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And Vienna has more things to see, do, and hear than Venice, no doubt about it. In low season, Vienna too can be most romantic, especially if you like "city-romantic" things like quaint coffee shops, quiet strolls, beautiful palaces, enchanting concerts, great museums, and lovely parks.
compared with vienna and venice and view vietnam
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Spies for China's Communist Party could have your data | Under Investigation with Liz Hayes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5pthbz995U
[Music] a superpower addicted to
spying and now it's coming for us why China wants your
secrets our investigation Starts
[Music] Now
[Music] good evening I'm Liz Hayes and this is
under [Music]
investigation [Music] tonight how your personal data is
becoming China's State Property they'll buy it they'll borrow
it they'll build it or they'll steal it with our three intelligence experts we have never seen an authoritarian
government that is technologically powered like China is we investigate the
Spy Nation we are facing an authoritarian regime that can reach right into our bedrooms the lengths to
which China will go to grab your information look at what those privacy settings give your app access
to with every move you make every step you you take it's stuff that spies of
the 20th century could only dream of and the ultimate cyber
threat ai ai is like a weapon a terrorist can use it or a soldier on our side can use
[Music] it president Xi Jinping has made it
clear he wants China to lead the world in that ambition knowledge is power and
much of that knowledge comes from SP the United States government is
tracking a high altitude surveillance balloon allegations that it infiltrated and hor parliamentary pressure group
China is Infamous for the vast scale of its Espionage activities there have been
evidence-based attacks on critical infrastructure and the origin of those attacks has been the Chinese government
but it's now about all of our secrets yours and mine what we do where we go
what we think the data of our personal [Music]
lives in a given year now we collect and produce more data than for nearly all of
human history before it from passwords to love
letters credit cards and photographs each of us carries our
deepest secrets in our pockets you just now can tap into
people's phones and that is an incredibly powerful uh point of access
your phone is a surveillance device that you willingly carry in your pocket every day it's got apps all over it all of
which is collecting data about you where you are who you're talking to what you're buying it's an incredibly Rich
surveillance device targeted individual citizens and our data gives China
extraordinary information about us giving it the ability to infiltrate our
lives through social media news feeds in the next 20 years maybe sooner China
will become the dominant economic world power enabling it to manipulate how we
think for cooperation and Partnerships and many what we believe why do the
rules apply to China but not the rest of the [Music] world data ultimately gives China
control and it already does that in its own country through its intense
monitoring that collates very individual information of its
[Music]
people China's a huge country the most sophisticated cities the largest cities places like Beijing
Shanghai Shenzhen these places are incredibly wired there's some of the most surveilled places on
Earth reminding people hey that the government is here and you better get into
line joining our investigation tonight Paul moer global technology
correspondent for the New York Times he recently lived in China and was
an eyewitness to the Chinese government's Big Brother
surveillance I counted on my commute in Shanghai which was about 20 minutes 200 some odd cameras that I passed on the
way you have almost complete Vision into the sort of street level activity of
people and it's just a matter of what you want to find and who you want to see and who you want to
track the earliest notice that we found that the government trying to buy this kind of Technology was from
2015 mua is also with the New York Times investigation team which exposed China's
plans for its vast spying networks she analyzed papers that
revealed de IC surveillance on a massive scale we found that all regions and
provinces across China now have this kind of Technology on public streets in city
after city province after Province you'll find a vast network of
interconnected surveillance technology including disguised
microphones that can record your unique voice print even from a distance of 100
100 m and cameras equipped with facial recognition software feeding into an
Ever growing database the camera that's at your face level will identify who you are we say
this is Paul moer uh we know he's a journalist we know he's lives nearby he's walking down the
street now it will also say he's wearing a black shirt and his hair is kind of short and brown and he has blue eyes and
he has a large nose and then when you get to the next intersection and the next facial camera it'll look again and
confirm that it's you and then just you know whenever they want to click a button and you see a map and you see
where Paul has gone today and it kind of is passively doing the work that you used to need a full
police surveillance team to do China has even built and placed on
streets what appear to be thousands of mobile phone towers but they are not instead their
more Secret surve systems the way your phone works to
connect to the closest cell tower your phone has a sort of built-in software that you you can't really edit that you
don't modify that is just constantly searching for the nearest signals and so what they do is they
build what are equivalent to sort of fake cell towers all over the city you know hundreds and hundreds of these
things and so as your phone is looking for the real cell tower it will see the fake one shake hands with the fake one
and say hey but in that handshaking some data is exchanged and that data tells
them a couple of different numbers that help them to identify your phone number so in just two steps you have
every single person's phone number and and where they are and that gives you
their identity we're seeing that they're also
buying software that can help them connect the data assemble this kind of
very comprehensive personal profiles that include someone's faal information someone's phone identification someone's
carplay someone's clothing features and your Social
Network New York Times investigators found that China's databases carry a
menu list of identifying features of individual citizens key attributes which can then
be filtered in the way that you would use a drop- down menu in any kind of program or system and it will marry your
health records or your criminal past or or just your um views potentially your
online profile and in China everyone knows the government is always watching and
waiting to pounce if there's a a dissident or a
person causing problems what they'll usually do is just install a camera outside their house so you get your own
personal surveillance camera so it's all about layering
different data sets and data sources together what takes China's surveillance
technology to the next level is its ability to process all the many layers
of data it collects to create incredibly detailed profiles of
individuals they're looking at different types of personal data and putting them
together in the same database and using algorithms to really find the people they want to Target and we show later in our
investigation that's what we should expect China can also do with our data I
think we should be thinking really carefully and really cleare eyed about the Potential Threat that is there and
also the differences between a democracy that collects and uses data and an
authoritarian government that is data addicted and that has a habit not just
of controlling and surveilling its own people but also people around the world
that is hair raising John absolutely it's it's definitely hair raising and we haven't quite got our heads around what
that means a stark illustration of China's ability to Monitor and control its
people is in the northwest of the country in the province of shinjang home
to the Wagers 12 million people nearly all of whom are
Muslims if you're talking about the ultimate deployment of Highly invasive
surveillance technology in China I would say shinjang is definitely um the first
place in China that really has all these Technologies being used in one
spot if you're a weager nothing is private I think it's fair to say that
the Chinese Communist party has been using uh the weager uh issue as a test B
for a lot of this technological [Music]
control it's believed nearly a million and a half Wagers are jailed in
so-called re-education camps but it seems the entire province
of shinjang is a state controlled digital prison it shows you that you
know some of these Technologies combined with the authoritarian Powers you know can really be used to turn anything into
a jail the wer population is oppressed in
multiple ways this data surveillance and oppression is one of them of course
there's a lot of physical interment and suppression as well and China has
married those up [Music]
seamlessly coming up for a government like China they operate on a Hoover everything up now figure out how to use
it later basis it's the largest hack sensitive held data when our private
data compromising up to 9 million Australians isn't private at all we are
facing an authoritarian regime that can reach right into our kids' rooms and into our Lounge room that's concerning
for Australians that's next on under
[Music] investigation
our investigation tonight has revealed China is spying on virtually its entire
population analyzing personal data in ways it could also use against the rest
of the world including Australia it's stuff that spies of the
20th century could only dream of every way it can China is gathering
our personal data Australian cyber security Center recently identified a malicious intrusion into the Australian
Parliament House computer network for a government like China they operate on a Hoover everything up now figure out how
to use it later basis and that's concerning for Australians in less than a single year
Hackers from around the world stole the personal data of millions of Australians
the data breach of Australia's second largest Telco in September 2022 Opus
compromising up to 9 million Australians October 2022 medy Bank the hackers had
accessed sensitive Health Data of all 4 million of its customers March
2023 latitude Financial it's the largest hack of a financial institution in
Australian history and no matter who's responsible ch can still get its hands on our data
either through the dark web or from its own hacking Network and according to our experts it
has the technology to combine all that data into highly detailed individual
profiles it's not just one database it's all of the databases linked together which create a picture that is so much
greater the sum is so much greater than its parts but often what China knows about
us is information we make little effort to
hide most of us willingly if sometimes unwittingly hand over precious personal
data every day of our online lives but how many of us realize we
could be handing it straight to an authoritarian regime whose leader knows
the best way to control the population is is to know everything about it this
is unprecedented we have faced authoritarian regimes before and we've
been able to deal with them because they've been at arms length but now we are facing an authoritarian regime that
can reach right into our bedrooms into our kids' rooms and into our loung room
and we don't know how to handle that our social media apps Facebook
Instagram Tik Tok and dating apps like Bumble and Tinder are direct Windows into our
closest held Secrets windows that can also open doors
to the Chinese government's online spying Network you know we have an approach in
Australia and I hear it from my own kids how I've got nothing to hide it's all right well I'm sorry there are things
you do want to hide because there are malevolent actors and there's a lot of them some of our
we choose to reveal to the public some of it we think is private
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has apologized after 50 million users had their personal information exploited
this was a major breach of trust and and I'm really sorry that this happened the
reality is much of our private data isn't private at all after multiple
massive data breaches the private records of tens of millions of people
are often placed online for anyone to access including China's cyber
spies this is what happens when you think that it doesn't matter um if people have all my information actually
it does matter it matters enormously but for many it's hard to understand why China wants our personal
data head-to-head I would rather China get my data than Mark Zuckerberg I I
don't care what are you going to do with it look at it giggle a little maybe get
a little crush on me have it authoritarian governments in particular are interested in your data because that
gives them a range of different things they can do with [Music]
it one effective way China targets us personally is through our social media
apps and networks to push its own propaganda it can influence our news feeds the
posts we receive and click on in August last year MAA shut down thousands of
Facebook and Instagram accounts that were part of a Chinese political spam Network it dubbed spamf
flage a Chinese disinformation campaign it calls part of the largest known crossplatform covert influence operation
in the world we are examining facts I am not Facebook Instagram and many other
social media apps were flooded with pro-china posts from the spammer flage
Network it's all designed to influence the decisions we make from what we buy
to even how we vote to ensure those decisions are in China's best interests
there's so much data out there but with the clever algorithms you can actually be very uh Collective about what you
extract and you can very carefully Target who you want to and particular aspects of a person's profile to be used
uh really against them China targets audiences on topics
particularly where it feels deep criticism like China's oppression of its weager minority this is a fictitious
figure and a fictitious situation by using influencers who spook the Communist Party Line they're trying to
portray China and the most way possible I'll bring ASB and wisdom propaganda to account for the damage they've
caused the Chinese government sees the internet as a form of information
projection and propaganda and so there is a massive bureaucracy with tens of thousands of people uh huge amounts of
software dedicated to controlling what is said on the internet deleting the things that they don't want
said but there's one social media app developed in China which is able to
direct directly shape what we can and can't see it's the trending video app
popular with 1 billion people around the [Music] world on Tik Tok the idea space is being
shaped in a way we have not yet quite grappled with with over a billion users
worldwide and nearly a third of all Australians using the app it's a potent
influencer for China so from a Tik Tok point of view you don't know what you're not seeing former national security
officer Alex Capel says Tik Tock is already manipulating Freedom of
Information to search up what's happening in China how they're getting concentration camps throwing innocent
Muslims in there Tik Tok reportedly has a detection tool tracking a list of
sensitive words with some labeled as prohibited including criticism of the
communist government its leaders Taiwan and Hong Kong Independence and tianan
square Tik Tok denies using these banned words to censor posts but we know its
Chinese owner bik dance definitely uses such
lists there's a lot of content that gets posted on Tik Tok that is essentially shadowbanned by Tik Tok moderators where
they'll say we're not going to really let people see lgbti content we're not going to let
them see particular posts that might range around political issues like Hong Kong or Taiwan you might be able to post
it you might think that it's up there but it's demoted in terms of the search rankings and it's really kind of that
material is often suppressed on that platform so it's misinformation disinformation and uh a censorship
basically you're talking about absolutely and we don't see that you don't see that because it's an opaque
highly Advanced AI driven platform that is essentially steering you down a
particular path and the algorithm that sits behind something like a Tik Tok is not
neutral if you're a company like Tik Tok to some degree you do have power to kind
of control what people see and in turn if you control enough of what people see you start to control how they think
about the world many Western countries including Australia have banned Tik Tock
from government devices considered beholden to the Chinese regime Tik Tock
is the spy in Americans pockets it's a claim Tik Tok strongly rejects I
have seen no evidence that the Chinese government has access to that data they have never asked us we have not provided
and only last week us lawmakers demanded Tik Tok s all links with China's
Communist Party the ruling Authority the Chinese Communist party and its leader xiin ping have their hands deep in the
inner workings of the company with devastating consequences for our own
personal freedoms the threat is this do we want to live in a society where some
of the platforms that animate our democracy that power our economy that
underwrite our social interactions is ultimately able to be controlled by the
Chinese Communist party coming up China told us back in the
1990s that it wanted to control the internet and we laughed it off not just
online the world around us is increasingly constructed by technology that are controlled by China at work and
in our homes we have seen instances of Retribution how China can see us no
matter where we are China is trying to outplay outmatch outlast in a way that I
don't think we've quite got our heads around yet that's next on under
investigation [Music]
cyber security is the fastest changing national security threat that our country Faces tonight we're
investigating a major threat to Australia to our way of life to
ourselves the threat is this do we want to live in a society where some of the
platforms that animate our democracy is ultimately able to be controlled by the
Chinese communist party not a war but a cyber invasion of influence and control
there is a massive bureaucracy with tens of thousands of people huge amounts of software dedicated to controlling what
is said on the internet deleting the things that they don't want said and if you control enough of what people see
you start to control how they think about the [Music]
world as we've revealed China's ambition to control what's said or censored on
the internet can be seen with its campaign of influence on Western social media reps and the manipulation of the
hugely successful Chinese app Tik Tok its control China already has over
its domestic internet using what it calls the great firewall China told us back in the
1990s that it wanted to control the internet that it wanted to build the Great firewall
and use the internet both to surveil its domestic population and to insulate them
from Western liberal Democratic views and we laughed it off Bill Clinton then the president in
the early 2000s was asked what about this great firewall thing that China is
building and he laughed now there's no question China has been trying to crack
down on the internet good
luck that's sort of like trying to nail Jello to the wall Bill Clinton with this moment of
hubris of you know kind of too much pride thinking that we're Unstoppable
we're unbeatable China is trying to outplay outmatch outlast in a way that uh I
don't think we've quite got our heads around yet Western democracies allow Chinese
apps like WeChat and Tik Tok to operate freely amongst the general public but
Western social media RS are blocked in China so we allow that WeChat can
operate here but uh Western systems like Facebook and Twitter can't operate in
China because of the great firewall that makes it a completely uneven playing field so China can influence out uh it
can in it can interfere it can manipulate uh it can exert influence and
control but it doesn't allow the reverse even the app it created Tik Tok is
outlawed in China in its place is a local version called Duan which is heavily censored
and bans a long list of topics such as the tianan Square
massacre Hong Kong's Pro democracy protests and any mention of Wier
oppression in Shin Jang so we were arrogant we thought America created the internet so will
always represent liberal democratic values and we'll control it and that's not the world we live in
now and China's online oppression is now reaching well beyond its borders up
until about 10 15 years ago we saw things like surveillance in China and chinae oppression of its own populace as
being something that was strictly domestic now I think it's become very very clear that that's not actually the way that China conceives of stability
according to cyber security expert Dr Alex Caples China's idea of stability
includes silencing and punishing critics wherever they might
be and it uses the internet to find them tracking down Critics on the messaging
app WeChat often used by Chinese people living in the west we have seen
instances of Retribution against individuals whove used WeChat outside the geographic boundaries of China who
have then had family members affected inside whether they've been harassed intered whatever that is um and that is
a way of being able to extend that social control beyond the geographic
border we've revealed how China can spy on Us
online but there's also an acknowledged threat from Chinese technology including
consumer products purchased in their Millions by Australia Australians like security cameras and
[Music]
drones the world around us that we live in now is increasingly constructed by
technologies that are increasingly controlled by China or where China is
exploiting the vulnerabilities to hack them to take our data to manipulate them
and I just don't think we've really recognized that that's the world we're living in Chinese drones mainly those
made by da Jang Innovations or DJI are ubiquitous in Australia at home in
business and government the company behind them has deep ties to the Chinese Communist party
and it's believed their drones are being used to track and surveil the weager
population in Australia it's feared the same drones equipped with cameras and
advanced sensors could be collecting our personal data including facial
recognition information the thing about China that really makes it stand out is
just the lack of insight from regular people into these systems and the lack
of transparency for them this is not a democracy this is the world's most powerful and largest authoritarian
country under Chinese law the Communist Party can access data and video
collected by any d ji drone as well as information from
Chinese security cameras like hick vision and dawa all Chinese companies
under kind of Chinese intelligence and security laws are essentially bound to pursue their economic objectives
alongside National Security objectives so for a hick Vision or any of the sorts of Chinese companies that are operating
out here in the western world and are selling to Western consumers they nonetheless abound under those Chinese
legislative instruments to support the objectives of the C in February last year the defense
minister ordered hick vision and da cameras to be removed from sensitive
government buildings it is right to be focused on it we do need to be thinking about the security uh of our defense
estate and so we're going through the process to remove what cameras
exist there are also moves to stop government departments using an
estimated 3,000 Chinese DJI drones but
these drones and cameras are still being used in institutions companies and homes
across Australia potentially Gathering data on us all I thought it was really
interesting when the government made the decision to rip uh Chinese manufactured
surveillance cameras out of government property but were pretty silent on where
they saw risk and where they saw threat and the problem with that is if we think
about most of our critical infrastructure in Australia the electricity grids the hospitals the
transport networks that make our economy tick most of that isn't government property it sits in the private sector
so if there are risks from surveillance and from potentially vulnerable devices in government property those risks will
be elsewhere John what are Australians supposed to make of this well we are in a conundrum because we are trying to
reconcile two very different Polar Opposites where we are dependent on
trade with China security specialist John Blackland says Australia is in a double bond
having to delicately dance with a financial friend who is also a spying
foe we have a difficult situation between what is emerg as a far darker
more authoritarian China under President G than we had hoped would emerge we are
kind of in a race and we have been maybe playing the tortoise versus the hair we
we have not been aware of the gravity or the scale of the challenge yes you say
we're in denial we are in denial yeah coming up AI is like a weapon a
terrorist can use it or a soldier on our side can use it the AI Revolution AI
means you can analyze more data and make sense of it just faster than a human brain can that could change every aspect
of Our Lives is China doing this now yes there is evidence that China is using AI
to influence and coers foreign citizens and societies that's next on under
[Music] investigation in a given year now we
collect and produce more data and for nearly all of human history before it and it's not just the availability of
data it's the fact we now have the tools to process that
data what China can do with our personal data right now is deeply
concerning but what it will be able to do in the near future is terrifying
China is trying to outplay outmatch outlast in a way that I don't think we've quite their heads around
[Music]
yet China is a world leader in AI artificial intelligence the coming
Revolution that we're being warned could change every aspect of our
lives in the hands of an authoritarian China AI could be used to weaponize our
personal data is AI the game changer many seem to
think so step inside the AI world and the possibilities become all too
clear China can use AI to analyze the vast SES of data it collects from its
own citizens and from us according to cyber intelligence expert Katherine
maner when you're dealing with an authoritarian country in a digitalized world where it's not just the Chinese
government thinking about the Chinese people and Chinese citizens they're able to reach into Australia they're able to
surveil Australian citizens that's where we start to potentially have a
problem AI means you can do all of that at bigger scale you can do it faster you
can collect you can analyze more data and make sense of it just faster than a human brain can so tonight where using
AI Google's chatbot called Gemini to investigate China what type of specific
personal data while search engines like Google rely on key words AI Gemini digs
far deeper into the internet name phone numbers email addresses essentially focusing and cating all available
knowledge to provide single simple and social media posts and your travel plans
which can be used to monitor you how does China collect personal data gini says China buys our personal data
and even steals it using fake apps Chinese state-owned companies purchase your data from Western social media
platforms they create disguised apps to collect your data without your knowledge or consent unfortunately criminals
nation states they use apps because they've got the keys to our digital Kingdom and they've got access to a lot
of different information to pull that on us yeah oh I is telling us itself it's
reviling its sa and it doesn't end there how could China employ AI to influence AI Gemini
spills out just how our information can be used against us and our societies to
Target you with personalized Chinese propaganda and disinformation to launch cyber attacks against Western targets
and individuals social media manipulation does so Discord and Division and undermine trust in
institutions and a Monitor and track individuals considered a threat to China's national
security it's an unsettling Revelation so Discord uh division undermine trust
uh I can see what's happening here is creating chaos isn't it it's it's the
ability to make nothing truthful again no there is no such thing as truth yes
so the researchers call this the fire hose of falsehood you just spew as much
rubbish out there that people will be so so bewildered that they don't know what to believe anymore which is possibly the
most dangerous thing that we could have in a democracy or indeed an economy is China doing this now yes there is
evidence that China is using AI to influence and coers foreign citizens in [Music]
societies and we've already seen it happen in Australia incend posts from
fake social media accounts linked to China and potentially created by AI
seeking to create suspicion and division was seen in last year's Voice to
Parliament debate today I announc that referendum day will be the 14th of
October at the time National Security expert Dr Alex capes and her team at the
Australian strategic policy Institute discovered China was actively
infiltrating social media using misinformation to influence and engineer
chaos during the voice [Music]
referendum there's a range of kind of hostile activity that social engineering
can beget social engineering is essentially using the things that you know malicious actor might know things
they know that you're likely to click on and once that's been exploited everyone in your network is potentially exploited
and it just gets a life of its own cyber security Specialists agree the next big
threat from China is ai ai is like a like a weapon a terrorist can use it or
a soldier on our side can use it I think there's a challenge for us
the connections between computers and the network and the network of networks that's emerged in the last 20 25 years
that has transformed Our Lives that's made it much more connected super
enabling super exciting but it's also put us in the space where we're all extremely
vulnerable at its most dangerous China could use Ai and the personal data it's
collected to compromise Australian citizens Catherine on a personal level
what's the worst case scenario suddenly you've got all of this information that makes you very blackmail or controllable
right so this could be information about your health conditions your financial situation stuff that you've disclosed to
the government as your employer but you don't want anyone else to know that's the personal tax of course there's also
dissidents and journalists and human rights activists there's a real human rights issue at stake there for any of
those people whose data is been
stolen coming up foreign interference and Espionage have outstripped terrorism
and are now our principal security challenges how to protect your data
we're all hooked on the great apps on our phones but it's put us in the space where we're all extremely vulnerable and
yourself recognize that your data matters it's valuable and that'll help us with everything that's next on under
[Music] investigation tonight we've investigated the new
thread to our personal data our experts have exposed China's
insatiable appetite for information it already collects the most
intimate details about its own people and so what they do is they build what
are equivalent to sort of fake cell towers all over the city you know hundreds and hundreds of these things
and we've shown that now China wants ours so suddenly you've got all of this
information that makes you very blackmail or controllable we've revealed its
information China can weaponize against us using artificial intelligence AI is
like a weapon a terrorist can use it or a soldier on our side can use it and that's according to AI there is evidence
that China is using AI to influence and coers foreign citizens and
societies it leaves us to ask how how can we protect ourselves and our
country it's important for the National Security of our country uh that we're transparent and upfront with Australians
about the threats that we Face the Australian government is now speaking more openly about the Cyber threat from
China there have been um evidence-based attacks on critical infrastructure and
the origin of those attacks has been um the Chinese government is it an over statement to
say it's kind of like a silent Invasion I think it's worth pointing out the Australian government's been really
clear with the Australian people that foreign interference and Espionage have outstripped terrorism and are now our
principal security Challengers we're all hooked on the great apps on our phones but it's also put us in this space where
we're all extremely vulnerable other countries and in particular our close allies are also
sounding the alarm and they want us all to know guarding our personal data is in
our national interest it's not simply like oh you know I have nothing to hide
why why should I care and it's not oh you know everything's already spied upon so it doesn't matter the the you know
the cow's out of the barn the point is if you live in a democracy and you care about the future of that that democracy
you need controls and you need checks on this stuff because in the long run it can be weaponized so powerfully and
abused in such ways that that it will threaten at some point your system and it may not be now it may not be tomorrow
it may be in 25 years but the point is you have to start somewhere in that that that somewhere is right here and right
now so right now this is what you can do to protect your personal data it's all
about limiting the permissions you give apps on your phone sharing your location allows your
movements to be tracked enabling your microphone allows
your voice to be recorded apps could be disguised spy
wear so don't download unless you're sure don't accept cookies you're giving
up personal details for no good reason be careful of free public Wi-Fi
networks anyone can set one up and intercept everything you do while you're
connected and use different passwords for all your apps so if one is breached
the others remain secure I think really it's about according to our experts these are the
basic steps that everyone should follow look at what those privacy settings give
your app access to see what you can live with and live
without have a think about you know how much information you're actually volunteering online whether or not it's
really relevant or necessary Katherine I would say recognize that your data matters it's valuable and
everyone else in the world recognizes that company's platforms authoritarian governments our own government knows the
value of your individual data so you should value that as well and that will that'll help us with everything from
avoiding scams and criminals online right through to some of the pointy end of foreign nation state disinformation
and propaganda as well we end tonight at what could well
be a turning point in human civilization where digital Supremacy means real world
power we've shown how China does it and why Australia and Australians must take
note from our national cyber borders to our personal apps the more China knows about us the
more it can disrupt and divide our society and our
democracy we have to all take responsibility we've reached that point is that not true we can no longer say we
didn't know we've pred that point I think it's important for us to have our eyes open we need to not be afraid but
be alert and not alarmed it is incumbent on all of us to
stay informed and Vigilant about our digital security and for a more detailed privacy
checklist please go to our website thank you very much for joining
me tonight and I thank you I'm Liz Hayes good
night hello I'm Liz Hayes and thank you for watching under investigation
subscribe to our Channel now for exclusive clips and don't miss out on full episodes of under investigation on
9 now and the N9 Now app
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end in sight.
In this video, we’ll take a brief look at how Russia’s military arsenal has failed
to live up to the hype, why it has failed, and even why some of the weapons Russia claims
it is developing will likely not perform as advertised – if they can build them at all,
that is.
Russia has one aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov.
The Admiral Kuznetsov began its life in the 1980s and was commissioned in 1991, just before
the Soviet Union’s collapse.
However, this carrier is not of the same quality as the US Navy’s aircraft carriers, which
use a catapult system to rapidly launch their planes.
Instead, it uses the STOBAR (short take-off, barrier-arrested recovery) system, which makes
its planes far slower to launch than the American Nimitz and Ford-class carriers, or China’s
Fujian.
The Admiral Kuznetsov has also been plagued with problems, with frequent deadly accidents.
The ship has been under repairs since 2018, with one delay piled onto another.
It was originally supposed to return to service in 2021, but that obviously did not work out
as planned.
The ship is finally supposed to return to service in 2024, but that date is still questionable.
Corruption has also plagued Admiral Kuznetsov’s repairs.
Three years ago, the director of the Murmansk shipyard was arrested on suspicion of embezzling
rubles the equivalent to $600,000.
Such corruption is rampant in the Russian military and has long proven a problem with
weapons development, logistics, and maintenance.
The Admiral Kuznetsov’s saga is a good way to start the video, because it reveals deeper
problems in the Russian Navy, which include outdated equipment, incompetence, and corruption,
which have all played out in the war, as seen in Ukraine’s success against the Black Sea
Fleet despite having no navy of its own.
Russia’s surface navy is in poor shape in other ways.
It is steadily retiring its Soviet-era ships and replacing them with lighter, less combat-worthy
vessels.
This process is slowly but surely causing the Russian Navy to lose its blue water capabilities
and confining it closer to the coasts.
One of the ways that Russia has attempted to mitigate this trend is through a new class
of destroyer, the Lider-class.
If completed, the Lider-class destroyer could prove a formidable new addition to the Russian
Navy.
It would weigh 19,000 tons and be powered by nuclear propulsion, making it twice as
large as the Soviet-era destroyers it would be replacing.
It would even be larger than the three Slava-class cruisers in service with the Russian Navy.
The ship’s size would make it capable of supporting new weapons, such as the 3M22 Tsirkon
winged anti-ship hypersonic cruise missile, which is a naval version of Russia’s S-500
air defense system.
The Lider-class would also be able to field the Paket-NK torpedo and Paket MTT anti-torpedo.
The offensive version can hit targets up to ten kilometers away, improving the range on
Russia’s previous torpedoes, with a much more accurate targeting system.
If the Lider and its classmates were to come online, it would be a big improvement over
the Russian Navy’s current ships.
Unfortunately for Moscow, this new destroyer has suffered from numerous delays.
The Lider-class destroyer was first revealed in 2015, with Western experts seeing it as
an attempted answer to the United States’ Zumwalt-class destroyers then under construction.
Unfortunately for Russia, these new destroyers have not taken to the sea.
In fact, they have not even begun construction nearly ten years later.
Construction on the new class of destroyer was finally supposed to begin in 2023, but
that year has now come and gone.
The Lider project was even dropped from the Kremlin’s 2025 State Armament Program, which
made foreign defense experts question its future.
Russian sources claimed that its being dropped from the State Armament Program did not mean
that the Lider had been canceled, but rather that funding for it had been reduced.
As of 2024, we cannot know when, if ever, construction will begin, and therefore that
the Russian Navy will continue to get smaller and lighter as its older and heavier ships
get retired.
The problems for the Russian Navy go deeper than the surface vessels.
Its underwater fleet is also aging and its supposed newest and greatest submarine is
also probably an item that owes its reputation more to advertising than performance.
The Belgorod submarine and particularly its Poseidon Torpedo are two other items of hype
in the Russian Navy that don’t seem to stand up to scrutiny.
The Belgorod and Poseidon have often been items of fear in Western media and national
security circles, which have nicknamed the former Russia’s “Doomsday Submarine.”
According to the Kremlin’s hype, the submarine and its arsenal of smart drone Poseidon torpedoes
can unleash a 100 megaton yield capable of creating radioactive tsunamis that would inundate
coastal communities and make them unlivable.
However, tests of the Poseidon have seemingly proven less than satisfactory.
That shouldn’t be too surprising, because for the Poseidon torpedo to work as the Russians
claim, it would need to be able to house all of the equipment needed for a nuclear reactor
to convert atomic fission into electricity and propulsive force, while ensuring negligible
waste heat (to avoid detection).
It would also need the hardware to shield its sensitive electronics from the nuclear
fission process.
Unfortunately for Moscow, the torpedo is too small to do this, meaning that it is either
an object of hype or Russian engineers have come upon a technological leap enabling exotic
engineering methods.
We’ll let you decide which of the two scenarios is likelier.
Meanwhile, even if the Poseidon’s yield was 100 megatons, which it almost certainly
is not, it would still not be large enough to generate the type of tsunamis the Russians
claim it can.
Instead, the likeliest scenario is a yield of about one to two megatons per torpedo,
which would be enough to inundate a coastal area with dangerous radioactive waters, but
not to create a tsunami.
The Poseidon Torpedo also faces engineering problems with its supposed speed.
With a purported speed of 100 knots, or 185 miles per hour, the Poseidon would be faster
than all of the torpedoes in the arsenals of NATO member countries.
However, if it were to go that fast, the torpedo would be easily detectable to sonar equipment,
emitting noises far beyond the level of civilian ships that it would ordinarily try to hide
behind.
The torpedo would also have difficulty fulfilling its mission at the shallow depths which it
would need to navigate in order to target coastal cities, which is its purported function,
according to James Mac, a former nuclear and electronics technician with the United States
Navy.
If the Poseidon were to be traveling at its advertised speed of 100 knots or more in depths
that shallow, it would not only be detectable because of the high heat it would generate,
but also suffer from cavitation – the formation of vapor cavities in a liquid when it has
been accelerated to high velocities.
Cavitation can create shockwaves that damage machinery, meaning that the Russians have
either compensated for this with unknown new engineering techniques and technology, or
the claims of the Poseidon again do not stand up to scrutiny.
This will be far from the only time in the video where this dilemma presents itself in
relation to a Russian weapons system.
There is also only one Belgorod submarine, meaning that its can easily be tracked by
satellite surveillance when it needs to dock for upkeep.
From this surveillance, intelligence analysts have a good chance of guessing its missions.
International defense experts guessed just that when Belgorod conducted its exercises
in the autumn of 2022, for example.
We now journey from the sea to the skies and look at the Russian answer to the American
fifth generation F-22 and F-35 fighter jets – the Su-57 Felon.
To be fair, the Su-57 does have some impressive features, like its 3D thrust vectoring engines,
climb rate of 64,000 feet per minute, 66,000-foot service ceiling, Mach 2 speed, and range of
2,186 miles without refueling.
In a plane vs. plane battle, the Su-57 should be a capable opponent against almost any fighter
jet on the planet.
However, the Su-57 has a big drawback – its comparative lack of stealth.
Aviation experts regard the Su-57 as being by far the least stealthy of the fifth generation
fighters currently in service.
For example, the F-22 Raptor is detectable at a range only under ten miles, while the
Su-57 would be detectable at a range of 35 miles.
Its stealth features are also concentrated in the front of the plane, meaning that if
it turns or maneuvers, it is far more detectable.
Some aviation experts are even less kind and believe the Su-57’s radar cross section
is similar to that of the F/A-18 Super Hornet, which is 1,000 times less stealthy than the
F-35 Lightning II.
Therefore, they say, the Su-57 is not a true fifth generation fighter jet, but rather an
advanced fourth generation one.
The lack of stealth means that advanced radars from other fighter jets or air defense systems
are capable of detecting the Su-57 and destroying it from a long range.
These weaknesses seem to be confirmed by the way Moscow has used the few Felons it has
in service.
The Su-57 has played little part in the war in Ukraine, as the Russian Aerospace Forces
have refused to field it in Ukrainian airspace.
Instead, it has only attacked targets at long range from within Russian airspace.
The limited use of the Felon speaks volumes about the Russian brass’ confidence in its
stealth attributes – or lack thereof.
It is also unlikely that the Russian military will be able to manufacture the Felon in the
numbers needed to make it truly formidable.
The Kremlin ordered 76 Su-57s in 2019.
22 are in service as of December 2023, after several years of delays.
It is difficult to see how Russia will field the Su-57 in adequate numbers anytime soon,
giving it limited effectiveness as a means of making war.
Russia is much more well-known for its tanks than its planes.
However, the newest Russian tank has even more problems than the Su-57.
To be fair, the T-14 Armata does have significant improvements over the tanks Russia has usually
fielded in Ukraine – the T-72, T-80, and T-90.
These tanks have been lost in their thousands during the fighting in Ukraine, thanks to
bad doctrine and their own design flaws.
Because they do not segregate their ammunition magazines in a sealed compartment, they have
often suffered from complete destruction with jack-in-the-box explosions.
The T-14 Armata mitigates this flaw with a protective capsule isolating the crew from
their vehicle’s ammunition magazine.
The vehicle’s profile adds further protection, as its low-silhouette avoids exposure of its
parts to enemy fire.
The Armata’s main weapon is a 125mm 2A82-1M smoothbore gun which can fire related rounds
and laser-guided missiles.
This weapon would be a significant threat to the Western main battle tanks that Ukraine
began fielding in larger numbers last year.
Unfortunately for Russia, this gun is not backward-compatible with its older tanks,
which means only the Armata can field it, and that’s a problem, because there has
never been a confirmed sighting of the T-14 in Ukraine.
Russia has even fewer T-14 Armata tanks than it does Su-57 fighter jets.
From its inception, the tank has been mired in production delays.
When it publicly revealed the tank in June 2015, Moscow claimed it would field 2,300
of them by 2020.
That obviously never happened.
In 2021, Russia promised serial production, but that didn’t happen, either.
To date, only about 20 prototypes have been built.
The T-14’s engine in particular has proven to be an item of difficulty to manufacture.
Unlike most of Russia’s tanks, the Armata uses a derivative of the German X-shaped Simmering
SLA 16 engine, which was designated as the A-85-3.
However, this engine was not designed for a tank, but as a unit for compressor oil and
gas pumping stations.
Nevertheless, it was chosen as the basis for the Armata, and the tank was designed around
this engine, rather than the other way around.
While it had attractive features, being smaller and more powerful, though heavier, than the
standard Russian tank engine, it never truly proved adequate, and the Armata cannot be
resized to fit Russia’s proven and reliable tank engine, the V-92S2F.
The problem has presented a sunk-cost fallacy to the Russian brass, as it has been reluctant
to start on a new tank, instead struggling to find a way to make the engine problems
work for the Armata.
Meanwhile, the electronics for the Armata’s sensory and fire control systems are no longer
as widely available due to the sanctions put in place as a result of its invasion of Ukraine.
Indeed, there has not even been an assembly line built for the Armata and all of the prototypes
have been made by hand.
Given all of these problems, don’t expect to see the Armata fielded in large numbers,
if at all, anytime soon.
The lack of a modern tank is a big problem for Russia, because its current tanks have
often found themselves outgunned on the battlefields of Ukraine as well as lacking adequate protection.
Russia’s tanks lack the range of their Western rivals because they cannot raise their guns
as high.
For example, the T-90, Russia’s latest tank before the Armata, can only raise its gun
by 14 degrees or lower it by six degrees.
The Abrams, on the other hand, can raise its gun by 20 degrees and lower it by nine.
The additional flexibility means that the Abrams can hit targets at longer ranges than
the T-90 or the other tanks Russia can field in Ukraine in large numbers.
The lack of gun mobility also makes the Russian tanks much more vulnerable in urban combat
than their American counterparts, as fighters can shoot down on them with anti-tank weapons
from rooftops or high windows and leave the armor unable to retaliate.
Russia learned this lesson the hard way in its wars in Chechnya around the turn of the
millennium.
Russia has been unable to modify its tanks since then, however, and has suffered from
ambushes in the same way during the war inn Ukraine.
The combination of flaws in the ammunition storage and the lack of firepower and flexibility
has left thousands of tanks destroyed in the war, and Russia cannot seem to mitigate this
problem because it cannot manufacture the T-14 Armata in large enough numbers to change
the situation.
Russia could try to overcome these disadvantages with changes in doctrine, including deploying
infantry and other units to better support its tanks in combined arms operations, but
there is no indication that Russia has built a capacity to do so.
Decades of Soviet deep battle doctrine and centuries of Russian reliance on mass to overwhelm
an opponent no matter the casualties have proven too difficult for the Kremlin’s military
commanders to shake.
Meanwhile, engineering problems apply not only to Russia’s current military gear,
but the ones it claims it has coming.
For example, Russia’s body armor has also been a subject of embarrassment.
Many of Russia’s soldiers, especially the conscripts Putin mobilized in the autumn of
2022, have lacked proper protection.
Infamously, some Russian troops were issued airsoft versions of the Ratnik body armor.
Despite its problems in this area, Russia has made bold claims about what it has coming
down the pike – its next-generation Sotnik body armor, which it says will be able to
stop a .50 caliber Browning Machine Gun round.
The Sotnik armor is supposedly going to be made of polyethylene plastic fibers to keep
its weight down.
Polyethylene is effective against incoming rounds because as the material heats up from
the energy transfer, the plastic melts, adhering to the bullet and slowing it down.
The principle has proven effective in other body armor systems around the world, and indeed
if there is enough polyethylene, it could work in the same way against a .50 BMG round.
However, a .50 BMG round transfers over 11,000 pounds of force onto its target, enough to
punch holes through a cinder block wall.
To say the least, it would require a lot of polyethylene to put a stop to a round this
powerful.
Even accounting for improved efficiency, it is hard to believe that a soldier wearing
this sort of armor would be mobile on the battlefield.
Russian engineers would have a very tough hill to climb if they wanted to design a polyethylene
armor that would afford such protection against an incoming .50 caliber machine gun bullet
and keep the wearer mobile.
We should treat the Sotnik body armor with skepticism to say the least.
Another big example of engineering challenges built into Russia’s future weapons systems
comes with the sixth generation fighter jet it supposedly has in the works, the MiG-41.
According to the Kremlin, this jet will be the fastest aircraft in the world, with a
cruising speed of Mach 4.
If it works as Russia says, the fighter would also have a ceiling superior to any other
aircraft, at 85,000 feet.
Unfortunately for Russia, the MiG-41 is almost certainly an example of a weapon that would
never be able to work as it claims.
If the MiG-41 were to fly at its cruising speed, let alone what it would reach with
its afterburners, it would lose its stealth attributes.
Supersonic flight creates high heat and friction.
Such friction erodes the stealth materials that help to reduce the radar cross sections
of planes like the F-22 and F-35.
Additionally, the heat signatures involved in such high-speed flight would make the MiG-41
easily visible to radar.
Russian engineers would need to have exotic technology on their hands to mitigate such
a weakness.
Don’t count on that.
The MiG-41 is supposed to be an evolution of the MiG-31 interceptor, which was designed
to counter the American SR-71 Blackbird spy plane.
It was built to reach speeds Mach 2.8 for that purpose.
The problem for Moscow is that an interceptor is a far different order of business than
a fifth generation fighter, let alone a sixth, and the SR-71 has been retired from the American
air fleet since the 1990s.
Why the Russians would choose to develop their sixth generation fighter from an outdated
concept is puzzling and suggests that even without the engineering challenges to get
it to work as advertised, the MiG-41 could suffer from the same problems as the T-14
Armata – a frame built around a questionable concept.
According to the Kremlin, the MiG-41 will have its maiden flight in 2025 and begin delivery
in 2028.
But given Russia’s long delays in introducing new weapons systems, or even repairing existing
ones, we should take those claims with a heavy grain of salt to say the least, even if everything
else supposedly works.
What do you think about these failures of Russian military engineering?
What other weapons systems from Russia have proven not to live up to the hype?
Don’t forget to let us know in the comments.
Also don’t forget to hit the like button and subscribe to the channel for more military
analysis from military experts!
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