Honing our intelligence capabilities

Intelligence is a critical pillar of Australia's national security. It extends Australia's advance warning of threats, buying us time to prepare for contingencies that may endanger us. Intelligence also clarifies other states' intentions, alleviating uncertainties which can otherwise drive fearful logics of arms racing and pre-emption. In that sense, a reliable intelligence picture helps to guardrail the slippery brinks of war.

Yet intelligence is a double-edged sword. Just as we use it to clarify and deconflict Australia's place in the world, so too is intelligence weaponised against us. Our adversaries regularly use their intelligence capabilities to expose and exploit weaknesses in our security. They seek to comprise the integrity of our information, systems, capabilities, and people as a way of gaining strategic advantages in competition and conflict. Our security therefore depends as much on effective counter-intelligence as it does on eyes and ears abroad.

This, of course, is not a new imperative. For decades, we have worked intimately with our Five Eyes partners to maintain a comprehensive intelligence picture of global challenges and threats. ASIO has likewise been serving its vital counter-espionage role since the early Cold War.

As strategic competition intensifies, however, we must elevate both intelligence and counter-intelligence as a priority. Decades of preoccupation with terrorism have atrophied our skills in gleaning other states' secrets and blocking access to our own. We must redress this if we are to safely and successfully navigate an era of great-power contestation. In that vein, the strategy identifies a series of policies aimed at enhancing the intelligence community's collection, sharing, and disruption capabilities:

Broaden the agenda of the Five Eyes alliance. As it stands, the grouping is highly adept at gathering and sharing signals intelligence, owing in large part to its origins as a codebreaking partnership. The emphasis on SIGINT, however, has let other collective capabilities—particularly in HUMINT—trail behind. We must therefore work to replicate the depth of cooperation we apply to SIGINT across all areas of intelligence collection and sharing. We should also continue advocating the shift from a need-to-know to a need-to-share presumption when distributing information.

Expand the network of partners privy to our intelligence sharing. More than ever, we and like-minded countries face shared threats that demand a common operating picture. Japan, particularly, has become so enmeshed in the geostrategic dynamics challenging our security as to warrant serious consideration of its inclusion as the alliance's Sixth Eye. Likewise, Australia should leverage the sharpening capabilities of other valued partners, such as Indonesia, through mutual interest-based intelligence sharing beyond the Five Eyes framework.

Keep pace with technological advancements. While we build on a strong foundation, technology threatens to erode our capabilities in relative terms. We must especially keep pace with new developments in AI, Big Data, and quantum cryptography if we are to maintain our intelligence edge. By harnessing these technologies, we can help ensure our collection and analysis capabilities remain up to the task of making sense of an ever noisier threat environment.

Promote long-term investment in human capability. In particular, we must build up the intelligence community's linguistic and cultural capability, the current poverty of which is degrading our capacity to understand the region and anticipate potential threats. Part of the solution is to review vetting processes, ensuring they do not unduly disqualify Australians with dual heritage. We must get better at weighing individual risks against the aggregate strategic cost of excluding candidates with much-needed lingual and cultural fluency. In terms of addressing the capability gap more broadly, we should also look to scale investment in long-term training, up-skilling, and talent cultivation programs—including in partnership with universities. Beyond building language proficiency, such initiatives could be geared towards nurturing talent in the many technical specialisations vital to intelligence work.

Bolster the cyber security of Australian Government agencies. Cyber-attacks remain one of the most common vectors through which adversaries try to gain sensitive information that may compromise our security. To mitigate this threat, we will act as a matter of urgency to bring all government agencies in conformance with ASD's Essential Eight cyber security protocols. We will also continue to ensure that ASD is fully equipped to disrupt and deter cyber-espionage efforts—including via targeted offensive operations as needed.

Enhance Australia's counter-espionage capabilities. Traditional human espionage efforts remain a significant threat, however. Indeed, they necessarily complement our adversaries' efforts to gather intelligence through cyber means. In that vein, we will ensure ASIO remains resourced and empowered—with appropriate checks and balances—to counter the rising threat of espionage.