Australian Spy Chief Accuses China of ‘Wholesale’ IP Theft and Political Meddling

Australia’s top intelligence official directly accused China’s security services on Tuesday of widespread intellectual property theft and political interference — while arguing Beijing still doesn’t grasp how Western democracies operate.

According to The Associated Press, 👤Mike Burgess, director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), said he would not back down from calling out Beijing’s behavior.

“We all spy on each other, but we don’t conduct wholesale intellectual property theft. We don’t actually interfere with political systems and we don’t undertake high-harm activity,” Burgess said during a speech at the Lowy Institute in Sydney.

Burgess added that China’s denials of wrongdoing show a fundamental misunderstanding of ASIO’s independence.

“Every time I’ve done that (called China out), there’s an army of Chinese government officials that go around complaining to almost everyone in this country across the system — public and private — but not to me,” Burgess said.

“If they were smart as they should be — and they are smart — they would understand a Western liberal democracy and the role and the statutory standing of the security service. We work for the government of the day but our security assessments and our security action are independent,” he continued.

“They clearly don’t understand the system, because if they want to complain about ASIO doing its job and explaining the threats to the people we’re protecting, including calling out China when we need to, it won’t stop my resolve, it won’t stop my officers from doing the job and we’ll continue to call them out when I need to,” he added.