Australia’s strategic warning time has collapsed — in response to profound geopolitical shifts. As the Australian Defence Force (ADF) is adapting to the hard implications of this change, so must the national intelligence community (NIC).

Australian Government decision-makers need time and insight to identify and prioritise threats (and opportunities) and devise effective responses. Strategic warning intelligence enables and empowers them to do so. But it must be done in a way that keeps up with the rapid pace of geopolitical and technological change, and a widening array of non-traditional strategic threats, and in a fashion best suited to Australia’s circumstances.

To meet this, this report contends that the NIC should develop a discrete, institutional strategic warning intelligence function—an Australian Centre for Strategic Warning (ACSW). This would recognise the distinct skills, analytical focus and interface with decision-making entailed—and the vital national interests at stake. In implementing an ACSW, much can be learned from Australia's own and other intelligence communities’ ongoing efforts to adapt to threats other than invasion—notably terrorism and pandemics. This will be especially pertinent in its application to grey-zone threats, such as economic coercion.

Policy recommendations

• The NIC should develop a discrete organizational element for strategic warning intelligence — an Australian Centre for Strategic Warning (ACSW).
• The ACSW should be located within the Office of National Intelligence (ONI), given ONI’s breadth of national responsibilities (and current NIC architecture) and should leverage the National Threat Assessment Centre’s multiagency staffing model.
• Developing an effective interface with policymakers should be a critical ACSW priority.
• An initial task would be to prove the Australian strategic warning intelligence concept, for example through a classified simulation exercise applied to an economic-coercion or impending regional crisis case study.