Dr Brendan Walker-Munro

Since the enactment of the AUKUS Arrangement in 2021, the proponents of AUKUS – the United States (US), United Kingdom (UK) and Australia – have been undertaking a drastic re-engagement with their agendas of conducting of research in the national interest. Yet the historical independence of many research institutions has been modified by geopolitics, with these institutions collaborating more or less frequently with arms of government depending on concerns of national security. Further, the commonality of research partnerships with overseas individuals and entities – still absolutely crucial to the development of diversity in opinions and views – is being challenged in the face of subordination, manipulation or interference by malicious actors.

AUKUS has thus seen the evolution and expansion of legal controls into the domains of higher education research: foreign investment reviews, sanctions and export controls, and visa restrictions on overseas students and professors. This practice of “research security” has gained significant traction across a number of jurisdictions over the last decade as a measure of securitizing university research against national security threats. The language of these controls largely reflects the emergence of geopolitics as an existential threat: according to the policy basis of those controls imposed by States, universities are no longer safe to engage in the frank, open and collaborative inquiry that has personified their existence for centuries.
One recent trend has been the emergence of, or uptick in, the use of economic sanctions and controls to limit engagements or partnerships between universities and foreign entities on research security grounds. However, the precise contours of what constitutes appropriate and responsible research security controls in the higher education environment remain simultaneously contested and poorly explored.

This paper will thus focus on examining the current research security regimes of the US, UK and Australia, with particular emphasis on the use of national security and economic controls to shape collaborations in high-tech research. The paper will argue for the proper place of such controls typified in regimes of law and policy, as well as exploring the utility and drawbacks associated with the use of law versus policy in the institution of research security controls. It will also develop several key lessons that could be learned by other jurisdictions as they confront the shifting dynamic of global economic competition.

The intersection of science, technology, and geopolitics has become increasingly pronounced in recent years. Academia and higher education are now seen as critical battlegrounds in the intensifying geopolitical rivalry among major science regions such as the United States, China, and the European Union. Policymakers in these regions view global science as both a necessity and an arms race for technological and innovation leadership. Such developments increase the pressure on national governments to align their science policies with the strategic goals of allies, thereby disincentivizing scientific collaboration with geopolitical rivals. It is against this backdrop that research security has gained considerable attention in the past few years. This heightened awareness is largely driven by state actors and governments, especially in advanced Western scientific nations.

The introductory chapter will set out an overarching conceptual discussion of research security, providing key definitions as well as distilling common themes that will appear in subsequent chapters. This handbook proposes that while the conceptualisations of research security have overlapping aims and methods, they differ on the target of their regulatory influence and the degree to which they interfere in the work of individual research units. As will be demonstrated in other chapters in this handbook, securing university research differs between continents, nations, and even individual campuses. The mechanisms of regulatory control involve interwoven layers of statute law, governmental and institutional policy, and “best practice” amongst stakeholders such as funding bodies. On that basis, universities not only need to meet their legal obligations but also recognise and respect their unique institutional strengths and weaknesses in adopting research security programs. This chapter will conclude with some unified observations of research security practice across the multiple countries which have been represented here.

This chapter will explore the evolution of cyberEspionageespionageCyber espionage threats to higher educationHigher education institutions around the world, with a particular focus on the cyber domain as a vector to undertake theft of personal information, sensitive research and intellectual property. It will then identify both legal and policy-based limitations with university operating models and offer opportunities for legal or administrative intervention. The chapter will then conclude with an overview of the future of cyber espionage in the world of higher education.

University research contributes significantly to the development of novel inventions and life-changing expertise, with universities set to take an increased role in receiving and holding crucial technologies under both Pillars of the AUKUS deal. However, given the contested geopolitical environment in the Indo-Pacific (constituted by other highly influential nations like China, North Korea, India and Japan), “research security” – the protection of university research from national security threats – is emerging as a highly challenging policy problem. Researchers want to collaborate internationally. Cooperation brings increased opportunities for funding and new insights, and for diversity of voice and thought. Our higher education sector can bridge diplomatic and foreign policy gaps that no other form of soft power can achieve. Yet, international collaboration has a dark side – it can open the door to espionage, foreign interference, illicit technology transfer and potential compromises to human rights, research integrity, or ethical and legal obligations. The AUKUS Agreement has exacerbated those risks, with intelligence agencies such as Australia’s Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) warning of an “unhealthy interest” in AUKUS technologies by autocratic governments. The US has signalled at least two potential challenges to AUKUS – a lack of submarine-building capability and insular research funding policies that have caused shocks worldwide. Other Indo-Pacific players are also shoring up their research security defences: New Zealand has a mature “trusted research” program, and Japan and South Korea are mobilising to protect their research from foreign competition and infiltration. This paper will briefly present research security measures in the AUKUS nations before proposing three lines of effort to contain threats to higher education research:
- Working between Australia, the US and the UK to create a common understanding of research security, under which to harmonise as much of their policy settings as possible;
- Leveraging the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance to provide “sanitised” strategic intelligence to the higher education sectors of Indo-Pacific nations, countering the threats from autocratic interference in the region; and
- Incentivising and lowering the barriers for research opportunities between AUKUS universities and those in the Indo-Pacific, to drive strategic uplift in our Indo-Pacific partners capacity to handle research security risk (through capacity building, exchanges, investment etc).

At first glance, the notion of protecting university research from misuse or abuse by foreign actors (“research security”) bears little resemblance to countering money laundering. Yet a deeper analysis of these disciplines yields some surprising similarities: they both involve protection of intangible objects that possess tangible financial benefit, they both seek to shield against a wide spectrum of transnational security threats, and they both involve the imposition of regulatory restrictions on institutions with cultural values that can run counter to those restrictions. For those reasons – and others which we will explore further below – this chapter examines the utility of the United Nations considering enacting a global research security policy (like the FATF’s 40 Recommendations) for the benefit of Member States. By drawing on the lessons from the establishment of international standards of anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing (CTF), this chapter suggests that there are some significant advantages to enacting an international policy instrument to protect higher education research institutions.

The use of generative artificial intelligence platforms has been widely embraced in the biological and life sciences. Use of large language models and machine learning programs is emerging as a prominent method for replacing hours of iterative analysis or 'grunt work' usually performed by laboratory assistants or early-career researchers. However, there remains a 'dark side' to the use of these platforms, such as the development of novel biological or chemical warfare agents that have artificial characteristics not found in nature, or that enable a pathogen to bypass traditional protective measures. This chapter has two purposes. First, it examines the evolution of common domestic legal responses to biological weapons and their precursor research flowing from the Geneva Gas Protocol and the Biological Weapons Convention, with a particular focus on examining the 'dual use' dichotomy inherent in such responses. The chapter will then progress to examining the challenges, risks, and opportunities facing these types of legal responses in the face of emerging, critical, and disruptive technologies, especially generative artificial intelligence and synthetic biology. Some recommendations for more targeted governmental intervention (both internationally and domestically in many Western nations) will be proposed before concluding.

This new book, the first of its kind, is a curation of wide-ranging expertise on national security law in Australia at a time in history where polycrises are testing the very foundations of the state.

National security goes to the heart of a state’s existence, citizens, and values. So it is that national security law is inherently interdisciplinary and those who make and administer national security law must navigate a complex array of competing interests and structures.

To that end, this edited volume takes an interdisciplinary approach and includes chapters on national security in the context of judicial power, executive power, federalism, human rights, gender, citizenship, counter-terrorism, foreign interference, cyberspace, biosecurity, policing, law of the sea, space law, and international humanitarian law.

Both scholars and practitioners are represented among the contributing authors. The chapters are written so as to be accessible to policymakers and those without legal training, as well as providing a useful resource to lawyers and law students. Each of them provides a pragmatic overview of the relevant frameworks, while highlighting key law and policy challenges.

This chapter provides a thematic analysis for the Australian context of the legality and challenges to the use of big data analytics to identify risk, conduct compliance action, and make decisions within the tax administration space. Recent federal court jurisprudence and research is discussed to identify common themes (i.e., privacy/opacity, inaccuracy/bias, and fairness/due process) currently influencing the legal treatment of big data analytics within the tax administration and compliance environment in Australia.

The black economy—also called the hidden, covert, underground, grey, illicit, or cash economy—is used to describe the aspect of a country's economy that is not visibly subject to taxation. However, it is also a useful measure of behavioral disruption to the taxation system, as the scale and tactics of black economy participants vary over time. The purpose of this chapter is to suggest that existing tax policy (where legal constraints alone are used) is insufficient to affect black economy behaviour. It suggests that by adopting responses that are “more than law,” revenue administrations can deploy a more advanced and effective approach to improve tax compliance and can decrease the negative impacts of the black economy.