Australia’s strategic outlook is deteriorating and, for the first time since World War II, we face an increased prospect of threat from a major power.
This means that a major change in Australia’s approach to the management of strategic risk is needed.
Over the past 40 years, Australian governments have periodically commissioned reviews of the Australian intelligence community (AIC). The first such inquiry—the Hope Royal Commission of 1974—was commissioned by the Whitlam government as a way of shedding light on what had hitherto been a shadowy group of little-known and little-understood government agencies. It was also the beginning of a journey that would eventually bring the AIC more into public view and onto a firm legislative footing. The second Hope Royal Commission, in 1983, was partly a response to some dramatic external events, in the forms of the Coomb–Ivanov affair and a poorly judged Australian Secret Intelligence Service training exercise that went badly wrong. But it was also a continuation of the process begun by the previous commission.
ASPI is releasing two research publications on the uses and limitations of big data in national security.
The first report, ‘Big Data in national security’, provides a high-level analysis of how big data capabilities can be used and managed by Australia’s national security community.
The second product, ‘Big Data in National Security – Online Resource’, is a background paper which provides policy makers and the public with a detailed analysis of the key concepts, trends, and challenges of big data in national security.
Big data requires big governance…
Hear Dr John Coyne discussing the report with author Michael Chi;
Watch the publication launch…
The research was conducted with the support and sponsorship of DXC Technology, formerly CSC Australia.
The proliferation of cyberspace and rise of social media have enriched and strengthened the application of democratic governance.
Technological developments have expedited the international flow of information, improved freedom of speech in many areas of the world, and increased the quality of interaction, accountability and service delivery from democratic governments to their citizens. But these benefits must be balanced against a longstanding vulnerability of democracy to manipulation that cyberspace has enhanced in both scope and scale.
The 2016 US presidential election demonstrated the increasingly complex cyber and information environment in which democracies are operating. Using US case study illustrations, this report offers a conceptual framework by which to understand how cybersecurity and information security techniques can be used to compromise a modern-day election.
The report places this case study in its historical context and outlines emerging approaches to this new normal of election interference before identifying associated policy considerations for democracies.
This paper argues that enhancing parliament’s role in national security will reinforce Executive accountability, improve the quality of public debate over national security and serve to strengthen the foundations of Australia’s parliamentary democracy.
There are several measures that would materially improve parliament’s role in the conduct of national security:
This report explores the challenges of building a stronger community in the Asia-Pacific. It does so by using a ‘comparative regionalism’ approach, drawing upon the lessons of region-building efforts elsewhere.
Philomena argues in this paper for a greater emphasis in Australian foreign policy on community building in Asia.
She outlines five strategies for policymakers: that Australia should re-position itself as a ‘fore-runner state’ in Asia, promote mediation and reconciliation in the region’s long-running conflicts, develop its soft-power and educational exchanges across the region, promote sound design principles for the future of regional architecture, and build a consensus among regional states about the difficult issues of membership and mandate for future regional institutions.
Those strategies would be a longer-term recipe for better, more effective, regional institutions.
This Policy Analysis, authored by Kelly O’Hara and Anthony Bergin, examines the information sharing vision of the new National Security CIO in light of reforms made towards a more joined-up national security community. It argues that information sharing should be a high priority for improving decision making in Australia’s national security community.
This Policy Analysis recommends:
This report, authored by Mark Thomson, looks at demographics and security from an Australian perspective.The economic and demographic transition of countries from poverty to prosperity has been a driving force of history over the past two centuries, and is set to remain so for the remainder of the century. In the decades ahead, development and demographics will drive two profound changes in Australia’s strategic environment.
First, emerging countries like China and India will increasingly become major economic powers. The result will be a steady shift of economic power from the West to the East and from the rich to the poor.
Second, although economic growth will deliver improved standards of living to most of the world’s inhabitants, some vulnerable countries will be left behind as their populations grow. Critically for Australia, East Timor and parts of Melanesia are among those countries with poor prospects in this regard.
While Australia has limited scope to influence the seismic geopolitical shifts wrought by the rise of new powers, we can help mitigate the risks associated with demographics in developing countries.
The 1.5 Track Security Dialogue is an initiative of ASPI and the Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA). It aims to assist the two governments to address and explore, through frank and sustained exchanges, their respective policy approaches and options on global, regional and local security issues.
Participants at this Dialogue, hosted by ASPI with the assistance of the Australian Department of Defence and the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, engaged in discussions with a view to strengthening bilateral security and defence relations in support of their common interests.
This Policy Analysis, authored by Carl Ungerer and Anthony Bergin, examines the inaugural Australian National Security Statement released last Thursday by the Prime Minister. The statement goes some way to outlining the broad range of risks and threats facing Australia, but it represents only a partial strategy. At this stage, the jury must remain out on whether a number of the changes the statement suggests will work to improve our national security.
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