On research security, our divisions are the real vulnerability
Scholars named in public for entanglement with a foreign regime, international research collaborations quietly binned, and institutional partnerships needing to be torn up by the government – such events are increasingly frequent. The external risks that prompt them are important to protect against, but division within the research ecosystem itself also needs to be addressed to provide a foundation of trust and security.
Last month Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong terminated the Australian National University’s Joint Science College with Shandong University, as well as the University of Queensland’s collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Soon after, Education Minister Jason Clare directed the Australian Tertiary Education Commission to develop new national security and foreign interference requirements for the Higher Education Threshold Standards, to which universities are subject.
The government’s moves to lift the sector’s floor are necessary, and avoid going as far as interference in academic freedom. Freedom, after all, does not mean absence of guidance, due diligence or accountability. Nor does it confer a right to enter international arrangements that may run counter to the national interest. These reforms address the reality that, as we argued in these pages last year, foreign policy and geostrategic competition are increasingly local – in this context, conducted in laboratories and lecture theatres as much as through embassies or capitals.
Ensuring there is broad understanding of the need for such reform is vital for research sector resilience, public trust in institutions, and national security. However, Australia’s research ecosystem is itself at risk of fracture, within and between institutions.
At one pole sit independence purists who treat any whiff of national security thresholds as government overreach on intellectual freedom. At the other are those who deem any foreign association so grave that broad exclusion is justified. A case in point is the response to the government’s proposed reforms that could see the regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), impose new foreign collaboration conditions on universities that fail to meet the set standards and, in the most serious cases, revoke their registration to operate.
The peak body for Australia’s universities, Universities Australia, correctly notes TEQSA is not a national security agency and cannot, itself, determine whether a collaboration, entity or research venture poses a national security risk. However, this response risks missing the reform as an opportunity to better connect the regulator to those who can inform that judgement – whether the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation or the departments of Home Affairs, Defence or Foreign Affairs and Trade, parts of government where the intelligence, assessments and policy levers sit.
The education sector, to its credit, has substantially strengthened its research security posture in recent years. The question is no longer whether universities are trying. They are. But internally, the sector remains inconsistent.
University leaders run large, globally exposed institutions operating under real financial and regulatory pressure; governance is their discipline. Researchers generally hold close an ethos to advance frontiers of knowledge. But brilliant minds breaking boundaries in intellectual pursuit need support to spot indicators of foreign interference and respond.
Judging the dual-use potential of civilian research, for example, is genuinely difficult. Reverse engineering can redefine the purpose of most capabilities we produce.
The result is a system with governance at the centre and execution at the edge, but too little connecting both. The risk is that the sector, despite wanting to be as strong as possible, is easier to exploit. If any scrutiny at all is reflexively cast as overreach, sophisticated threat actors gain greater scope to weaponise that debate – portraying legitimate safeguards as evidence of Australian xenophobia. At a time when social cohesion is already under strain, public confidence in our institutions matters. We need confidence Australia’s research institutions are advancing Australia’s interests, rather than allowing persistent uncertainty over whose objectives are ultimately being served.
A strong research ecosystem is a central pillar for national resilience. As the national security and defence committee of the Group of Eight major universities demonstrates through its outreach and uplift work, no single part of the system can build the necessary trust and coordination alone.
This is why security should sit inside research design, just as ethics approval already does as a routine, supported step, not just a post-execution investigative exercise. Baking in security builds trust. Using security mechanisms to only review after agreements have been formed can cause institutional embarrassment, national insecurity and international distrust.
Research security should rest on persistent, shared responsibility frameworks, rather than exclusively compliance ones. Practical tools such as ASPI’s China Defence Universities Tracker empower researchers and administrators to transparently assess international collaboration. The aim is to navigate risk and make engagement safer, not just shut it down.
The European Union is also prioritising managing risk in research, providing a timely example given Australia’s ambition to leverage its flagship Horizon Europe program. There is much for democracies to learn together. European institutions that grasp the risks associated with foreign interference are approaching research risk in terms of knowledge security. This recognises that a conversation exclusively about interference can paralyse people into inaction or resentment. A dialogue which is centred on prosperity, capability and gains and which takes into account risk, focuses on keeping the advantage that makes our research worth stealing in the first place.
As a nation of 28 million, Australia has relied on openness and engagement with minds far beyond our shores for its research strength. This should be sustained, but protected.
Protecting it requires coherence within the research sector which means empowering individuals and reassuring institutions. Crucially, protecting Australia’s research edge demands more than either pole in the current debate litigating purity while those whose intentions are anything but pure exploit the gaps. It requires a unifying framing that gives equal weight to taking the opportunities to build, and guarding against the threats to, Australia’s strategic advantage.
About Author
