By Focus and AFP | 2025-08-04

Foreign espionage cost Australia at least 12.5 billion AUD ($8.4 billion) in the past financial year, a figure authorities say likely underestimates the true damage to the nation's economy and security.

The estimate comes from a first-of-its-kind report jointly released by the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) and the Australian Institute of Criminology.

In a major speech delivered at the annual Hawke Lecture on July 31, ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess revealed the organization had disrupted 24 major espionage and foreign interference operations since 2022 -- more than the previous eight years combined.

He singled out Russia as a long-running intelligence threat.

"Russia remains a persistent and aggressive espionage threat," Burgess said. Without providing details, Burgess said a number of Russian spies had been expelled from Australia in recent years.

Burgess also named China and Iran among the most active nations targeting Australia's secrets.

"The obvious candidates are very active -- I've previously named China, Russia and Iran -- but many other countries are also targeting anyone and anything that could give them a strategic or tactical advantage, including sensitive but unclassified information," he said, as quoted by The Conversation.

The report's estimate includes losses from cyberattacks, intellectual property theft, insider threats and defensive costs across sectors.

However, Burgess said it still underestimates the true damage.

"The potential loss of strategic advantage, sovereign decision-making and warfighting capacity hold immense value, but not a quantifiable dollar value," he siad.

Shifting tactics

Australia's AUKUS partnership -- which will see the country acquire nuclear-powered submarines from the United States and United Kingdom -- has become a top foreign intelligence target, according to Burgess.

"Foreign intelligence services [are] taking a very unhealthy interest in AUKUS and its associated capabilities," Burgess said, adding that "we are not just defending our sovereign capability. We are also defending critical capability shared by and with our partners."

He added that adversaries are pursuing both classified military programs and dual-use technologies.

"Targets include maritime and aviation-related military capabilities, but also innovations with both commercial and military applications."

ASIO has observed foreign agencies go to extreme lengths, including tailing Australian defense personnel abroad and planting surveillance devices in gifts.

"In recent years, for example, defense employees traveling overseas have been subjected to covert room searches, been approached at conferences by spies in disguise and given gifts containing surveillance devices," Burgess said.

Foreign agents have also used trade missions and research visits as cover for theft.

Burgess recounted how members of an overseas delegation snapped off branches from a restricted horticultural research facility.

"Almost certainly, the stolen plant material allowed scientists in the other country to reverse engineer and replicate two decades of Australian research and development," Burgess said.

Other tactics include acquiring land near sensitive military sites and infiltrating joint research programs, according to the ASIO-AIC report, which warns that adversaries increasingly exploit legitimate investment and collaboration channels to gain access to classified or commercially sensitive data.

Complacency

Despite the escalation, Burgess expressed frustration at domestic complacency, emphasizing he had "lost count of the number of times senior officials and executives have privately downplayed the impacts of espionage."

He cited one instance in which "a trade official told ASIO there's no way the Chinese intelligence services would have any interest in his organization's people and premises in China."

Burgess also criticized public servants who reveal sensitive details online. He pointed to nearly 2,500 people who publicly boast about having a security clearance and 1,300 who claim to work in the national security community.

"While these numbers have fallen since I first raised the alarm two years ago, this still makes my head spin… surely these individuals, of all people, should understand the threat and recognize the risk?"

While most Australians resist foreign approaches, Burgess warned that some are compromised.

"Unfortunately, though, some are sucked in and end up being used -- recklessly or consciously -- to gather information for a foreign country."