspectives, creativity and unconventional problem-solving to their work. Journalists, technologists and citizen-sleuths, such as those at Bellingcat, have proven OSINT’s value—for example by uncovering Russian war crimes or hidden missile silos in China. Standardisation must not stifle this diversity. Training should encourage innovation while ensuring consistency and quality.

OSINT delivers near-instantaneous situational awareness, unlike signals or geospatial intelligence, which sometimes involve lengthy tasking cycles. However, its speed comes with challenges, such as filtering disinformation and verifying data. By professionalising OSINT, agencies can better harness its potential while addressing these problems.

Ultimately, professionalisation would improve OSINT’s credibility and outputs while fostering a cultural shift to recognise it as an equal partner in the intelligence community. By retaining diversity and creativity alongside robust frameworks, OSINT can evolve into a respected, indispensable discipline.

Drifting into danger: will we ever see the independent intelligence review?

The road to hell is apparently paved with good intentions. But often, it’s tarmac laid with thoughtlessness and passivity.

Two years ago the Albanese government described Australia’s immigration policy as broken, owing to unplanned, temporary migration flows since 2005. It claimed this ‘happened without any real policy debate or discussion. It happened not through thoughtful planning and strategy, but by negligence and continental drift.’

Today, a similar drift threatens to break a model of intelligence review, strategic direction and public engagement that has served Australia well for more than two decades.

It’s been more than 210 days since the 2024 independent intelligence review report was given to the prime minister. As noted in The Strategist back on the first anniversary of the review’s commencement (and two and a half months after the review was completed):

The Albanese government did well by instituting this latest review … but the job isn’t finished until the report and recommendations are made public. Then the hard work of implementation and accountability begins.

Back in August 2024 the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet confirmed the report’s receipt before its 30 June 2024 deadline. There’s no public indication of anything abnormal or deficient about the report or its findings—hardly surprising given the eminence of the authors, Heather Smith and Richard Maude. There’s also no hint of a great clash of competing visions or principles to guide our National Intelligence Community (NIC), or of a fundamental intelligence failure requiring remedying, not least given the transformative investments in and fundamental restructuring of the NIC following the last review in 2017.

This only exacerbates frustration with the government’s failure to respond to the review and release a public version of the report. There are two possible explanations. Either it’s timidity or they’re unable to exercise sufficient direction to end this damaging delay.

It bears repeating that the world has not stood still since June 2024—and certainly not since the last inputs into the review, which date to late 2023. Since September 2024 alone we’ve seen civil and military unrest across the globe, including the most audacious intelligence operation in recent history—Mossad’s supply chain attack on Hezbollah—as well as the eruption of antisemitic violence in Australia and the change of administration in Washington.

One interpretation is that for seven months the NIC has been beavering away implementing the classified report. But even this ignores the importance of the public report, including to the NIC itself.

The benefits of public intelligence review reports were outlined in a Strategist article last year.

In short, they enable intelligence reform and transformation, given the NIC’s reliance on the public for workforce recruitment, technology and industry partnerships and social licence. Public reports also help hold government accountable for the implementation of recommendations.

Also, an unclassified version of an otherwise very sensitive and restricted top-secret document is the best way of engaging not just the public but all the NIC’s staff, and officials across the broader bureaucracy.

While Australian voters will make their call at the ballot box later this year, we suspect few votes will turn on this issue alone.  But there is now a much, much bigger problem, which doesn’t just affect the value and future utility of this particular review.

The implication that the Smith-Maude review may never see the light of day places us all on the precipice of a government, albeit without malice aforethought, breaking the system of public intelligence review that has existed in Australia for over 20 years.

Before the 2004 inquiry by diplomat Philip Flood, Australian governments’ understandable but unsustainable historical refusal to engage publicly on intelligence resulted in a series of crisis-response, judicially led inquiries: two Royal Commissions, led by Justice Robert Hope in 1974–77 and 1983–84, and the Samuels-Codd Commission of Inquiry in 1994–95.

Other reviews were also carried out entirely behind closed doors, such as the post-Cold War Richardson and Hollway reviews (both 1992), and the Cook 1994 counter-intelligence inquiry.

It was Flood who gave Australia the significant benefits of intelligence review through scheduled check-ups focussed on the future, and an effective balance between secrecy and openness. Since then, we have had the 2010–11 Cornell-Black review, the 2016–17 L’Estrange-Merchant review and now the Smith-Maude review, as well as the Richardson review of the NIC’s legal framework.

This is an invaluable, internationally unique, bipartisan system that would be sorely missed.

In the 1970s and 1980s, complete nonsense filled an intelligence community-shaped information hole in Australian public life—and that was in a more regimented media ecosystem.

Without the substantive public engagement built into the independent intelligence review system, what’s going to happen in tomorrow’s misinformation hellscape?

Oz intelligence review: challenges and threats

The new normal of international affairs has lots of abnormalities. Not least is the way the norms of the system of states are being tested and stretched and pushed and punished.

Along with all the noise, the biggest of shifts just keeps on keeping on. See the trajectory forecast five years ago by all of America’s intelligence agencies, sitting as the US National Intelligence Council, in their Global Trends report:

In a tectonic shift, by 2030, Asia will have surpassed North America and Europe combined in terms of global power, based upon GDP, population size, military spending, and technological investment. China alone will probably have the largest economy, surpassing that of the United States a few years before 2030.

The US will still be the number 1 world power. Yet it’s about to become the number 2 economic power. That is a power paradox to ponder. And it’s one of the paradoxes expressed in the title for the new US Global Trends report, The paradox of progress, issued as Donald Trump was sworn in.

The next five years will see rising tensions within and between countries. Global growth will slow, just as increasingly complex global challenges impend. An ever-widening range of states, organizations, and empowered individuals will shape geopolitics. For better and worse, the emerging global landscape is drawing to a close an era of American dominance following the Cold War. So, too, perhaps is the rules-based international order that emerged after World War II. It will be much harder to cooperate internationally and govern in ways publics expect.

China became the biggest economy in the world in 2014 (measured by purchasing power parity). And about 10 years from now, China will reconfirm its place atop the world economic table, based on exchange rates. That means America and China and the rest of us still have a further 10 years to get used to the megatrend that has already happened. Trend moments get no bigger. We’ve been living with this for a while, so it has lost some of its surprise element. But not its sense of danger.

In the 20th century, Europe’s wars were world wars. In the 21st century, world wars will come—if they come—from Asia. For Asia, power has arrived. In the world of states, that shift is profound. Paradox, indeed. That’s why the modern Metternich, Henry Kissinger, was moved to pen the book World order, arguing that the ultimate problem of our day is ‘the crisis in the concept of world order’. And, says Dr K, the ultimate challenge for statesmanship is ‘a reconstruction of the international system’.

As Kissinger commented in August, ‘the United States and China will become the world’s two most consequential countries both economically and geopolitically, obliged to undertake unprecedented adaptations in their traditional thinking’.

Just stroll around that last thought: the two biggest beasts on the planet will have to make ‘unprecedented adaptations in their traditional thinking’. And the tradition in both countries, as Dr K notes, is to ‘think of themselves as exceptional, albeit in fundamentally different ways’. Tough for exceptional countries to alter their fundamental thought processes, much less cope with a geopolitical equal that also thinks itself unique.

The tectonic stuff in the world of states is matched by the shifts in the other realms of peoples and technologies. That inelegant phrase ‘non-state actors’ only hints at all the acting up these non-state players are conjuring. The modern age of terror arrived with the first decade of this century. The age of cyber drives this second decade.

Australia finds itself ‘wedged between the limits of sovereignty and the constraints of multilateralism’. That phrase is from Michael L’Estrange, in the second of the ASPI interviews on the 2017 Independent Intelligence Review.

The L’Estrange–Merchant review spends its first chapter surveying Australia’s national security environment. It’s a six-page sprint through the abnormalities of this new international normal, arguing that Australia’s security interests have become ‘more complex, less predictable and more volatile’ because of:

  • changes in the balance of wealth and power in the international system
  • new dimensions of the interaction between economic globalisation and geopolitical power politics, particularly in the Indo-Pacific
  • the asymmetrical influence of non-state actors, including extremists
  • technological advances.

The review groups those forces around three key focal points:

  1. Fundamental changes in the international system: ‘The trend in the global balance of wealth and power is favouring China and India. The Western ascendancy in international institutions and values that characterised the second half of the twentieth century, and the early years of the twenty-first century, is eroding.’ Power politics remains important. Rivalry and competition between states ‘will become more accentuated over coming years’.
  2. Extremism with global reach: Globalisation accelerates the movement of people, goods, money and ideas; the dark side of those positive trends is ‘the illegal and destabilising transfer of goods, money, weapons and people. This has broadened the potential for extremism, sectarian fundamentalism, radicalisation and terrorism to take root and have their destructive impact.’
  3. The security consequences of accelerating technological change: Disruptive technological innovation places ‘enormously destructive capabilities within easier reach of rogue states and non-state actors. This trend is not reversible and it will lead to an even more threatening international environment than now exists.’

Here’s the APSI interview with Michael L’Estrange on challenges and threats.

The 2017 review of intelligence: keeping watch

In previous posts I looked at the major structural reforms recommended in the recent intelligence review and at the legislative changes that will be required to implement them. Today I look at the oversight of the Australian intelligence community. As usual, I’ll recommend that readers refer to the review (PDF) for more detail (chapter 7 pertains).

Australia’s robust oversight mechanisms owe their existence to the two Hope Royal Commissions on intelligence and security in 1974 and 1983. As Peter Edwards pointed out in The Strategist recently, Hope really knew his stuff, and the layered ministerial, legislative, parliamentary and statutory oversight mechanisms for the nation’s intelligence agencies have rendered sterling service to Australians. The 2017 review agrees, observing that the current framework constitutes ‘a well-structured set of arrangements that provide independent assurance about the legality and propriety of intelligence operations and the management of resources’.

That doesn’t mean that the reviewers are content with the status quo. While leaving all of the major building blocks in place, they make two major recommendations for change to the current arrangements. First, recognising the importance of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) role—effectively a standing royal commission—they suggest broadening it and increasing the staffing of the office from 17 to ‘around 50’. Second, they recommend expanding the remit of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS). Both recommendations are predicated on the evolving nature of intelligence work, changes to the composition of the Australian intelligence community and the need for greater public outreach.

The agencies recommended to newly come under the watchful eye of the IGIS and PJCIS are the intelligence elements of the Australian Federal Police, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre, and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission.

That would certainly make for a bigger workload for the IGIS, especially if it’s combined with more public outreach. Whether that all adds up to a need to triple the workforce is impossible to judge on the information provided, though it’s also possible that the reviewers thought the IGIS was already understaffed. I won’t argue; more oversight resources are a good thing.

The review recommends that the PJCIS’s remit be similarly extended to include the agencies listed above. The committee would receive regular briefings from the IGIS, the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor and the director-general of the proposed Office of National Intelligence. However, the operational activities of the intelligence agencies would continue to be outside the purview of the committee—at least as far as formal inquiries go. The review says (paragraphs 7.44 and 7.45) that:

Rather than giving the PJCIS the power to conduct its own inquiries into agency operations, we favour strengthening the connection between the PJCIS and the IGIS … We recommend that the [Intelligence Services Act] be amended to enable the PJCIS to request the IGIS conduct an inquiry into the legality and propriety of particular operational activities of the [national intelligence] agencies, consistent with the IGIS’s remit, and to provide a report to the Committee, the Prime Minister and the responsible Minister.

There’s little to argue about in the recommendations made, but there are a few things not mentioned in the review that could usefully be considered in the implementation phase. While not explicitly part of the intelligence oversight framework, other mechanisms play an important role in assuring the public of the propriety of intelligence operations and management. Those include freedom of information processes and recourse to the courts. Neither of those avenues is mentioned in the review. It’s hard to believe that everything our intelligence agencies do is sensitive beyond the reach of FOI laws, but there’s no discussion of the appropriateness of current blanket exceptions.

Another important—if often imperfect—oversight mechanism not mentioned in the review is the ability of the press to expose questionable behaviour and to ask difficult questions. A related issue is the protection of whistleblowers. There’s an undeniable downside to the public release of secret information, but it can also be positive to shed light on improper activities. And it provides a disincentive to cover up misconduct under the cloak of operational security. Edward Snowden’s leaks led to press investigations—aided by American FOI laws—that revealed a systematic failure in the oversight of the US National Security Agency. It’s true that Snowden leaked far more than that, and I think the net result of his activity was negative. But the case shows that whistleblowing can play an oversight role when all else fails. (And it also shows that constant vigilance is required even when apparently adequate oversight mechanisms are in place.)

I’ll finish with one other issue that has been nagging away at me for a while: I can’t find a legislative basis for oversight of the activities of the Australian Defence Force’s intelligence units. The IGIS oversees the Defence Intelligence Organisation, and the two collection agencies in the defence portfolio are covered by the Intelligence Services Act. But the ADF intelligence elements aren’t under the command of DIO and, while carrying out their collection function, they could incidentally gather information relating to Australians. For example, ADF intelligence-collection aircraft might intercept communications from Australians at sea. And there was at least one past instance of a minister instructing the ADF to collect information about Australians—which incidentally provided a good illustration of how the press can help expose infelicities. Perhaps I’ve missed something (comments welcome), but this looks like a loose end needing tidying—perhaps during the forthcoming legislative review.

Australia’s intelligence reforms: lessons from the United States

During my recent engagement with the Australian National University’s National Security College, I was asked whether Australia would benefit from having a Director of National Intelligence, similar to the position I held in the United States from 2010 until January this year.

Knowing that a review of Australia’s intelligence arrangements was then wrapping up, I was a little reticent to offer gratuitous advice. Now that the Review is out there, and Prime Minister Turnbull has announced his intention to establish an Office of National Intelligence, I thought I would outline my views in a little more detail.

First, I commend Australia for its practice of conducting regular reviews of the effectiveness of its intelligence community and recommending improvements. We in the United States do not do that—our reviews are more sporadic and anecdotal. The last time we made any major change to our intelligence community, it was in response to a traumatic event—the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In comparison, changes Australia makes have not commonly been impelled by extreme circumstances.

Second, if Australia made no changes to its intelligence posture, it would still have a very competent, professional intelligence community. I have worked with the Australian intelligence community for over 30 years in many capacities, and I can attest to its maturation, sophistication, and tremendous capabilities of Australian intelligence. In the intelligence space, the United States does things with Australia that we do not do with any other ally.

Third, while there are many very thoughtful recommendations in the 2017 Review, the one I would (not surprisingly) like to focus on is the analogue to the US Director of National Intelligence.

An Australian version of this position, tailored for local circumstance, makes great sense, for essentially the same reason it makes sense in the US context. I found great strength in the integration of US capabilities across our 17 components, all but two of which reside in one of six cabinet departments.

There are many common denominators across the functions of intelligence, and many enterprise similarities. This stems from the simple but profound truism that the sum is greater than its parts—US experience shows that when the complementary capabilities of our various intelligence components are synthesized and melded, we end up with more complete intelligence products and services for our decision-makers. This applies whether that decision maker resides in the Oval Office, or, to stretch the metaphor, an oval foxhole.

Yet integration and coordination across organisational boundaries will not happen by itself. It requires a full-time champion and advocate with both internal and external constituencies.

One of the most important forms of leverage to encourage this integration is through the allocation of resources. Where is the manpower and money allocated, across the enterprise? Where should we make investments, and where should we make divestments? Moreover, I can attest, this works much better if this is done with a strategic overview, rather than on a stovepipe by stovepipe—Australians might say ‘silo by silo’—basis.

Hopefully, the director general of the Australian Office of National Intelligence will have this perspective and the authority to do something with it. It was critical to me in the US system.

Who the first DG ONI is will be hugely important because of the precedents that he or she will set for successors. If I were king, which I clearly am not, I would recommend someone steeped in intelligence, preferably having served as an agency director—knowing all the players will be key to championing integration, collaboration, coordination on a day-to-day and systematic basis.

It is worth emphasising that style counts. Furthering integration, coordination and collaboration across the Australian intelligence community will require artful persuasion and integrity, not overbearing force.

Back in 2010, just before nominating me as DNI, President Obama invited members of my family to the Oval Office. The President said to my granddaughter ‘I really appreciate your grandfather taking on the second most thankless job in this town.’

The inaugural head of the Office of National Intelligence will have thankless days ahead of them, but this is a smart reform, and we should all wish them well.