ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess has issued a stark warning about China’s espionage activities within Australia. Speaking at an Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) forum in Melbourne today, Burgess highlighted China’s ongoing efforts to infiltrate and disrupt the nation’s communication networks.

He pointed to two Chinese hacking groups, known as Salt Typhoon and Volt Typhoon, as key players in this cyber espionage landscape. According to Burgess, these groups have inflicted a significant economic blow, costing $12.5 billion during the 2023-24 financial year. However, he cautioned that the broader implications could be even more severe.

“These hackers are effectively operatives for Chinese government intelligence and military forces,” Burgess explained.

He emphasized that while the theft of sensitive information is concerning, the greater threat lies in potential sabotage—specifically the disruption of critical infrastructure.

Burgess warned that Australia now faces a “threshold for high-impact sabotage.” He suggested that these cyber attackers could employ similar tactics in Australia as they did in the United States, where they were reportedly capable of disabling vital infrastructure.

He said it was part of a plan by authoritarian regimes like China and Russia that could have multiple impacts on Australia.

“Hackers compromised American critical infrastructure networks to pre-position for potential sabotage,” he said.

“The penetrations gave China the ability to turn off telecommunications and other critical infrastructure.

“We have seen Chinese hackers probing our critical infrastructure as well.

“Authoritarian regimes are growing more willing to disrupt or destroy critical infrastructure to impede decision-making, damage the economy, undermine war-fighting capability and sow social discord.” 

He pointed to the recent Optus triple-zero outage as a severe outcome to disruptions in communications, saying the impact would be more severe if such an outage was nationwide.

Burgess listed several instances of espionage ASIO had uncovered in Australia, including an academic from abroad breaking into a secure laboratory and filming what was inside and hackers stealing blueprints from an Australian manufacturer.

Burgess told the Lowy Institute that there is a “realistic possibility” a foreign government would “attempt to assassinate a perceived dissident in Australia”.