22-11-2025: For the umpteenth time, ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) has claimed that “authoritarian regimes” are conducting cyber attacks to target infrastructure assets overseas, including in Australia. ASIO head Mike Burgess, speaking to an ASIC (Australian Securities and Investments Commission) forum on November 12 used cagey language to infer the state actors supposedly doing this are the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Russian Federation and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Specifically referring to China, he claimed that the Chinese government was sponsoring hacking groups Salt Typhoon and Volt Typhoon to disrupt critical infrastructure. Without presenting a shred of evidence for these wild claims, he posed the rhetorical question of what might happen if “foreign actors” took down power networks, polluted drinking water or crippled the financial system.[1] Burgess also pointed to the recent Optus outage that led to phone calls to the emergency Triple Zero number not being connected, leading to the deaths of several people, as an example of how disruptive and dangerous a cyber attack on critical infrastructure could be.[2]
Repeating pattern
Burgess did not of course mention that the Optus telecommunication outage which led to Triple Zero calls not going through and some dying as a result, were yet another example of a profit gouging corporation refusing to spend money maintaining critical infrastructure. For its part, the government of the PRC immediately lodged a protest with the Australian government, requesting a full retraction of the statements, and strongly denied all allegations. PRC Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun stated this this is not the first time that the “Australian official” had attacked China and hoped that the official (Burgess) would stop making irresponsible comments.[3]
Burgess nevertheless also inferred that the cyber attacks were targeting the Five Eyes states – the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – but again with no supporting evidence. This follows the outrageous actions of ASIO in August, where it accused the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) of orchestrating two anti-Semitic attacks in Sydney and Melbourne – again with no documentation to verify such a charge. On the basis of this, the Australian government expelled the Iranian Ambassador to Australia and gave him and his staff seven days to leave the country. This was the first diplomatic expulsion since World War II.[4] In fact, it is much more likely that either the Australian government itself, or even the Israeli government via international agents were involved in the attacks on the Sydney kosher restaurant and the synagogue in Melbourne. Both entities have been seeking to demobilise the pro-Palestine movement by discrediting its motivations as being both anti-Israel and anti-Semitic.
Preparations for war
The repeated and blatantly false allegations hurled by the Australian government at China, Russia and Iran, combined with the expulsion of the Iranian Ambassador, are little more than real preparations for World War III. The Australian ruling class is arguably an extension of the US and UK ruling classes, who are bent on taking down the three central pillars of the burgeoning multipolar world. China, Russia and Iran are the major powers of the non-imperialist BRICS bloc (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa plus 15 other Global South states) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Eurasian security alliance. BRICS is fast building an economic and financial alternative to the Western dominated imperialist architecture of the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank, which are both located in Washington DC. BRICS has recently launched a payment system which allows trading in Chinese yuan for 185 nations – bypassing the need to trade in US dollars at all. BRICS now encompasses around 55% of the world’s population and over 40% of world GDP (Gross Domestic Product), and this is only going to increase, given ongoing economic decline in the West.
Capitalism’s crisis laden operations are perhaps best personified by its deindustrialisation. Much manufacturing and industry has been shut down, and there is little prospect of it restarting. On the other hand, manufacturing has been rapidly expanding in the socialistic PRC, to the extent that it now produces more output than the US, Europe and Japan combined. Red China could not have achieved this without public ownership of the major and strategic means of production, nationalised land, state owned infrastructure and nationalised land. The capitalist West, weighed down with private ownership of the means of production and an economy largely based in financial speculation, has sown the seeds of its own downfall. Combined with its multipolar allies Russia and Iran, as well as almost the entire Global South which is desperate for an alternative to centuries of Western colonialism, the PRC is arguably leading the world towards a new era of common prosperity.
The contrast for working people between Australia and the PRC could not be more stark. In Australia, housing verges on the unaffordable for most with full time employment, with median house prices over 1 million dollars for an average home in most cities. By contrast, in the PRC – Australia’s largest trading partner – a staggering 93% of people own their own homes.[5] At a certain point, workers internationally are going to start questioning why living standards are so much higher, why wages are increasing, and why most infrastructure in China is state of the art. Capitalism in the West is in rapid decline, and thus it must create an imagined external enemy. Working people obviously have no interest in geopolitical conflict, and every interest in fraternal relations with China, Russia and Iran. World War III must be avoided at all costs. NO TO WAR! ABOLISH NATO! ABOLISH AUKUS!
Workers League
E: workersleague@protonmail.com
[1] www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1-billion-per-incident-asio-boss-warns-of-aggressive-cyber-threat-to-australia/cg2hyvdsb (19-11-2025)
[2] www.news.uq.edu.au/2025-11-high-impact-sabotage-spy-chief-issues-grave-warning-about-espionage-and-sabotage-threat (19-11-2025)
[3] www.9news.com.au/national/australia-china-mike-burgess-hackers-spy/1affd20d-eee7-4dd3-94db-f1ce387fbef6 (19-11-2025)
[4] www.straitstimes.com/asia/australianz/australia-says-iran-behind-two-antisemitic-attacks-to-expel-envoy (19-11-2025)
[5] www.medium.com/@hrnews1/report-93-of-people-in-china-own-their-own-homes- (19-11-2025)
Image: The Ben Chifley Building in Canberra, which houses ASIO. http://www.canberratimes.com.au
Red Fire 