Today’s briefing:
— Why Australia’s spymaster is scared
— This country’s 40-day warning
— Venezuela’s dark recycled app
Your Insider’s briefing:
— Why Australia’s spymaster is scared
— This country’s 40-day warning
— Venezuela’s dark recycled app
Good morning {{first_name | Intriguer}}. Every diplomat has their own version of this story: you get summoned to a spy agency for a meeting, and duly pass through like six Get Smart-style security layers — weird air locks and guards who stare like you already did something wrong — until you’re finally ushered into the inner sanctum, where…
There, grinning sheepishly, is an ol’ friend or neighbour or school parent you legit thought was an accountant at a furniture supply chain or something. All those years of polite chat about the merits of leather versus fabric. And now it turns out they’re actually a hard-core spy spending their days chasing terrorists or reading other people’s encrypted nightmares.
The first time this happened to me was actually at the headquarters of an agency we’re visiting for today’s briefing: the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). So please lock your devices in the pigeon-holes provided, then follow me inside.
 | Managing Editor Jeremy Dicker |
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Number of the day
20%
That’s how much Apple just raised its prices on MacBooks and iPads, citing a surge in chip prices and sending stocks tumbling. Apple netted $112B in profits last year.
Learn your lines.
Mike Burgess, Director-General, ASIO
For a country that's home to killer spiders and venomous everything, not to mention one of history's most humiliating military defeats against [checks notes] flightless birds, we were a little shocked to see Australia's spymaster drop such a spicy threat assessment.
Here are the four lines from ASIO boss Mike Burgess that you can't ignore, starting with…
“Unfortunately, we are already there”
Okay, not inherently spicy, until you recall last year he warned Australia's security environment would turn more dynamic, diverse, and degraded by 2030. So a year later, he's now warning that this darker world has arrived already, five years early.
We'll explore how that’s playing out below, but Mikey-Mike's point here is our world is accelerating in ways he wishes it wouldn't. For example...
“When an Australian is killed at the hands of a foreign government on Australian soil, we will be shocked – but we should not be surprised”
That is some Merciless Pepper of Quetzalacatenango levels of spice right there. Which foreign governments would do this? Burgess points to a textbook example: a duo tried to torch a bar in Bondi, then hit a nearby Jewish deli with a similar name — that initial bar hit was just a case of mistaken identity.
But it turns out this arsonist duo was being directed and paid by an anonymous 'James Bond', who cops allege was actually a crime boss taking orders from handlers in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps! It's the IRGC's classic grey zone — deniable, outsourced ops to sow fear and amplify social tensions among foes.
So that's all intriguing, but last year, Jersey Mike warned there were at least three countries sniffing around this kind of lethal targeting. So Iran is one.
Another is widely understood to be India, already caught targeting Khalistani separatists elsewhere. And yet those expelled operatives from RAW (India’s CIA) still get zero mention by Mike (and India denies the claims). Canberra wants stable Delhi ties given their shared wariness of China, so any spicy disputes still get handled silently behind closed doors.
But it’s not just nation states playing the game…
“Neo-Nazis are antisemitic. Islamic extremism is antisemitic… Nation states can be antisemitic… Anarchists and revolutionary groups can be antisemitic”
There’s a long history of authoritarians using antisemitism to weaken and divide their foes. But Big Mike is really here citing antisemitism as a prime example of how threats, long siloed, are now overlapping and feeding off one another — like some kind of messy Venn diagram of hate, nationalism, and ideology.
And that all makes his job much harder: a single low-fi arson attack can now be lots of things at once: a hate crime, a crime of opportunity, politically-motivated, terrorism-inspired, and state-sponsored. All while eroding social cohesion.
Then let's wrap with...
“Great power competition is driving an insatiable appetite for strategic advantage. As a result, espionage and foreign interference are at extreme levels"
This is the closest Iron Mike gets to uttering the c-word (China, to be clear), in an inference that becomes clearer as he goes on — he warns that hostile espionage efforts are “increasingly focused on strategic defence initiatives, including AUKUS” — the Aus-UK-US pact to supply Australia with nuclear-powered subs and counter a more assertive China.
And he cites some familiar examples, like a foreign spy posing as a consultant on LinkedIn trying to elicit insider info. At least it makes LinkedIn interesting?
But his spicier alert is really that “preparation for sabotage is growing in scale and sophistication” — Dirty Mike spells out that authoritarian regimes are now hacking into Australia's critical infrastructure networks, not to harm now, but to pre-position access in case of future conflict over (say) Taiwan: planting malware, mapping systems, and maintaining footholds in a country hosting critical US capabilities (google Pine Gap).
Again, this isn’t new, though the recent Five Eyes warning around AI capabilities suggests it's only getting worse — plus the fact it was aimed at CEOs is a stark reminder that so much of the free world's critical infrastructure is guarded not by troops, but private enterprise.
So all that to say... Magic Mike has spoken, people. And he's warning that in 2026, maybe those spiders are the least of your worries.
Intrigue’s Take
Western spy chiefs are all doing some version of the same dance these days: stepping out of the post-Cold War ‘quiet professionals’ era to rebuild public consent — and secure funding — for a messy decade ahead.
We’d also add, based on conversations with a few accountants at a certain furniture supply chain, that…
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Meanwhile, elsewhere…
🇨🇩 DR CONGO — Ebola hope?
With the three fast-tracked Ebola vaccine candidates still months away (Oxford, IAVI, and Moderna), the World Health Organisation is now launching Congo clinical trials on whether the remdesivir antiviral or MBP134 antibody cocktail can help blunt the region’s fast-moving Bundibugyo strain outbreak. (WHO)
Comment: Tedros (the WHO boss) is sounding more optimistic than earlier briefings as the response accelerates — regional testing and beds are both way up, and these two trials are building on donations from the US (which just left the WHO in January).
🇮🇷 IRAN — Ship hit in Hormuz Strait.
The UN has halted its planned evacuation of over 11,000 sailors stranded in the Strait of Hormuz after a presumed Iranian drone or missile hit a Singapore-flagged ship transiting near Oman. The regime’s IRGC naval arm had just warned this Oman route was unauthorised. Oil prices spiked on the news but have since stabilised back around the $70 post-deal mark. (EuroNews)
Comment: With US-Iran talks ongoing, it’s a pretty direct flex of the regime’s most powerful asymmetric weapon: the ability to choke 20% of global oil. So for anyone still hoping for a rapid return to the Strait’s pre-war free status, there’s your answer.
🇯🇵 JAPAN — Invest your trillions.
PM Takaichi has unveiled an unprecedented $2.3T investment plan in combined public + private financing for the next 14 years, with nearly a third earmarked for AI and semiconductors alone. (Bloomberg $)
Comment: The cautious market response is revealing — rather than exacerbate pre-existing fears around Tokyo’s fiscal trajectory, the ‘meh’ might hint at initial confusion, both around exactly where that tsunami of cash comes from, and the ability to assess the merits of a plan over such a long time-frame. Still, it looks to us like a Takaichi flex both to reverse decades of sluggish growth, and respond to US-China tech rivalry and supply chain vulnerabilities.
🇺🇦 UKRAINE — 40-day blitz.
President Zelensky has announced plans for a 40-day pressure campaign to get Russia to end the war. The Ukrainian leader declined to share any further details, but confirmed Ukraine just hit another two Russian oil refineries. (Independent)
🇰🇵 NORTH KOREA — Ship-measuring contest.
Pyongyang has commissioned its biggest-ever ship, a 5,000-ton destroyer the supreme leader claims will “put an end to over 70 years of [his navy’s] stagnation”. (CNN)
Comment: As much as bro has been on a hot-streak lately, it’s worth noting this is still pretty small by modern standards — the US Arleigh Burke-class is almost double that size. But it’s interesting because, after decades of his navy being a touchy subject, Kim now has the cash (courtesy of Putin) to get on with a gradual modernisation. Longer term, that’ll expand his ‘anti-access/area-denial’ bubble, raising the risks for US and South Korean operations off the peninsula.
🇮🇳 INDIA — AI on the prize.
Amazon has announced another $13B investment in India’s AI sector, bringing its cumulative announced injection to $48B through to 2030. It’s mostly going to expand AWS data centres in Mumbai and Hyderabad. (TechCrunch)
Comment: Why so much Big Tech interest in India? It’s got a rare mix of low-cost, high-volume, and world-class engineering talent, plus the world’s largest untapped digital consumer base, in an English-speaking democracy with solid US / Quad ties. It’s also a win for PM Modi, who’s citing it domestically as proof the world is betting big on India under his leadership.
🇮🇶 IRAQ — Empty (?) threat.
Baghdad authorities have reportedly considered leaving OPEC+ if the cartel doesn’t significantly expand its production quotas. Key member UAE already just left the group of oil producing countries citing the same complaint. (Reuters)
Comment: We flagged back when the UAExit news broke that “each departure weakens the club’s leverage, in turn making the next departure not only easier, but more logical.” Iraq is proving us right, though its “threat”, via a “leak” to international press, still seems more an initial strategy to increase pressure on OPEC’s de-facto leader Saudi Arabia to let members open their spigots. The timing for an actual exit was better for the Emiratis, just as Hormuz was blocked and prices were higher.
Extra Intrigue
Intrigue’s weekend recommendations
Read: Why are people so obsessed with colonising Mars?
Watch: Meet some of the characters behind Iran’s AI propaganda.
Listen: Need a break from everything and everyone? Listen to the latest episode of the birdwatching podcast by Sean Bean (yes, that Sean Bean).
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App of the day
“Meet VenApp”
Heard of that app above? It was Venezuela’s former dictator Nicolás Maduro who first launched it, claiming it’d help communicate on things like power outages and medical emergencies. But its underlying purpose soon became clear — his thugs used it to snitch on protesters and dissidents.
We mention it because Maduro is now gone, and the app’s purpose has shifted again. Venezuelans are now using VenApp to report missing people and damaged buildings after this week’s devastating duet of earthquakes that’ve flattened suburbs and left hundreds (and counting) dead.
We have some complicated feelings about this (kids, nuance is fun!). We’re all in favour of repurposing existing infrastructure if it means reuniting someone with their loved ones. But we’re not naïve about Delcy Rodriguez (Maduro’s veep-turned-Fredo) still using a tool her own Maduro-era regime wielded to stifle her own people.
Friday quiz
Wednesday was International Day for Women in Diplomacy, so here’s a quiz.