Let’s hope Mike Burgess has a good flak jacket. The head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, a civilian bureaucrat, took no prisoners when he appeared on Wednesday on a Stanford University stage to bluntly call out China’s alleged technology theft.

“The Chinese government is engaged in the most sustained, scaled and sophisticated theft of intellectual property and expertise in human history,” Burgess said in a highly scripted appearance by the Anglosphere’s Five Eyes spy chiefs.