News Club Interview: Alastair MacGibbon

Alastair MacGibbon’s CV is long

But it’s important to understand, so here I go…

Alastair is the former National Cyber Security Adviser, head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre (Australian Signals Directorate), and Special Adviser to the Prime Minister on Cyber Security. During that time, the federal government banned Chinese-owned telco Huawei from accessing our networks. Prior to those jobs, he served as the Australian Government’s inaugural eSafety Commissioner. He also headed eBay’s Asia Pacific Trust & Safety operations. 

And before that, Alastair served for 15 years as a Federal Agent with the Australian Federal Police, during which time he established the Australian High Tech Crime Centre. 

Why is he relevant now? Well, he runs the world-leading cybersecurity company CyberCX. 

Long story short, when it comes to cyber threats in Australia, he’s the guy in the know. Fair warning: this interview tackles some big themes - cyber warfare, online criminal threats, how exposed our critical infrastructure could be to malicious actors… 

Alastair tells me that the threats to our nation if we fail to secure ourselves are very real. He says they’re inevitable. He also explains - and this is where he is very relevant to this Newsmakers series - that the most critical piece of critical infrastructure we have is not a power station, a water facility, or a telecommunications company. It's our parliaments and our courts and the free press…

You can listen to the conversation here or keep reading below for an edited transcript.

Interview Highlights

Highlight 1: On CyberCX and cybersecurity

Kate Watson: I did try and read your recent cyber threat report. I thought the summary was excellent, but then I barely understood the rest. And I thought, wow, there's a lot going on here that the layman just doesn't understand.

Alastair MacGibbon: No. And frankly, nor should they have to, right? They should care about the consequences. People should design technology such that it's fit for purpose. If you bought a microwave or a baby pram stroller that cut your fingers off every time you fold it up, they'd take that off the market. They'd say it wasn't fit for purpose. Maybe it rolls a baby around, but hey, it damages things more broadly. We do that for every piece of consumer good and service, except for tech. And with tech, we've kind of accepted that it's all just failed and that, you know, unless you use it right, we're just going to let you get harmed. And so what we do is we try to design out the harm piece.

Highlight 2: On why cyber attacks are warfare

Alastair MacGibbon: Sometimes we'll go in and find the code the offender - nation, state, or criminal - has put in is so subtle that they’re using the organisation’s own tools to carry out their acts. It is designed for the purpose of crippling critical infrastructure.

If you found a Chinese commando team putting plastic explosives on telephone exchanges and inside power generation plants - with a remote control that says if we need to, we're going to blow this up - that'd be an act of war. Which is why I say this is cyber warfare… It’s the equivalent of putting an explosive device on critical infrastructure.

Highlight 3: On TikTok, DeepSeek, and connected technologies…

Kate Watson: When it comes to China and national security, I often hear people say, ‘So what if China is listening? Why does it matter if Xi Jinping knows what I'm up to?’ There's a lot of talk about TikTok, but many don't see the concern. How do you respond to that?

Alastair MacGibbon: There's a couple of layers to this. Firstly, I'd say people misunderstand just what type of kleptomaniacs you're dealing with. They will steal everything they can and look to use it at some later stage. So, DeepSeek was in the press a couple of weeks ago. One of the things they collect is essentially the biometrics of the way you type. And people would sit there and go, who cares? I care. Because the way I type, the way I use a keyboard, then becomes an identifier for me on a whole range of other platforms… So I understand if the average punter doesn't care about that individually, but I care about connected technologies more broadly.

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