Category: Intelligence and Security

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Media Link: Discussing the NZSIS Security Threat Report.

I was interviewed by Mike Hosking at NewstalkZB and a few other media outlets about the NZSIS Security Threat Report released recently. I have long advocated for more transparency, accountability and oversight of the NZ Intelligence Community, and although the latter remains only as a hope the Report is a decent step towards making the NZSIS more open about how it sees the NZ threat environment. The Report is straight-forward and easy to read, and even if it does not identify sources and methods (as it should not), it gives the public a good idea (sometimes in refreshingly blunt terms) of how it prioritises the threat landscape and the means and criteria by which threats are identified as matters of national security concern.

The interview is here.

The Report is here.

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Security Politics in Peripheral Democracies: Excerpt Three.

The notion of geopolitical  “periphery.”

The concept of periphery used here refers strictly to what can be called the geopolitical periphery. Being on the geopolitical periphery is an analytic virtue because it makes for more visible policy reform in response to changing external conditions. It is defined as a situation where a nation is engaged in, but not central to the pressing military-security issues of the moment, be it through direct engagement in conflict or involvement in larger alliance decision-making. It does not refer to the core-periphery distinction commonly used by worlds-systems theory and its successors, and as the case sample shows, it is not a product of the global North versus South divide. It does not refer to economically peripheral countries in a context of regionalization and globalization of production, trade and exchange, although it acknowledges the overlap that may occur between economic and military integration processes. As used here “periphery” is not synonymous with “marginality.” The differentiation is based on the fact that these countries are involved, even if not by choice, in the overarching military-security engagements of recent times. They are not excluded from them. Moreover, when it comes to regimes, “marginal” implies instability or inconsequentiality of the regime. Yet the first criterion for selection used here is not the relative stability or consequence of the regimes in question (although democratic regime stability is a factor in the analysis of the case studies), but their relative distance from international military-security decision-making during fluid times. 

It is this commonality that binds the case studies together as a sample: their relative distance from the decision-making that governs the major conflicts of the last two decades. After all, none of these countries has a vital national interest at stake in these conflicts other than a commitment to international norms and principles and support for larger allies. This does not mean that they are inconsequential in the scheme of things, or as analytic subjects. To the contrary, as actors that must respond to changing external conditions without having decisive influence in the decision-making that created them, small peripheral democracies are excellent subjects for the study of policy reform in fluid times, be it in the field of military politics or others. This is due to what might be called the “ripple effect” of world politics: ideological and policy change in the center has a stronger impact the further from the center of decision-making, but still connected to it, that a country gets. As a result small peripheral democracies are, in a phrase, microanalytic barometers of larger international trends (see Buchanan and Nicholls, 2003).

What these countries all share is physical distance from the major political and military power centers around which issues of global security revolve, and physical distance from the military conflicts in which their armed forces are involved. Physical distance in large measure determined their traditional status on the geopolitical periphery. Portugal is located on the southwestern corner of Europe, Chile on the southwestern edge of the Western Hemisphere, New Zealand in the southwestern corner of the Pacific Rim. This has historically given them a measure of insulation from direct threats by larger adversaries (Portuguese concerns about Spain and Chilean concerns about Argentina, Bolivia and Peru notwithstanding), as well as physical distance from the major conflicts of the twentieth and early twenty first centuries. Even so, given the global reach of military power mentioned earlier, their relation to global conflicts has been more political than physical, in the form of neutrality or alliance with larger powers. 

That has been reflected in their approaches towards World War Two, the Korean War and Vietnam conflict. Remaining neutral in World War Two, Portugal spent decades on the outskirts of NATO decision-making in spite of its being a founding member of the alliance. Chile, another neutral in World War Two (although, like Portugal, its Axis sympathies were undisguised), was by 1970 no more than, in the words of Henry Kissinger, “a dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica.” Militarily, New Zealand offered its subjects to a variety of UK and US-led wars during the twentieth century and well into the next. These make for different legacies when confronting the current context in which security politics are constructed. The bottom line is that it is, first and foremost, spatial location that makes these countries members of the geopolitical periphery, a situation that continues to do this day. From that point the political aspects of the military-security equation can be factored in.

The consequences of these legacies are discussed ahead. For the purposes of the argument, the focus here is exclusively on geopolitically peripheral democracies, nations that reside on the geographic fringe of the major military alliances and coalitions that have dominated the world scene in the last 25 years, although continuing to have ongoing involvement or engagement with them. As it turns out, the reasons for geopolitically peripheral status differ among the cases, something that in turn has an impact on the way in which each country has approached the changing international security environment of the last two decades.

Next: Internal versus External Security.

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Security Politics in Peripheral Democracies: Excerpt Two.

A question of size.

Small size generally means large vulnerability. The perception of threat is broader and often more immediate for small countries. The feeling of comparative weakness, of exposure to risk, and of potential intimidation by larger powers often permeates the security perspectives of small states. Some even exhibit “garrison state” approaches to national security, including adoption of policies of preemption. Israel is the salient case of recent times, but in this sample Chile has a history of garrison state outlooks due to its narrow land mass and extensive land and sea borders (leading to a lack of strategic “depth”). Irrespective of the specific response, such concerns about relative weakness and vulnerability translate into a pressing need to accurately read evolving threat scenarios, changing geopolitical contexts and strategic circumstances. 

This is true regardless of physical location. As World War Two demonstrated, advances in military technology allow for global force projection by large military powers, something that even island states like New Zealand have experienced first hand. Thus, regardless of the lengths to which they are compelled to go in order to defend themselves, small countries often believe that they must be more vigilant than large countries against a variety of potential threats both near and afar. For example, domestic instability in Indonesia, the Solomon Islands or Papua New Guinea may hold relatively little concern to the United States, China or Russia beyond a potentially adverse impact on economic interests and the possibility of local proxies dragging them into direct conflict. The growing Chinese submarine presence shadowing its blue water fishing fleet in the South Pacific is of relatively low concern to European and African powers. But for New Zealand, instability in the Melanesian archipelago and Southwest Pacific or militarisation of the Antarctic constitute more immediate threats. That can either be by drawing New Zealand into direct military intervention, or from ethnic conflicts in the Solomons or New Guinea spilling over onto other island states in the Western Pacific and/or expatriate communities located throughout the region. For its part, the Chinese naval presence in the Southwest Pacific is seen as an emerging threat to important sea lanes of communication between East/Southeast Asia and the Antipodes. This has become a major concern for New Zealand as well as its larger security partners.

For its part, Chile has more to be concerned about Peruvian maritime territorial ambitions (and vice versa) than Brazil does with Peruvian land encroachment, while Portugal has more to fear from unchecked North African mass migration and the potential for backlash produced by its involvement in NATO deployments than does a similarly sized country like Austria. On the other hand many small nations do not exhibit undue preoccupation with external threats, either because they are seen to not exist, or more often, precisely because they are included in security alliances such as NATO. But that is exactly why they join: if they felt secure they would not feel the need to align with such umbrella organizations, or to seek the bi-lateral protection of larger defense patrons. To the contrary, the starting point for most small states is a quest for security that they find impossible to achieve on their own.  How they do so is secondary to the imperative that they do so. 

The issue, again, is a matter of size. Beyond the elements of discipline, motivation and will, a nation’s ability to defend itself, much less wage war, is determined by the size of its resource base. Size is physical, economic and human. Advantages in size translate into military strength, be it via economies of scale (production of basic military base materials such as iron and oil), population (ability to muster troops), or geography (that is, the concept of strategic depth (land mass and terrain under arms), the larger of which makes for difficult conquest by external aggressors (unless they adopt piecemeal warfare approaches such as those being employed by Russia in the Ukraine, which are susceptible to marshalling-of-force defensive strategies). Needless to say, the ability to translate resource advantages into war-fighting capability passes through a raft of other intervening variables such as political legitimacy, ideological motivation, technological sophistication and the like. But all things being equal, size confers military advantage. For those lacking in human and natural resource bases, sources of comparative advantage, or economies of scale and population numbers upon which to draw on, policies of complete self-defense are impossible. For them, neutrality, subordination or alliance are the strategic options. 

To be sure, the value of well-trained citizen militias like those of Switzerland in deterring aggressors by raising the costs of invasion cannot be discounted. When strategically organized into a prolonged armed resistance employing guerrilla (irregular, non-conventional) tactics, small states may even stand a respectable chance of prevailing in an asymmetric war of attrition against larger adversaries whose vital interests are not at stake and who choose not to wage wars of annihilation. Vietnam is a case in point, and Cuban defense strategy is premised on such a scenario (although the origins of the Stalinist regimes in both countries brought with it the help of larger military patrons, which, if lessened now, guaranteed their initial survival and consolidation). But for most small countries, foreign military assistance and mutual defense agreements are the most sought after key to national security.This makes small states, and their military planners, especially conscious of changes in the geostrategic environments in which they operate. 

Dependent as they are on their connections with larger powers, on the specific nature of these relations, on their internal political dynamics and on the ongoing relations between the larger powers themselves, security practitioners in small democracies must be able to respond quickly to changing geopolitical events and shifting strategic doctrines. This may not always be in accordance with the perspectives of civilian political elites or the public at large, who do not necessarily perceive security issues in a manner akin to those directly responsible for national defense. In fact, quite the contrary often occurs.

Absent dire, immediate and compelling threats to national sovereignty or physical integrity, the public in many small democracies see spending on external defense as a luxury that comes at the expense of other core areas of state endeavour such as health, education and welfare. The public perception often is that being small and insignificant on the world strategic stage means that these countries do not attract the unwanted attention of larger states, and when they do attract such attention, they can rely on others for protection.  Conversely, political and military elites in small democracies are more cognizent of the fact that it is the commitment of military forces to external security roles, be they multilateral or bilateral in nature, along with or beyond cultural-diplomatic or economic and trade ties, that secure them the protection of larger patrons.

Because of this difference in perspective, spending on external defense often translates into a losing election proposition for democratic governments in small countries. This is due to the fact that domestic policy areas (including domestic anti-crime efforts) are more vital than military security when it comes to the reproduction of the contingent mass consent that is the foundational stone of democratic regimes. In any political system based upon competitive elections and contingent mass consent, foreign military commitments are particularly susceptible to the vagaries of public opinion, especially in times of peace. In small democracies the issue is particularly acute given the limited resource base available, which means that military involvement in foreign theaters requires universally compelling rationales that transcend patriotic impulses exploitable–one way or the other–during electoral cycles. In most cases the comfort of a larger security umbrella is the preferred option, with unilateral external force projection being the exception to the norm. 

The was evident in Portugal in the 1980s and 1990s, where the slow process of post-authoritarian military reform towards new external missions was not so much due to ingrained corporate attitudes and bureaucratic entrenchment within the armed forces that favored continuation of internal security roles. Rather, it was more a product of two internal factors: inter-service rivalries over the strategic orientation to be adopted, and competing government priorities. The latter were driven by public concerns with domestic issues rather than military projection in the absence of immediate threats, especially given the “insurance policy” provided by Portuguese membership in NATO. (Vasconcelos, 1986; 1988). The former were driven by conflicts within the armed forces about which service branch should be given leadership priority and corresponding resources given the new strategic posture. The Army? The Navy? The Air Force? How should they be organised and how much should each be funded? That was at the core of the inter-service disagreements over future force composition and projection.

But are small democracies any more vulnerable or their concerns with military preparedness and projection any different than those of other small countries with non-democratic forms of rule?  The answer is yes, and the issue is one of internal politics rather than external threat realities. Small authoritarian regimes may at times divert scarce societal resources to external defense operations because domestic mass consent is not sought or put to legitimate tests of accountability. What this means is that unlike small democracies, which must make the case for external military involvement in a way that passes successfully through the filter of popular consent, small authoritarian regimes simply do not have to do so. The colonial defense strategies of authoritarian Portugal are emblematic in this regard, and Chile’s territorial sabre rattling against Argentina and Peru under the Pinochet dictatorship was a manipulation of rather than a response to genuine threats or nationalistic sentiment on the part of the Chilean population. The fore-mentioned cases of Cuba and Vietnam, however “popular” they claim to be, are further examples of small authoritarian regimes unconstrained by the filter of freely given consent. Moreover, under all authoritarian regimes, big or small, the military-security apparatuses are primarily used for internal control, with the difference between inclusionary and exclusionary dictatorships being read by their management of political opposition, ideological mobilization capabilities, control of productive investment and labor market conditioners. In all cases, public expenditures on security in small authoritarian regimes far outstrip those seen under small democratic regimes, and their capabilities of control of the domestic population often exceed even those of larger authoritarian brethren (e.g. Singapore versus Myanmar).

NEXT: The notion of geopolitical periphery.

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Security Politics in Peripheral Democracies: Excerpt One.

This project analyzes security politics in three peripheral democracies (Chile, New Zealand, Portugal) during the 30 years after the end of the Cold War. It argues that changes in the geopolitical landscape and geo-strategic context are interpreted differently by small democracies with peripheral involvement in the major international security decisions of modern times, different geopolitical perspectives, foreign relations networks and dissimilar histories of civil-military relations (post-authoritarian versus post-colonial in this sample). These democracies react to but do not initiate changes in the strategic environment in which they operate. The specific combination of internal and external factors involved in security policy-making  translates into different strategic perspectives, institutional features and policy outcomes that combine the traditional interest in preservation of the nation-state with an understanding of the diplomatic as well as military and intelligence necessities of variegated partnerships in a fluid international environment in which the threat of traditional inter-state conflict shares space with asymmetric warfare involving state and non-state actors. 

The issue of how small states, and small democracies in particular, react to changes in the international security environment is especially salient during periods of global change such as the period following the end of the Cold War. During that time international security affairs suffered two appreciable modifications that required major adjustments on the part of a wide variety of actors, especially militarily and economically vulnerable countries such as those studied here. 

These milestones were the end of the Cold War and its attendant bi-polar security alliance structure at the beginning of the 1990s, the subsequent emergence of a unipolar international system in which the United States served as the world “hegemon” and systems regulator by acting as a global police force that intervened in a number of low intensity conflicts that were not existential in nature (to the US and its major allies), but which promoted regional instability that undermined the international system as a whole. 

This was manifest in the spread of Islamicist-inspired insurgencies in response to Western secular expansion after the decline of the Stalinist bloc. The latter saw its definitive pronouncement on September 11, 2001, which forced another turn of the international security “screw.” That was marked by the advent of global unconventional warfare in concert with ongoing conventional operations and increased preoccupation about the use of weapons of mass destruction by non-state as well as state actors. Notions of cooperative security, which had replaced collective security doctrines as the dominant Western security paradigm in the 1990s, gave way to global asymmetric warfare involving collective security partners. Multinational counter-insurgency operations in parallel with peace-keeping and nation-building (as operations other than war) became the dominant form of conflict until the mid 2010s, 

At the same time, while the US and various coalition partners expended blood and treasure fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, Northern Africa, Syria, the Sahel and East Africa (and beyond), other powers directed resources into economic and military development unimpeded by the costs of those “small wars.” India, Russia and the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) poured resources into building the foundations for their rise to Great Power status (India and the PRC as emergent powers and Russia as a re-emergent former Superpower). From 2001 to the present the international system began a process of transition, as of yet incomplete, to a multipolar order in which the US is now just one of several Great Powers competing for influence using “hard” as well as “soft” (and “smart” and “sharp”) power in order to achieve strategic objectives. 

The move to multipolarity was accelerated in the 2010s by the end of many of the low intensity conflicts that preoccupied Western military leaders in the early 2000s. The US and its coalition partners withdrew from Afghanistan and Iraq and downsized their presence in other areas in which jihadism was present. The territorial defeat of the Islamic State (aka ISIS or Daesh) in Northern Iraq and Syria reduced armed disputes involving jihadists to localized encounters. Syria remains stalemated between the Russian-backed Assad regime, US-backed anti-Assad forces and ISIS remnants while post-Gaddafi Libya is rendered by sectarian violence unimpeded but armed by outside forces. The Taliban have regained control of Afghanistan. Shiite and Sunni militias vie with the post-occupation Iraqi defense forces for dominance. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, with the war ongoing, while Israel responded to the October 2023 Hamas attacks that killed 1300 people and in which 150 were taken hostage by engaging in asymmetrical collective punishment against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank that has resulted in over 40,000 deaths, mostly civilian non-combatants. The PRC has expanded its reach deep into the South China Sea, provoking clashes with its littoral neighbors, while at the same time pushing its land claims against countries on its western borders. The Sahel region has seen a rise of indigenous militant groups opposing local authorities and their Western partners (such as the Tuareg in Mali). Via proxies and directly, Iran has conducted attacks on Israeli and Western interests, and the Kim regime in North Korea continues to rattle its nuclear sword. In effect, by the end of the 2010s, the global “War on Terror” was effectively over but conflicts and wars, both conventional and unconventional, remained as a systemic constant.

In both East and West but more importantly, in the global North and South, the strategic gaze has returned to a “Big War” focus involving peer militaries in the emerging multipolar system. The PRC’s aggressive military diplomacy in the South China Sea, marked by island-building projects in disputed waters that defy international norms regarding territorial sovereignty and maritime laws, coupled with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, represent the two most obvious signposts that a return to “Big Wars” is now on the minds of strategic planners world-wide. The way in which peripheral democracies responded to these events and others therefore offers insight into the broader issues at play in the realm of comparative security politics in the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries. 

So why choose Chile, New Zealand and Portugal as case studies? The justification for their selection is made by the internal differences that underlie their geo-strategic commonality. All are small in population size and geographically distant from the major centers of international conflict and security decision-making. All are countries of the “West,” albeit of different ethnic and cultural traditions and democratic capitalist maturity. All have recent histories of UN-mandated peace keeping, and all have minor involvement in the larger conflicts of the early twenty-first century. Military forces from all of these countries are currently deployed overseas as part of UN-mandated multinational security commitments. All have seen their military politics transformed, to one degree or another, by the strategic-doctrinal and geopolitical shifts that followed the end of the Cold War. Yet, varying in length of democratic experience, institutional stability and levels of economic development, each has a very distinct set of civil-military relations, military institutional culture and strategic perspective that impact on their specific response to the changing global security context after 1990. It is the effects of these changes on national security politics across three geographic regions that are of concern here.

Why go “small, democratic and peripheral” when studying comparative security politics? The world strategic environment is dominated by large countries with substantial military resources and the nature of contemporary conflicts has taken on increasingly complex characteristics, so it appears counter-intuitive, if not inconsequential, to study countries that have no major impact on the strategic matters of the day. However, there is good justification to do so, because small democratic nations serve as weather vanes of larger global trends and the repercussive effects that they generate. It is equally clear is that there are few studies that systematically compare, on a cross-regional basis, the military politics of small, peripheral democracies. There are virtually none that do so with a specific focus on the way the post-Cold War move to unipolarity, subsequent rise of the War on Terror, followed by the shift to multipolarity and return of Big War strategising between peer competitors has influenced the evolution of military-security dynamics in them.

NEXT: A question of size.

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Excerpting “Security Politics in Peripheral Democracies.”

In the late 2000s-early 2010s I was researching and writing a book titled “Security Politics in Peripheral Democracies: Chile, New Zealand and Portugal.” The book was a cross-regional Small-N qualitative comparison of the security strategies and postures of three small democracies on the global geopolitical periphery, both physically and in terms of their involvement in the major strategic decisions of modern times. I set the time frame for the study as the period 1990-2020 because it covered the end of the Cold War as a starting point and included 9/11, the so-called War on Terror and the transition from bipolarity to unipolarity to multipolarity in the International system (the latter which remains ongoing). Its original endpoint will require some extension to account for developments since 2020, but the conceptual apparatus and analytic framework underpinning the study remains valid as a methodological approach (more on this later).

As some readers may know, I departed NZ academia in 2007 and after spending three years at the National University of Singapore I returned to NZ to follow my wife (who took an academic job in her homeland) and to help raise a family. I resurrected and rebranded a consultancy that I had started in the US prior to my arrival in NZ and left academia for good. That was a bittersweet decision to make, since I enjoyed teaching and research, but I am told and have seen that the academic Taylorism and market-driven managerialism that I butted heads with in the 2000s has gotten much worse since my departure from the academe.

Unfortunately, without the institutional support of a university and needing to monetarize my knowledge and experience via the consultancy in order to help pay the bills, I had to abandon the book project. I already had 13,000 words written by way of an introduction outlining the rationale behind and methodological approach to the project, but needed follow up research funds to undertake field research in the countries being studied. That was impossible given my new “business” orientation, plus I had already been turned down for a Marsden Research Grant while still at the NZ university where I used to work (it turns out the Marsden Fund award committee at that time was uninterested in security topics, much less a cross-national comparative study in which NZ was just one case study rather than the focus of attention). In fact, even such basic things as not being able to access a university library greatly impended my ability to do the secondary research required for the book to be comprehensive and thorough in its analysis. If one thinks of the cost of buying specialised books and subscriptions to professional journals and other pertinent material (for example, a single individual subscription to one political science journal can cost US$400/year), then it should be clear that writing academic books involving in-depth research in a social science discipline requires institutional support that I no longer had. Confronted by that reality, I shelved the project even as I thought of resurrecting it later or at least eventually writing an academic article that summarised my findings.

Ten years or so later, I have started to look at what I wrote and decided that I am going to except the introduction here at KP in order to share the conceptual premises and analytic framework used in it. I am hoping that some readers will find the argument of interest and if so inclined, offer critiques, comments and suggestions. I am not sure that the book will ever come to fruition but perhaps I can get that academic article out or simply publish it on the consultancy website even if it is more of a think piece than a targeted assessment of a matter relevant to paying client interests. Most importantly, it gives me a reason to re-visit the original argument and make updates as part of the review and revision process.

The excerpts will begin to appear in the next post. I shall try to keep them relatively short but true to the original book narrative.

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Media Link: “A View from Afar” on deterrence versus de-escalation.

In this week’s “A View from Afar” podcast Selwyn Manning and I return to the airwaves to discuss whether deterrence is still a useful concept in international relations and, if so, whether it applies equally to all states. We also consider whether deterrence contributes to international security dilemmas and whether it is antithetical to de-escalation. You can find the show here.

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Still the 5 Eyes Achilles Heel?

The National Cyber Security Centre (NZSC), a unit in the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) dedicated to cyber-security, has released a Review of its response to the 2021 email hacking of NZ members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC, a global organization of parliamentarians) and Professor Anne-Marie Brady, the well known China expert and critic. A number of problems were identified, both operational and (yet again) with regard to accountability and transparency, so I thought I would briefly summarise them.

The Review states that too much focus was placed by the NCSC on “technical” solutions to the email phishing probes instead of considering the “wider” context in which the hacking occurred. In layman’s terms that is akin to saying that the NCSC got busy plugging holes in the parliamentary server firewalls after breaches were detected without considering who was being targeted and what purpose the hacking may have served. This is remarkable because the hacking came from ATP-31, a unit linked to PRC military intelligence well known for having engaged in that sort of activity previously, in NZ and elsewhere. Moreover, the NCSC had to be alerted by a foreign partner that the email phishing efforts were part of a progressive hacking strategy whereby the ultimate target was not the emails of MPs but of the IP addresses that were being used by those MPs. In fact, the NCSC currently does not have procedures for how to respond to reports that foreign, including state-sponsored, actors are targeting New Zealanders. The NCSC found out about the parliamentary email servers hacking from Parliamentary Services in the first instance, and then from foreign partner intelligence that was passed on to it by the NZSIS.

This is of concern for several reasons, not the least of which is that it took a foreign 5 Eyes partner to alert the NCSC to something that it should have been well aware of itself (progressive hacking), and because the NCSC initially assumed, for whatever reason, that the phishing was done by ordinary criminals rather than foreign intelligence units. It also assumed that MPs were already engaged in providing their own security, even after Parliamentary Services flagged potential breaches of its email servers to the NCSC. In fact MPs were apparently told more by Parliamentary Services than the NCSC about their being targeted (albeit after the fact), and the University of Canterbury, Professor Brady’s employer, apparently was never contacted about potential security breaches of their servers.

Since MPs may have sent and received emails from multiple IP addresses attached to their official and personal devices, the security breach implications of the email hacks could be considerable given the potential cross-over between personal and official MP communications. Put bluntly, it is incredible that a dedicated cyber-security unit that is an integral part of the GCSB and through it the Anglophone 5 Eyes signals/technical intelligence network did not consider the membership of the targeted MPs in IPAC and that the phishing occurred at the same time that Professor Brady’s emails were targeted (Brady is known to have close contacts with IPAC). This is basic 1+1 contextual stuff when it comes to operational security in cyberspace, so one gets the sense that the NCSC is made up of computer nerds who have little training in geopolitics, foreign policy, international relations or how the world works outside of WAN and LAN (hint: these are basic computer terms). They simply approached the hacking attacks as if they were plugging a leaking dike rather than consider what may be prompting the leaks and red-flagging them accordingly.

The advice given by the Review was for the NCSC to engage more with the targeted individuals in real time, who only found out about their exposure long after the fact. Moreover, the Minister of Intelligence and Security was not briefed on these intrusions, much like the targeted MPs and Professor Brady were not. Again, this defies the notion of democratic oversight, transparency and accountability within NZ intelligence agencies. Worse yet, it follows on the heels of revelations that for a few years a decade ago the GCSB hosted a foreign partner “asset,” presumably a signals or technical intelligence collection platform, at GCSB headquarters in Wellington without the knowledge of the then Minister or even the GCSB Director-General. Operational control of that platform, including specific taskings and targets, were done by the foreign partner. Imagine if one of the taskings was to geotrack a foreign human target in order to eliminate that target. If word was leaked about GCSB’s hosting of the tracking platform, it might cause some diplomatic tensions for NZ. At a minimum it is a violation of both NZ’s sovereignty as well as basic notions of intelligence agency accountability in a democracy. It seems that, almost a decade later, the much vaunted reforms designed to increase intelligence community accountability embedded the 2017 Security and Intelligence Act had not filtered down to the NCSC dike-plugging level.

This is a very bad look for the GCSB, both in the eyes of its domestic clients as well as those of its 5 Eyes partners. NZ already had a reputation for being the “Achilles heel” or “weak link” of the 5 Eyes network due to its lax security protocols and counter-intelligence capabilities. This may only confirm that belief in spite fo significant efforts to upgrade GCSB capabilities and toughen up its defences, including in cyberspace. And, judging from the reactions of the targeted MPs and Professor Brady, domestic clients of the NCSC, who are both private and public in nature, may not feel too reassured by the Review and its recommendations.

It is known that the GCSB is made up of an assortment of engineers, translators and computing specialists. It has a remit that includes domestic as well as foreign signals and technical gathering and analysis, the former operating under the framework of NZ law under the 2017 Act (most often in a partnership with a domestic security agency).This brings up a question of note. If the staff are all of a “technical” persuasion as described above, then it follows that they simply adhere to directives from their managers and foreign partners, collect and assess signals and technical intelligence data as directed by others, and do not have an in-house capacity to provide geopolitical context to the data being analyzed. It is like plugging leaks without knowing about the hydraulics causing them.

In that light it just might do good to incorporate a few foreign policy and comparative political analysts into the GCSB/NCSC mix given that most of NZ’s threat environment is not only “intermestic” (domestic<–>international) but “glocal” (global and local) as well as hybrid (involving state and non-state actors) in nature. Threats are multidimensional and complex, so after the fact “plugging” solutions are temporary at best.

Given their diversity, complexity and sophistication, there are no “technical” solutions that can counter contemporary threats alone. Factoring in the broader context in which specific threats materialise will require broadening the knowledge base of those charged with defending against them or at a minimum better coordinating with other elements in the NZ intelligence community in order to get a better look at the bigger picture involved in NZ’s threat environment.

The NCSC in-house Review is silent on that.

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Media Link: “A View from Afar” on the moment of friction, and more.

After a hiatus of over four months Selwyn Manning and I finally got it together to re-start the “A View from Afar” podcast series. We shall see how we go but aim to do 2 episodes per month if possible.

Here we start of with a catch up on events since the last podcast of 2023. Selwyn liked the KP moment of friction post from April 1, and so we used it as the stepping stone into a discussion that incorporates material from several recent KP posts and other news. I hope that you find the podcast of interest. You can find it here.

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Arguing about a moot point.

I have been following recent debates in the corporate and social media about whether it is a good idea for NZ to join what is known as “AUKUS Pillar Two.” AUKUS is the Australian-UK-US nuclear submarine building agreement in which the US and UK will provide Australia with the know-how and training on how to build and operate a small nuclear submarine fleet beginning in the 2030s. It has two components.

Pillar One involves the submarines themselves, which will be home ported at HMAS Stirling outside of Perth. Beginning in 2027 US Virginia-class and UK Astute-class attack subs (from which the future AUKUS-class Australian submarines will incorporate design features) will start rotating through HMAS Stirling so that Royal Australian Navy (RAN) and civilian personnel at HMAS Stirling can become familiar with nuclear submarine technologies and home port surface operations. The US will sell Australia up to three Virginia-class Block IV and Block VII subs beginning in the early 2030s and delivery of five new AUKUS submarines (designated as SSN-A’s) will begin in the mid 2040s. RAN crews are already attending the US Navy nuclear propulsion school in South Carolina and they will also join UK and US Astute- and Virginia-class boats on deployments as a part of their training. The project envisions the Royal Navy receiving SSN-A boats to replace their Asute-class fleet beginning in the early 2030s, and for the RAN to have a nuclear fleet of eight boats by 2050. Although nuclear propelled, they will not be nuclear armed. They are attack submarines whose main roles are to kill other submarines, surface vessels and land-based targets with conventionally armed torpedoes and cruise missiles. They are also tasked with intelligence-gathering missions involving technical, signals and even human collection methods.

Pillar Two of the AUKUS agreement involves complex technology research, development and transfers. The primary areas of focus will be on computer and cyber technology (including Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Computing and classified undersea technologies), hypersonic and counter-hypersonic platforms (already in progress), and Radar Capability, including the Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability (DARC) that will see tracking stations built in the Pillar One Countries. Pillar Two is designed to move beyond basic systems interoperability between the military allies, which is already in place, and integrate the military-industrial complexes of the three partners in ways that will not only lead to more seamless integration of complex technologies but also help create and expand high tech development hubs in each country, but especially in Australia and the UK. This is seen as having tremendous “trickle down” benefits for the civilian economies of each country as the flow-on effects of Pillar Two ripple into related industries up and down the supply, service, and delivery chains and their associated labour markets.

In March 2023 then Defense Minister Andrew Little of the Labour Party said that NZ was interested in discussing potential involvement in the non-nuclear aspects of Pillar 2, and in July 2023 US Secretary of State said that the “door was open” for countries like NZ to join the agreement. In December 2023 new Prime Minister Christopher Luxon reiterated his government’s interest in potentially joining in the non-nuclear aspects of Pillar Two, something that was followed by an announcement in February 2024 by Australia that it would begin to brief NZ officials on developments with regard to Pillar Two. However, after losing the October 2023 election the Labour Party reversed course and announced its opposition to participating in Pillar Two, and even the Grande Dame of the Labour Party, former NZ Prime Minister and UNDP chief Helen Clark, came out strongly against it. She has been joined in her opposition by a number of prominent NZ academics, peace, non-proliferation and disarmament campaigners, human rights and environmental activists, civil society organisations and left political movements as well as former diplomats.

Their concerns range from not wanting to jeopardise NZ’s trade relationship with the PRC, which has strongly denounced AUKUS as a provocative attempt to militarily counter and encircle it in the Western Pacific (and there is truth to that), which has a history of using trade as a retaliatory weapon in order to show its displeasure with other State’s behaviour, and upon which NZ is significantly trade-dependent, to fears of a nuclear arms race and/or great power conflict in the Southwestern Pacific that would have a disastrous impact on Pacific Island societies, economies and environments.

That latter point is significant because the permanent basing of nuclear submarines at HMAS Stirling appears to be in violation of the 1997 Treaty of Rarotonga declaring the South Pacific to be a nuclear-free zone.The maps of the South Pacific nuclear-free zone attached to the Treaty include the Australian West Coast fronting the Indian Ocean, and the Treaty prohibits the storage of significant quantities of fissile material or nuclear-processing facilities within the Zone. So the AUKUS agreement is seemingly in violation of the Treaty, which if so sets a dangerous precedent (AUKUS supporters claim that at worst the signatories exploited loopholes in the Treaty that make the agreement compliant with it). This can now open the door for other States to station nuclear powered submarines in the region, say for example, the French in New Caledonia or French Polynesia or the PRC in the Solomon Islands (thanks to the recently signed bilateral security agreement between the two countries). That would not be good from a strategic or arms control standpoint and would fulfil the darkest dreams of the non-proliferation community.

These opposition voices are countered by security experts and conservative political observers who see closer relations with AUKUS as enhancing NZ’s security in a rapidly deteriorating international security environment (in which militarily aggressive Russia and the PRC are seen as leaders of an authoritarian, anti-democratic, anti-Western bloc emerging from the Global South), and which also has great economic benefits for NZ should it join Pillar Two.

That is the foundation of the debate I mentioned at the beginning of this essay. Put crudely, Lefties do not want NZ involvement in Pillar Two. Righties do.

All of this seems to me to be a bit of a moot point. I hopped on the consultancy social media account to outline two reasons why, and I have expended them below.

First: the NZDF and GCSB (as part of 5 Eyes) will share AUKUS-related military technology and signals and technical intelligence collection advances because of their ongoing integration with Australian and US maritime operations and 5 Eyes partnership, especially when it comes to Western Pacific Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) roles. The incorporation of new P-8 long range patrol and ASW aircraft into the RNZAF and upgrades to the RNZN frigates have been done with that complex interoperability in mind. The NZDF already uses the principle of interoperability when working alongside its military partners–the US, UK and Australia being foremost among them– so whatever systems integration upgrades that result from AUKUS will be shared with NZ in any event. As it is, the NZDF already communicates with US and Australian submarines as a matter of course, so it will continue to do so once the nuclear-propelled ships come on board (remember that submarine hunters and surface patrol platforms need to distinguish friend from foe, and the best thing to do in that case is to ask upon contact or be alerted in advance by friendly forces). So as far as non-nuclear military technology sharing with the NZDF goes, it is a done deal. NZ does nothing (at least publicly) and yet it still gets to play with the military “big dogs.”

Also keep in mind that submarines are excellent signals intelligence collection or intercept platforms, particularly when it comes to undersea fiberoptic telecommunications cables. So upgrading to nuclear powered subs by the RAN will expand the range and operational capabilities of its maritime signals intelligence collection platforms as well as improve its ability to monitor hostile naval movements above and below the water line. The NZDF and GCSB will benefit from that, again, without having to do anything different than what they are doing already but with improved intelligence-gathering capabilities as a result.

Secondly, Australia, the UK and the US high technology sectors will not gift NZ firms a slice of the Pillar 2 pie for competitive and political reasons. Why allow the small high technology sector of a non-nuke “freeloading” country to benefit when AUKUS firms can benefit instead? Plus, AUKUS high technology sectors employ voters, have entrepreneurial lobbies and involve established economies of scale, so why share the Pillar Two market with what essentially would be a start-up upstart that has no political influence and electoral impact in the AUKUS countries themselves?

In effect, for operational as well as economic and political reasons, NZ involvement in Pillar Two is improbable. It will be briefed about Pillar Two as announced, but an invitation to join the endeavour faces opposition both from within and from without NZ. It therefore seems that the current government is engaging more in political and diplomatic posturing when it speaks of NZ’s involvement in Pillar Two rather than realistically assessing the prospects of that ever happening.

In that light, perhaps the fears of Pillar Two opponents are overblown?