Spies and scholars in the cyber age: researching intelligence in Australian policy and regional security

ABSTRACT The limited treatment of intelligence by IR and strategic studies academics in Australia distorts the scholarly research and public understanding of policymaking in Canberra. This article provides an overview of intelligence-focused research in Australia, including the traditional challenges which constrained the field, its limited engagement with more conventional scholarship, and the potential for more applied historical study of intelligence-related issues in the future. It demonstrates how key developments in Australian alliance diplomacy and cyber security are heavily influenced by intelligence and identifies trends in the US–China relationship and regional security which are elevating the strategic importance of Australia’s intelligence agencies. More interest from the academic community in the role and contribution of intelligence to foreign and defence policy will be needed in the coming years if scholarship is to remain in touch with the reality of Australian statecraft.

In 1998, the historian Warren Kimball addressed a letter to the US Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, which levelled serious charges against the transparency of the US government.As Chairman of the committee advising the Foreign Relations of the United States publications, Kimball warned that the refusal of several US intelligence agencies to declassify their files after thirty years had reached a crisis point.The formal record of US government activity documented in the Foreign Relations series was, in Kimball's words, 'so incomplete and misleading as to constitute an official lie'.Major events in US diplomacy had been shaped by intelligence, including covert operations conducted by the CIA, but this influence was nowhere to be seen.An official silence on intelligence threated to undermine the academic research of US foreign policy and public understanding of international politics (Kimball 1999).
While the influence of secret, clandestine power in international politics was impossible to ignore by the end of the twentieth century, the study of intelligence has remained something a niche field in the years since (Andrew 2004;Gill, Marrin, and Phythian 2008;Immerman 2015).Australia is no exception to this trend.By and large IR and strategic studies scholars who research Australian foreign and defence policy fail to examine the intelligence community, despite its professed aim of collecting sensitive information and providing special insight into foreign actors and international developments.This is particularly discouraging because the problems in the US which Kimball complained about a quarter of a century ago do not apply to the same extent in Australia today.Over the last decade the Australian government has declassified thousands of intelligence records and published official histories of two agencies (Blaxland 2015;Blaxland and Crawley 2016;Fahey 2023;Horner 2014).This release of information is often delayed, and subject to various redactions and omissions, but it has provided the source material for a growing body of Australian intelligence history (Blaxland and Birgin 2023;Deery 2022;Edwards 2020;McPhee 2019;2020); while other academics are exploring contemporary trends in intelligence practice (Baldino 2013;Baldino and Crawley 2018;Hammond-Errey 2023;Walsh 2017;2020;2022;Walsh and Harrison 2021;Walsh and Smith 2021).With few exceptions, however, this research has yet to permeate the wider academic community.
This article seeks to rectify the limited treatment of intelligence in Australian defence and foreign policy.The first section canvasses the obstacles which hindered the academic study of intelligence in the past, and some of the encouraging developments in recent years which can facilitate more applied historical research of Australia's intelligence community and its contribution to policymaking.The next section demonstrates how an informed understanding of intelligence history is necessary to fully comprehend the practice of alliance diplomacy and cyber security; key areas of Australian policy where intelligence agencies play a critical, if neglected, role.The final section outlines several changes occurring in Australia's region, spurred by an intensifying US-China espionage contest, which are likely to elevate the work of Australia's intelligence agencies in the years ahead, and concludes with suggestions for future research.

Old problems and new opportunities
As with diplomacy or military power, intelligence is a vital instrument of the nation-state which scholarly accounts of international politics can ill afford to ignore.With the revelation of wartime codebreaking and deception success against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in the mid-1970s, historians were alerted to the outsized impact of intelligence over the course of the Second World War (Moran 2011).It was suddenly apparent that key turning points like the Battle of Midway were powerfully affected by intelligence agencies, prompting a new generation of academics to query what other events may have been secretly influenced in the years before and since.Over the following decade British and American intelligence records from the pre-war and early Cold War period were gradually released, leading IR scholars and historians to examine how intelligence assessment informs peacetime policymaking (May 1986); others, including the late Ball (1980;1988) pieced together details about intelligence capabilities that enabled nuclear deterrence and arms control.Today records of intelligence analysis and management bodies spanning most of the last century are now either available or in the process of being declassified in North America and Europe, particularly among the former countries of the Warsaw Pact which are exposing Soviet intelligence records left in their possession (Bułhak and Friis 2020).The result is a vibrant field of scholarship with practical insight for a range of contemporary developments, from the Russian offensive in the Ukraine War to the collapse of Western-backed forces in Afghanistan (Coulthart and Rorissa forthcoming).
There are good reasons for scholars to approach intelligence with caution.Most intelligence activity is geared towards producing knowledge, but the resulting analysis can be ignored by decision-makers, many of whom lack the patience for an analytical process that is fundamentally concerned with ambiguity.At least two Australians privy to intelligence assessments in the 1970s and 1980sone a former Prime Minister, the other a senior Defence official and Director-General of Securityhave said they could not recall a single time when these influenced major decisions (Fraser and Roberts 2014;Wrigley 1994).Intelligence agencies also offer a means of covertly influencing or subverting other governments; a 'third option' between diplomacy and warfare.(Johnson 2022).This is more likely to capture the attention of politicians but it is difficult for clandestine operations to impact the strategic balance when the need to preserve an espionage foothold limits the potential for exploitation, especially in the face of a dedicated counterespionage service.In the Cold War, for example, the well-resourced CIA and KGB achieved success neutralising one another's spying and pursuing covert activities in other countries, but they never managed to seriously disrupt the inner decisionmaking processes of their principal rival (Garthoff 2004).The image of intelligence as an esoteric contest between specialists, operating in isolation from the wider course of politics and diplomacy, is not helped by the number of former practitioners who turn to intelligence scholarship.This input is welcome, but many publications narrowly focus on ways of improving professional practice, raising suspicions about the field and its openness to critical perspectives (Ben Jaffel and Larsson forthcoming).There are also amateur historians who rehash long-running debates about notable spies, such as the Golitsyn-Nosenko dilemma which seised the CIA in the 1960s, or the identity of Soviet-controlled assets in 1940s Australia (see for example Fahey 2020).In most cases, this 'espionage buffism' does little to raise the esteem of intelligence scholarship among professional academics.
Other problems traditionally discouraged the study of intelligence in Australia.Foremost among these was the limited availability of primary source material which has only begun to ease in recent years.The record-keeping of the Commonwealth bureaucracy was poorly managed in the first half of the twentieth century, and after the explosion of intelligence activity in the Second World War most clandestine functions were consolidated under the Department of Defence.This remained the case until the first Hope Royal Commission re-structured the intelligence community in the late 1970s, but Defence officials preserved control over key collection and analytical resources (Edwards 2020).As there is no programme of historical transparency by Defence on par with the commendable work of the DFAT history staff, most post-1945 intelligence documents released by the archives are copies of material circulated to Australia's diplomats, offering a potted coverage of past events.Among intelligence academics the use of interviews is advocated to 'triangulate' between archival material and official histories (Davies 2001).This is a well-established method in the UK and US, where post-graduate research routinely incorporates oral testimony, but researchers walk an uneasy path in conducting interviews with retired practitioners, who are prohibited from disclosing sensitive information; those who are willing to discuss issues in general terms rely on hazy memories, and in the face of detailed questioning they tend to fall back on the professional instinct of not saying anything at all to avoid any risk of criminal prosecution.
Among the small group of Australians who ventured to write about intelligence, there was an unbalanced focus on the one agency which has periodically surfaced in the public arena of politics: the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).With its polarising role in the Cold War contest against Soviet espionage and communist subversion, Australia's security intelligence agency received considerable attention, especially following the politically charged Petrov defection.The critical scrutiny of ASIO's declining professionalism in the 1960s by left-wing journalists, and its troubled relationship with the Whitlam government in the 1970s, supplied much of the material for the earliest intelligence writings in Australia (Hall 1978;McKnight 1994;Whitlam and Stubbs 1974).This trend has continued with the release of ASIO's records associated with its official history, the agency's role in counter-terrorism policy since 2001, and the revelation of at least one Soviet mole within ASIO in the later years of the Cold War (Cain 2008;Deery 2022;Hocking 2004;Neighbour and O'Neill 2023).ASIO is also disproportionately reflected in the substantial body of legal scholarship which analyses Australian intelligence powers and their relationship with civil liberties (Kirby 2021;McCullough and Tham 2005;Williams 2011).Until recently, the availability of ASIO-related sources contrasted with the absence of material documenting the work of Australia's foreign collection and analytical agencies, even though these have always comprised a larger share of the intelligence community.
The Australian intelligence community comprises ten organisations, but aside from ASIO there are three agencies working on foreign intelligence issuesthe Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), and the Office of National Intelligence (ONI)which merit greater interest for their capacity to influence Cabinet decisions on foreign and defence policy. 1 With few exceptions, the Australians who are interested in foreign intelligence examine conceptual issues like analytical practice or information sharing with little underlying source material (Baldino and Grayson 2020;Vandepeer 2018) or look to the experience of other countries.(Brand 2019;Shoebridge, Coyne, and Shah 2021). 2 Many Australians with an intelligence background went on to work in academia, but only three -Mathams (1982), Woodard (2001) and Dibb (2018) have reflected on their experience in any detail, while others focus on the management of the intelligence communityas a whole (Walsh 2020;2022;Wright-Neville 2010).As this scholarship rarely deals with the content of Australian policy, it receives little interest beyond fellow intelligence researchers.Studies of Australian alliance policy, defence strategy, and diplomacy typically fail to mention ASD, ASIS, or ONI, while intelligence-related matters rarely feature in the pages of AJIA or similar journals.As one historian observed about the post-Cold War boom in intelligence scholarship in the US, the field does not lack for interested researchers, but it is self-contained (May 1995).
While this situation may be understandable, it is increasingly out of step with the practice of modern statecraft.In part, this is a simple question of bureaucratic power: ASIO, ASD, ASIS, and ONI collectively receive over three billion dollars in annual funding, on par with major departments of state like Attorney-General's or Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). 3In the face of critical media coverage and public scepticism from the 1960s, successive governments have chosen to preserve the intelligence community; since the turn of the century, they have established several new agencies and strengthened a range of collection powers.While some critics query the relevance of intelligence to policy, this does not accord with the findings of major reviews over the last twenty years -Flood ( 2004), Cornall andBlack (2011), L'Estrange andMerchant (2017), Richardson (2020) each of which attested to the value and importance of an intelligence capability.Recent years have since more investment in the analytical and managerial responsibilities of the ONI and greater funding for the agencies it coordinates (Gyngell 2017).Even if it this resourcing was not justified, as critics allege, it would still warrant some inquiry as to why the intelligence agencies are such successful bureaucratic operators.
It is also apparent from declassified records in the US and elsewhere that the hidden hand of intelligence has shaped the recent course of international history.In some cases, such as the lack of coordination before the Korean War or the mistakes which informed US activity during the Tonkin Gulf incident, this was a case of intelligence failures impacting matters of war and peace which involved Australia (Budiansky 2016;Prados 2004).If these illustrate the consequences of under-investing in intelligence, more Western intelligence successes have come to light in the last few years which are evidence of its positive contribution.The most significant was the 2020 revelation of Operation Rubicon, an effort spanning almost half a century which saw the US and its partners deliberately weaken the products of the world's leading encryption supplier, CryptoAG.With US and German intelligence secretly controlling this Swiss-based company, Rubicon offered unprecedented access to the communications of CryptoAG clients in the developing world, including Indonesia, from the late 1950s until the early 2000s (Aldrich et al. 2020).Considered alongside the revelations of Wikileaks and Edward Snowden, Rubicon gives some indication of how a sophisticated intelligence capability can reveal the secrets of other counties, and the powerful advantage this has afforded the US and its partners.As with the discovery of intelligence success in the Second World War, this naturally begs the question of how Australia's sizeable intelligence community has shaped decision-making in Canberra.
Happily, there are less constraints on the study of Australian intelligence than there used to be.During 1950-1951, Australia's involvement in human intelligence (Humint) was considered so delicate that different parts of the government planned missions to London to discuss the idea of establishing a new agency; these were only revealed to one another after the future Director of ASIS had already left the country (Andrew 1989).The work of ASIS' signals intelligence (Sigint) counterpart, the Defence Signals Bureau, was hidden from the Department of External Affairs for much of its first decade and was overseen by a secret committee from which Australia's diplomats were excluded (Andrews 2001).More than seventy years later, these agencies are following ASIO's lead by releasing more files to the archives and discussing historical events and future challenges with the media (Dobell 2020;Probyn 2023;Tillett 2022).This information is naturally circumscribed by security concerns, but in principle there is nothing prohibitive about a limited amount of data, which is a problem for any effort at applied scholarship.No study of Australian defence and foreign policy can have access to the recent correspondence and internal planning of government officials, or sensitive diplomatic negotiations.Nor do scholars fully understand the context of leaked information appearing in the media; a tactic frequently used to shape Australia's foreign policy debate (see for example Brown 2016).The lack of knowledge about who leaked and why is just an accepted reality of democratic policymaking which experienced researchers learn to navigate, even as they make use of the resulting information (Stockings 2022, 130-7).The difference between studying these policy issueslet alone a secretive regime like North Koreaand intelligence is one of degree, not type.
Scholars can also take advantage of transparency initiatives by some of Australia's intelligence partners.Aside from the prolific reporting of intelligence activity in the US media, agencies like CIA and NSA maintain online large databases with declassified historical records. 4A close study of this material can indicate Australian involvement in joint intelligence activities, with researchers deploying the 'mosaic method' of crossreferencing between documents to piece together an understanding of historical events.In one demonstration of this method, Ball, Robison, and Tanter (2016) assembled a detailed account of Pine Gap's management for much of the last fifty years.This was made possible in part by the NSA's decision to redact any reference to Pine Gap or its location in an internal history of the agency, but publishing excerpts from the text detailing its operations, including Pine Gap's codename, in the hope that readers could not know which facility was being referred to (Johnson 1995, 410).Once subsequent accounts revealed the facility's codename, it permitted Ball, Robinson and Tanter to document the early clash over Pine Gap between the NSA and the CIA, as part of a wider research project which compiled information from other unconventional sources, including telephone directories and Linkedin profiles.
Intelligence agencies in Australia and their counterparts in Europe and North America are also exploring new ways to engage the public.Perhaps the most innovative aspect of the US-led diplomatic campaign against the 2022 Russian offensive in Ukraine was the release of intelligence detailing Moscow's preparations (Dylan and Maguire 2022).This tactic helped to dispute the false narrative propagated by Russian officials and has prompted a new policy from the Biden administration which is keen to disclose more intelligence for diplomatic effect.Future international crises and military conflicts may feature a declassified version of intelligence findings, as already occurred in controversial fashion during Australia's 2003 decision to participate in the Iraq War (Taylor 2023). 5Indeed, the strategic disclosure of intelligence is already an established practice in the cyber domain.The US and its 'Five Eyes' Sigint allies now publicly attribute major incidents of espionage to foreign governments, and this messaging is supplemented by private intelligence companies conducting their own reconnaissance of threat actors (Willett 2021).In a sign of this more open environment, ONI commissioned the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (Withers et al. 2019) to survey innovative research in the tertiary sector that could aid intelligence analysis, while two of Australia's leading think tanksthe Lowy Institute for International Policy, and the Australian Strategic Policy Instituterecently hired former practitioners who produce intelligence commentary. 6 The greater transparency of intelligence provides an opportunity to undertake more applied history of intelligence-related developments in Australian foreign and defence policy.Applied history involves the study of historical incidents and long-running trends which can improve understanding of contemporary events.Rather than attempting to summarise crude 'lessons learned' or drawing parallels between markedly different case studies, this research encourages thinking which is sensitive to how present challenges are shaped by the past.Given that many political leaders and decision-makers use historical analogies in their own thinking, applied history can help to identify erroneous reasoning or draw attention to underlying aspects of an issue which are being neglected.This field has experienced an intellectual revival in recent years, including in Australia, where advocates have formed a professional network to promote historically informed research of contemporary policy challenges (see for example Holbrook and Lowe 2021).While this is targeted at government policymaking, historical knowledge can also benefit academics researching policy.Indeed, a recent workshop on Australian foreign policy sought to achieve this very aim by injecting historical perspectives from the Menzies years into a discussion of Australian regional policy (Stoltz 2023).
Applied history is well suited to the study of intelligence given the predominantly historical nature of sources and academic expertise.While the investigation of contemporary issues in the intelligence community may encounter resistance from officials who worry about exposing 'sources and methods', there is less concern with historical research; in fact, intelligence practitioners are often surprisingly ignorant of their profession's history, given the traditional prohibition on historical disclosures (Andrew 2018).Today, there are more historical records documenting Australia's intelligence experience since 1945 than there was primary source material available for some of foundational studies of Australian strategic studies and foreign policy produced in the second half of the twentieth century (see for example Albinski 1977;Bell 1988;Millar 1965).These records have been used to good effect by Peter Edwards, who recently surveyed the Royal Commissions from the 1970s and 1980s to argue the case for another major review of the intelligence community (Edwards 2021).Combined with the new openness of intelligence, there is greater scope for this kind of historically informed research.This may not be the only approach for studying intelligence, but it is the one most likely to address the scholarly concern over reliable data.

The hidden influence of intelligence
What, if anything, can the applied research of intelligence history offer academics who study Australian foreign and defence policy?The most critical policy area shaped by recent intelligence history is the Australia-US alliance, where Cold War-era problems in cooperation inflicted serious damage to bilateral relations.Under Prime Minister Ben Chifley, perhaps the greatest crisis in US-Australia diplomacy was triggered by espionage, with some Australian officials failing to vigorously investigate allegations of a Soviet spy network in Canberra.This led the Truman Administration to boycott the exchange of sensitive military information with Australia, including intelligence, before it was gradually restored, culminating in the Defence Signal Bureau's formal accession to the 'Five Eyes' sharing arrangements (Fahey 2023;Horner 2014).During the Whitlam government, initial missteps by the new Prime Minister, including a vague threat to close CIA-run collection facilities in response to any sign of political meddling, fed the Nixon administration's paranoia.US officials became increasingly worried that Whitlam's Cabinet colleagues would expose intelligence collection programmes; a concern which lingered in the background of the government's controversial dismissal (Curran 2015).In its wake, the Fraser government appears to have presided over a more clearly structured exchange with Australia's liaison partners, adopting a 'mature strategy and an independent role' in Sigint arrangements by 1980 (Ferris 2020;Schaefer forthcoming).No account of US-Australian relations is complete without considering these events.
Maintaining the flow of US intelligence has been an important consideration for Australian governments ever since.Among the famed 'Five Eyes' network of Sigint agencies, Australia has worked energetically over the last several decades to develop institutional connections and facilitate new areas of cooperation.There has been little sign in Australia of the resourcing problems which afflicted Canadian Sigint in the final years of the Cold War, or the policy disputes which circumscribed New Zealand's collaboration with the NSA during the 1980s and 1990s (Aldrich 2010;Robinson 1992).Indeed, the Australian government joined the UK to lobby for New Zealand to continue receiving intelligence material, devising workarounds to keep its Sigint agency functioning (Hager 1996;Hensley 2006).Documents leaked by Snowden illustrate how ASD officials discussed options for sharing raw metadata with the NSA during the War on Terrorism, unlike the Canadians who were restricted by privacy laws (MacAskill, Ball, and Murphy 2013).Following Snowden's revelations, ASD was also less inclined to criticise the NSA than its fellow members of the Five Eyes, frustrating British officials who wanted to press Washington over its security lapses (Kerbaj 2022).
The integration of knowledge and personnel among the 'Five Eyes' Sigint agencies has developed into something unprecedented in history (Gioe, Goodman, and Schaefer 2021).These arrangements permit Australian access to some of the most closely guarded secrets of US national security; in the words of Ball (2001), intelligence is the 'strategic essence' of the alliance, while Garry Woodard (2004, 290-291) described the work of the joint facilities as 'the real cement of ANZUS' after Vietnam.Under the Howard government Pine Gap was drastically expanded, with a growing US military workforce analysing satellite-collected intelligence on site to provide battlefield support (Ball, Robison, and Tanter 2015).This infrastructure is vital for US military power projection and has a greater bearing on Australia's strategic trajectory than any other aspect of the US alliance.Recent initiatives like AUKUS, or the deployment of US bombers near Darwin, have received scrutiny for their impact on Australian strategic autonomy, but there is little thought given to how the integrated work of the joint facilities already conditions Canberra's diplomatic options (Roggeveen 2023;Cox, Cooper and O'Connor forthcoming).For instance, cooperation with the US in space surveillance places Australia at the forefront of a potential Taiwan conflict, as jointly-managed satellites are more likely to be targeted in an initial cyber offensive by China's military before the use of conventional or nuclear weapons.This threat, and the capacity of US officials to suspend Australian access to intelligence and communications platforms, may well oblige a future Australian government to partake in a war it could otherwise hope to avoid (Schaefer 2018).
The ties between Sigint professionals have also encouraged a convergence between other intelligence agencies.Australia's Humint, security intelligence, defence and civilian assessment personnel all maintain some degree of liaison with the same community of foreign partners, in part because these agencies all benefit to varying degrees from the common pool of Sigint reporting.Studies of Australian foreign and defence policy fail to consider the diplomatic importance of these relationships.These are not like other types of intelligence liaison, which are generally ad hoc and controlled to minimise the risk of deception or penetration (Lefebvre 2003).Nor are they simply a means to access knowledge in areas of technical and analytical expertise which Australia could not produce by itself.In no small part because of the past crises in the 1940s and 1970s, Australian intelligence resources have been organised to buttress the collection activity of the US and other 'Five Eyes' allies, with a structured division of labour to provide coverage of potential threats in Asia and to encourage continued sharing in the future.For instance, Wesley (2016) argues that the existence of ASIS strengthens Australia's reputation as an intelligence partner willing to shoulder responsibilities beyond those of a typical middle-power.Outside committing military forces to war, Australian investment in Sigint and Humint activity is the most significant contribution which Canberra provides for US global primacy.
If the history of liaison is essential to understand Australian intelligence collection today, it exercises influence in other ways.The extensive relationships between Australia's intelligence agencies and their counterparts across the 'Five Eyes' nations also explains the historically weak tradition of leadership in the intelligence community.When the idea of a centralised intelligence agency was proposed by the Hope Royal Commission in the late 1970s, a major concern was to ensure stronger oversight of the collection agencies so that they supported the working needs of analysts (Edwards 2020).The Director-General of the then-Office of National Assessments (ONA) was tasked with coordinating intelligence priorities and activities.In practice, however, the Sigint and Humint agencies in Melbourne were wary of greater control by Canberra; the former was so concerned with Australian obligations to GCHQ and NSA that it maintained 'compartments' of Sigint activity beyond the knowledge of Defence officials until 1990 (Ball 2016).In response, ONA's community-leadership role never functioned as intended, and the agency resorted to more informal procedures (Flood 2004).The centrifugal impact of Australia's liaison relationships is a better explanation for the autonomy of ASIS, ASD, and ASIO than self-interested bureaucratic competition.It is also the reason why more radical suggestions for managing the intelligence community, including the idea of a single Minister responsible for all intelligence functions, are unsound (see for example Stoltz 2021).Whether or not an upgraded ONI can defy this historical trend, it is one that will influence the agency in the years to come.
An appreciation of intelligence history is also necessary to understand the cyber security challenges facing Australia.Since the widespread adoption of personal computing, internet, and mobile communication technology in the 1990s, scholars have struggled to conceptualise the cyber domain.Until recently the dominant approach drew on conventional strategic theory, with its emphasis on deterring offensive military operations through the threat of punitive retaliation.This perspective, with its focus on promoting norms of responsible behaviour and limiting conflict escalation, has done little to restrain the rising volume of state-directed cyber intrusions which inflict a staggering cost on governments and organisations.This activity, which falls short of the armed conflict threshold, is nonetheless shaping the diplomatic and strategic agenda in cyberspace.In the case of a recent Israeli air strike targeting Hamas hackers, it is also clear that some political leaders are not willing to ignore malicious cyber activity which does not produce a kinetic effect (Newman 2018).A host of new 'grey zone' concerns and capabilities beckon, blurring the distinction between war and peace.
The cyber domain is shaped above all by the dynamics of espionage, not warfare.Recent intelligence history demonstrates how Sigint agencies pioneered the exploitation of computing technology from the late 1970s (Wiener 2016).In principle, there is little difference between the interception of radio traffic between wireless operators in the 1940s and electronic data carried over modern submarine cables and satellite links.In fact, Sigint agencies are responsible for major technological breakthroughs which contributed to a functioning cyberspace by the end of the Cold War; Britain's GCHQ can alone claim credit for building the world's first electronic computer and theorising a key-sharing method for encrypting private communications (Aldrich 2010).Contrary to the militarised image of a 'cyber Pearl Harbour' or the focus on disruptive exploits like the Stuxnet worm that targeted Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities, state-led cyber intrusions typically refrain from causing immediate disruption (ACSC 2002;NCSC 2022).These are instead designed to access and extract protected information, such as industrial secrets with defence applications, or personal details from large databases which assist in identifying potential spies for recruitment.
Malicious cyber activity is not only geared towards espionage, but intelligence agencies have emerged as powerful norm-setters (Georgieva 2020).Unlike conventional military operations, cyber intrusions are almost always undertaken when the opportunity presents itself and with little regard for diplomatic consequences.Perpetrators can evade detection while exploiting a target, retain their anonymity despite encountering technical setbacks, or if they are identified and evicted from a network simply ignore efforts by law enforcement from another jurisdiction to investigate the incident.As in all intelligence operations, a distinguishing feature of cyber intrusions is the imperative to maintain secrecy and, as a final resort, deniability.Beyond the virtual private networks and proxy servers which offer general anonymity, intelligence agencies have been known to masquerade behind criminal groups (Sherman 2022).Even the 2020 SolarWinds incident, which involved a widespread compromise of US government networks that was described by some commentators as an act of war, was intelligence-directed reconnaissance activity: the hackers targeted a supply chain vulnerability that would avoid typical means of detection and carefully controlled their subsequent movements to conceal their presence (Willett 2021).The operational value of secrecy applies equally to victims.The response to a sophisticated intrusionundertaking a forensic analysis of infected devicescan be aided by a victim's ability to deceive the perpetrator by surreptitiously monitoring their presence once it is detected (Gartzke and Lindsay 2015).
The influence of intelligence over cyber security is not confined to the methods of Sigint agencies.In recent years, a range of cyber-enabled threats have resembled the tradecraft of Humint agencies.Recent scholarship argues convincingly that seemingly novel threats like disinformation and cyber-enabled foreign interference are variations of covert activities long practiced by intelligence agencies (Chesney and Smeets 2023).Aside from handling assets who provide access to protected information, Humint practitioners also have at their disposal other categories of recruits, including sleeper operatives who plan acts of sabotage or agents of influence who engage in bribery and coercion or finance political movements and media outlets.Each of these subversive tactics has its digital equivalent in the twenty-first century, be it ransomware campaigns targeting infrastructure or interference in political campaigns using fake social media accounts.In each case, what seems like more innovative trends in the practice of state power are the latest manifestation of intelligence operations which exist between war and peace (Maschmeyer 2023).This is reflected in Australia, where the national Sigint agency is the principal authority on cyber security.It was an internal Sigint-led study of communications vulnerabilities which prompted the Australian government to establish a national framework for cyber policy in the mid-1990s, and ASD initially hosted the inter-departmental operations centre which evolved into the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ASCS) (Blaxland and Birgin 2023).This Centre remains an operational branch of ASD and channels technical knowledge from foreign intelligence operations to other parts of the government and industry partners.The single largest spending item in the 2020 Australian Cyber Security Strategy was reserved for ASD, as part of a recruiting drive which will support the ACSC (Department of Home Affairs 2020).With the announcement of ASD's Project Redspice, the Sigint agency is poised to double its workforce and engage in more reconnaissance to identify threat actors, which critics warn could fundamentally recast Australian strategy in cyberspace (Blaxland and Birgin 2023).Put simply, without any historical knowledge of the agency and its long-running responsibility for communications security, academics have little basis for assessing Australian cyber policy.

A future research agenda
These are just two examples of the valuable insight which can be derived from the applied study of recent developments in intelligence history.Issues in alliance diplomacy and cyber security do not lack for scholarly attention in Australia, but the distinctive influence of intelligence has been almost completely neglected in other studies which continue to privilege overt, declared instruments of government.Nor are these isolated case studies.Wider changes are taking place in Asia's security landscape which are elevating the significance of intelligence to Australian regional policy.
Under the pressure of strategic competition with the US, the Chinese government has taken steps to professionalise its intelligence community.As part of the security reforms introduced by Xi Jinping in the early 2010s, the Ministry of State Security (MSS) assumed greater control of intelligence functions from the military (Mattis and Brazil 2019).Whereas Chinese espionage traditionally relied on ethnic Chinese communities to acquire foreign defence and commercial technology, the MSS is now apparently directing a more ambitious counter-intelligence effort targeting foreign nationals visiting China and former practitioners working in the private security industry (Inkster 2013).Under the guidance of the military's Strategic Support Forces, China's Sigint infrastructure is also expanding to prepare for war against US forces in Asia.Beijing has established intercept facilities on the disputed islands of the South China Sea, introduced Sigint equipment on satellites and other airborne platforms, and purchased a larger stake in the aging Soviet-era Sigint base in Cuba, which is located near US military and space facilities in Florida (Madhani 2023).
China's developing foreign intelligence effort now involves a breadth and scale of activity which can interfere with diplomatic initiatives, such as the planned visit by the US Secretary of State to Beijing in early 2023 which was cancelled after the 'spy balloon' controversy (Sevastopulo 2023).The relentless exploitation of US government networks and commercial organisations by Chinese intelligence has reached the point where it is described by US authorities as a greater security threat than Soviet espionage at the height of the Cold War (Barnes and Wong 2023).The long-running United Front work programme, which coopts foreign business and political figures in support of Beijing's agenda, has also received more support from the current generation of Chinese leaders (Brady 2018).The United Front bureaucracy is distinct from the MSS, but many operations are reportedly directed by intelligence officials or rely on their agents to organise and fund United Front associations (Joske 2022).These clandestine issues are occupying a larger portion of the diplomatic agenda, although it should be emphasised this is not necessarily as alarming as it may seem.The growing reliance on intelligence is an inevitable aspect of great power rivalry; in the case of China's satellite-based collection systems and Sigint facilities, the insight they can provide for decision-makers in Beijing will be necessary for the management of future crises.
Even so, the intelligence contest between Beijing and Washington increasingly resembles the espionage duel between the US and USSR which played a role in the deteriorating great power relationship after 1945.As in that historical conflict, Australia's liaison arrangements make it an appealing target to obtain knowledge of Washington's intelligence capabilities.This concern has shaped Australian regulation of foreign investment, notably the handling of the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei.Although media reporting focused on the possibility that Chinese officials could suddenly direct Huawei to suspend service, a former senior ASD official has stated that it was the potential for peacetime espionage which persuaded officials to ban Huawei from involvement as a vendor in Australia's 5G infrastructure (McKenzie and Galloway 2020).No account of the declining Australia-China relationship in the late 2010s can avoid the fallout over the Huawei decision or the discussion of foreign interference laws introduced by the Turnbull government.Of the highly-publicised fourteen grievances listed by the Chinese embassy in Canberra in 2020, it is instructive that the first threeforeign investment decisions, banning Huawei and ZTE from 5G, and the foreign interference legislationwere policies shaped by counter-intelligence concerns (Kearsley, Bagshaw, and Galloway 2020).
Questions of intelligence cooperation also feature on Australia's diplomatic agenda with other regional countries.In recent years Japanese officials have floated the idea of Tokyo joining as a sixth member of Five Eyes network as these agencies share common security procedures and maintain a 'no spy' understanding, permitting them to exchange particularly sensitive material (Abe and Miki 2020; Hartcher 2021).There is certainly a case for bolstering Japanese Sigint: according to media reports, Tokyo was only alerted to the compromise of its defence network in 2020 by Chinese hackers after the NSA Director personally briefed the Japanese Defence Minister (Nakashima 2023).Given these weaknesses, and the lingering uncertainty over Japan's long-term trajectory after the independent diplomatic streak of the 2009-2010 Hatoyama government, there is some wariness about trusting Tokyo with the most precious secrets of Western intelligence.Tokyo has also been a longstanding priority target for Australian Sigintunlike, say, Canada or the UKwith Canberra arguably having more to lose from Japan's entry into a no-spying arrangement given how much its diplomacy could impinge on Australian policy (Dorling 2013).Balancing this intelligence requirement against the technical needs of a regional partner is something of a dilemma for Australian foreign policy which has yet to receive the scholarly attention it deserves.
To the extent that Chinese influence is exerted through covert means, Australia's intelligence collection agencies will also play a more proactive role.With espionage tactics migrating online, ASIO is more concerned with shaping community behaviour and regularly warns about vulnerabilities targeted by foreign intelligence (Burgess 2023).This has elicited criticism from commentators who worry that ASIO's blunt messaging jeopardises diplomatic relations with China (Waterford 2021;Wroe and McCauley 2019).It will be ASIO's challenge to reconcile this awareness campaign with the tenor of Australian foreign policy.In a similar vein, ASIS is playing a more engaged role in Australian diplomacy.The deepening relationship between China and the Solomon Islands saw the Director-General of ASIS visit Honiara in 2022 to persuade Prime Minister Sogavare to refrain from signing a controversial bilateral treaty.In the wake of this meeting, Australian intelligence allegedly leaked details of the treaty draft, leading to a parliamentary vote of no confidence in the Sogavare government which turned into an unspoken contest of influence with Chinese diplomats (McDonald 2023).ASIS' working knowledge of Chinese Humint techniques may well be conveyed to other partners in the future; as with ASIO, this type of outreach is an innovative tool for Australian policy, but more thinking will be needed about how it compliments, not undercuts, diplomacy.
The applied research of intelligence history can offer valuable insight into these challenges, which have seen Australia's intelligence agencies take on added responsibilities beyond providing knowledge to decision-makers.These developments have not taken place in absolute secrecy, and nor are they entirely unrelated to Australia's historical experience.Concerns over Chinese espionage, the membership of the 'Five Eyes' network, and the role of counter-intelligence and covert action in Australian policy each have a precedent from the last century worth examining in more detail (Aldrich 2010;Blaxland and Crawley 2016;Horner 2014;Stoltz 2020).Most importantly, they represent different manifestations of an intensifying US-Chinese intelligence contest that is already influencing Australian policy thinking.Unless this trend is reversedand there is no reason to expect any diminution of inter-state espionage in the coming yearsscholars of Australian foreign and defence policy will need to consider the intelligence community and its work in a way they have not before.
If there is a greater need to study intelligence, it would be a mistake to dismiss the concern for sourcing that traditionally discouraged scholarship in this field.As a starting point, future research is best advised to focus on the institutions of the intelligence community which directly contribute to policymaking.Access to primary sources has improved since the 1970s, but these still do not provide the type of granular understanding that would be needed to competently assess the specific techniques of spycraft or foreign intelligence activities which leak into the Australian media.While self-styled defectors like Wang Liqiang generate public interest, the simple truth is that these cases are fraught with uncertainty (McKenzie, Sakkal, and Tobin 2019).Anyone tempted to speculate about these kinds of issues should remember that intelligence historians are still debating some of the most high-profile espionage cases of the Cold War.
Intelligence academics should also engage wherever possible with other areas of scholarship.The study of intelligence naturally focuses on secret, clandestine capabilities, but intelligence agencies are still part of the wider bureaucracy in Canberra, staffed by public servants moving between Departments who are responsive to government requirements.There is a wealth of scholarship which can place their secret matters in perspective, from public administration to communications theory (see for example Davies 2010).The failure to consider relevant scholarship was painfully evident in Hamilton's (2018) study of Chinese espionage and influence operations in Australia.This involved considerable open-source research but failed to contextualise its findings, so that much of the activity it documented was assumed to reflect the single-minded pursuit of global hegemony by Beijing; a caricatured interpretation of Chinese foreign policy at variance with much of the literature.In its own problematic way, this illustrated the failure to bridge different areas of scholarship which has impeded the study of intelligence in Australia.
Intelligence academics have long described their field as the 'missing dimension' of international politics, but this is no longer true.There is now an established community of academics and a sizeable body of research which draws on intelligence materials declassified by governments around the world.Encouraging developments have taken place in Australia, but the field remains narrowly focused on the practice of intelligence and poorly integrated with the work of IR scholars and strategic studies experts.As this article has demonstrated, there are both new opportunities and pressing reasons to explore the contribution of intelligence to Australian foreign and defence policy.Anything less risks perpetuating the historical distortion and public misunderstanding which Warren Kimball warned about twenty five years ago.

Notes Notes on contributor
David Schaefer is a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of War Studies at King's College London and post-graduate coordinator of the King's Centre for the Study of Intelligence (KCSI).His work focuses on the role of intelligence in Australian history and the international relations of Asia, particularly the influence of the 'Five Eyes' arrangements in cyber and outer space security.He recently partnered with the late Michael Herman to help write the book Intelligence Power in Practice, which was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2022.