An influx of Chinese spies has forced Australia's home espionage agency into a recruiting drive to counter the threat as well as that posed by Muslim extremists, a newspaper report said yesterday.
The Australian newspaper said the the Australian Security and Intelligence Organization (ASIO) had more than doubled the number of spies from non-English speaking backgrounds in the past two years in a major recruitment drive, with most of the newcomers fluent in Chinese, the paper said.
Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said it would be inappropriate to reveal the language skills and cultural backgrounds of the new recruits, but said ASIO had been on a major recruitment drive since the Sept. 11 attacks in the US.
"We have committed very significant resources which has enabled ASIO to expand its staffing to 1,200, double the number it had at 2001," Ruddock told reporters.
"This campaign that we have been engaged in has been certainly very innovative and recruited high-quality staff with a range of experience and backgrounds," he said.
The Australian said around 88 linguists had been employed since 2004 under the recruitment drive which plans to see ASIO grow to more than 1,800 by 2011.
ASIO is responsible for protecting Australia against espionage, acts of terrorism and sabotage. ASIO agents have no arrest powers and are not armed.
The Australian said many of the new Chinese-speaking recruits had been assigned to a counter-espionage unit set up specifically to address concerns Beijing was running extensive spy networks in Australia.
A government source said Australia was being aggressively targeted by Chinese agents, who were mostly operating undercover as diplomats or business figures.
But ASIO was having less success recruiting fluent Arabic speakers, with fewer than a dozen working inside security and intelligence agencies, the report said.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of