Transcript

What are the origins of AGO and how has the organisation developed within the National Intelligence Community? 

How does AGO contribute to the broader remit of Australian statecraft, the work done by other NIC agencies, and the Five Eyes partnership? 

What are some of the biggest challenges in Australia’s immediate region that AGO is working towards? What role do emerging technologies play in this? 

What makes innovation in the geospatial intelligence space key to building resilience? 

In this episode Kathryn McMullan joins Sally Bulkeley to discuss the importance of geospatial intelligence, how it contributes to statecraft, and how the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation (AGO) works with other partners to enhance national security and resilience. 

(This transcript is AI-generated and may contain inaccuracies.)

Kathryn McMullen 

For me, resiliency is diversity, so the more partners we have that have different capabilities and offerings for us, the better that is. It increases our breadth, our depth, our coverage, and provides a degree of challenge to our own capabilities so that we're continually improving our own trade craft.

National Security Podcast 

You're listening to the National Security Podcast, the show that brings you expert analysis, insights and opinion on the national security challenges facing Australia and the Indo Pacific, produced by the ANU national security College.

Sally Bulkeley 

Welcome to the National Security Podcast. I'm Sally Bulkeley, deputy head of the ANU National Security College, and today's podcast is being recorded on the lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, and I pay my respects to their elders, past and present. Today we pay tribute to the 25th anniversary of the Australian Geospatial Intelligence Organisation, and I'm delighted to have Kathryn McMullen, the director of AGO on the podcast, appointed in June 2023 Kathryn, is responsible for all aspects of AGO’s operations as an intelligence agency within the national intelligence community, the NIC and the Department of Defence. Previously at the Office of National Intelligence, Kathryn was responsible for NIC wide workforce, including the establishment of the National Intelligence Academy, head of profession for analysis and trade craft and lead for the daily Prime Minister's brief. Kathryn has worked extensively across the national security community in a range of operational intelligence and strategic policy roles within the Australian government, including ONI, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Department of Defence. Her breadth of experience impressively spans across intelligence capability, border security, national defence, foreign policy and intelligence. Kathryn, welcome to the National Security Podcast.

Kathryn McMullen

Thank you so much for having me. It's a delight.

Sally Bulkeley

Thank you, Kathryn. If we were to look back into the year 2000 It was when Howard first released his first defence white paper, which marked the beginning of a period of change in Australia's outlook and presence, and some of that focus was around globalisation and the US presence caught within our immediate region. How was the AGO initiated? And how was the agency's evolution shaped by the National Intelligence community today?

Kathryn McMullen 

Good opening questions, and it's an opportune time. As you said, we are here to celebrate AGO’s 25th birthday. But in fact, the roots of the organisation go back to the beginnings of World War One. So we had the army survey corps was established in 1915 and the first hydrographic department of the Royal Australian Navy followed in 1920, but it wasn't until 2000s that DIGO, the Defence Imagery and Geospatial Organisation, was formed, and that was sort of the beginning of what is now AGO, very much focused on defence needs, ADF capability. And then in 2017 the Australian Hydrographic Organisation was added to our remit, and they brought our maritime geospatial capabilities to the fore. But AGO as it is today, is really about being the centre of excellence for geospatial intelligence for the country, we are primarily focused on our defence and ADF customers on a day to day basis, but increasingly, we are supporting our national intelligence community partners as well. And that shift to do NIC Support has really focused around sort of domestic resilience and support of ASIO activities, and that, I think, is becoming increasingly important in today's sort of geopolitical environment, and sort of what some of Director General Security has been talking about publicly. But we also do a lot right across government. We support Geoscience Australia, who are a civilian geospatial organisation. We support the states and territories during bushfire, sort of flood seasons. We do lots of HADR activity in the region. So I'd say we're a very versatile organisation, but our value add and our unique contribution really is that that we are the organisation that that sees, visualises and understands with precision and clarity exactly what is where on the globe, and being able to do that for our customers in whatever form they need it to execute their mission is really what AGOs about. I talk about us being the quieter achievers, we're often in the background, enabling others, but it's pretty exciting when everyone needs you and there is no competition. We are the best at what we do, and we want to make sure that our customers can be their very best as well.

Sally Bulkeley 

Have to agree there Kathryn that when working in the national intelligence community, invisibility, is success, and certainly we've seen through the AGO where they have specifically delivered on Geo intelligence to customers. But also we're starting to see the emergence of state craft, integrated state craft take place across multiple agencies. So it's a whole of nation effort at the moment.

Kathryn McMullen 

Indeed

Sally Bulkeley 

And of course, as part of state craft, you have technology, diplomacy, economic resilience, and, of course, military and intelligence. How has the agency expanded to be able to provide that broader remit of statecraft

Kathryn McMullen 

We're guided by what sort of government requests, and you know, listeners would know the Office of National Intelligence role around working on what their priority intelligence activities for the community and the Australian intelligence missions as we as we call them, and we make sure that we're hitting those requirements within the defence system. The Chief of Defence Intelligence sets the Defence Intelligence priorities as well, and we work to those. In the current environment, you know, there's about an 80% overlap between those guiding areas of activity. And AGO as we straddle both, we really focus our workforce and our analytical activity in support of those priorities. But we're not just reactive. We do do a lot of work, especially with DIO, ONI and our policy partners, to anticipate where the need will be. So if we're thinking about AUKUS, what can geospatial intelligence bring to that problem set? It's less of a collection analysis, but it's more about understanding threat profiles and red teaming activity to inform countermeasures for example. We're thinking much more about how we can support the financial intelligence agency to understand what money flows look like in support of their priority areas, same with the ACIC and others. So Geospatial Intelligence has a really useful way where, when it's fused with something else, you can get really interesting insights that can help drive other agencies work programmes, and we've really been focused on making sure that everyone understands what our capability can do. And the, if I think about how many partners we have across the NIC, across the Australian Government, and then, you know internationally, that speaks to recognition of quality and benefit for those customers.

Sally Bulkeley 

And it's great to hear you speak of geospatial intelligence capability, not only within the intelligence context, but also fore-sighting and being able to conduct scenario testing, stress testing, particularly within the Australian community. How has the relationship extended beyond the Australian community and into our alliance partners, particularly the Five Eyes community. How has the AGO shaped its development?

Kathryn McMullen 

There is a five eyes GEOINT community, like all of the other INTs. It's a really strong connected system, both in terms of connected in terms of actual mission systems. You know, we work closely together and share capability together, and we're able to burden share across the globe. We're able to do follow the sun activities. So we can do hand off if it's in a continuous sort of active, active environment. But increasingly, we see the benefit of Geospatial Intelligence outside of the five eyes. And the National Defence Strategy released last year, gave some pretty clear guidance to defence, but to wider Australian Government about other regional partners of priority, outside of the five eyes, talks about some of our Pacific partners, Southeast Asia, Japan, Korea and others, and the importance of building those capabilities. All of those players we have a relationship with. We work well with them together, and we're really trying to deepen those partnerships so that they are optimised for both of our nation's interests and we can lean on them if and when required. But it's a busy world, and the more we can burden share with other countries of like minded capabilities, values and intents, the better it will be for all of us.

Sally Bulkeley 

And I think in this very complex and very compounding threat environment that we're in at the moment, there is no time like right now where it's ever so more important to have geo intelligence capability shared amongst our alliances, but also extending the partnership into industry. What role does commercial space and cyber capability in Australia play in supporting AGO’s mission and the other way around? How does AGO then support industry as well?

Kathryn McMullen 

Yeah, GEOINT is really interesting. If you look at the commercialization of intelligence over the past decade, I talk about us being in a golden decade of GEOINT, I'd say the last decade was all about OSINT. You know, it was all about that commercialization of open-source material. But you look at some of the big players globally, and there are big geospatial intelligence, I'd say, kind of lowercase i companies out there providing collection services, analytical services, and building industry to advance those, those collection systems, AGO has relationships with those. For me, resiliency is diversity, so the more partners we have that have different capabilities and offerings for us, the better that is. It increases our breadth, our depth, our coverage, and provides a degree of challenge to our own capabilities so that we're continually improving our own trade craft. So AGO’s relationship with industry, I would say, is strong and continues to grow, and we are finding industry partners who are really interested in testing their capabilities against our problem sets and looking to find solutions together. And I think that's a great thing for the geospatial industry writ large, but within Australia, I would say it's less mature than others, but certainly there are some really excellent local players that we're looking to partner with, and we've sort of trialled and tested capabilities with and I see a really positive future, I think the age when, especially in, I'd say the GEOINT business in particular, it isn't a government only activity. I think the ability to partner with trusted experts in the field, but inside sort of the control of our business set and ensuring we've got, you know, the appropriate operational security, etc, we're going to accelerate and advance our capabilities and advance our warning capabilities for decision makers much more quickly than if we were doing it without industry partners.

Sally Bulkeley 

And I think it's part of that maturity concept that you've highlighted there, it's about the building trust with industry, building the trust with the alliance partnerships, building trust with government and as an intelligence ecosystem, then being able to deliver on the priorities that you're considering. The NSC at the moment, is focused on preparedness and resilience as part of our policy agenda and bringing social licence to the community on preparedness and resilience. How is AGO through that ecosystem and through the wonderful workforce that you have preparing for future international and domestic shocks, whether that's extreme weather events or whether that's cyber hacks or changes to world order, which feature is part of some of our alliances? What are some of the biggest challenges that you're seeing in the immediate region that AGO can contribute to

Kathryn McMullen 

Yeah, so we talk a lot about preparedness and resiliency inside AGO, but inside defence writ large, and inside the NIC as well. For me, it has a couple of layers, and you can look at it through those, but really it's how do you bring that whole package together? But you have preparedness of systems and processes. We have preparedness of workforce, do we have the right people with the right skills, the right training, the right transferability, etc? Do we have preparedness of policies? Who are decision makers in times of crises, or, God forbid, conflict? And how do you, how do you get to those decisions? What are the risk appetites, and how do you operate within that? And what's your authorising environment? Those things shift during the scale of kind of competition to crises. So you know, your system, your policy, your processes, your people. And then the final element for me is, well, what are you actually doing? Will we be doing the full breadth of activity in a crisis that we're doing right now? If a crisis runs 24/7, for weeks on end, probably not. So how do we make some of those hard decisions about what's, what is particularly important at that moment in time, and what's and what's not? So all of those things, for me is really about positioning AGO to be match fit essentially when required. We've spent pretty much all this calendar year in almost perpetual rehearsal and exercise in support of the ADF, whilst balancing real world events where we've had high demand on our activities, such as the task group 107 circumnavigation of Australia. That is the most kind of, you know, commonly known one. But all through the year, we've been busy, and what that has enabled us to do is actually test our systems, our sort of staffing activities, making sure we can balance wellbeing and sort of mental resiliency of staff with the demands and the tempo that we're operating in. So it's been one package of work, but there is a lot of work happening across the NIC and across government, with broader preparedness and resiliency activity that we're feeding into as well. And that's important, because, as I said, you know, we are, we are an enabling organisation in many ways, and it won't be AGO at sort of the front line, making decisions and picking yes or no. We'll be informed by, you know what the government of the day requires, what our senior officials require, what our regional partners require, and so the ability to be lean and agile and effective requires a culture and an organisation that is committed to the mission, but adaptable and able to see their value through those partnerships. And I think we've got a workforce that's really attuned to that.

 

Sally Bulkeley 

I think there's, there's great confidence in that Kathryn and I think also having private sector there, partnering with you as part of the AGO remit to undergo things such as space and cyber domain contributions, but also such a huge advancement of technology and capability uplift within the AGO over the next 25 years. I think, you know, I look back at 2000 the good old classic internet, the Y2K bug, which was hugely mitigated across multiple businesses, cost millions of dollars. And here we are, 25 years later, looking at satellite technology, AI, quantum and machine learning, how has advances to capability and digital transformation influenced and shaped the way that AGO operate, and how do they give redundancy to the AGO mission in this time where we need to be resilient?

Kathryn McMullen 

Yeah, when I was coming over to record the podcast, my chief of staff made the observation to me that 25 years ago, she was a teenager and didn't even have a phone. So if I think about what 25 years from now looks like, it's actually somewhat unfathomable. But seeing the explosion of space based assets, and I won't say kind of intelligence assets, but just general assets, you know, that will be there for intelligence, will be there for military purposes, that will be there for research and exploration they talk about, you know, mining in, you know, in sort of the moon and other places, like just the volume of activity in space in 25 years, I think will be, you know, a significant leap forward again. So it's really hard to think about what that technology looks like 25 years out, but what we are trying to do now is to essentially think of ourselves, yes, we're an intelligence organisation, but actually we're, we're a data knowledge organisation. So how do we shape and position ourselves such that we are able to absorb such massive amounts of data? And I kind of describe as heavy data, because, you know, the visuals of it, it's not zeros and ones, it's quite bulky, heavy data that takes, like a lot of you know, virtual space, essentially. But how do we get ourselves ready to absorb that be able to make sense of that information? So information leads to insights. Insights leads to intelligence, and intelligence leads to impact. Hopefully, if we focus on the data bit so that we make the most of that intelligence, to get us ourselves to insights actually, then the rest of the Intelligence Cycle kind of flows from that. But if you don't have those foundations right now, we'll be playing catch up for the you know the next 25 years. What we've done in the last 18 months, we're very close to delivering some really impressive capabilities through the integrated investment programme that defence has, and that will really be the start of the next few years where we think about how we leverage good knowledge and data management practices. How do we leverage cloud-based technology? How do we leverage AI, machine learning, computer visualisation technologies to help drive insights and to help inform intelligence and getting an organisation that is data literate, AI savvy and with a curiosity and a culture that encourages the testing and adoption is really important. One of the things I was most proud of at my census results for this year was a significant increase in the number of people who are, who think that we embrace innovation as an organisation, because we are prepared to try things, fail it and move on. And I can't remember off the top of my head it was about a 14, 15% increase in that actually, for me, what that speaks to is a culture in the organisation that people are prepared to try things, test things, and make changes to the way we're doing things, or if it doesn't work, try the next great idea. And actually, if you have an organisation that's agile with the right sort of cultural foundations, then I think you're much more likely to succeed with whatever the future looks like for AGO

Sally Bulkeley 

and I think it's a wonderful sentiment also to your leadership, to have a culture that drives innovation as well, particularly in a challenging period where most people divert to the processes or the direction or what's established already, when thinking about the wicked problem of data sets and how you bring it all together, whether it's AI or quantum, are we leaders here in Australia in doing so? Or are there other examples out there, through our alliance partnerships, or through commercial partnerships, where they're offering different ways by which we can, we can bring these data sets together, bring meaningful information, bring it quickly and responsively, particularly when shocks prevail across Australia's context.

Kathryn McMullen 

I would say there are some areas we're absolutely leading in, and some of the trade crafts that AGO’s analysts and our data scientists have developed in the last sort of 18 months that I've seen is definitely at the forefront, and has been, you know, made it into presidential briefings and sort of other, you know, Five Eyes, partners briefings. But, but there are aspects that actually our US colleagues, and our Canadian colleagues, and our UK and New Zealand colleagues are excellent at as well. And the benefit of five eyes is that actually we can all bring that expertise together. We can, we can share, we can contest, we can challenge, and then we find actually what is, what is best. But if you think of it from a purely tradecraft perspective, the insights and the learnings we're seeing through the Russia-Ukraine conflict has been particularly useful to think about. Well, what does that mean for indicators and warnings? What does it mean for the nature of future military conflicts, albeit that's a land based, how would that impact on how we would collect intelligence, understand indicators to ensure that there is enough warning time. How do we work across the space, air, land, sea, undersea domains in a way that supports the ADF, but is also understanding kind of, you know, adversary presence, et cetera. So all of that, we continually talk about as a Five Eyes, continually challenge, and increasingly we talk outside the Five Eyes with other key partners as well on that. So, you know, success is a team sport, and whoever your team is, you want to rely on them. So absolutely AGO we’re doing some excellent stuff, but so are all of our partners, some pretty impressive and very smart people in the GEOINT community.

Sally Bulkeley 

And I think that the collective innovation, or the collective sense of advancing through what I see is mission centric ideals here, which is fantastic, builds on the resilience picture as well,

Kathryn McMullen 

exactly

Sally Bulkeley 

of the capability and furthering that, do you see AGO whether it's an organisation or more broadly, with its partners and commercial partners, building resilience together on the capabilities that you've described when it comes to cyber threats, or cyber-attacks so you mentioned earlier red teaming, for example. Are you starting to see that the foresighting of red teaming functions makes these shocks more apparent? Or are we still pioneering our way through determining how we protect intelligence capabilities from adversaries.

Kathryn McMullen 

I think we've as a community, have been doing more red teaming the last few years, and as a result, getting better at it and sharing trade craft with other partners and testing that so I definitely have seen a significant improvement in that capability. But again, there's always more to learn and more to improve, and there'll be new capabilities that we'll need to think about as new technologies that have come, come into the into the world. So it will be a continuous journey. But you know, red teaming is one aspect we talk a lot about redundancy. So how do we ensure redundancy in a, you know, fully internet connected world, and what does that look like outside of an internet connected world, you know, there are things that we will have to do that are very old school in that kind of scenario. So, so thinking about redundancy, how does that? We've already touched on resiliency as well, but the ability to not just be interoperable with partners, but potentially interchangeable, that's a different concept as well. So kind of continually challenging our thinking around, okay, I might say AGO we’re, you know, we're fit for purpose and we're good to go, and we do business continuity testing and tabletop exercises and real life rehearsals and all those sorts of things. But actually what that is doing is just challenging us to continually review and reassess and make sure that we are shaping ourselves and posturing ourselves to what we think is coming, and all of those insights that we get through red teaming, that you get advice out of our all source agencies about what threats might look like in the coming years, are all critically important. So the more that we can listen and consume that and then apply it for our own business and our own challenges and our own responsibilities, again, the better we'll be at actually exercising and rehearsing those scenarios and therefore informing where the business needs to change and evolve.

Sally Bulkeley 

And I think that's a really good point to make right across the board when it comes to protecting assets, building resilience, building redundancy, is that the red teaming, with various partnerships, with the ecosystem, with a mission centric vision in mind, supports everybody that needs to be in that build up for preparedness as part of that.

Kathryn McMullen 

Exactly, yeah, and I'm a big one on sort of the mission approach, right? We can't do it alone. The more friends we have, the more teammates we have, the better the outcome will be.

Sally Bulkeley 

Absolutely.

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Sally Bulkeley 

And moving on to AGO within its own self an entity. It's a rather unfamiliar entity to the Australian community. It could be considered suits or spies. It could be considered people sitting in the back with a sort of Sim City centric type geospatial gaming. How would you demystify AGO’s remit to our listeners.

Kathryn McMullen 

So at AGO we recently sort of rebranded, and we talk about protecting our horizons and mapping our future, and that really picks up sort of two of our core functions. So protecting our horizons, we're there to support as articulated in the National Defence strategy. We're there to support broader Australian government, the ADF, the homeland, et cetera. And our capabilities takes us beyond line of sight. It takes us over the horizon and through our international partnerships. We do have global coverage, if and when required. We want to map our future, though, a part of our core job is to actually survey and map undersea, the maritime environment on land and support Air Force for their air charting activity as well. And that, those are heavily technical skills that require lots of training, lots of expertise. And we have some of the world's best experts in some of those, those geospatial specialisations. And through the Australian Hydrographic Office, through AGO through our foundation geospatial, we are really mapping, where we need to go, where our customers need to understand, with real, true precision, what the nature of their operating environment looks like from a physical sense, and that is a core part of our job. So yes, we are an Intelligence Organisation. We're a geospatial organisation, we're a collection organisation, we're a training organisation, we're a data management organisation. So we are many things to many people, but it's an organisation full of experts in their field, and people committed to that mission, so that we can adapt and change and service those requirements. And that's a pretty awesome and pretty exciting place to work, I'd say.

Sally Bulkeley 

And I think Kathyrn, you can extend the AGO role like we did previously with statecraft, to diplomacy

Kathryn McMullen

Indeed.

Sally Bulkeley 

and to foreign policy and international engagement, partnerships and Kathyrn in your role as leading NIC workforce, looking at what the forecasted role of personnel and their mission to play in the intelligence community, if we were to step into AGO what are the types of career opportunities that are out there, whether you're a national security practitioner or whether your administrative body, very keen to hear from you.

Kathryn McMullen 

So I often say there is a job for every person and every trade anywhere in the intelligence community to do really interesting things for AGO we are, we do have geospatial experts who have studied geography and you know precision navigation timing, you know all sorts of very specialised things. And we recruit through universities and TAFEs for those activities. We look for people that are good analytical thinkers who can hopefully feed into our intelligence stream. We look for STEM people. We've got a STEM cadet programme where we're really looking for data scientists to really help drive our innovation activities. And we like to have our sort of innovation data scientists working hand in glove with our intelligence analysts so the business is informing that development. We've got generalists. We've got corporate functions I need lawyers, I need policy folk to help inform my international engagement programme. And where we might want to prioritise partners, we do do a lot of what we call intelligence diplomacy activity. The benefit of GEOINT is it's often less sensitive than other INT’s, and so it is always in high demand from our DFAT and defence attache colleagues to use in their engagement so we do a lot of that activity as well, and we need people that understand that kind of policy and international engagement space. As I said, we are as a collection organisation, we need to understand the technology behind collection assets and how we task and automate that collection. So fundamentally, what I'm looking for are people that are excited about what AGO does that have an aptitude to learn and expand their skill sets. And who are, you know, willing to give things a try, but are fundamentally committed to protecting Australia's national interests, supporting the mission of Defence and the National Intelligence Community, and, you know, being in a job where actually they're contributing to Australia's prosperity and security. And if I've got someone like that, then we can absolutely optimise their skill set and their contributions within inside AGO

Sally Bulkeley 

Kathyrn. That's highly motivating. I feel like I need to sign the application form at this point. At this point,

Kathryn McMullen 

please do. But one of the benefits, which I say to my NIC colleagues, is we have a really positive workforce. I am full, and there is not any other NIC agency that is full. So we have low separation, a healthy but low separation, and oversubscribed recruitment streams, which is a fantastic place to be in, but I still encourage people to keep looking at AGO and keep joining.

Sally Bulkeley 

And it's incredible, because with the capabilities that you have with that we've all just expanded on today, there is such great demand on the AGO to perform such a wide range of tasks and missions, which is fantastic. But it all comes down to the leader, which is yourself, and you've been leading now since July 2023, what leadership legacy would you like to leave with the AGO in the future, both, both today in your current leadership role, but as we venture into 2030, and beyond. What are some of the attributes and values and missions that you would like to see remain within the ATO?

Kathryn McMullen 

So I've really focused in the last couple of years on building the profile of the organisation in a way that demonstrates we're there to serve and enable our customers. But for me, that is a lot about putting faith and trust in the workforce and giving them the confidence that I am their champion and their advocate. I want a workforce that feels empowered to try new things, to test new things, and not to be afraid of failure, because I think true innovation can't happen without failure. So I really want a workforce that feels empowered. Mission and purpose, though, for me, are the real drivers. So I talk a lot about what AGO does and what benefit that that gives the ADF, that gives the NIC partners, that gives wider government. Because I think if people can see themselves in the mission, they derive value from that, and they see purpose in their day to day work. And I'm going to therefore end up with a, you know, hopefully more motivated and engaged workforce. So when I think about leadership, you know, I focus my effort on those concepts of empowerment, on mission, on setting the vision. And, you know, in my own sort of daily exercise of my jobs and my responsibilities, walking that talk and truly trying to say, Yes, I am your I am your champion, I am your advocate, I will listen, but I will challenge at the same time in a, you know, respectful way. And that's all because I want us to be, you know, a highly optimised and agile organisation, and the change I've seen and the positive response from the workforce I've had in the last two years, I think actually means the organisation was ready for that as well and really excited about what that means for the future of the organisation going forward. Everyone's tenure is a point in time, and the next director of AGO I have no doubt, will continue to drive the organisation forward, and they'll put their own sort of leadership stamp on it. What I hope that I leave that person with is an organisation that is absolutely the forefront of advancing not just AGO’s mission set, but, but that broader national picture of, you know, prosperity and security, but with these foundation stones of curiosity, innovation, commitment to mission and purpose, and a willingness to lean in and do what they can to advance our customers objectives. I think we're, I think we're there, and I think the organisation is primed and is already fulfilling that. But when I leave, I'm sure that that will continue as well.

Sally Bulkeley 

I can hear a lot of value based leadership in in that which is very much resonating with me at the moment, when it comes to uplifting culture, having everybody on a unified value set and a mission centric purpose. We've come to the end Kathyrn, where I can't believe we've been going for almost 40 minutes, but I have one last question to ask you, it's quite odd, but let's go with it. What is your favourite line of intelligence?

Kathryn McMullen 

Well, of course, as Director AGO, I should, I should absolutely say GEOINT. But having worked in a few of the different INT’s in my career, I actually think the best intelligence is when it's fused. So AGO does really excellent work with ASD. We do GEO-SIG fusion on a couple of, you know, really interesting topics, and the ability to derive insights in a completely different way is what gets me most excited. We're doing more, as I said earlier, with AUSTRAC and that sort of geo-finance fusion, geo locating where money goes, how it moves around the globe, to support, you know, sort of terrorism or organised crime activities. That's really important for some of our NIC counterpart agencies, when we combine with AUSINT’s and sort of some of the ad tech stuff that's out there, again, really interesting and important for when we're doing kind of threat to life activity as well, and we're supporting sort of DFAT and others around that. So every INT has its own quirks, I would say, and its own cultures inside those organisations, but they're all fantastic on their own. But actually the special source is the fusion. And when you bring not just the output of the INTs together, but you actually get different INTs professionals working together, and their ability to problem solve is particularly exciting. I think

Sally Bulkeley 

That's fantastic. And Kathryn, before we leave, do you have any final reflections that you'd like to offer the listeners?

Kathryn McMullen 

No, I just, I think. Thank you very much. As I said, you know, it's 25 years for AGO which makes us, you know, a baby of the organisation, but the roots of the organisation go back to the beginning of the 1900s when I think of the future, I only see good things for AGO and I only see good things for the for the national security community more broadly. But I think for AGO for listeners you know, partner with us, think about joining the organisation. Think about how GEOINT might contribute to your mission sets wherever you work, and I think you'll always find an open door at AGO and staff and professionals who want to help and want to advance the mission set. So don't be a stranger.

Sally Bulkeley 

Thanks, Kathryn, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today, and thank you for being on our podcast.

Kathryn McMullen

My pleasure. And thank you very much.

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