Maybe that’s why he has been in the cross hairs of Beijing, or so he claims.

Bassi has just written an op-ed in The Canberra Times, complaining that China is taking aim at the ASPI, and that “should be a wake-up call whether you [as an Australian] like, dislike or don’t know ASPI”.

He claims that “China’s main security agency directed state-backed cyberhackers to target [them]”.

Well, I think that is precisely the kind of exaggeration characteristic of the ASPI when it comes to all things Chinese. The ASPI is hands down the leading think tank promoting “the China threat” story in Australia, just like its news counterparts within the Rupert Murdoch media empire.

Submarines won’t prepare Australia for what China could do to it in a war

Presumably, Bassi was referring to an alleged “exclusive” by news site The Nightly, which claimed: “Chinese spymasters have identified Australia’s top security research institute as a priority target in their cyberattack operations, with an investigation by The Nightly for the first time able to reveal messages between hackers that refer to our nation.”

So, did the Chinese carry out the cyberattacks or were they merely thinking about or planning it? And should we trust The Nightly for not hyping the story, and the ASPI?

The Nightly story started off with a big bang. And then, towards the end, you have this letdown. “There is no suggestion that the Chinese government or its network of state-sponsored hackers has successfully compromised the ASPI’s cybersecurity,” the report said.

I started rolling my eyes, probably to the horrors of ophthalmologists. What, you mean China’s infamous state-supported hackers couldn’t crack the network security of a think tank? How are they going to target real government agencies and critical infrastructure in the West? What kind of a pitiful Chinese cyberthreat is this?

When it comes to China’s military capabilities, online influence or technological prowess, you can be sure any study from the ASPI will hype and exaggerate.

In November, the ASPI claimed in the title of a report that the Chinese Communist Party “actively cultivates a rising group of foreign influencers with millions of fans, which endorses pro-CCP narratives on Chinese and global social-media platforms”. The report was titled: “Singing from the CCP’s song sheet: The role of foreign influencers in China’s propaganda system.”

Really? Even if they were all paid for by the CCP, their reach is a drop in the ocean compared to the countless anti-China influencers who really do have millions of subscribers, not to mention the entire mainstream Anglo-American media to which influential think tanks such as the ASPI have a direct line. Often, their personnel are interchangeable.

Don’t take my word for it – The Nightly report goes even further.

Elon Musk escalates feud with Australia over X as spy chief warns of extremism

“The ASPI has contracts to deliver military research and training to the Department of Defence and cyber intelligence agency the Australian Signals Directorate,” it said. “The institute counts current and former senior officials from the defence and intelligence communities within its ranks.”

The ASPI is funded by the Australian Department of Defence, and some of the biggest Western defence contractors such as Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, Thales Group and Raytheon Technologies, as well as tech giants such as Microsoft, Oracle Australia, Telstra, and Google. Several European governments also contribute.

While we are on tech giants, just how threatening are China’s technological advances? Very, according to another ASPI study.

The September update of its “Critical Technology Tracker – The global race for future power” claims that China has already achieved dominance in “critical technologies”, and Western democracies are losing in the global technological contest. Its methods of comparisons are questionable.

It’s true that China has made amazing progress in science and technology, and research and development, but I think even Beijing would admit it is not quite there yet with the Americans – particularly in artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and pharmaceuticals.

First of all, research output is not the same as technological innovation. I imagine the most innovative people wouldn’t bother too much writing up papers to get published in academic journals.

Even in such journals, published papers are not all equal. It’s their groundbreaking nature and impact in their fields that really count. There are actually sophisticated studies and methods that track influence and impact, but they were not found in the ASPI study, which seems rather primitive.

In 2022, China’s share of total worldwide R&D expenditure was 27.5 per cent, compared to 35.6 per cent of the United States.

The US still leads by quite a distance, in both quality and quantity, and the same goes for its global military capabilities, though you wouldn’t get that impression from recent studies put out by the ASPI.

China, if the think tank is to be believed, wants to, and can, take over the world.

The reality is that China does not aim to take over, nor is it capable of taking over the world in the way the US does.

Maybe China should feel flattered – for being made into this highly unrealistic giant of a world-threatening monster.

Meanwhile, if I knew the US National Security Agency were hacking my computer and home Wi-fi network, I would wear it like a badge of honour rather than act like a crybaby. I would write an op-ed boasting, rather than complaining about it.

OK, maybe don’t reveal my internet search history, that could be embarrassing!