Southeast Asia (Page 4)

Australia’s surveillance scheme should not be governed by “business as usual” because the Albanese Labor state was defeated by such a large margin.

Australia’s surveillance landscape is quite different now from when Labor was second elected in 2022, or even when its Defence Strategic Review was released in 2023 due to the global confusion that US President Donald Trump has initiated.

The Albanese government is confronted with exceedingly tough questions, as we have recently argued in our book.

How can we keep our critical security ties with the US while forming stronger alliances with nations that disagree with US plan? How much can we rely on the United States in the face of Trump’s subsequent actions, and what might the alliance cost?

The new government has the chance to think critically about national protection thanks to a sizable political lot. Australia needs to experience the fast changing world with our heads raised, which is not the time to keep its head downward.

Trump 2.0 is not the same as 1.0.

We don’t think Australia should withdraw from the US ally. We are even aware that generations of defence procurement have made Australia rely heavily on US defense equipment ( and its subsequent support ) for our safety.

The Australian Defence Force’s deep connectivity with the US military is something alliance skeptics very readily overlook: many American military capability cannot function without continued American support.

Some empire supporters underestimate the impact of the new problems we face, but some do so at the same day. Some resisted the first and second Trump governments ‘ consistent behavior. Yet, we do not believe that the lessons learned from Trump 1.0 are nonetheless true.

The impact of Trump’s decision to disregard worldwide rules is a significant difference between Trump 1.0 and 1.0.

For instance, among other things, the US and Russia have cast ballots against UN Security Council resolutions that, among other things, have criticized the Ukraine conflict, withdrawn from the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization, and severely damaged relations with NATO friends.

Australia has much relied on the “rules-based order” as a middle-class nation to expand its geopolitical and international policy objectives.

Yet if “normal transfer” begins under a fresh US president in 2029, we are concerned that the Trump administration’s structural adjustments to the global order won’t be easily reversed.

Cuts to the US State Department, USAID, and global radio services have decimated American delicate energy. Additionally, this won’t be immediately rebuilt.

There are few “adults left in the room” in the Trump presidency, which is a second change.

The hardliners less likely to rebel against Trump’s thoughts and impulses have taken the place of the advisors who kept him in verify during his first administration. His long-held objection to how friends have been stealing from the US includes this.

The Albanese state needs to consider more seriously how to reduce its dependence on the US. This entails working with other lovers to encourage the laws, rules, and norms that ensure stability and predictability in international affairs, especially in Asia and the Pacific.

A utopian outlook on the future

We are also concerned that many in the national security group basic their policy recommendations on the premise that a conflict between the US and China is expected and that Australia had become America’s ally in the event of such a fight.

Instead, the Trump administration’s taste for “deals” opens the door to a deal between the US and China that will change our region’s leadership and presence.

Australia might not be ready to deal with this. If the US withdraws from the area or makes decisions that Australians don’t assistance, the new government needs to have a more open debate about how to keep our protection.

We need to start by considering how Australia may do self-reliance within the alliance construction. Future generations will require a range of corporate choices that don’t rely on an archaic perception of the US as a trustworthy companion.

What we call “pragmatic idealism” should be the guiding principle in this discussion.

The state and members of the national security society must reevaluate how things can be in order to accept the situation.

We argue that the Albanese authorities should use its crushing political victory to create a politics of hope, chance, and chance for our future security. This must be replaced by the pessimism, passive understanding, and learned helplessness that frequently characterizes American national security debates.

We are aware that being “idealistic” is frequently dismissed as stupid, impure “wishful thinking.” However, the new government needs to show Australians that it has the courage to face the numerous, interconnected, and challenging safety issues that we face, possibly on our own. These include issues like climate change, international violence, and cyberattacks.

Practical measures

The Albanese government needs to develop a comprehensive national security method that takes into account all the diplomacy resources Australia can use to address these issues as a first step.

This requires more interaction with regional colleagues in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. As the US surrenders from this area, Australia should think about investing more money in information programs and common diplomacy in particular.

Additionally, the government needs to be more open and honest about its safety alternatives and decisions.

For example, the government on AUKUS may separate its” social licence” from the public in order to continue funding for a sizable deal over generations. Australians need to be better informed and consulted about the choices they may eventually make.

In a turbulent world, Australians should be open and honest about the necessity of more defence spending.

The new Albanese government is understandably tempted to stick to a” small target” strategy when it comes to the US. This has resulted in limiting home contentiousness about the alliance to avoid risking the ire of a Trump with a thin nosed.

However, the government needs the guts to ask hard questions and envision alternate future.

Elizabeth Strating, director, La Trobe Asia, and Rebecca Strating, professor of international relationships, La Trobe University, are Joanne Wallis, professor of global surveillance, University of Adelaide, and professor of international relations, University of Adelaide.

This content was republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Learn the article’s introduction.

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China is tightening its grip on Tibet and using its proper roof of the world to gain more support from the Dalai Lama’s followers “worldwide” from Lhasa to London, opening Tibet’s global aircraft to Singapore and Nepal, and constructing the largest hydroelectric bridge on a glacier-fed valley.

China rewards resource-rich Tibet’s noble Himalayan peaks, which allow the People’s Liberation Army to “look down” on India, China’s local foe, and provide a fearsome buffer between Beijing and New Delhi.

However, the Tibetan and international activists, experts, and supporters of the self-exiled 14th Dalai Lama are being warned by the United Kingdom’s GCHQ knowledge company that they are in danger of illness from “malicious actors” who created global surveillance malware known as MOONSHINE and BADBAZAAR.

The National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), a division of the British government, claimed that the Chinese also developed snooping apps that resemble WhatsApp and Skype but allow text, audio, and video.

Other surveillance tools are packed into a standalone app such as Tibet One, which operates in the Tibetan language, the same source said. &nbsp, &nbsp,

The Tibet One messaging app was made shareable by Chinese hackers on Reddit and Telegram channels where Tibetans and their supporters exchanged information, according to the NCSC.

” We are seeing a rise in digital threats designed to silence, monitor and intimidate communities across borders”, NCSC director of operations Paul Chichester said in a statement.

Targets can be anyone” considered by the Chinese state to pose a threat to its stability,” according to the NSCS.

The NSCS reported that it had discussed the warning with cybersecurity officials from Australia, Canada, Germany, and New Zealand, as well as the US National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

” The malicious software– dubbed MOONSHINE and BADBAZAAR – hides malicious functions inside otherwise legitimate apps in a technique known as ‘ trojanising'”, the NSCS said.

” Once installed, the apps have been observed variously accessing functions, including microphones, cameras, messages, photos, and location data, including real-time tracking, without the user being aware,” it said.

Meanwhile, Meiya Pico, a government-owned digital forensics firm in China, is getting a deeper understanding of Tibetan society.

” Digital forensics technology, training, and services as provided by Meiya Pico can play a role at both ends of a repression pipeline, facilitating the long shadow of transnational repression beyond the Belt and Road corridor – helping Beijing track, intimidate, and silence Tibetan dissent worldwide, from Lhasa to London”, reported Turquoise Roof, an online Tibetan research site.

In a report titled” A Long Shadow: The Expansion and Export of China’s Digital Repression Model in Tibet” on April 16th, Turquoise Group stated that” when Chinese police in Tibet seize a phone from someone suspected of sharing information with Dharamsala, they ] exfiltrate and analyze the phone’s contents.

According to Turquoise Group, which collaborated with Canada-based SecDev Group, it found some of Beijing’s alleged spyware in a forged document from” SDIC Intelligence Xiamen Information Co Ltd, a digital forensics company better known as Meiya Pico, which ] won a contract in mid-2023 to construct two labs at the Tibet Police College, one on offensive and defensive cyber techniques, and the other on electronic evidence collection and analysis,” according to Turquois

In 2021, the US Treasury said Meiya Pico was using “biometric surveillance and tracking of ethnic and religious minorities in China”. The US Commerce Department placed the business on blacklist in 2019.

According to Maya Wang, associate director for China at Human Rights Watch, “using a cellphone has become dangerous for Tibetans, and everyday things like posting funny videos or calling loved ones abroad can lead to arrest, detention, and torture,” according to Maya Wang.

” Tibetans, particularly those living in remote areas, once celebrated the arrival of cellphones so they could stay in touch with friends and family, but their phones have effectively become government tracking devices”, Wang said.

Infractions include challenging the Dalai Lama, repressing Tibet’s independence or expressing opposition to the Chinese Communist Party. Beijing has for decades been a force behind dissent in Tibet.

A fresh crackdown is being waged against supporters of Tibetan Buddhist abbot and author Tulku Hungkar Dorje, 56, who fled to Vietnam in September 2024, fearing imprisonment in Tibet.

According to Tibet’s India-based parliament-in-exile, which is allegedly associated with the Dalai Lama, the abbot was” not enforcing Chinese state education policies in schools established under his guidance.”

Tulku Hungkar Dorje was taken into Vietnamese custody on April 3 after being detained in Ho Chi Minh City in March, according to media reports. He passed away there on April 3. Vietnam reportedly said the abbot died from a heart attack but provided no public evidence, sparking allegations that he was killed.

According to Free Tibet, an activist news website based in Britain, he was cremated on April 20 “without family consent.” This raises serious questions about China’s role in his arrest and demise.

Under heavy Chinese and Vietnamese surveillance, the monks present had their phones taken, and no one was allowed to leave, according to Zoe Bedford of the Australia Tibet Council.” Tulku Hungkar Dorje’s body was secretly transferred late at night to Sakya Vietnam temple.”

” This is not a sacred rite, it’s a forced cremation that looks like an attempt to destroy evidence and erase the truth”, Bedord claimed.

China recently expanded Lhasa Gonggar International Airport on the outskirts of the Tibetan capital to make the first round-trip flight to and from Singapore in December 2024 in order to utilize Tibet’s strategic high ground.

The airport’s renovation is a part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure development initiative.

Planes operated by China’s government-owned West Air, a unit of HNA Aviation Group, are scheduled to fly three times a week round-trip to Singapore with a stopover in China’s southern city Chongqing, according to the company. Lhasa-Hong Kong and other nearby locations are planned for future international routes.

Prior to this time, Lhasa only flew to and from nearby Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, and Chinese cities like Beijing, Chengdu, Chongqing, Xian, Guangzhou, Kunming, and Shanghai.

” Looking ahead, West Air will expand its investments in Belt and Road countries, and open additional routes to meet growing passenger demand while supporting national strategies and regional development”, the company said.

However, Beijing’s real money-maker in Tibet is anticipated to be the company’s planned hydroelectric dams on the world’s highest peaks, where Mount Everest and other peaks soar.

When the glaciers ‘ waters flow into the Brahmaputra, Salween, and Mekong rivers, rivers that originate in Tibet reach hundreds of millions of people in plains across India, Bangladesh, and Southeast Asia.

China is building the world’s biggest hydroelectric dam on the country’s longest river, Tibet’s Yarlung Tsangpo, with expectations it will pump out three times more energy than the nearby Three Gorges Dam, which is currently the mightiest hydroelectric dam on earth.

The British Broadcasting Corporation ( BBC ) predicts that the US$ 137 billion Yarlung Tsangpo Hydroelectric Project will have four 12-mile ( 20 kilometers ) tunnels.

As it travels from Tibet to India, the Yarlung Tsangpo River, which already has a number of hydropower plants, is a good one. The river’s value is its huge waterfalls, making it attractive for hydroelectric plants despite the zone’s earthquake-vulnerable tectonic plates.

The sacred river has the largest vertical difference of 25 feet (7, 667 meters ), according to the website of New York-based Interesting Engineering.

The Chinese government intends to make the most of this, generating nearly 300 billion kilowatt hours (k Wh ) of hydropower from the project, enough to meet the energy demands of 300 million people annually, according to the engineering site.

The Yarlung Tsangpo cascades east across Tibet before bending south across the China-India frontier through Himalayan valleys into India’s Arunachal Pradesh and Assam states.

The Brahmaputra River flows southwest into the river in India, which empties through Bangladesh’s delta into the Bay of Bengal.

The Australian-based Lowy Institute think tank argued that” control over these rivers ]in the Tibetan Plateau] effectively gives China a chokehold on India’s economy.

China’s vigilance over Tibet stems from the old Cold War. Two years before the Dalai Lama escaped, the US CIA began training Tibetans in combat and operations skills in 1957 and dropped them as insurgents against Communist Chinese in Tibet.

According to Radio Free Asia ( RFA ),” The CIA had piloted the project with a group of]Tibetan ] fighters who were trained at Saipan, Northern Mariana Island.”

The first radio team to be dropped back into Tibet by Operations St. The training camps were moved to Camp Hale [Colorado ] in September 1957 after it became clear that the Tibetans were not familiar with the island’s hot weather, so Colorado was chosen because of the island’s terrain and weather, according to RFA.

The CIA trained at least 259 Tibetan insurgents in Camp Hale from 1958 to 1964.

RFA reported that” the Tibetans were trained in radio operation, surveillance, and combat maneuvers, parachuting, intelligence gathering, clandestine exchange of written material, film, world history, and geography, and small armament training with bazookas, grenades, and rifles.”

According to Newsweek in 1999,” the CIA began using C-130s to airdrop weapons, ammunition, and US-trained Tibetans into their occupied homeland” from a secret CIA base in Takhli, Thailand.

Nine out of every 10 guerrillas who parachuted into Tibet were killed by Chinese or committed suicide to evade capture, the Smithsonian Institution’s Air &amp, Space Magazine reported.

When President Richard Nixon visited Beijing in 1972, shook hands with Chairman Mao Zedong, and improved their frosty relations, the Tibetan Buddhists ‘ CIA-backed insurgency ended in defeat against China’s revolution-hardened People’s Liberation Army.

After escaping Tibet in 1959 with the aid of the CIA, the Dalai Lama now lives in self-exile in McLeod Ganj, a small town in the forested northwest of India.

China’s Communist government opposes the Dalai Lama, portraying him as a” splittist” working with foreigners to recreate an independent Tibet after China annexed it in the 1950s.

Beijing doesn’t trust the Dalai Lama, who has consistently said he is” Marxist” and agrees with Tibet’s autonomy within China.

Since 1978, Richard S. Ehrlich, an American foreign correspondent reporting from Asia, has won the Columbia University Foreign Correspondents ‘ Award.

Excerpts from his two new nonfiction books,” Rituals. Killers. . wars &amp, Sex. The books” Apocalyptic Tribes, Smugglers & Freaks” and” Apocalyptic Tribes, Smugglers &amp, Freaks” are available here.

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