The nation's top spy uses a major speech to warn there is a "realistic possibility" a foreign government will try to assassinate a dissident on Australian soil, saying ASIO believes "at least three" nations are willing and capable of carrying out such a plot.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/5467408

Australian Security Intelligence Organisation director-general Mike Burgess used the 2025 Lowy Lecture to reveal how the nation was facing an unprecedented number of threats to social cohesion, including Russian trolls, neo-Nazis, Islamists, extreme anti-Israel activists and hostile state actors.

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While Mr Burgess would not identify which countries were capable of carrying out a domestic assassination plot, he said they were effectively “on notice”.

Asked why he did not mention Beijing specifically in his speech as he did in previous appearances, Mr Burgess quipped: “How do you know I wasn’t talking about things China did in my remarks today?”

“[My] second response is, we all spy on each other, but we don’t conduct wholesale intellectual property theft. We don’t actually interfere in political systems and we don’t undertake high-harm activity.”

Mr Burgess went on to say he found it strange that when he had previously publicly identified China, Beijing’s representatives had often complained to numerous members of government but never to him directly.

“[I] will continue to call them out when I need to,” he said.

“This evening I didn’t, primarily because I was talking about things that tear at our social fabric. And at the extreme end of that, that isn’t China, although we do have some concerns there too.”

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