Australian Strategic Policy Institute

Australian Strategic Policy Institute (Think tank)
Abbreviation	ASPI
Formation	2001
Headquarters	Canberra, Australian Capital Territory
Type	• think-tank • lobby group
Interests	China, Corporate media/Deep state control, propaganda
Sponsored by	Lockheed, Raytheon
Membership	• Hugh White • Peter Abigail • Peter Jennings • Ken Gillespie • Stephen Conroy • James Brown (SIAA) • Brendan Nelson • Jane Halton • Gai Brodtmann • Lavina Lee • Jennifer Ma • Denis Dragovic • Stephen Brady • Robert Hill (Australian senator)
Its function is to give a serious academic appearance to dubious stories in the campaign against China.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) is a military and strategic policy think tank based in Canberra. Its main function is to give an academic, serious patina to dubiously sourced propaganda, for then for it to spread further in politics and corporate media. It is most noted for being one of the main "serious sources" for many of the claims regarding China and 'Chinese influence' dominating Western corporate media.

Another mission of the think tank is to lobby for increased weapons spending, by a fortuitous coincidence from the very weapons producers who sponsor its activities.

In his 2016 documentary, “The Coming War on China.” John Pilger stated:

“ASPI has played a leading role – some would say, the leading role – in driving Australia’s mendacious and self-destructive and often absurd China-bashing campaign. The current Coalition government, perhaps the most right-wing and incompetent in Australia’s recent history, has relied upon the ASPI to disseminate Washington’s desperate strategic policies, into which much of the Australian political class, along with its intelligence and military structures, has been integrated.””
John Pilger (2016) 

History

ASPI was first established in 2001 under Prime Minister John Howard. ASPI's inaugural director was Hugh White, who served as director from 2001 to 2004. White was succeeded by Major General (retired) Peter Abigail in 2005, and from 2012 Peter Jennings.

Funding

The Australian Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme, set up to monitor Chinese government influence in Australia, ironically captures some more recent sources of ASPI funding, including NATO, the US State Department and the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Military-Industrial Congressional Complex sponsorship

ASPI works on evaluating the military budget, a key part of its output. Former director Hugh White believed, when he was in charge until 2004, that this budget evaluation was incompatible with taking cash from the companies the military buys things from, but this anti-corruption safeguard has since been eliminated. In 2019 the institute received only 43% of its funding $9 million total budget from the Australian Government.

The biggest non-state sponsors are military contractors such as Lockheed Martin, BAE, Northrop Grumman, Thales and Raytheon.

The second important funding source is technology companies with ties to the military-industrial-surveillance complex, like Microsoft, Oracle Australia and Google, and Australian telecom Telstra.

Paid Influence from Foreign Governments

ASPI also received nearly $450,000 from the US State Department. And there are contributions from other foreign governments, many being strategic competitors to China, including the Embassy of Japan and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (that is, Taiwan). Other interesting sponsors are the spooky Institute for War and Peace Reporting and the even more spooky MITRE Corporation USA.

Getting money from prison labour

In early 2021, Defense for Children (DCI) took the ASPI to court in New South Wales. DCI’s lawsuit charges that ASPI may have been receiving funds from a number of weapons manufacturers and government agencies in the US and UK profiting from prison labor, including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and BAE Systems. According to Pepe Escobar, "sources that prefer to remain anonymous insist ASPI exercised serious pressure directly on DCI’s headquarters in Geneva to drop the case."

China Propaganda Campaign

ASPI's influence comes partly from a deep engagement with the media. Executive director, Peter Jennings stated "One of our focuses has been to make a more prominent debate around national security issues, in the same way we discuss economic issues."

The growing funding over the last few years has allowed the establishment of a range of new initiatives, including a growing focus on China through the formation of its International Cyber Policy Centre in 2013, which today employs most of its China-focused analysts. The centre's output is impressive:

Its Picking Flowers, Making Honey report charted the Chinese military's collaboration with foreign universities including many in Australia. Its findings informed an virulently McCarthyist episode,"Red Flag", of the state channel ABC's prime-time investigative magazine Four Corners.

Another investigation, Mapping Xinjiang's 'Re-education' Camps', used satellite imagery to show the massive growth of camps used to detain Uighurs, and attracted wide coverage.

And another, on China's technology giants, has been regularly consulted by the Western press to give an angle on state censorship and control as exercised on Chinese social networks.

ASPI's Alex Joske was a bylined contributor to Channel Nine's coverage of alleged Chinese defector Wang Liqiang, whose revelations drew fervent attention in the recent Taiwanese election. Joske's role was conducted in the course of his employment as a casual researcher by influential The Age newspaper, but dove-tailed and intersected with his work at ASPI.<

Issues like the ban on Huawei's involvement in Australia's telecommunications infrastructure originated within Australia's intelligence agencies, formed director White stated.

A tweet by a member of ASPI is revealing of the one-sided reasoning behind the project. "QR-codes" on a market stall and a "knife chained down" is used as an indication of Uighur oppression.

Integrity Initiative

Full article: Integrity Initiative/Cluster/Australia

A frequent participant in ASPI panels, Greg Sheridan, was mentioned in the Integrity Initiative leaks, where Chris Donnelly and Keith Sargent went to a "closed door meeting on Australia’s perception of the Chinese threat", a speech held by Greg Sheridan.

Building Integrity Initiative in Asia?

From February 2019 to March 2021, through a project supported by DFAT and the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the International Cyber Policy Centre is promoting international cyber norms and confidence building in the ASEAN region via in-country training workshops. In April 2019, the centre held the first workshop of its kind in Kuala Lumpur, bringing together 18 representatives from 10 countries.

Controlling social media feeds

In 2020, Twitter announced that, on the ASPI’s recommendations, it had shut down more than 170,000 accounts that praised China’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, generally “antagoniz[ed]” the U.S., or amplified “deceptive narratives” about the Hong Kong protests (i.e., ones that did not agree with the State Department or the 44% of Hong Kongers who supported the movement).

In 2021, Twitter revealed in a blog post that ASPI had helped identify thousands of accounts that “amplified Chinese Communist Party narratives” around China’s treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, accounts that now had been permanently deleted. Neither ASPI nor Twitter claimed that the deleted accounts were fake or operated by the Chinese state, strongly implying that merely agreeing with Beijing or questioning Western narratives was reason enough to be banned.

Other

Another recent analysis, on Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's digital capabilities, was notable for its key author: now-Liberal MP and former Australian ambassador to Israel Dave Sharma.

Mainstream Criticism

Former NSW premier Bob Carr has accused it of pumping out a “one-sided, pro-American view of the world”. Veteran foreign editor Tony Walker has slammed its "dystopian worldview" which "leaves little room for viewing China as a potential partner". "It lacks integrity and brings shame to Australia," says retired former DFAT chief and ex-Qantas CEO John Menadue. “I see it as very much the architect of the China threat theory in Australia”, adds ex-ambassador to China turned Beijing-based business consultant Geoff Raby. In the Australian Senate, Labor's Kim Carr criticized it heavily, thundering about "hawks intent on fighting a new cold war".

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
AIJAC/Rambam Programs/2015	“Our exchange on strategic issues soon demonstrated a whole range of areas where our military forces [ IDF and the Australian military ] could learn from one another. These ranged from defence industry co-operation (our army has purchased an Israeli battle management system) to counter-insurgency, urban intelligence gathering, coalition warfighting, countering improvised explosive devices, military education, the use of reservists, airpower developments (both countries are acquiring F-35 joint strike fighters), military procurement processes and maritime security (Israel is developing offshore gas fields). Issues related to counter-terrorism and social resilience were highlighted as common interests of both states.”	Anthony Bergin	2015
Peter Jennings (ASPI)	“The only person who thinks there is no chance of militarily victory in Afghanistan is Joe Biden”	Peter Jennings (ASPI)	June 2021
Paul Keating	“The Albanese Government’s complicity in joining with Britain and the United States in a tripartite build of a nuclear submarine for Australia under the AUKUS arrangements represents the worst international decision by an Australian Labor government since...World War One...And that approach was to have the United States supply nuclear submarines for deep and joint operations against China... And how did this come to be? The answer lies in Anthony Albanese’s reliance on two seriously unwise ministers. Penny Wong and Richard Marles....Labor’s valiant three fell immediately into line – they would join the neo-cons in the Office of National Intelligence, ASPI, the country’s principal US apologist, the security agencies and the hapless Defence department.... Indeed, two of our major dailies, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, have for five years now, argued the notion of war against China. Or readiness for war.”	Paul Keating	15 March 2023

 

Employee on Wikispooks

Employee	Job	Appointed
Justin Bassi	Executive Director	May 2022

 

Known members

10 of the 159 of the members already have pages here:

Member	Description
Justin Bassi	Australian spook who "wears CIA cufflinks". Leader of Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
Kim Beazley	Australian politician with spooky overtones
Anne-Marie Brady	New Cold Warrior New Zealand academic. Member of Australian Strategic Policy Institute and Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China
Gai Brodtmann	Australian Labor politician with close ties to the military-industrial complex.
Stephen Conroy	Introduced internet censorship as Australian Minister of Communications. Later on the board of Australian Strategic Policy Institute and lobbyist for the gambling industry.
Jane Halton	Former leader of the murderous People Smuggling Taskforce, event 201 participant
Peter Jennings (ASPI)	Executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) from May 2012 to May 2022
Stephen Loosley
Rajiv Shah	USDSO. As President of the Rockefeller Foundation, sat on the Lancet COVID-19 Commission
Vern White	Canadian senator and former chief of the Ottawa Police Service.

 

Sponsors

Event	Description
Lockheed	"Nobody is doing a better job of arming the world than Lockheed-Martin"
Raytheon	Military-industrial complex.

Rating

17 January 2020 Terje  Propaganda mill against China
Picks up and washes dubiously sourced claims, thus giving them credibility

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