Spying tops terror as the No.1 threat

Spying and foreign influence has overtaken terrorism as ASIO’s key concern, with the agency blocking four attempts by foreign powers to covertly exert influence in the past financial year.

ASIO director-general Mike Burgess. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Spying and foreign influence has overtaken terrorism as ASIO’s key concern, with the agency blocking four attempts by foreign powers to covertly exert influence in Australia in the past financial year.

ASIO’s annual report for 2021-22 showed attacks by “hostile foreign powers’’ and their proxies were now the No.1 concern, with terrorism – both by Sunni extremists and nationalist and racist extremists – reducing.

For the first time in nine years, there was no disruption of a terror plot by Sunni extremists in Australia. There were no terror ­attacks committed in Australia last financial year.

But the threat from foreign governments increased, with ASIO director-general Mike Burgess warning hostile countries would be particularly interested in information about the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal and the Quad security agreement.

Mr Burgess does not name any country as being a hostile foreign power, but security experts have previously warned about China and Russia’s spying capabilities. The Quad and AUKUS agreements are seen as a challenge to rising Chinese military power in particular.

“Espionage and foreign interference has supplanted terrorism as our principal security concern,’’ Mr Burgess wrote in the annual report. Last year he had warned espionage would likely become the No.1 concern within five years.

“Multiple countries are aggressively seeking information about Australia’s strategic capabilities, economic and policy priorities, world-class research and development, and defence technologies,” he said.

“We anticipate hostile foreign powers and their proxies will be particularly interested in obtaining information on AUKUS, the Quad and their associated ­initiatives.’’

The report warned some foreign powers had sown Covid-19 disinformation, which had been consumed and amplified in ­“online echo chambers’’ on social media and via encrypted communications.

“These foreign powers view such networks as potential vectors to undermine Australian security by generating uncertainty, division and unrest,’’ the report ­stated. “We have seen extremist ideologues, in Australia and offshore, seeking to incite this ­violence within the community and against the government by combining conspiracy theories with highly emotive propaganda, particularly in relation to Covid-19.’’

ASIO gave no details on the four foreign influence plots it had disrupted.

Mr Burgess said multiple foreign governments were working to undermine Australian sovereignty, by harassing diaspora communities, and “attempts to shape political and business decision-making to the foreign governments’ advantage.

“These attempts are occurring in all states and territories, at all levels of government, on all sides of politics and in the private sector,’’ he said. The report warns that cyber-enabled attacks on Australian infrastructure were “well within the reach of some foreign powers’’ and while they hadn’t been used in Australia so far as they had overseas, ASIO assessed it was “possible’.’

On the terrorism front, the report noted that “overall, we are seeing a reduction in the number of violent extremists who have both the intention and capability to undertake terrorist attacks in Australia.

“This is down from a peak during the height of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s (ISIL) global terrorism campaign.’’ However, it warns Sunni violent extremism such as that ­espoused by Islamic State or al-Qaida, represented “an enduring threat’’.

The report also warned on the threat posed by Australians drawn to “nationalist and racist violent extremist ideologies’’ and who held a key belief that a “race war’’ was inevitable.

“There is a broad acceptance that at some stage in the future, ­society will collapse and a conflict will break out along racial or ethnic lines, after which there will be the creation of a white ethno-state,’’ the report states.