{"id":38623,"date":"2018-04-17T14:30:06","date_gmt":"2018-04-17T04:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=38623"},"modified":"2018-04-17T17:15:10","modified_gmt":"2018-04-17T07:15:10","slug":"content-ideas-cyber-sleeper-national-security-defences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/content-ideas-cyber-sleeper-national-security-defences\/","title":{"rendered":"Content and ideas + cyber\u2014the sleeper in our national security defences"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Australia is in the midst of a much-needed cyber resuscitation. Over the past two years Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, a small group of overworked public servants, proactive industry supporters and key civil society actors have been hard at work trying to elevate<\/a> and mainstream<\/a> all things cyber. No easy feat given that the term \u2018cyber\u2019 means very different things to different people<\/a>.<\/p>\n

New senior positions, proactive government strategies, growth centres and innovation hubs, piles of industry conferences and a gaggle of indecipherable acronyms are spurting out of Canberra at impressive speed. While a much-discussed national cyber \u2018slip, slop, slap<\/a>\u2019 campaign hasn\u2019t yet been realised, the momentum is positive. It must continue to grow under this and future governments.<\/p>\n

Why? Because this is only the beginning. Cyberspace and cyber-enabled technologies will continue to reshape everything. Advancements like the internet of things<\/a> and artificial intelligence<\/a> (AI) will alter the make-up of Australia\u2019s future workforce, our export base and potential customers.<\/p>\n

Australia will have to fundamentally rethink how we engage in diplomacy, intelligence work and warfare. We\u2019ll likely continue to coast on the first but won\u2019t have the luxury of lagging on the latter two. Think, for example, of the impact of advances in facial recognition<\/a> on human intelligence gathering. Or the potential defensive and offensive capabilities of autonomous military systems guided by composite human\u2013AI decision-making.<\/p>\n

Regionally, large technology and AI investments made by others\u2014such as China\u2019s ambitious social credit system to rank citizens<\/a>\u2014will bring unexpected consequences (watch this space<\/a> for an upcoming ASPI paper on this).<\/p>\n

Until now, governments have rightly focused on understanding and defending against traditional cybersecurity threats, ensuring that our infrastructure and industry is resilient to attacks.<\/p>\n

But we\u2019ve failed abysmally on the content side of cyberspace\u2014the actual information that keeps the world\u2019s 4\u00a0billion+ internet users coming back again and again. We haven\u2019t invested in understanding how information actually travels in cyberspace. How it engages with, and potentially influences, those that consume it and pass it on. Or how particular information gets magnified and amplified and how these actions can so easily manifest themselves offline<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As Fairfax\u2019s Chris Zappone wrote last year<\/a>, when it comes to information warfare, cybersecurity won\u2019t help defend us. Information warfare isn\u2019t about the protection of networks or the ways in which information is delivered. It\u2019s about the actual content and ideas that form and shape cyberspace and its users.<\/p>\n

This has been a rather dangerous oversight<\/a>, but we\u2019re certainly not alone. Countries around the world, particularly democracies, are grappling with<\/a> external interference in their political systems and social structures. Arguably, Australia is ahead of many other countries given its ongoing and important public debate and the draft espionage, foreign interference and foreign influence reforms<\/a> before Parliament.<\/p>\n

We know that there are mounting examples of increasingly sophisticated<\/a>\u2014often cyber-enabled<\/a>\u2014covert operations occurring around the world, including in our own region<\/a>. We\u2019re not talking here about public diplomacy, or slick, overt propaganda put out by international broadcasters.<\/p>\n

Instead, we\u2019re talking about the deliberate and covert use of information to confuse, distract and mislead. Who is behind it, and why, are the key questions. (See Herb Lin and Jackie Kerr\u2019s work<\/a> for useful definitions of \u2018cyber-enabled information warfare and manipulation\u2019).<\/p>\n

Is Australia actually prepared? If a state or non-state actor were to deploy a deliberate, strategic and coordinated cyber-enabled influence operation in Australia, what would we do?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say it\u2019s deployed around an election<\/a>, a breaking political development<\/a> or an issue related to regional security: who\u2019s in charge? And while I\u2019m here, let me throw out a few more questions:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. How does cyber interference fit into Australia\u2019s draft foreign interference legislation?<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Is the Australian government currently resourced with the right skills and expertise to <\/span>detect<\/span><\/i> a covert attempt at cyber interference in our domestic political and social landscape? Which department\/agency would take the lead?<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Is the Australian government currently resourced with the right skills and expertise to <\/span>counter<\/span><\/i> such interference? Which department\/agency would take the lead?<\/span><\/li>\n
  4. If such an event did occur, which part of the Australian government would then be responsible for alerting, informing and sustaining a dialogue with the Australian public about such developments so there\u2019s no ongoing confusion?<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Within these questions there are some issues that need further unpacking. For example, it\u2019s hard to see Australia\u2019s foreign interference laws having much effect if such an operation is run from overseas rather than physically from Australia\u2014or by individuals with diplomatic cover for that matter.<\/p>\n

    Detection is equally complicated. It would require multi-language work by individuals who understand how information spreads online. And the work would need to span popular online networks and apps from the US and North Asia. WeChat, for example, has an estimated 2.5\u00a0million users<\/a> in Australia.<\/p>\n

    Let\u2019s say, for example, that a social media bot swarm<\/a> were activated<\/a> by a state or non-state actor to promote confusion, magnify dissent or prop up a particular political position. Let\u2019s say these maliciously intended activities are detected by one of our intelligence agencies. Now what?<\/p>\n

    Would the work be handed over to another part of government that would be responsible for publicly countering such efforts? Most government departments have a very risk-averse approach to online engagement, and few have a savvy cyber presence, so it\u2019s hard to imagine any part of the government engaging in domestically focused, protective information operation efforts.<\/p>\n

    But equally, can the government really be silent? Should the government instead focus its efforts on urging American and\/or Asian social media networks to dismantle the bot swarm? What if they won\u2019t or they\u2019re slow to action?<\/p>\n

    Home Affairs will most likely be charged with explaining what is happening and what is being done. But Home Affairs is brand-spanking new. It doesn\u2019t have much of a relationship with the Australian public (or much<\/a> of its own active online infrastructure<\/a>). In the short-term, this doesn\u2019t provide us a satisfactory answer.<\/p>\n

    Russia\u2019s cyber interference in the US exposed a crucial gap in the West\u2019s national security threat matrix. While we\u2019ve been rightly worrying about cybersecurity, we\u2019ve failed to worry about actual information\u2014it\u2019s integrity, how it can be used to influence, and how it can be so easily redirected, falsified, magnified, manipulated and weaponised through cyberspace.<\/p>\n

    Ensuring the integrity of domestic discussions isn\u2019t just something for political parties or ASIO to worry about\u2014it\u2019s key to a free and open Australian society. We\u2019ve been gifted a colossal wakeup call. Let\u2019s not waste it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Australia is in the midst of a much-needed cyber resuscitation. Over the past two years Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, a small group of overworked public servants, proactive industry supporters and key civil society actors have …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":691,"featured_media":38631,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[381],"class_list":["post-38623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-information-warfare"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nContent and ideas + cyber\u2014the sleeper in our national security defences | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/content-ideas-cyber-sleeper-national-security-defences\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Content and ideas + cyber\u2014the sleeper in our national security defences | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Australia is in the midst of a much-needed cyber resuscitation. 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