Record $1.3bn boost for ASIO’s war on spies and hackers

Australia’s domestic spy agency will move to an artificial intelligence war footing in a technology arms race against adversaries.

Mike Burgess and Karen Andrews at an ASIO centre.

Australia’s domestic spy agency will move to an artificial intelligence war footing in a technology arms race against the nation’s adversaries as it moves to counter a spike in foreign intelligence services launching sophisticated attempts to steal Covid and vaccine research secrets.

It comes as the national security chief warned that the recent shutdown of one of the largest oil pipelines in the US due to a cyber attack could happen in Australia.

In an exclusive interview with The Weekend Australian, Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews and ASIO director- general Mike Burgess have revealed that an unprecedented $1.3bn boost to ASIO’s operations in Tuesday’s budget would involve sophisticated AI technology to boost Australia’s security and intelligence capabilities.

Ms Andrews said there had been a number of countries identified behind repeated and increasing attempts to infiltrate government, commercial and industrial sources but said it would be wrong to assume China was the focus of the funding increase aimed at countering threats.

This week saw the largest investment in ASIO’s operational capabilities in the agency’s 70-year history, as it moves to machine learning capabilities to counter and detect increasingly sophisticated and high-level terrorism and espionage threats.

“I know there will be people out there who will see this funding in terms of just the Chinese influence — that will be a mistake to interpret it as that,” Ms Andrews told The Weekend Australian.

“There are a number of nations out there. We take a very broad approach and as a government we want to be as proactive as we can in dealing with any of those threats. It would be wrong of us to be focusing on one particular nation when there are a number of threats.”

Mr Burgess said that AI would be a major component of the funding, the bulk of which would be rolled out over the next four years, but stressed that it was not designed to equip the agency for mass surveillance programs.

The Weekend Australian was granted the first access by media into one of ASIO’s highly sensitive surveillance operations centres in Canberra that tracks the movements of agents and targets across the country in real time.

“This is not an investment in mass surveillance. Everything we do in this organisation is proportionate and targeted,” Mr Burgess said. “That’s a fact of law. It’s a fact of practice.

“This is the single biggest investment ASIO has had in our seven decades of existence.

“The size and scale of that investment is commensurate with the threat that we and other agencies in Australia are dealing with. Threat to way of life, espionage and foreign interference … This continues to be at unacceptably high levels. We are having an effect. But given the complexity of the environment and the global situation we have to continue pressing into that.

“That’s why we have won this argument and justification for investment because it is the capability ASIO officers need to operate in a world where you have … rapid adoption of technology.”

ASIO has long argued for significant investment in AI and machine learning capability using the example of a recent espionage case which uncovered millions of messages from a single device.

The AI technology would use algorithms designed to decrypt and decode mass data quickly.

“As the country charts our way out of COVID, we have seen attempts to understand why Australia is in the position that it is in,” Mr Burgess said. “We have seen attempts to steal information around vaccine research, what the government is thinking behind the scenes. We have seen nation state spies seeking this information. Espionage has always been a threat but at the moment it is at unacceptably high levels.”

While espionage, foreign interference and the potential for sabotage of critical infrastructure were set to outstrip terrorism as the principal security concern for the nation within the next five years, Mr Burgess said terrorism still remained the most serious threat.

Referencing the shutdown of the Colonial pipeline last week in the US, which holds almost half of the country’s east coast fuel supplies, Mr Burgess said that similar cyber attacks were a serious risk to Australia’s critical infrastructure.

“That’s exactly what could happen here. That’s real — it’s a possibility,” Mr Burgess said.

He also revealed that ideologically driven violent extremism had now reached 50 per cent of the agency’s total onshore counter terrorism priority caseload for the first time.

“There were two terrorist attacks in Australia last year. Two people were killed and I’m not exaggerating when we know there are individuals in this country who are talking about killing Australians. Threat to life is very much real.

“In that context there is much conversation around ideologically motivated extremists … Sunni violent extremism is not diminishing any time soon … Nationalist and racist violent extremists are a problem that must be put in perspective … The two deaths last year came from Sunni and ISIL-related violent extremists.

“We have now reached parity in our priority counter terrorism case load.

“It is representative of the increased effort in trying to understand this problem.”

The technology investment was just as critical to counter terrorism as it was to espionage, with 97 per cent of priority targets using encryption on mobile devices. AI programs could be used to red flag cold cases if they become active again.

Mr Burgess said ASIO’s human intelligence capability was good at “collecting the dots”, but that computers would assist in “connecting the dots” at speed. He cited the potential threat posed by 15 convicted terrorists currently serving prison sentences and who are due to be released over the next five years.

“I’m pretty confident some of those people have not reformed … We need to understand the threat that might present to the country and these investments help us to the monitoring required from the security intelligence point of view,” he said.