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Because people have been spying for most history, it’s easy to forget that our intelligence bureaucracy was developed primarily to fight the Cold War. After the Cold War the digital revolution took off. The consequent transformation of the information environment is the most important development in the history of intelligence, at least since the Second World War.
Australia must adapt its National Intelligence Community (NIC) to information age. It’s true that Australia and its Five Eyes partners have reformed the intelligence institutions established in the Cold War. But the lodestar of reform for the last two decades has been counterterrorism. The independent review of NIC, which will submit its report in 2024, should focus more directly than its predecessors did on the challenges of information age.
The sheer volume of information is its most striking feature. Turning torrents of data into useful information increasingly requires specialist skills. The disciplines of collation, verification, curation, and analysis have come to be known as open-source intelligence (OSINT). OSINT organisations, ranging from commercial data brokers to investigative NGOs such as Bellingcat are producing more intelligence that rivals that of secret intelligence organisations.
Secret intelligence is already competing with unverified social media feeds for the attention of ministers.
But OSINT won’t replace secret intelligence. Australia needs – perhaps more than ever – to understand the secret intentions and capabilities of its competitors and adversaries. The war in Ukraine has demonstrated the value of both forms of intelligence. OSINT has pierced the fog of war while, the United States and United Kingdom used secret intelligence before Russia’s invasion to alert allies and “pre-bunk” Russian disinformation.
The real challenge is to balance and integrate the production of OSINT and secret intelligence. OSINT should provide foundational intelligence. Scarce classified resources to be focussed on hardest targets and most valuable secrets. Secret intelligence should be used to direct, refine and validate OSINT. Quality OSINT can be shared with allies and partners far more easily than secret intelligence because the risk to sources and methods is greatly reduced.
Still, integration remains a challenge because OSINT and secret intelligence differ in fundamental ways. According to intelligence expert Amy Zegart, they are different “ecosystems”. Each discipline has distinct advantages and disadvantages. OSINT is cheaper and faster. Secret intelligence is more tailored and revelatory. A degree of opacity is necessary for secret intelligence while transparency usually improves the quality of OSINT.
Integration remains a challenge (Rosie Steggles/Unsplash)
But secrecy comes at a cost. Secret intelligence organisations tend to over-classify and under share information. They generate a culture secrecy which views information as valuable because it is secret rather than vice versa. This culture is at odds with the new information environment and frequently invoked as the main obstacle to the adoption of OSINT by secret intelligence organisations.
Australian intelligence organisations are making more and smarter use of OSINT. But the NIC remains geared towards secret intelligence. That’s not surprising. Australian intelligence was, after all, established as part of a multi-layered Five Eyes bureaucracy designed to collect, protect, analyse and disseminate secrets. That bureaucracy delivered important wins in the Cold War and the war on terrorism, but a major shift towards OSINT is now necessary.
Housing the OSINT agency within the portfolio of Foreign Affairs and Trade would better connect it to the vast but under-utilised pool of knowledge contained in DFAT’s international network.
Australia should establish a dedicated OSINT organisation within the NIC. This would recognise – and make the most of – the fundamental differences between OSINT and secret intelligence. Housing the OSINT agency within the portfolio of Foreign Affairs and Trade would better connect it to the vast but under-utilised pool of knowledge contained in DFAT’s international network.
Done right, this reform could also disrupt the culture of excessive secrecy. The integration of OSINT and secret intelligence should not preclude healthy competition between the two disciplines. Secret intelligence is already competing with unverified social media feeds for the attention of ministers. A more managed competition between OSINT and secret intelligence should be harnessed to improve the overall quality of intelligence, regardless of its source.
Competitive pressure from OSINT should encourage the NIC to focus on valuable secrets, to correctly classify information and to prioritise the usability of intelligence. The downgrade, declassification and dissemination of intelligence by the United States and United Kingdom before and during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been rightly hailed as a success. But it is also true that much of this intelligence was, therefore, originally over-classified.
National security in the information era will depend more on the ability of states to obtain, protect and use data. But the new information environment is still taking shape. New technologies are both clarifying and confusing. We still have much to learn about the complex dynamics of information competition virality and disinformation, as well as how these dynamics shape human perception, cognition and action.
So, the NIC must, above all, become more flexible. Already, the distinction between OSINT and secret intelligence is starting to blur as cyberspace is fragmented by digital sovereignty, firewalls, and ubiquitous encryption. It’s distinctly possible that what we now know as secret intelligence will one day be a niche specialisation within the larger OSINT enterprise. Establishing a dedicated OSINT organisation would not cause such a radical shift. But it would better prepare Australia for that, and other, possibilities.
Ben Scott is author of Adapting Australian intelligence to the information age, an Occasional Paper published this week by ANU National Security College.
Senior Hamas officials Bassem Naim and Moussa Abu Marzouk, and Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov meet for talks on the release of foreign hostages, at a location given as Moscow, Russia in this handout image released on October 26, 2023. Hamas Handout/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights
MOSCOW, Dec 11 (Reuters) – Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov demanded the release of hostages held in Gaza in telephone calls on Sunday and Monday with Hamas and other Palestinian factions, the Russian foreign ministry said.
The statement followed a series of meetings and calls between President Vladimir Putin and Middle East leaders in the past week.
The ministry said Bogdanov’s conversations highlighted the military and humanitarian situation in Gaza, where Russia “confirmed its principled position on the need to cease hostilities and urgently resolve all humanitarian problems that have arisen, including the release of hostages”.
The statement did not make clear whether Russia sought the release of all hostages seized by Hamas during its Oct. 7 rampage into southern Israel or just the release of any Russian nationals among them.
The minister spoke to senior figures in the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), the Palestinian Democratic Union, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Hamas.
Bogdanov stressed the need to restore Palestinian unity “in the framework of the PLO” and reaffirmed Moscow’s support for a Palestinian state to co-exist alongside Israel, the statement said.
Russia called on Sunday for an international monitoring mission to go to Gaza to assess the humanitarian situation.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow strongly condemned the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, but it was unacceptable for Israel to use that as justification for “the collective punishment of millions of Palestinian people with indiscriminate shelling”.
Analysts say the Gaza war has proved helpful to Russia by distracting the world’s attention from its war in Ukraine and making it harder for Kyiv to compete for Washington’s attention and military aid.
Putin has also used it as an opportunity to criticise the failings of U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East and raise Russia’s own profile as a regional player with ties to all the main actors.
Putin has stepped up his own contacts in the past week, though the aim of his latest diplomatic flurry is not yet clear.
He spoke to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Saturday and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyuhu on Sunday, having last week met the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iran.
Reporting by Reuters, writing by Mark Trevelyan
Editing by Gareth Jones
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Russian officials are demonstrating a sudden shift in rhetorics over the Israel-Hamas war — the question is how consistent can the Kremlin be
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister and Special Representative of Russia’s President for the Middle East Mikhail Bogdanov demanded immediate release of hostages held in Gaza. The statement was made in the telephone calls held on Sunday and Monday with Hamas and other Palestinian groups, stated Russian Foreign Ministry.
Earlier on Sunday, Russia’s FM Sergey Lavrov stated that Russia had immediately condemned Hamas’s terrorist attack on October 7. He said that the Kremlin only maintains relations with the group’s political wing.
“Hamas carried out a terrorist attack on October 7, which we immediately condemned. Hamas has a political branch operating in Doha and we have a relationship with that political branch,” he said.
“We immediately contacted the people in Doha to discuss the fate of the people taken hostage,” added Lavrov. He then noted that this was said in regard of the Russian nationals as well as the citizens of the neighbouring countries.
Such a dramatic change in the public narrative comes as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin held an almost one-hour long telephone conversation on Sunday. The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said that Israel’s PM openly criticized Russian officials’ stance on the Israel-Hamas war and Moscow’s intensifying dialogue with Iran.
Earlier on Thursday, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi paid a visit to Moscow to reportedly discuss with Putin bilateral cooperation as well as “regional and global issues, notably the Palestinian situation and ongoing developments in Gaza,” said Iran’s Irna news agency.
Deputy FM Bogdanov was also among those who held talks with the Hamas delegation in Moscow back in October. Namely, he met with Hamas head of international relations Mousa Abu Marzouk joined by Iran’s Deputy FM Ali Bagheri Kani.
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Published: 13:28 GMT, 13 December 2023 | Updated: 14:07 GMT, 13 December 2023
Artificial intelligence guru Sam Altman has warned the technology could be used to sway American voters in the 2024 election.
One particular concern of OpenAI co-founder Altman – spectacularly fired then reinstated as the company’s CEO last month – is that the technology could be used to scan voters’ social media posts.
He says people could then be targeted with personalized, AI-generated disinformation including highly emotive messages imploring them to vote for a certain candidate.
The tycoon, whose firm is behind ChatGPT, believes AI ‘will be the most powerful technology humanity has yet invented’.
But, he told the audience at Time magazine’s gala in New York City, it will create potent tools for those looking to sway an election, enabling techniques far more sophisticated than those currently available.
Sam Altman, 38, on Tuesday appeared on stage at Time magazine’s annual gala, where he was named CEO of the year
Altman and Sam Jacobs, editor in chief of Time magazine, are seen at the Plaza Hotel in New York City on Tuesday night
Altman, speaking after being named Time’s CEO of the year, warned that troll farms in foreign countries are ‘trying to interfere without elections’.
‘They make one great meme, and that spreads out and all of us see the same thing on Facebook or Twitter. That will continue to happen and get better.
‘But the thing I am more concerned about: What if an AI reads everything you have ever written online – every tweet, every article, every everything? And right at the exact moment sends you one message, customized just for you, that really changes how you think about the world.
‘That’s a new kind of interference that just wasn’t possible before AI.’
The St Louis-born tech entrepreneur, in a discussion with Time’s editor in chief Sam Jacobs, insisted he was optimistic about AI’s potential, presenting a generally sunny picture of medical advances and increased access to learning.
‘I think we will see education changed deeply and improved forever,’ he said. ‘I think the kids in kindergarten today, by the time they reach 12th grade will be smarter and better prepared than the best kids of today.’
Altman is seen with Jacobs, who interviewed him during Tuesday’s event
He said the experience of his firing and rehiring had been ‘painful and exhausting’ and he had not yet had time to process what had happened – but that he was ‘happy to be back at work.’
‘I think everybody involved in this, as we get closer and closer to super intelligence, everyone involved got more and more stressed as the stakes get higher,’ he said, trying to explain the dramatic events.
‘And I think that all exploded.’
Altman said the team at OpenAI were working ‘to build tools that are helpful to people’ – and that they realized they had huge responsibility.
Critics fear a nightmare Terminator II: Judgement Day-type scenario where sentient machines decide to exterminate their creators and take over the world, turning it into an apocalyptic hellscape.
‘If we can create abundant intelligence for the world, and abundant energy, then our ability to have amazing ideas for our children to teach themselves, for healthcare, for people to be more productive, to uplift the economy, for people to help themselves – then if we put those things into action with energy they are two massive, massive things,’ he said.
‘Now they come with downsides. And so it’s on us to figure out how to make this safe, and put it responsibly in the hands of people.
‘But I think we see a path now where the world gets much more abundant and much better every year, and people have the ability to do way, way more than we can possibly imagine today.’
Altman said he understood there were many skeptics, and many people fearful about the vast power of AI.
They include Elon Musk – who co-founded OpenAI with Altman, before leaving the company in 2018, and becoming one of its most strident critics. Musk has argued that AI is becoming too powerful, without sufficient guardrails.
Altman said on Tuesday that he was ‘very grateful Elon exists in the world,’ adding: ‘I think he’s done some amazing things.’
He also praised Musk’s work on electric vehicles and space exploration, and said his criticism about Microsoft controlling OpenAI – Microsoft has invested $13 billion in the company – was unfair and inaccurate.
Altman is pictured with his fiance, Australian software engineer Oliver Mulherin
The San Francisco-based CEO said he still believed he and his team were developing something beneficial for humanity.
‘I think in 2023 we started to see it; 2024 we’ll see way more; and by the time the end of the decade rolls around I think we’ll be in a way better place,’ he said.
‘It sounds silly and sci-fi optimism. But if you think about how different the world will be. Today they have ChatGPT – it’s not very good.
‘Next they have the world’s best chief of staff. And after that, every person has a company of 20-50 experts that work super well together, and after that, 10,000 experts in every field.
‘If someone wants to focus on curing disease they can do that, or create art – they can do that.’
Addressing his dramatic November 17 firing before being rehired at OpenAI on November 21, Altman said that it should be viewed in the context of ‘a crazy whole year’ – noting that ChatGPT was only released a year ago, and the company’s profile and reach exploded.
And he said he believed, in the long run, the firing-rehiring drama would be beneficial for the company.
‘It’s been extremely painful for me personally but I actually think it’s been great for OpenAI,’ he said.
‘We’ve never been more unified. We have never been more determined and focused.
‘And we always said this moment would come when we were building AGI. We didn’t think it would come so soon.
‘But we are stronger for going through it.
‘I wouldn’t wish it on an enemy, but it did have a positive effect on the company.’
He said he was extremely proud of how his staff reacted, and carried on working despite the turmoil.
But, he admitted, it had been intense and draining.