FOREIGN spies are targeting Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine programme and plotting to harm or kill opponents living in the country, the nation’s intelligence chief warned Wednesday.
Overall, Australia’s security environment is becoming “degraded”, Mike Burgess said in a wide-ranging speech that declassified some of his agency’s secretive thinking about the national threat outlook.
Besides disclosing the international subterfuge waged against Australia, Burgess cautioned that terrorism remained a real threat but that the perpetrators were now more likely to be acting alone, and in their teens.
Australian plans to deploy stealthy nuclear-powered submarines in a pact with the United States and Britain — known as AUKUS — offer an enticing target, including to friendly nations, said the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) director-general.
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.
AFP
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