[10 May 2022] Since its inception, Australian intelligence has strictly followed the British model: subtle, discreet and, most of all, avoiding any publicity —good or bad— by any means necessary. That is why, until very recently, there was no presence of anything resembling public relations in the Australian intelligence community. Even in our age of transparency, Australian spooks are rarely heard of in public. That is precisely why one should pay attention in the rare instances when Australian spooks do choose to address the public-at-large. When an Australian intelligence official chooses to speak publicly, it means something serious is going on —and it’s usually bad.
That is precisely what happened this week in Sydney, when Paul Symon, director of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), made a rare speech. Symon was speaking at a public event held to mark the 70th anniversary of Australia’s main foreign intelligence service. The significance of that event, which was hosted by the Lowy Institute, an independent Australian think-tank that focuses on international affairs, cannot be overstated. A few years ago, even acknowledging in public the existence of the ASIS would have been unthinkable. So, a public speech by its director is an extraordinary event.
What did Symon choose to focus on in his rare public speech? Simply put, Australia needs more spies. He argued that a growing number of regional and global security concerns make “the need to recruit new spies” more essential than ever before. According to Symon, ASIS needs to “recruit and work with even more vigor and urgency than at any other point in our 70-year history”. Let me help you, in case you are trying to do the numbers in your head: what Symon is arguing here is that Australia needs to recruit foreign spies with more urgency than at any time since the opening stages of the Cold War, i.e. the early 1950s.
Later in his speech, the ASIS director touched in broad terms on the challenge posed by technology on human intelligence (HUMINT) operations, in which ASIS specializes. He described these challenges as “extraordinary”, and said they resulted from an interaction between “a complex strategic environment [and] intensified counter-intelligence efforts” by Australia’s adversaries, as well as a host of “emergent and emerging technologies”. These technologies are in many ways posing “a near-existential” risk to the types of HUMINT operations carried out by ASIS, as the organization’s collection activities run the risk of becoming “increasingly discoverable”, he warned.
Is there a hint of hyperbole in Symon’s remarks? Possibly. After all, civil servants rarely waste an opportunity to justify the existence of their agency and ask for a bigger operational budget. However, alongside their discreetness, Australian spooks also tend to be understated. They typically don’t ring alarm bells, unless they absolutely have to. For Symon to do so, it means he is sensing a clear danger ahead. His audience, in Australia and beyond, should be paying attention. [EIA]