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501. Digital government services. Building for peak demand.

Author:
Tom Uren
Publication Date:
07-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, the myGov website was overwhelmed by a demand surge from citizens seeking to rapidly access digital services. In 2016, the online Census (eCensus) suffered a series of relatively small distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. While they didn’t overwhelm the platform, the attacks ultimately resulted in the eCensus being taken offline. What do these two examples have in common, and what lessons should we learn to ensure more robust digital government services? To answer those questions, this paper will examine five points: The nature of the DDoS attacks The CIA (confidentiality, integrity and availability) triad model for digital security How to predict demand How to respond to unpredictable demand The structure of reliable data systems
Topic:
Government, National Security, Science and Technology, Cybersecurity, and Digital Policy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

502. ASPI - Embassy of Japan 1.5 Track Dialogue on Responsible Behaviour in Space

Author:
Malcolm Davis and Khwezi Nkwanyana
Publication Date:
05-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
Earlier this year, ASPI and the Embassy of Japan in Australia convened a hybrid workshop on responsible behaviours in space; a concept which has emerged as a key focus of the international space policy community. At the workshop, participants discussed the stable and sustainable use of space and management of security challenges in space, and ways to define responsible behaviour in space, including through UN General Assembly Resolution 75/36. Participants at this workshop included academics, practitioners, government representatives, military personnel and legal experts from Australia, Japan, Britain and Southeast Asia. This workshop and report were sponsored by the Embassy of Japan in Australia.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Diplomacy, National Security, Science and Technology, and Space
Political Geography:
Japan, Asia, and Australia

503. Deterrence through denial: A strategy for an era of reduced warning time

Author:
Paul Dibb and Richard Brabin-Smith
Publication Date:
05-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
Australia now needs to implement serious changes to how warning time is considered in defence planning. The need to plan for reduced warning time has implications for the Australian intelligence community, defence strategic policy, force structure priorities, readiness and sustainability. Important changes will also be needed with respect to personnel, stockpiles of missiles and munitions, and fuel supplies. We can no longer assume that Australia will have time gradually to adjust military capability and preparedness in response to emerging threats. In other words, there must be a new approach in Defence to managing warning, capability and preparedness, and detailed planning for rapid expansion and sustainment. This paper addresses those issues, recognising that they’re a revolutionary break with the past era of what were much more comfortable assumptions about threats to Australia. Considering the complexity of the issues involved, we have identified further areas for research, including at the classified level.
Topic:
Defense Policy, National Security, Science and Technology, and Deterrence
Political Geography:
Australia

504. Mapping China's Tech Giants: Reining in China’s technology giants

Author:
Fergus Ryan, Audrey Fritz, and Daria Impiombato
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
Since the launch of ASPI ICPC’s Mapping China’s Technology Giants project in April 2019, the Chinese technology companies we canvassed have gone through a tumultuous period. While most were buoyed by the global Covid-19 pandemic, which stimulated demand for technology services around the world, many were buffeted by an unprecedented onslaught of sanctions from abroad, before being engulfed in a regulatory storm at home. The environment in which the Chinese tech companies are operating has changed radically, as the pandemic sensitised multiple governments, multilateral groups and companies to their own critical supply-chain vulnerabilities. The lessons about national resilience learned from the pandemic are now being applied in many sectors, including the technology sector, where a trend towards decoupling China and the West was already well underway. As the geopolitical rivalry between the US and China has heightened, both sides increasingly see any reliance on the other for strategic commodities, such as rare-earth minerals and semiconductors, as dangerous vulnerabilities.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Bilateral Relations, Geopolitics, COVID-19, and Supply Chains
Political Geography:
China and Australia

505. Mapping China's Tech Giants: Supply chains & the global data collection ecosystem

Author:
Samantha Hoffman and Nathan Attrill
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
Most of the 27 companies tracked by our Mapping China’s Technology Giants project are heavily involved in the collection and processing of vast quantities of personal and organisational data — everything from personal social media accounts, to smart cities data, to biomedical data. Their business operations—and associated international collaborations — depend on the flow of vast amounts of data, often governed by the data privacy laws of multiple jurisdictions. Currently, however, existing global policy debates and subsequent policy responses concerning security in the digital supply chain miss the bigger picture because they typically prioritise the potential for disruption or malicious alterations of the supply chain. Yet, as we have defined it in this report, digital supply-chain risk starts at the design level (Figure 1). For the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the designer is the Chinese party-state, through expectations and agenda-setting in laws and policy documents and actions such as the mobilisation of state resources to achieve objectives such as the setting of technology standards. It’s through those standards, policies and laws that the party-state is refining its capacity to exert control over companies’ activities to ensure that it can derive strategic value and benefit from the companies’ global operations. That includes leveraging data collection taking place through those companies’ everyday global business activities, which ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre (ICPC) described in the Engineering global consent report. Technology isn’t agnostic—who sets the standards and therefore the direction of the technology matters just as much as who manufactures the product. This will have major implications for the effectiveness of data protection laws and notions of digital supply-chain security.
Topic:
Security, Science and Technology, Data, and Supply Chains
Political Geography:
China and Asia

506. The impact of quantum technologies on secure communications

Author:
Robert Clark, Stephen Bartlett, Michael Bremner, Ping Koy Lam, and Timothy Ralph
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
This ASPI report examines the impact of quantum technologies on secure communications. It provides an overview of the key technologies and the status of the field in Australia and internationally (including escalating recent developments in both the US and China), and captures counterpart US, UK and Canadian reports and recommendations to those nations’ defence departments that have recently been released publicly. The report is structured into six sections: an introduction that provides a stand-alone overview and sets out both the threat and the opportunity of quantum technologies for communications security, and more detailed sections that span quantum computing, quantum encryption, the quantum internet, and post-quantum cryptography. The last section of the report makes five substantive recommendations in the Australian context that are implementable and in the national interest. A key message on quantum technologies relates to urgency. Escalating international progress is opening a widening gap in relation to Australia’s status in this field. It is critical that, in addition to its own initiatives, the Defence Department transitions from a largely watching brief on progress across the university sector and start-up companies to a leadership role—to coordinate, resource and harness the full potential of a most capable Australian quantum technologies community to support Defence’s objectives.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Science and Technology, Communications, and Quantum Computers
Political Geography:
Australia

507. Somebody might hear us: Emerging communications security technologies

Author:
Andrew Davies
Publication Date:
05-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
Militaries have been trying to keep their communications safe from prying eyes for centuries. But they have also sought to be able to communicate as quickly as possible and as widely as possible with their own forces. Those requirements are in tension with one another. Today, militaries can communicate globally over increasingly capacious data pipes. But the same technological evolution that allows them to do that has also given would-be eavesdroppers new and powerful tools to collect and exploit signals. In this report, author Dr Andrew Davies explains the principles of secure communication and uses some examples of emerging technologies to illustrate what the next generation of secure communications might look like.
Topic:
Security, Science and Technology, Communications, and Military Affairs
Political Geography:
Australia

508. An Australian strategy for the quantum revolution

Author:
Gavin Brennen, Simon Devitt, Tara Roberson, and Peter Rohde
Publication Date:
05-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
The world is now at the precipice of another technological and social revolution—the quantum revolution. The countries that master quantum technology will dominate the information processing space for decades and perhaps centuries to come, giving them control and influence over sectors such as advanced manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, the digital economy, logistics, national security and intelligence.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Quantum Computers, and Strategic Planning
Political Geography:
Australia

509. Coming ready or not: Hypersonic weapons

Author:
Andrew Davies
Publication Date:
03-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
This report analyses the future impact that hypersonic weaponry will have on global affairs. Hypersonic systems include anything that travels faster than Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. We may be on the cusp of seeing hypersonic weapons proliferate around the world, with Russia, China and the US all in the process of developing and testing them. By 2030 they are likely to be in the inventory of all of the major powers. And Australia might well join them - we have some world class researchers and have been active in joint programs with the US for over 20 years. The government has added hypersonic weapons to its defence acquisition plan. It's a topic we should be interested in and better informed about. It's always hard to predict exactly how much will change when a new technology enters the battlefield, but Australia is investing tens of billions of dollars in advanced sensors and combat systems to defend its surface vessels against subsonic and supersonic weapons. It's not clear that they will be effective enough against hypersonic weapons. On the plus side for our defence forces, hypersonic strike weapons with ranges of thousands of kilometres could return a strike capability to the ADF that has been missing since the F-111 was retired a decade ago. There are some strategic stability issues to be wrestled with as well. The US is developing a 'prompt global strike' system that would allow it hit a target pretty much anywhere on Earth in 20 minutes. Russian and Chinese systems are being developed with a nuclear or conventional warhead capability. The combination of short warning times and nuclear warhead ambiguity is potentially highly destabilising.
Topic:
Defense Policy, National Security, Nuclear Weapons, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
China, Australia, and United States of America

510. Technical Difficulties of Contact Tracing

Author:
Amy Robinson and James Waldo
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
In mid-October, thousands of English and Welsh citizens received phantom alerts that they had potentially been exposed to COVID-19. A quick Twitter tour reveals the spiraling fear, frustration, and confusion that ensued. Even though National Health Service (NHS) later updated the app, built using an Exposure Notification System (ENS) developed by Apple and Google, the incident still amplified mass hysteria and confusion.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Public Health, COVID-19, and Contact Tracing
Political Geography:
Global Focus