Five Eyes

• Some 63 years later, my grandmother Mary also travelled to Australia to marry my grandfather Ted.
• He was a clerk with the Bank of New Zealand and had been posted to Melbourne in the 1920s.
• Ted and Mary lived in St Kilda and played cards in the evening with Australians, Mr and Mrs Shaw, who lived in Ivanhoe and barracked for Collingwood.
• My father was born there in 1929 and moved back to New Zealand with his family at the age of five.

Two-way traffic

• Historian Judith Binney writes that some Māori chiefs travelled to New South Wales to advance their tribes’ political and commercial interests and broader trans-Tasman trade in the early 1800s.
• At that time, New Zealand’s exports comprised flax, timber, whale products and foodstuffs, and were in high demand by Australia.
• The gentler New Zealand climate attracted Australians seeking a farming life, while journalists and artists went the other way to expand their horizons and careers.

Inextricably linked

• Premier Richard Seddon was born in Victoria, while six of the 13 members of the first Labour cabinet in 1935 were former Australians, including the prime minister, Michael Savage.
• New Zealand gave Australia Mike Rann, Joh Bjelke-Petersen and Barnaby Joyce.
• As well, there are numerous regular and routine links, from the Five Eyes security relationship and prime ministerial and ministerial meetings, to common food standards, policy coordination and information sharing.

Return to the ‘fair go’

• Australia remains New Zealand’s second-largest trading partner (we are their ninth-largest) and has a 30% stake in our total foreign investment.
• Traditional measures of the trans-Tasman relationship will always appear asymmetric due to differences in geographic, economic and population size, and our respective military alliances and capacities.
• At various times, political leaders on both sides of the Tasman have chosen to accentuate the differences in policy interests to suit their own agendas.

• This comes hot on the heels of news in April of a North Korean supply chain attack on Asia-Pacific telecommunications provider 3CX.
• Such public admissions from the Five Eyes alliance are few and far between.
• Let’s take a look at the events leading up to Volt Typhoon – and more broadly at how this secretive transnational alliance operates.

Uncovering Volt Typhoon

• Volt Typhoon is an “advanced persistent threat group” that has been active since at least mid-2021.
• Australia wasn’t directly impacted by Volt Typhoon, according to official statements.
• As for how Volt Typhoon was caught, this hasn’t been disclosed.

Living-off-the-land

• This is when attackers rely on using the resources already contained within the exploited system, rather than bringing in external tools.
• By using internal resources, attackers can bypass safeguards that alert organisations to unauthorised access to their networks.
• As such, living-off-the-land allows for lateral movement within the network, and provides opportunity for a persistent, long-term attack.

Who are the Five Eyes?

• The alliance was formed after World War II to counter the potential influence of the Soviet Union.
• In 2019, Australia was targeted by Chinese state-backed threat actors gaining unauthorised access to Parliament House’s computer network.
• Indeed, there is evidence that China is engaged in a concerted effort to target Australia’s public and private networks.

• AUKUS is the 2021 agreement between Australia, the UK and the US for the “exchange of naval nuclear propulsion information”.
• It has been presented as the foundation for an enhanced security partnership linked to a “free and open Indo-Pacific” and a rules-based international order.
• AUKUS also envisages the sharing of information in cutting-edge defence technologies, including artificial intelligence, quantum capabilities and cybersecurity.

The argument for AUKUS

• Read more:
  As Australia signs up for nuclear subs, NZ faces hard decisions over the AUKUS alliance

  A growing arms race and points of extreme geopolitical tension, from North Korea to Taiwan, highlight the need for an arrangement like AUKUS to provide a counterweight of like-minded partners to ensure greater stability.

• In this climate, the argument goes, New Zealand’s preferred option of “hedging” between the superpowers has been squeezed.
• Given New Zealand’s history, liberal democratic values and existing security ties with the AUKUS partners, it makes sense for Wellington to align with the agreement’s long-term strategy to deter and contain China’s expanding military power.

The argument against AUKUS

• But they seem to have little confidence that AUKUS, a security arrangement involving three English-speaking states, is capable of a serious response in a region inhabited by billions of people.
• Read more:
  Paul Keating lashes Albanese government over AUKUS, calling it Labor's biggest failure since WW1

  Furthermore, while China’s global ambitions are real, they should not be over-hyped.

• Besides, AUKUS will not be able to do much in the short term to counter China’s designs on Taiwan.

The case for caution

• On balance, we believe the evidence points to New Zealand’s interests and values being best safeguarded by maintaining a cautious approach to AUKUS.
• We accept New Zealand shares a great deal with Australia, the UK and the US, and should not be “neutral” in the face of authoritarian pressures from China.

• "Governments, law enforcement, and other organizations need a faster and easier way to collect and analyze this open-source data.
• Fivecast's advanced collection methods and AI-supported analysis tools bypass current manual data analysis processes to meet this important need.
• It's yet another example of Australian deep-tech innovation making a positive, large-scale impact on the world."
• Fivecast is also the first Australian company to be awarded a Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) project with the US Department of Defense.