Government ‘vagueness’ thwarting universities’ security efforts

Vaguely expressed national security requirements are undermining universities’ ability to ensure that they operate in Australia’s interests, a Canberra inquiry has heard.

University of Adelaide vice-chancellor Peter Høj said “lack of clarity” around “no-go” areas for collaborative research made it harder to focus on the genuine threats. “We come out with a big hammer, but everything looks like nails,” he told the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security.

“What are the [fields of research] around which we have to build really high fences [to make them] impenetrable to anybody other than our allies? If we don’t define [them] clearly, we will [fail to implement] protective arrangements efficiently where they’re really required.

“That’s the big challenge – high fences around things we only want to share and co-develop with certain partners, and collaborative measures in areas [requiring] a global effort, such as a pandemic.”

The committee, which is looking into national security risks affecting Australian higher education, has heard that security agency Asio is developing an expanded list of sensitive technologies to be shielded from collaborative research with some foreign nations.

The list includes research fields vulnerable to intellectual property theft as well as those that could be harnessed for weapon development. “It would provide universities with greater certainty about the areas where they need to be cautious, including when engaging with foreign institutions,” Asio director general Mike Burgess told an earlier hearing of the committee.

But Professor Høj said universities had not yet seen the list, and this left them vulnerable to accusations that they were violating staff’s rights if they tried to second-guess government security concerns.

“We [may] have a suspicion, for instance, that materials science is on the sensitive list…[but] unless [we] have the government saying this is a no-go area from a national security point of view, it is very hard to not get an internal debate about curtailing academic freedom.”

Australian National University (ANU) vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt said there was danger in the “highly duplicative” and “not well-defined” regulatory instruments being imposed on universities. “Rather than being strategic about our risk, and trying to really do what is right for the Australian interest, we are instead spending huge amounts of effort figuring out how to comply with things where there is great uncertainty,” he said.

“The ambiguity does not come from the [security] agencies. It comes from the legislation.”

Vice-chancellors told the committee that universities’ engagement with security agencies – which had initially focused on research into technologies with potential military applications – had expanded from about 2017 to address broader issues of foreign influence.

They said the agencies were forthright with their advice, particularly through the University Foreign Interference Taskforce.

But vice-chancellors were accused of excessive reliance on transparency to manage national security concerns. Liberal senator David Fawcett raised ANU’s preparedness to continue employing an associate professor who researched drone swarms with military applications, and had reportedly trained a People’s Liberation Army scientist, so long as his Chinese affiliations were publicly acknowledged.

“[That] would be like saying we’ll have a TV camera broadcasting livestream somebody coming and robbing my house,” Mr Fawcett said. “It’s all transparent so we’re OK with that.”

Professor Schmidt said transparency was universities’ “number one tool” and “inoculates most adverse effects. However within transparency, if you see conflict of commitment, then it needs to be dealt with.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com