This was now the greatest security threat facing the nation, according to ASIO director-general Mike Burgess.
And not enough Australians were taking it seriously enough.
It will be a feature of Anthony Albanese’s first headland speech of the year on Wednesday when he outlines the government’s response to the defence and security challenges Australia must navigate over the years ahead.
Burgess, as the tip of the spear in defending the country from the domestic threats, pulls no punches. The latest annual national threat assessment makes for sobering reading. For the first time, Burgess identified the global strategic competition – and the regional power balance – as being the epicentre of the primary national security threat.
Terrorism was still a major threat. But foreign espionage and the unprecedented level of political interference designed to undermine Western democracies was frenetic.
This is a return to a Cold War, pre-terrorism era, but at unprecedented levels of activity.
This is the broader theme. It’s not only about stealing secrets, the main game is dividing nations from within and undermining the primacy of democracy and the international order.
It is essentially war by other means and Australia was smack bang in the middle of it.
“Based on what ASIO is seeing, more Australians are being targeted for espionage and foreign interference than at any time in Australia’s history … more hostile foreign intelligence services, more spies, more targeting, more harm, more ASIO investigations, more ASIO disruptions,” Burgess says. “From where I sit, it feels like hand-to-hand combat.
“This means ASIO is busier than ever before. Busier than any time in our 74-year history. Busier than the Cold War; busier than 9/11; busier than the height of the caliphate.”
Yet Burgess is gobsmacked at the level of ignorance at “senior” levels – senior people in government, business and academia.
“I am concerned that there are senior people in this country who appear to believe that espionage and foreign interference is no big deal; it’s something that can be tolerated or ignored or somehow safely managed,” he goes on to say. “Individuals in business, academia and the bureaucracy have told me ASIO should ease up its operational responses to avoid upsetting foreign regimes.”
This is an extraordinary statement for an ASIO chief to make.
But anyone who knows Burgess also knows what a pointless endeavour it would be to try to pressure one of the most hawkish spy bosses the country has had in years.
The fact he elected to call the behaviour out in his annual threat assessment on Tuesday only confirms that level of foreign interference – in all its forms – has reached epidemic proportions in this country.
And Burgess clearly believes it is not being taken seriously enough by some.
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Australia’s balancing act in the great power competition between the US and China means it is now a primary target for espionage and foreign interference.