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Australia Security

Australia Cyber Defence Bolstered by $10 Billion via Project REDSPICE (theage.com.au) 22

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Almost $10 billion over the next decade will be pumped into helping Australia compete in cyber warfare with adversaries such as Russia and China in a major funding boost that will nearly double the size of the nation's leading cyber security agency. From a report: In its centrepiece defence budget announcement, the government will make the largest single investment in the 75-year history of the Australian Signals Directorate, the country's powerful and highly secretive electronic intelligence agency. The government said the funding increase -- dramatically named Project REDSPICE (Resilience, Effects, Defence, Space, Intelligence, Cyber, and Enablers) -- will significantly expand the ASD's offensive cyber capabilities, as well as the agency's ability to prevent hacking and other digital attacks.

The government intends to put national security at the centre of the upcoming election campaign, contrasting its latest announcements with reductions to defence spending during the Rudd-Gillard era. In his budget night speech Treasurer Josh Frydenberg described the $9.9 billion in spending over 10 years as the country's "biggest ever investment in Australia's cyber preparedness." It comes on top of the government's previously announced expansion in Australian Defence Force personnel and the purchase of new Chinook helicopters, Abrams tanks and combat engineering vehicles.
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Australia Cyber Defence Bolstered by $10 Billion via Project REDSPICE More

Australia Cyber Defence Bolstered by $10 Billion via Project REDSPICE

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  • I doubt they'll be able to use the money effectively since Australia lacks the number of qualified hackers / people who can be trained to be hackers and can also pass the ridiculously long and invasive top security clearance required to work at the ASD.
    Hackers tend to be a bit weird, and the clearance process rejects everybody who isn't a straight white christian male who has never committed a crime in his life.

  • Australia is due for a federal election in the next couple of months, and the conservative incumbent PM ("that fella down under" to Biden) is on the nose.

    So lots of cash being splashed around in the budget - as if inflation was not looking bad enough already!
    Fuel tax lowered, cash handouts. And tough on crime, no, illegal immigrants, no, communist hackers. That's it! Tough on commies.

    • I doubt Scomo can ever win considering how badly he fucked up the handling of the pandemic.
      As long as people don't stay home on election day, it's going to be a Labor victory.
      Libs fucked up bad this term

      • As long as people don't stay home on election day,

        Tell us you have no idea about elections in Australia [wikipedia.org] without telling us you have no idea about elections in Australia.

  • The west's intelligence and law enforcement agencies (including the NSA, CIA, FBI, GCHQ, ASIO, DSD, BND and all the others) need to backdoors and being able to hack and spy on everyone and prioritize defense (that is, making the computer systems used by the good guys more secure) over offense (that is, being able to hack in the computer systems used by the bad guys).

  • This is coming out of a political announcement, Australia is having a grand budget spendathon in the lead up to an election which will be called next week.
    And this particular article pretends analysis but simply provides the government press release and talking points.

    The expenditure is mostly loaded into the last six years, often viewed as the political never-never. Forecasts are performed over the next four years, revenue, deficient etc. By putting the expenditure outside of that period they get to claim

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