April 27, 2023
Good afternoon.
It is a privilege to be with you today at the Royal United Services Institute Victoria.
It has never been more important for Australians to engage in a clear-eyed, mature conversation about the serious defence and national security challenges our country faces.
That’s what makes organisations like RUSI-V, and events like today so important.
Thank you, Mike for your leadership and for bringing us together.
I am pleased to be speaking today on “Our Race Against Time To Win the Battle of the Mind.”
The battle for hearts and minds is not a new domain of conflict, but the dizzying rise of advanced and emerging technology and resulting cyber threats presents complex and fast-evolving challenges to Australia’s security settings.
We now find ourselves in a race against time to ensure we prevail against foreign authoritarian attempts to gain the political, strategic and military upper-hand through cyber-enabled information operations.
Until recently, I was the Shadow Minister for Cyber Security and Countering Foreign Interference. I sometimes joked I was the Shadow Minister for the Grey-Zone.
I’m pleased to continue to have responsibility for both areas in my new portfolios of Shadow Minister for Home Affairs and Cyber Security. Long before the first shot is fired in any future conflict, we know grey-zone tactics will have been used for years to try to shape the outcome of any kinetic action that follows.
Our task as a nation today is to do everything we can to prevent conflict, and at the same time prepare to withstand it should prevention fail.
Preparation for the kinetic component of conflict has rightly received significant attention in recent years, starting with the Defence Strategic Update and Force Structure Plan in 2020, the commencement of AUKUS in 2021 and the Defence Strategic Review, released this week.
Less attention has been devoted to the information war already underway. It will only ramp up if military action ever becomes imminent. And when it does it will be too late to take the preventative steps required to inoculate ourselves against its worst effects.
We must begin the work now to harden our institutions and increase our resilience against information operations already being run against us by authoritarian states. Because even if conflict never breaks out in our region, great harm can be done to our democracy, sovereignty, national unity and social cohesion solely on the battlefield of the mind.
None of us know when, where or how conflict might break out in the future. But we do know the risk now is higher than it has been for many decades.
Released on Monday, the Albanese government’s long-awaited Defence Strategic Review describes Australia’s strategic circumstances and the risks to our national security as “significant” and “radically different” to the post-Second World War period.
According to the Review: “Intense China-United States competition is the defining feature of our region and our time. Major power competition in our region has the potential to threaten our interests, including the potential for conflict.”
The Review rightly acknowledges that the nature of conflict and threats have also changed.
It does not suggest that conflict is imminent or inevitable, but we ignore these developments at our peril.
This is occurring against a backdrop which sees regional powers nervously considering their security and sovereignty in light of the Chinese Communist Party’s demonstrated willingness to deploy all levers of state power in pursuit of its strategic interests.
In recent years, Beijing has brazenly conducted campaigns of economic coercion, espionage, cyber attacks and foreign interference in service of the CCP’s ambitions of regional hegemony.
Australia is all too familiar with these grey-zone activities – actions which fall short of war, but which cumulatively can have serious consequences for our sovereignty and prosperity.
It’s one of the reasons why ASIO director-general Mike Burgess has classified foreign interference and espionage as Australia's biggest security concern.
According to the Department of Home Affairs; “foreign interference occurs when activity carried out by, or on behalf of, a foreign power, is coercive, corrupting, deceptive or clandestine, and at odds with Australia’s sovereignty, values and national interests. It involves foreign powers trying to secretly and improperly interfere in Australian society to advance their strategic, political, military, social or economic goals, at our expense.”
Because it is covert and often subtle, foreign interference is difficult to identify and even harder to stop. It is a carcinogenic force that, if left alone to grow and metastasise, eats away at the very foundations of our democracy.
Foreign interference activities have traditionally targeted specific individuals or institutions, typically via coercion, espionage, cyber attack or covert persuasion.
At the same time, advanced and emerging technologies have opened the door to an onslaught of sophisticated information operations and cyber threats aimed at securing political, social, strategic and military advantages.
The advent of social media – and the lightning speed at which news and information can now proliferate – has provided widely used theatres for foreign interference. Cyber campaigns can target Australians with messages tailored to their unique interests and proclivities, conducted at a magnitude and pace previously unimaginable to influence hearts and minds on a national scale.
In the post-WWII period, the strategic defence of our nation accepted a 10-year warning time as the foundation for planning, capability development and preparedness for conflict.
We no longer have this luxury. That was put to bed by the Defence Strategic Update released by the former government in 2020.
It’s a judgement backed by this government’s DSR, which argues Australia’s loss of strategic warning time – in part due to the rise of emerging and disruptive technologies – necessitates “an urgent call to action.”
The ‘battlefield of the mind’ is a critical and quickly evolving domain that demands our attention and urgent policy response.
“The most hateful human misfortune is for a wise man to have no influence,” Greek historian Herodotus once said.
Nowhere is this truer than in a destabilising security environment that sees great power competition as the defining feature of our time.
Any serious defence strategist knows they cannot disassociate the information environment – and the strategic influence that can be forged and wielded therein – from their strategic and operational circumstances.
The fourth joint doctrine which governs the US’ military coordination with other US Government departments and agencies during operations defines the information environment as the, “aggregate of individuals, organisations and systems that collect, process, disseminate, or act on information.”
The use of information activities orchestrated in a multi-domain battlefield is designed to extract operational advantages which may yield military benefits.
More simply, RAND policy analyst Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga describes it as an, “evolution in warfare, moving from the natural and material domains - land, maritime, air, and electromagnetic - into the realm of the human mind.”
Similarly, Chinese military reports acknowledge that warfare is shifting from destroying bodies to paralysing and controlling the opponent’s mind, while NATO is exploring ‘cognitive warfare’, which it describes as the weaponisation of information to influence public opinion, sow discord; division and confusion, destroy morale and impede government decision making, as the sixth domain of military operations.
But the weaponisation of information and orchestrated attempts to control the information environment is not a new operational phenomenon.
While some military historians contend that orchestrated attempts to gain strategic and military advantage through manipulation of information dates from the beginning of the 20th century, information warfare can be traced back much earlier.
It was the ancient Chinese military theorist and philosopher Sun Tzu who said that “all warfare is deceptive”. As he argued in The Art of War, “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
Over the centuries, leaders have targeted information warfare to influence and mislead an adversary’s decision-making processes, and to rally support in pursuit of their own national objectives.
According to military historian Christopher Duffy, Frederick the Great relished using tricks and ruses to disguise his own intentions and manipulate his adversary’s strategic planning. He planted false messages with couriers he intended to be captured, and created the illusion of retreat by repairing certain roads.
Author Michael Hughes suggests that Napoleon often published proclamations in newspapers and on placards portraying France as the victim of foreign aggression to influence the French population as well as neighbouring powers.
Information warfare, according to US Army Major Robert R. Mackey, is as old as warfare itself.
Far from being a new domain of conflict, the proliferation and application of advanced technology has, to use the words of US Major Nathaniel D. Bastian, “opened Pandora’s box” in terms of the depth, breadth and speed at which information operations can be conducted.
The question that remains for Bastian, who serves as a senior data scientist and artificial intelligence engineer at the US Department of Defense, is who will succeed in dominating the information environment in the physical, information and cognitive dimensions.
Today, we need look no further than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to see how this is already playing out in the real world.
Ukraine has rightly identified that it is fighting a hybrid war against Russia – one on the ground, and one in the cyber realm.
Wiper malware, DDoS attacks, cyber-enabled disinformation and attempted sabotage of critical infrastructure have all been weapons in Russia’s digital arsenal against Ukraine.
But often it’s the psychological effects of digital warfare that have proven most fruitful.
Throughout the war, Russia has undertaken a head-spinning campaign of disinformation, fabricated imagery and documentation, disruption and targeted propaganda to support its war efforts.
These efforts were underway well-before a single shot was fired, as Russia pre-positioned false narratives that it would later point to as part of its twisted justification for the war.
Long before the invasion, Russia claimed Ukraine was secretly developing biological weapons with the assistance of the US Government.
According to University of Washington Professor Scott Radnitz, this narrative has been around since at least 2011, but propaganda efforts went into overdrive in the lead up to the invasion as Russia amplified these damaging claims through traditional and social media channels. Meanwhile, Russian diplomats went to work pushing these claims through the UN.
This campaign joined a cacophony of disinformation that followed the start of the conflict, designed to sow discord and confusion and weaken Ukrainian resolve.
Take the deepfake video that circulated on Ukrainian news sites three weeks after Russia invaded the country. The video showed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urging Ukrainians to stop fighting and live, a crushing blow to the morale of soldiers and countrymen giving their lives for their country.
While the video was debunked as fake, it could have had a meaningful impact on many viewers if left unchecked.
To guard against perpetual Russian propaganda, Ukrainian officials have had to battle in the digital realm as fervently as they would on the front line of the war.
Fortunately, with the help of some western “big tech” companies, and the rapid declassification of intelligence to debunk and even pre-bunk Russian narratives, Ukraine has been able to stymy Putin’s propaganda campaign.
This has not just underpinned Ukrainian morale to resist the invasion. It has helped maintain Western resolve to provide tangible support for Ukraine amidst a desperate campaign from Russia to drive wedges between NATO members and partners and undermine the flow of assistance the Ukrainians are relying upon to defend their homeland.
The sobering question for us to ponder today is if Russia spent months or even years pre-positioning disinformation to try to shape the perception of its future invasion of Ukraine, what is the disinformation being pumped into our democracy right now, who is responsible for it, and why are they doing it?
Operations in the battle for the mind are rarely so brazen and clumsy, nor are they constrained to combatants in conflicts.
Indeed, success in the information domain is arguably more pivotal in peacetime, where the prosperity and success of great powers is dictated by their ability to shape and harness the slow, powerful tides of global cooperation and competition.
Just last month, China’s Ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, published an opinion piece in The Sydney Morning Herald which made a series of misleading claims about Taiwan, the most egregious of which stated that there was an international consensus which accepted “Taiwan is part of China, and the government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China”.
As University of Tasmania academic Mark Harrison has been at pains to point out, under decades of bipartisan policy, while Australia does not recognise Taiwan as an independent country, we have also never endorsed the Chinese government’s position that Taiwan is part of the PRC. Ever since the 1972 joint communique establishing a formal diplomatic relationship between Australia and the People’s Republic of China under the Whitlam government, we have only “acknowledged” the Chinese government’s position in relation to Taiwan – not accepted it.
To many, this may seem like a minor, almost trivial semantic distinction. But I am not being hyperbolic when I say this is the thin end of the wedge.
Addressing the Ambassador’s claims in a subsequent opinion piece, Dr Benjamin Herscovitch from ANU rightly pointed out that; “China wants to make its control of Taiwan a fait accompli by convincing the world to accept its view that the island is rightfully, and so should be in practice, a province of the PRC… The ambassador’s op-ed is therefore not just a simple expression of the Chinese government’s position on Taiwan, it is part of a determined global effort to shape how the world understands Taiwan and limit engagement with the island.”
These narratives are particularly concerning when you consider them in the context of the rapidly evolving information environment that liberal democracies are currently grappling with.
Social media is becoming increasingly ubiquitous – more than 80 per cent of Australians are now active users of social media. According a University of Canberra report, more than 40 per cent of Australians get at least some of their news from social media, and almost 20 per cent of Australians rely on social media as their main source of news.
This comes at a time where the lines between news and entertainment are increasingly blurred as media platforms compete for the eyes and ears of users all over the world in relentless pursuit of the data and revenue that our attention can provide.
TikTok now has over seven million Australian users. TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is intimately linked to the Chinese Communist Party and is subject to the intelligence laws of China, which require all Chinese companies and Chinese citizens to assist intelligence agencies in their work, and to keep that cooperation a secret.
This means it would be trivially easy for the CCP to direct TikTok to use its algorithm to suppress information which is critical of the CCP, or to boost information that supports its narratives to millions of users in an instant.
These are not theoretical concerns.
I chair the Senate Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media, and at our first public hearings last week we heard evidence that TikTok has suppressed content that defies CCP-sanctioned narratives CCP, such as those on the infamous Tiananmen Square massacre. Disinformation that is favourable to the Chinese government, such as the claim there are no human rights abuses against Uyghurs in Xinjiang, is rife on the platform.
Professor Seth Kaplan from John Hopkins University in the United States told us that the Chinese-owned messaging app WeChat poses an even bigger threat than TikTok.
A recent Lowy Institute report found that 47 per cent of Chinese-Australian use WeChat. It is an essential communications tool for diaspora communities, who rely on it as a source of news and information and without which they would be unable to communicate or send money to family and friends in China.
This is by design.
Chinese-Australians are effectively forced to participate in the WeChat ecosystem, which Professor Kaplan described as a tool in Beijing’s global mass surveillance network which serves as a ‘narrative machine’ for the CCP and what it wants to promote – or suppress.
In the lead up to the 2022 Federal election, then Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s WeChat account was taken over and rebranded as a pro-Beijing propaganda outfit. ASPI analyst Fergus Ryan pointed to this as clear evidence of foreign interference by the Chinese Communist Party, which sought to restrict the Australian Prime Minister from communicating directly with a key political constituency, the 1.4 million Australians of Chinese descent.
Just yesterday, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute released a report detailing how, "the CCP has developed a sophisticated, persistent capability to sustain coordinated networks of personas on social-media platforms to spread disinformation, wage public-opinion warfare and support its own diplomatic messaging, economic coercion and other levers of state power.”
The potential for bad actors to psychologically manipulate Australians through sophisticated and subversive disinformation is a formidable weapon which we ignore at our peril.
It should be especially concerning for liberal democracies that are open and transparent by their very nature, and will defend to the hilt free speech, free enterprise, and the right to peacefully disagree.
These values make us strong, but they also increase the attack surface for foreign adversaries pursuing their own national ambitions.
It also provides an asymmetrical advantage to authoritarian regimes, who diligently censor and suppress inconvenient narratives domestically while exploiting the openness of liberal democracies to export their agendas offshore.
The advent of new artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT will be just as, if not more, transformative for how we produce, distribute and consume information as Facebook and Twitter were when we first became acquainted with social media.
These tools, while still in their early stages, have already been used to write school essays, develop computer code, generate unique artworks and even simulate human relationships.
But, as with all new technologies, they can also be used for darker purposes. A tool that can write an essay can write a phishing email. The code it writes could be for a ransomware attack. That artwork could be a deep fake. And a lifelike chatbot can shape and manipulate the way people think in subtle and creative ways.
As Justin Bassi from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute has observed, “chatbots create a sense of intimacy and identification with the user that, as the technology improves, will enable them to affect our thinking in ways that are orders of magnitude greater than today’s social media. The combined lesson of chatbots and TikTok is that we face a future challenge of technology that can establish a convincing sense of intimacy comparable to a companion, friend or mentor, but that is controlled by authoritarian regimes.”
The unprecedented complexity and scale of these tools represents a quantum leap forward in battle over the information space.
We are entering the age of industrial warfare for the mind.
The cost of inaction
The convergence of these issues will test the fortitude and very identity of liberal democracies like Australia, as previously theoretical threats manifest in very real ways.
Viewed through this lens, Ukraine’s plight is instructive.
We would be foolish to think Australia will always be free from this sort of conflict, and I’m sure there are many things that Ukraine wishes it had known before the war began.
Here in Australia, we need to ask ourselves what it is we’ll wish we had done sooner should the worst come to pass, and take action while we still can. What are the Australian equivalents to the pre-positioned ‘Ukrainian biolabs’ disinformation campaigns that could be activated against us in a crisis?
It doesn’t take much to imagine what this could look like for Australia.
Cyber experts testifying before the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security in 2021 shared the belief that adversarial state actors are likely already pre-positioned on Australia’s sensitive networks to disable or disrupt them in the prelude to regional conflict.
Imagine a scenario where an aggressive cyber operation was undertaken against Australia’s critical infrastructure in an effort to induce societal panic, weaken the credibility of Australian authorities and institutions and inhibit decision making at a time of regional crisis.
While this is happening, imagine tech companies headquartered in authoritarian regimes are the dominant source of news and information, and a foreign power has subtly and successfully put its thumb on the algorithmic scale to fuel chaos, division and distrust in the Australian system in line with its own national strategic objectives.
In this world, citizens in liberal democracies have become disoriented and divided in a post-truth information economy, ultimately disengaging from the democratic process as authoritative sources of truth become scarcer and less credible by the day.
According to ANU National Security College lecturer Dr William Stoltz, as great power tensions rise, and in the lead up to conflict, such a scenario “where perception, not truth, is often the most important commodity” is not so far-fetched.
In an Australian context, the double-edged sword of information operations conducted in tandem with cyber campaigns to disable our critical infrastructure could easily fracture Australia’s domestic social, political and economic stability, weaken the posture of our allies and strengthen the position of destabilising authoritarian forces.
The prospect of this scenario, and scenarios like it, underwrite the urgency of us needing an honest and transparent dialogue about the risks associated with digital technologies and how they can be weaponised against us.
Right now, Australia has an opportunity to get ahead of the threat before it’s too late.
But we can only do that if we are clear-eyed and willing to confront our vulnerabilities.
In government, the Liberal and National parties recognised these challenges and acted on them.
We made tough but necessary decisions to secure our digital sovereignty and harden Australia against the insidious threat of foreign interference.
In 2018 we led the world by banning Huawei and other high-risk vendors with close connections to the Chinese Communist Party from providing 5G mobile technology in Australia.
We had to do this because the risk of having an authoritarian government take control of what is effectively Australia’s central nervous system could not be overcome in any other way.
A host of other countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, India, New Zealand and others have since banned Huawei from their networks on national security grounds.
We passed world-leading cyber reforms to enhance our Security of Critical Infrastructure legislation in 2021 and 2022.
We also introduced laws to criminalise foreign interference, appointed the first National Counter Foreign Interference Coordinator within the Department of Home Affairs, and established a multi-agency Electoral Integrity Assurance Taskforce.
In 2019 we brought together the university sector and Australian Government agencies through the University Foreign Interference Taskforce to provide better protection for universities from insidious foreign interference activity occurring at alarming rates on campus.
We introduced the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme to provide greater visibility of the nature and extent of foreign influence activities impacting Australia’s government and political processes, and the Foreign Arrangements Scheme to ensure state and territory governments do not enter into arrangements with foreign entities that are inconsistent with Australia’s foreign policy – such as Victoria’s previously planned Belt and Road initiative.
We established a National Artificial Intelligence Centre as part of our AI Action Plan.
Beyond the acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines, the Coalition’s historic trilateral security partnership with the United Kingdom and the United States under AUKUS will enhance our joint capabilities in areas including cyber security, artificial intelligence and quantum technologies under Pillar Two.
Last month’s AUKUS announcement outlining the details of our submarine acquisition is evidence of just how seriously both sides of Australian politics regard our strategic circumstances.
I welcome Labor’s commitments in taking AUKUS forward, and the Coalition will continue to work with the Albanese government in a bipartisan way to prioritise and deliver the technologies Australia needs under the second pillar of AUKUS.
But despite our great need for it, Australia cannot rely on conventional military preparedness alone to protect Australians in the battle for the mind – no matter how critical this is to deter kinetic conflict in the region.
Nor can we rest on our security partnerships – no matter how vital they are for collective deterrence and regional stability.
The cyber realm is evolving rapidly, and we need an approach that tackles the issues we're facing right now and prepares us for how new and existing technologies could be used into the future.
The Albanese government’s decision to ban TikTok from government devices, while long overdue, was a welcome first step.
Now that we have acknowledged the app is not safe to be on the phones of public servants, it begs the question: what does it mean for the millions of regular Australians who use TikTok?
And beyond just data security, what should we do to address the risk of an app beholden to an authoritarian state being used to conduct foreign interference in our democracy?
We simply cannot allow companies closely linked to the Chinese Communist Party to have unregulated access to millions of Australians, including many young people who rely on it for news and information about the world.
The opportunity for the CCP to sow division, undermine social cohesion, erode national unity and suppress inconvenient narratives is too great.
This issue goes beyond just TikTok. We will confront similar issues with new applications and technologies we haven’t even thought of yet, and the approach we take now will lay the foundation for how we harden ourselves against foreign interference at a structural level.
Australia has an opportunity to get ahead of the curve again and demonstrate global leadership by making it clear that any companies vying for our data and attention must operate on our terms in line with our values.
Australia needs a holistic, risk-based approach to managing digital technologies – both software and hardware – that could serve as a vehicle for foreign surveillance or interference.
We need to closely consider controls for vendors who are likely to be subject to extra judicial directions from a foreign government that could jeopardise our national interests.
Recognising that there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach, we should rate digital technologies according to the potential risks they represent and apply commensurate controls to eliminate or manage these risks.
At the low-risk end of the spectrum, technologies may only be subject to voluntary measures or transparency requirements, while at the other end of the spectrum we may consider mandatory requirements or even an outright ban if the risk cannot be appropriately managed, as we did with Huawei.
Australia is not the only country grappling with this issue. Currently being considered by Congress, the United States’ RESTRICT Act would give the US Government the power to vet and, if needed, ban an app or service controlled by a foreign adversary that could endanger national security. This includes risks of sabotage, subversion and foreign interference, and aims to safeguard US critical infrastructure, the digital economy and the US democratic process.
The Australian Government should consider similar reforms to address these existing and emerging threats in the Australian context.
Australia should also consider how we can ensure that the risks of foreign interference via social media are managed by those best-placed to do so – namely the tech companies who manage the platforms on which this conduct is taking place.
These platforms need to be more proactive in detecting and disrupting foreign interference campaigns, and where these activities are detected, companies need to be transparent in what occurred, and what they did to stop it.
The Australian Government also needs to step up and name and shame foreign interference activities when they can be attributed, in conjunction with partners and allies wherever possible.
Doing so serves as a deterrent to those who conduct these activities, and positions Australia as a staunch defender of sovereignty and liberal democracy on the world stage.
It is a good thing the Minister for Home Affairs has done this on one occasion relating to foreign interference attempted by the Iranian government.
But we all know Iran is not Australia’s principal source of foreign interference risk. It is not even close. The government needs to adopt this policy of transparency for all sources of foreign interference, not just selectively.
Collectively these actions will also serve to raise the public’s awareness of the threat of foreign interference to inoculate them against this insidious threat.
It is also essential that the government use the platform and authority they have to dispel instances of disinformation and misinformation about the global and regional security environment that are being propagated into our information system, particularly when they are spread by people who have significant public standing and influence.
It is not sufficient to simply dismiss these voices with glib one liners, or to comfort ourselves that their views are currently marginal or extreme.
As we have seen in Europe and North America, these marginal voices can quickly become mainstream and influence public debate when we move from a benign security environment to a heightened one.
It is human nature when put under stress to look for simple explanations to complex problems. The voices telling you your energy and grocery bills are higher because NATO has provoked Russia into war, for example, get a better hearing when citizens are experiencing these hardships compared to when they are remote or theoretical.
If there were conflict in our region, regardless of whether Australia was directly involved, there would be a significant impact on the lives of Australians.
We can’t wait until then to confront the seductive arguments which will seek to blame the victims of that aggression for these problems instead of the perpetrators. By then these ideas will have much greater currency than they deserve.
A substantive, comprehensive and serious response to those arguments is required now.
In this regard, the Foreign Minister’s recent speech at the National Press Club is welcome first step. But we are going to need a lot more of it, and it will have to be direct, clearly communicated and from the top.
The worst thing that could happen is for us to drift passively into our digital future, wishing we had acted earlier after insidious threats have taken root in the foundations of our democracy.
That's exactly why the Senate Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media was established. Our first public hearings last week spoke to the alarming scale and sometimes deeply personal nature of foreign interference activities in Australia.
As Chair of the Committee, I will continue to shed light on these activities and hold tech companies to account in doing what is necessary to protect Australians from these sinister activities.
The Opposition stands ready to work with the government on bipartisan solutions to protect Australians and our democracy from this complex challenge.
Australia stands at a crossroads. We are facing the most perilous set of strategic circumstances since the Second World War, while the world is on the precipice of a new wave of technological advancement that will fundamentally reshape how we think and communicate.
The battle for hearts and minds is well underway, and we are running out of time to ensure we emerge victorious.
Every second counts when our democracy is at stake.
