By Focus and AFP | 2025-02-20

Foreign spies are targeting Australia's nuclear-powered submarine program and plotting to harm or kill dissidents living in the country, the nation's intelligence chief warned.

Overall, Australia's security environment is becoming "degraded," Mike Burgess, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) director-general, said on February 19 in a wide-ranging speech that declassified some of his agency's secretive thinking about the national threat outlook.

Australia in 2021 announced plans to buy at least three US-designed nuclear-powered submarines as part of its plans to boost defense spending because of a massive buildup of firepower by China and Russia.

Australian plans to deploy the stealthy submarines in a pact with the United States and Britain -- known as AUKUS.

The move to purchase the submarines angered Beijing, which described the new alliance as an "extremely irresponsible" threat to regional stability. Then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison rejected the criticism, saying that China has its own "very substantive program of nuclear submarine building."

The Virginia-class submarines being supplied to Australia will not have atomic weapons and are instead expected to carry long-range cruise missiles. They represent a major boost for the country's open water capabilities.

The submarine program offers an enticing target, including to friendly nations, said Burgess.

Foreign intelligence services seek to understand future AUKUS submarines' capabilities, how they will be deployed and to undermine allies' trust in Australia, Burgess said in the speech in Canberra.

By 2030, they are likelier to focus on interference to undermine support for AUKUS and "potentially sabotage" if regional tensions escalate, he said, adding that Australian defense personnel were being "relentlessly" targeted.

"Some were recently given gifts by international counterparts. The presents contained concealed surveillance devices," Burgess said.

Targeting critics

Australia is not immune from hostile states like Iran undertaking "acts of security concern" on its shores, Burgess added.

"ASIO investigations have identified at least three different countries plotting to physically harm people living in Australia," Burgess said. "In a small number of cases, we held grave fears for the life of the person being targeted."

In one case foiled by ASIO, a foreign intelligence service planned to silence an Australia-based human-rights activist by luring the person abroad and staging an accident to seriously injure or kill the target, he said.

Last year, a different hostile spy service sought to "harm and possibly kill" one or more people on Australian soil as part of a broader effort to eliminate critics, Burgess said.

This effort, too, was thwarted by ASIO.

In both cases the plotters were overseas, but those involved know "how we will deal with their agents," he said.

Multiple foreign governments have "continually" attempted to coerce Australian citizens and residents to report on fellow members of the same diaspora, Burgess said.

At least four countries have tried to pressure individuals to return to their countries of birth, including in one case by seizing assets and threatening the victim's family, friends and former classmates.

Chinese plots

In recent years, several Chinese spy cases have come to light.

In April 2023, for example, Australian prosecutors argued that two suspected Chinese spies had paid a Sydney businessman for information regarding Australia's defense strategies, including a deal with the United States and Britain to develop a nuclear-powered submarine fleet through the AUKUS (the Australia- United Kingdom- United States) partnership.

The Australian suspect, Alexander Csergo, is still awaiting trial.

Additionally, ASIO thwarted a Beijing-directed scheme to financially support New South Wales Labor candidates in the 2022 federal election, Reuters reported at the time.

In an incident at sea in November 2023, a Chinese warship injured a team of Australian military divers by activating its powerful sonar off the coast of Japan.

'Major terrorism plots' thwarted

Besides disclosing the international subterfuge waged against Australia, Burgess cautioned that terrorism remained a real threat but that the perpetrators were now likelier to be acting alone and in their teens.

Burgess said the country's counterterrorism defenses were robust and his service along with law enforcement had disrupted "dozens of major terrorism plots" including five last year.

Of all the potential terrorism plots investigated last year, fewer than half were religiously motivated, while most involved "mixed" nationalist or racist ideologies.

"Almost all the matters involved minors. All were lone actors or small groups. Almost all the individuals were unknown to ASIO or the police," the intelligence chief said.

The median age at which minors are first investigated by ASIO is now 15. Eighty-five percent of them are male and they are overwhelmingly Australian-born, Burgess said.

Looking ahead, a new generation would become potential targets for online radicalization, he noted.

"If technology continues its current trajectory, it will be easier to find extremist material, and AI [artificial intelligence]-fueled algorithms will make it easier for extremist material to find vulnerable adolescent minds."

Australia's national terrorism threat level was raised last year to "probable," Burgess said.

"I do not anticipate being able to lower it in the foreseeable future."