News Story: US Must Boost War Games, Data Sharing With Allies - DIA

By COLIN CLARK

GEOINT: In a stark speech clearly intended to get people off their complacent butts, the Marine general who leads the Defense Intelligence Agency told an approving audience here that the Intelligence Community risks becoming as irrelevant as the Kodak film company became with the advent of digital photography.

“Let me ask you one final question. What will your story be, a great story of the past, (for example) how successful we were during the Cuban Missile Crisis, or do you want to embrace the new environment?” Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart boomed out. Later, during question and answers, he said: “Sometimes there is the sense that our success in the past is enough for our success in the future” — a sentiment he clearly scorned.

He told the crowd here that he thought he could probably design an independent intelligence system, one reliant entirely on open sources, that could “deliver a 60 percent solution six weeks earlier” than the “100 percent solution” the IC would deliver six days after the event they were trying to predict.

Heads nodded in the crowd, though many faces wore the classic poker face of the IC professional.

Stewart went on, after delivering his speech, to note that the military has “gotten away from the business of effective war gaming. I’ve got to find a way to get back to effective wargaming,” saying “bland tabletop” and similar exercises were not very useful. We need “rich blue data, rich enemy data, where we can actually compete in a meaningful way. We don’t…do that very well,” he said. Such rigorous wargames could help decisionmakers allocate scarce Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) assets in a crisis or intelligently shift forces from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Read the full story at Breaking Defense

News Story: Australia flags crackdown on encrypted communication ahead of "Five Eyes" meeting

CANBERRA, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Attorney-General George Brandis said Australia would be pushing its "Five Eyes" intelligence partners this month to crack down on encrypted technology in the global fight against terrorism.

Brandis said Australia would list the issue as a top agenda item at a meeting of the "Five Eyes" alliance, which comprises Australia, United States, United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand, in Canada at the end of June.

Speaking to the Australian media on Tuesday night, Brandis said encrypted Internet communication was the biggest challenge facing law enforcement and security agencies around the world.

Brandis called upon telecommunications companies, social media outlets and Internet giants to cooperate with authorities on terrorism investigations, saying they had a "corporate social responsibility" to help combat terrorist activity.

Read the full story at Xinhua

News Story: Hundreds of Middle Eastern refugees refused entry into Australia on security grounds

CANBERRA, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Hundreds of Syrian and Iraqi refugees bookmarked for resettlement in Australia have been refused entry on grounds of national security, it was revealed on Thursday, after security networks discovered their names were on an international watch list.

Overnight, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull revealed that around 10,000 of the 12,000 refugees fleeing war in the Middle East had been successfully resettled in Australia, but a senior security source told News Corp that more than 500 potential refugees had been refused entry for their involvement in "criminal and other" activities.

The source said the refugees were refused entry after the Five Eyes intelligence network alerted Australian authorities.

"All matches identified were rigorously examined and where potential risks were identified these individuals were not granted a visa to Australia," the source told News Corp.

"Of the biometric checks approximately 500 were a preliminary adverse match, that is, the person's name was recorded on a watch list."

Read the full story at Xinhua

News Story: Trump 'unbelievably disappointed' in Australia deal & Trump's clash with Australia strains alliance

US President Donald Trump

Trump 'unbelievably disappointed' in Australia deal

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House deepened its condemnation of an Obama administration refugee deal with Australia Thursday, saying President Donald Trump was "unbelievably disappointed" in the agreement.

Asked whether the deal would continue, Trump said, "We'll see what happens." However, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told Australians that the American president has committed to following through with the agreement to allow mostly Muslim refugees to resettle in the United States.

The agreement was a source of friction during a recent phone call between Trump and Turnbull, according to an administration official. The call ended after less than 30 minutes, well earlier than scheduled. The official disputed reports that Trump hung up on the prime minister and Turnbull himself said Trump didn't hang up and that the call ended courteously. The U.S. official was not authorized to publicly discuss the conversation and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Read the full story at The Mainichi

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Aus PM Malcolm Turnbull (Image: Wiki Commons)

Trump's clash with Australia strains alliance

SYDNEY (AP) -- For decades, Australia and the U.S. have enjoyed the coziest of relationships, collaborating on everything from military and intelligence to diplomacy and trade. Yet an irritable tweet President Donald Trump fired off about Australia and a dramatic report of an angry phone call between the nations' leaders proves that the new U.S. commander in chief has changed the playing field for even America's staunchest allies.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was left scrambling to defend his country's allegiance to the U.S. after The Washington Post published a report on Thursday detailing a tense exchange that allegedly took place during the Australian leader's first telephone call with Trump since he became president. During the call, the Post reported, Trump ranted about an agreement struck with the Obama administration that would allow a group of mostly Muslim refugees rejected by Australia to be resettled in the United States.

The newspaper said Trump dubbed it "the worst deal ever" and accused Turnbull of seeking to export the "next Boston bombers" -- a reference to Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who were born in Kyrgyzstan and set off explosives at the 2013 Boston marathon.

Though Turnbull declined to confirm the report, he also didn't deny it, apart from rejecting one detail -- that Trump had hung up on him. The prime minister insisted his country's relationship with the U.S. remained strong, and that the refugee deal with the U.S. was still on.

Read the full story at The Mainichi

News Story: Australian-French Sub Deal Signals Appetite For Defense Uptick Down Under

By: Pierre Tran

PARIS – Defense minister Jean-Yves Le Drian is due to sign Tuesday an intergovernment agreement with his Australian counterpart, Maryse Payne, on cooperation on the AU$50 billion ($36 billion) Australian Future Submarine Program, Australian defence industry minister Christopher Pyne said. 

That signing in Adelaide, South Australia, will be “the next milestone” in working with DCNS, the boat builder, and Direction Générale de l’Armement procurement office, Pyne said after giving a Dec. 15 keynote speech to IHEDN, the Institute for Advanced Studies in National Defense, at the war college, here. 

Pyne added that he and the Australian prime minister would attend the signing and that Australia and France had already signed a security agreement in the week of Dec. 5. 

The program to build 12 ocean-going, diesel-electric submarines is the single biggest item in the Australian defense budget, he told a lecture theater packed with IHEDN students, officers and industry executives. 

DCNS will build the diesel-electric boats, with Lockheed Martin supplying the combat integration system. 

Read the full story at DefenseNews

Think Tank: Cyber wrap special - two heads are better than one

Andrew Davies

There’s a debate going on in the US at the moment that isn’t attracting much commentary here. While it’s a touch arcane, it’s worthy of public discussion. The question is the organisational arrangement for America’s cyber security, cyber offence and signals intelligence capabilities.

The Pentagon and the US intelligence community are in the blue corner, urging President Obama to split military Cyber Command functions away from the intelligence gathering National Security Agency. Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is in the red corner, pledging to thwart any attempt to split the two bodies.

Not unusually, Senator McCain has a strong view. His opening statement at a hearing on national security encryption and cyber matters didn’t mince words:

‘Here we go again: another major policy matter has apparently been decided with no consultation whatsoever between the White House or the Department of Defense with this committee. I urge Secretary Carter to provide this committee and the Congress the details of this plan and his reasoning for supporting it. And I hope he will explain what has changed since the last time the administration rejected this idea in 2013…I would remind them that this committee does not take well to being stonewalled while their colleagues in the administration leak information to the press.’

Industry: Airbus Defence and Space expands its Skynet channel partner network with three major military communication providers

With these new partnerships, Inmarsat Government, Hughes Network Systems, and SpeedCast are able to offer Skynet 5 military satellite communication services to their customer base

Airbus Defence and Space is continuing to work with service providers to develop new partnerships to deliver highly resilient Skynet military satellite communication services notably to the Asia Pacific region, following the move of its Skynet 5A satellite from 6° East to 95° East to provide global X-band and UHF coverage in this region.

Airbus Defence and Space has recently signed a further three partners to its channel partner programme for Skynet services. Hughes Network Systems (Hughes), Inmarsat Government and SpeedCast will be offering Skynet services as part of their already extensive and proven portfolio, to Australian, New Zealand and US forces operating across the globe.

News Story: Biden reiterates importance of Australia in U.S. military pivot to Asia

SYDNEY, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Australia is key to the core of the United States' Asia-Pacific pivot as each country has the other's back, visiting U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said as he ends his visit here on Wednesday.

Biden has been on a four-day public relations tour of Australia in a bid to boost its presence in the mind of locals.

In an address hosted by think-tanks in Sydney on Wednesday, Biden played to the nostalgic heart strings of a century of linkages in a bid to get a tired Australian public back on side following a series of pessimistic local commentaries towards their Asia pivot.

"The partnership between Australia and America is at the core of our vision for the region's future," Biden told the audience which included three former Australian prime ministers Tony Abbott, John Howard and Bob Hawke.

"Here in the early years of what's truly going to be the Pacific century, it's critical America and Australia look to one another for mutual support... because together, I am absolutely confident we can write a better future for all our children, and for this whole region."

Read the full story at Xinhua

News Story: Donald Trump's election 'would trigger collapse in Australian support for US alliance'

Image: Wiki Commons

Fergus Hunter

Donald Trump's election as US president would trigger a collapse in support for Australia's alliance with the United States, according to a new poll.

Forty-five per cent of voters believe Australia should distance itself from the United States if it elects a president like Donald Trump, compared to 51 per cent who say the alliance should remain strong regardless.

He is a clear favourite to win the nomination of one of the world's great political parties 

"It's a striking and somewhat disturbing result because one of the strongest and most consistent polling results in the Lowy Institute's history has been support for the US alliance," executive director Michael Fullilove said.

In 2015, 80 per cent of Australian adults said the relationship was very or fairly important.

Respondents were not asked their specific thoughts on Mr Trump but Mr Fullilove noted the billionaire property developer and TV personality's penchant for "outrageous and appalling" remarks.

"Donald Trump is crass and bombastic and egotistical and he embodies very few of the greatest qualities of the US: open-mindedness, generosity, willingness to lead and take a liberal definition of America's interests."

Read the full story at Sydney Morning Herald

News Story: U.S. spy chief arrives for talks in New Zealand

WELLINGTON, March 14 (Xinhua) -- The United States director of national intelligence has arrived in New Zealand for talks with Prime Minister John Key on Monday.

James Clapper was passing through the country ahead of a meeting in Australia of the "Five Eyes" intelligence-sharing network involving the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Key said in a broadcast press conference.

The visit follows the release last week of a government-commissioned report that proposed extending the ability of New Zealand's security agencies to spy on New Zealanders.

Read the full story at Xinhua

News Story: Airbus DS develops partnerships for military satcom services in Asia Pacific

Airbus Defence and Space is working with local service providers to develop new partnerships to deliver highly resilient Skynet military satellite communication services to the Asia Pacific region, following the successful completion of Skynet 5A satellite move from 6 degrees East to 95 degrees East to provide global X-band and UHF coverage in this region.

Airbus Defence and Space has signed an agreement with CopaSAT, to become a new channel partner for Skynet services, primarily using the relocated Skynet 5A satellite. CopaSAT will be offering Skynet services as part of a proven and assured portfolio to their US customers delivering innovative network services that combine the affordability, operational utility and scalability required to meet the complex scenarios experienced in global security and humanitarian operations.

Last year, Airbus Defence and Space worked with CopaSAT, and its terminal partner Tampa Microwave, to conduct a series of successful network tests using the Skynet 5A X-band satellite. CopaSAT teams, using CopaSAT's teleport infrastructure and Tampa Microwave's remote manpack and fly-away terminals, as well as various other small terminals, conducted end-to-end testing to confirm operation of an entire network and the performance of Skynet 5A at the new orbital slot.

Obie Johnson, President of CopaSAT said: "We have worked with Airbus Defence and Space for five years primarily as a terminal partner, but we are now positioned to provide CopaNET to our US troops throughout the PACRIM, Asia, and west to Arabia."

Read the full story at SpaceDaily

Think Tank: The Port of Darwin as a ‘grey zone’ situation

Patrick Cronin and Phoebe Benich

Protecting national security equities is a tricky business in an era of globalisation. Four years ago President Obama unveiled Marine rotational training in Darwin as the single most tangible security action to mark America’s long-term Asia-Pacific rebalance. While Australian Army counterparts initially relished this idea of introducing US troops to the crocodiles and harsh environs of the Northern Territory, the modest military step carried great political significance. In the face of Chinese criticism of the move as containment, many wondered how Canberra would balance its growing economic ties to China with its long-term security alliance with the US. The most recent move by Beijing to purchase a lease on the Port of Darwin pushes the seams of those two seemingly contradictory demands.

By putting up US$366 million for an 80% ownership stake in the Port of Darwin, Landbridge Group has just acquired nearly a century of access to one of the alliance’s strategic neighborhoods. Even if the private Chinese company’s transaction was simply for commercial benefit, does anyone believe it will take long for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and Ministry of State Security intelligence operatives to acquire privileged access—a permanent VIP pass?

No wonder some prominent American and Australian critics pounced on potential Chinese motivations and argued that the deal facilitates a ‘Chinese renaissance.’ The deal also took most of Washington by surprise, as it came immediately on the heels of high-level alliance consultations. Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who holds an honorary Order of Australia (AC), was nonplused about the apparent breakdown in alliance communications. Yet defenders of the lease, mostly in Australia, noted the obvious economic benefits of the deal and dismissed detractors as ‘xenophobic.’

Industry: X-band and UHF Milsatcom services available for Asia Pacific region from 1st September

Airbus Defence and Space has announced the successful completion of the 67,000 km move of the Skynet 5A satellite from 6° East to 95° East. Skynet 5A is now optimally located to provide protected and secure military satellite communications (Milsatcom) services to allied governments in the Asia-Pacific region.

Airbus Defence and Space started the move of the Skynet 5A military communications satellite on 17th June 2015. The relocation was initiated to extend the Skynet constellation’s coverage and services from 178 West to 163 East, including the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific region. With the move now complete, the Skynet network now offers near-global military X-band and UHF coverage, expanding core service reach for the UK military and augmenting coalition capabilities in the region.

Editorial: Australia and Iran to Cooperate in Fight Against ISIS

By Franz-Stefan Gady

Canberra and Tehran move closer in the fight against Sunni extremism.

Last Sunday, Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop announced that Australia and Iran have agreed to an “informal arrangement” to share intelligence about Australians fighting for the Islamic State (IS) or ISIS in Iraq, BBC News reported.

“During my discussions with the national leadership here it was agreed that we could share intelligence. We discussed the opportunities to share intelligence, information on who is in Iraq — clearly we want information on Australians and they agreed that they would be prepared to share intelligence,” Bishop said during a press conference in Tehran.

Around 100 Australian citizens are believed to have traveled to Iraq and Syria with the intention of joining up with Islamic State extremists. Australia already pushed for more cooperation on what Australia’s foreign minister last week called the ”most significant global threat at present” back in October 2014.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

News Story: New Zealand spying on China, N Korea, Iran and others - Snowden

Files that US National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden gave to the Auckland-based New Zealand Herald revealed that New Zealand's intelligence organs have been instructed to spy on around 20 countries around the globe, including Asian countries such as China, Japan, North Korea and Iran, and to share this intelligence with its Five Eyes allies, the US, the UK, Australia and Canada, according to the website of China's Communist Party mmouthpiece, the People's Daily.

Around 20 countries and regions, including many of the country's major trade partners, were being spied on by New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), who installed listening posts hidden in embassies and other strategic locations and infected computer systems and phone networks of target countries with malware, according to the paper.

The documents, dating from April 2013 and released March 11 by the New Zealand newspaper in collaboration with US online news organization The Intercept, have emerged at the same time that the Wikipedia Foundation, along with a group of human rights advocacy organizations, including Amnesty International, are suing the NSA for its Dragnet online surveillance program, stating that the program is in violation of the US constitution, particularly in regard to the stifling of freedom of speech and privacy violations. Wikipedia said that it hopes the suit will bring an end to what it sees as illegal behavior.

Read the full story at Want China Times

Editorial: New Zealand's Mass Surveillance of Pacific States Exposed

By Ankit Panda

New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau conducts mass surveillance of several Pacific states.

Reports citing classified documents leaked by U.S. National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden state that New Zealand is carrying out mass surveillance over several Pacific island states, including  Fiji, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Nauru, Samoa, Vanuatu, Kiribati, New Caledonia, Tonga and French Polynesia. The New Zealand Herald notes that the data gathered was shared with the other members of the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing network, a grouping encompassing the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada. New Zealand’s Green Party has lodged a complaint with the country’s Inspector General of Intelligence and Security claiming that the Government Communications Security Bureau (New Zealand’s intelligence agency) broke the law by spying on, among other target, New Zealand citizens’ activities in the aforementioned states.

Diplomatically, the revelations will likely cause a problematic backlash for Prime Minister John Key’s government. The nations included in the Snowden documents as targets of New Zealand’s mass surveillance are all friendly with New Zealand. The Intercept, which hosted the leaked documents, notes that the surveillance “is being carried out by GCSB from an intelligence base in New Zealand’s Waihopai Valley.” The report adds:

Intercepted data collected at the Waihopai site is being shared through an NSA surveillance system called XKEYSCORE, which is used to analyze vast amounts of emails, internet browsing sessions and online chats that are intercepted from some 150 different locations worldwide. 

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: New Zealand - Spying for the Club

By Helen Clark

Revelations emerge that New Zealand has been spying on friendly neighbors.

On Wednesday the New Zealand Heraldworking with the Intercept website revealed that New Zealand has been spying on many of its Pacific neighbors and passing vast troves of the collected information straight along to the United State’s National Security Agency. The allegations come from documents released by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013. This is part of the government’s work with the “Five Eyes,” alliance, which also comprises the U.S., the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada.

Working from its Waihopai base on New Zealand’s South Island, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) “hoovered up” large amounts of data from many Pacific nations and overseas French territories, all on friendly terms with New Zealand. The data was later shared through the XKEYSCORE NSA surveillance system and included chats, messages, emails and browsing sessions: all metadata, essentially.

“The Waihopai base focuses on gathering data and communications from another source – vacuuming them up as they are being transmitted through the air between satellites,” says the Intercept. Officials, politicians, NGOs, and government agencies were some of those routinely monitored.

That nations spy on one another might be cause for public diplomatic contretemps, but tacitly understood to occur. Similar revelations of Australia’s spying on Indonesia’s politicians and then President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (the revealed documents bear the motto in the bottom right corner “Reveal their secrets — protect our own”) caused huge friction between the two nations, whilst earlier reports of Chinese spying on Australia were dealt with more quietly. 

Read the full story at The Diplomat