Sea Control - Sea Control 368 - The Quad's New MDA Initiative with Gina Fiore

Episode Date: August 4, 2022

Links1. "FACT SHEET: Quad Leaders’ Tokyo Summit 2022," May 23, 2022.2. "The Quad Goes to Sea," by Zack Cooper and Gregory Poling, War on the Rocks, May 24, 2022.

Hey folks, it's Jared. Gina Fiore is back on the podcast today and we'll be discussing the Quad's new Maritime Domain Awareness Initiative. Marie Williams edited and produced this episode. I'd like to pause here, highlight our local chapters, whether you're in South Korea, Egypt, Singapore, France, New York, India, or the Caribbean. Chances are there's a SimSec local chapter near you. You can find a full listing of our local chapters and contact information on our website, simsec.org. So if you're interested, please reach out and get involved. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, The Bilge Bumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pot of iron brew bottles

wherever you download your podcasts. And on that note, Kimber's meant. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International American Hello, showmates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. My guest today is Gina Fiore, And we'll be discussing the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness. So Gina, welcome back. Could you tell the listeners a little bit more about your background, please? Sure. Thanks for having me again.

So I am a principal associate with the Pew Chatterbill Trusts based in Washington, D.C. I work on our ending illegal fishing piece of our international fisheries program. As part of that, I look at IUU fishing through the lens of convergence crimes, as well as different types of financial dealings, including beneficial ownership, which is what we're looking at now. The other half of my job is looking at IUU fishing as a maritime security issue and as a just overall national security issue. So I liaise with a lot of militaries, Coast Guards, navies. I do a lot of work with the U.S. military and security community as well. Well, thank you for coming back. As a reminder to our listeners, all opinions are our own and not representative of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated. So the headline of this initiative is that it's led by the Quad, the U.S., Japan, Australia and India. But the announcement posted the White House's Web page, which is referenced in our links in the show notes, referenced close consultations with regional partners.

So who else is expected to participate in this initiative and what is it exactly that they have agreed to? And then for the listeners, I will timestamp this. We're recording this on June 18th. So as far as I know to date, I haven't actually seen the verbiage of what anyone has signed up for. So if that changes between now and when this airs, that's why we're asking the question. And to be fair, I also have not seen any verbiage yet. I am eagerly anticipating it, though. And so what was announced was something called the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness. And so it'll involve the Quads, obviously, but it's also going to involve Singapore through their information fusion center, the Pacific Island states, and then potentially countries in the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia.

So this seems like a rather large partnership, but I think right now the initial focus of this is going to be the Pacific Island states. And so what this partnership actually is, what they've agreed it to, is still kind of up in the air. It's a little murky. But from the initial announcement, so the White House fact sheet that came out, I believe, two or three weeks ago now, it looks like the quads are going to offer commercial radio frequency data. And so that data would be offered through different information nodes, such as the Forum Fisheries Agency in the Pacific, the Singapore Information Fusion Center, and then the Fusion Center in Vanuatu. So the White House announcement also talks about a common operating picture, which has not been officially named. So this is just a guess for me, but I think it's going to be C-Vision, which is

the United States' specific MDA partnership tool and is already widely used by partners in the Pacific and in Southeast Asia. So there's been a push recently by the West to try to counter increased Chinese engagement in the region. For example, the Chinese government just signed a security and development agreement with the Solomon Islands. And the Chinese foreign minister has been touring the region advocating for increased engagement. And so the Quad's partnership seems like a tangible effort to counter some of that. Can you explain the how of how the quad is expecting to track IUU fishing and other activities? You mentioned radio frequency data, you mentioned sea vision, but how does it actually work? Sure. So normally an analyst would track

large industrial vessels, so cargo vessels, fishing, large fishing vessels, fishing vessels that would have transponders on them, they track them with something called AIS. If they're large enough to have it and they don't have it turned off, which is something that can happen, it is possible to turn your AIS transponder off. Also, there's a large class of fishing vessels that are not mandated to have AIS. Also, fishing vessels specifically may have something called VMS, the vessel monitoring system, if their government mandates that their fishing vessels have it. So this is sort of what they are using now to track ships. Since AIS can be turned off, sometimes it can be spoofed. This RF data has the ability and the opportunity to fill in that

maritime picture. RF data can be used to track vessels that don't have transponders, that have one or both turned off and they're tracked because vessels put off radio frequency using different radios, using satellite phones, different types of safety beacons, or even cell phones that are in use and are held by the captain and the crew. So these signals are all picked up by satellite constellations that are put up by the RF companies. They make passes over the earth. And then that information is turned into data points that are then fed back into end users. If they're using sea vision, then those data points are then fed into sea vision and they form what's called a vessel track. And then the analysts can look at the vessel track

and they can see the different movements and actions of that specific vessel. RF data is also helpful if you have other types of data to use that can help you build your maritime picture. So, for example, if the analyst also has SAR, synthetic aperture radar, then the RF data combined with the SAR, potentially combined with AIS and or VMS, that can all be used to get a relatively clear picture of what's happening in that analyst's area of responsibility. So is the limiting factor prior to this agreement technical or some mixture of diplomatic policy limitation? I think it's a little bit of both. So RF data is still very new. And until recently, there wasn't even a commercial option. I remember my, I've been at Pew five years and my first meeting was with one of those very, very new RF data companies that was just putting up, I think they were testing their first satellite. It's very new at the time.

And countries already have access to AIS and VMS data, either through their own commercial contracts through a fusion center or by being a member of the FFA. So RF data is also very expensive. And while the costs should come down over time as more companies get in the field and put their own satellites up, right now it's cost prohibitive for most countries to obtain it on their own unless they're going through an information sharing partnership like the one announced by the quads. and on the diplomatic side, it's most practical to reach all of these countries through a partnership agreement like this. So for the United States specifically, developing information sharing agreements between the United States and another country on a bilateral basis, even for unclassified data, this can be very complicated and incredibly time consuming. And so doing this through the quad and having the data go through the fusion centers and FFA, I think this makes a lot of

sense. And I think also doing it this way, offering this data through FFA and the fusion centers encourages just more information sharing and more partnership between countries in general. What types of things would analysts be looking for? So it'll be different depending on what the analyst is tasked with. And so for this example, I'll use IUU fishing because that is what I work on. So an analyst is looking for a lot of different things when you are tracking a fishing vessel. So on a basic level, they're going to see where that vessel is going. Is it entering and then fishing in an exclusive economic zone? Is it just transiting through? What are its movement patterns? And from there, the analyst would want

to see what the behavior of that vessel is. Do the tracks look like a particular type of fishing? So vessel tracks or patterns of behavior can potentially determine what sort of gear they're using or if they're engaging in a practice such as bottom trawling. And then depending on where your vessel is, that fishing behavior may or may not be legal in that area. So in some EEZs, it is illegal to do bottom trawling. In some areas, it is illegal to use specific types of nets or gear. So those are all things that an analyst would look for initially. And then on top of all of that. So sometimes an analyst can be looking to see if a fishing vessel is moving up with a larger ship called a fish carrier to do something called transshipping. So transshipping

is when two vessels, and in the case of IUU fishing or fishing in general, it would be a fishing vessel pulling up alongside a refrigerated carrier to have the fishing vessel potentially offload fish from the fishing vessel to the refrigerated carrier that allows the fishing vessel to stay out to sea longer. In some of the Pacific Island EEZs, transshipping is only legal in port. So if they see a potential transshipping event that's happening outside of port in the EEZ, that is something, um, that the analyst, uh, needs to call more attention to, um, and they need to give that special attention and potentially flag it for maybe interdiction by a larger vessel.

So the White House mentioned in their fact sheet, a very large fact sheet, by the way, the White House mentioned that they were also doing this partnership to look for something called dark shipping. And I think the behaviors for dark shipping would be similar to transshipping, which I described earlier. So in that case, I think we would be looking for a cargo vessel pulling up alongside another vessel. This could be a fishing vessel. It could be a smaller all-purpose boat. And this would be in order to transfer oil, gas, or potentially coal between vessels. I think when they're talking about dark shipping, they're talking essentially about sanctions evasion is what comes to mind at first.

so shameless plug time uh it hasn't aired yet but for the listener sea control 356 is on global fish transshipment networks with dr gohar petrosian from uh john j school of criminology in new york city and she's going to talk all about it so if you want to know more about transshipment identifying uh vessels that are involved in transshipment go back and listen to that episode it'll be up on june 23rd five days from now um i would say are there existing agreements with commercial satellite providers in place already, or is that being negotiated as part of this initiative? So a lot of the countries in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, they already have their own commercial data providers. Satellite AIS, for example, is used by Singapore's Information

Fusion Center. Other countries have their own bilateral contracts between the providers, so WorldCom and ExactEarth, and then their own countries. The Forum Fisheries Agency uses satellite AIS as well, but it also has access to VMS data that it manages for member nations. FFA then has the ability to share that VMS data with other member nations, depending on what sort of information sharing agreements are on file. And while it's not satellite data, so this is just an example of how FFA has a lot of different information sharing practices. FFA also has agreements in place to share electronic monitoring data between their member states. And so when we talk about electronic monitoring data, that is the electronic monitoring and picking up of information that human observers would record.

It's very hard to put a human observer on every single fishing vessel. And so now there's a push and a movement towards having some of that data recorded electronically. The White House announcement also referenced regional fusion centers in India, Singapore, the Solomon Islands. And that'll be interesting in light of the Chinese-Solomons agreement. We can talk about that more if you'd like. And Vanuatu, do you expect to see any additional fusion centers established as a result of this initiative? And where might they go if that's the case? I've thought about that. And I don't think there will be any additional fusion centers right now as a result of the initiative. At least I have not heard of any, though this is going to be a long-term rollout from everything that I have heard from people that I have spoken to within the administration.

It's a long-term rollout and the quads are committed to a long-term partnership. But even if there are additional fusion centers, I don't know that they're 100% necessary. So right now, this MDA partnership, it's brand new. It's in its infancy. And so I think we're going to have to see, at least for the next couple of years, if sharing the RF data is actually working to increase the MDA picture for the Pacific Islands and then eventually wherever else it gets rolled out to. I think there's also a tendency to equate more fusion centers with this automatic increase in information sharing. And that's not necessarily true. I know I've sat in a number of different working groups and somebody always within the first like 30 minutes of like the by the second or third meetings, like let's stand up an information fusion center. But I think there are more impactful ways than just fusion centers, especially because there are enough fusions. I think there are a number of information fusion centers in the region. And I think we need to instead find ways to increase the tools in the analyst toolkit, as well as increasing the knowledge sharing that is happening between analysts in different countries, encouraging bilateral information sharing between member states, And just trying to see what other gaps are there in the analysts' knowledge and abilities that they feel like they need to have filled.

I also prefer to see, and I'm just me as a one person, I would prefer to see time invested in creating new shipwriter agreements between the four quad states and other countries, as well as setting money aside for hardware that may be needed. So maybe new boats, new platforms, UAV. There's some interesting stuff happening in buoy technology. And then just increased maritime exercises and patrols. I think one of the best ways to learn is by doing. And so putting the shipwright agreements in place. So if you'll permit me a follow-up, is there any agreement or is there any part of this agreement that you've heard talked about, whether it's on the sidelines or the front lines of the agreement, to establish additional enforcement capability in addition to the surveillance capability? Because the information, it's great to have all the information, but if there is no additional enforcement capability, I feel like you're just going to wind up with a bunch of analysts talking to each other about, yeah, it's really bad out there. so from what i have heard i have not heard about new enforcement capability and new enforcement platforms and so this is this is why the word partnership in this in this agreement is so important to me i think that they're that the quads are going to have to take the um they're going to have to take into account the needs of the of the partner countries and so i think what

i'm hearing right now is that the pacific islands are the this is where it's going to start um and so definitely taking their needs into account and the pacific islands they're all different they all have different um capabilities um i think you're going to be looking at different capabilities if you're comparing uh let's say fiji to vanuatu or kiribati um and so i think working like that seeing what those countries actually individually need. And if some of them do need more enforcement platforms and they need more of that hardware, I think making that happen is going to be very important. I have seen, so it's in the fact sheet and I have talked to some folks, not immediately, but I think one of the next steps is going to be doing some sort of maybe

an inventory or maybe an overview of newer technologies that are coming out. And that could be software. That could be new data points. That could be new types of hardware. That really could be anything. I'm hoping that it is more inclusive versus exclusive. How does this compare to other maritime initiatives in the region? How important is this one? So again, I think it's too early to tell um i don't think we're going to know for a couple of years i think we're going to have to see some like solid outputs um and that could be um they could find like using this rf technology they can find some vessels that are engaging in dark shipping where they normally wouldn't um there could be an increase in finding vessels that are um fishing fraudulently or entering and

exiting illegally or entering the EEZ and then leaving some nets and then dragging them back out um over that like mile 200 marker um which is sometimes the tactic that is used to fish illegally so they could start seeing some of that um they could be um they could have an easier time tracking the Vietnamese blue boats that are according to who you talk to are still out there um just fishing you know illegally um off the coast of i believe they may still be fishing off the coast of australia um i am not 100 sure on that but the announcement um especially kirk campbell's declaration in may of this year that iuu fishing is one of if not the most uh important issue for the region and making it a priority for the quad i think that is overall

that's very important. We have not seen that in other maritime domain awareness initiatives. So for a long time, fisheries enforcement has been a real backburner issue. I can remember a time not too long ago when I worked for the U.S. Navy on IUU fishing and was told very politely that IUU was not a priority, that it was a Coast Guard issue only, and that's where it would stay for time immemorial and so now six years later uh the u.s indo-pacific coordinator he's on the stage at csis talking about iuu fishing as a priority threat in the pacific ocean and the quads are rolling out a new mda initiative and a new information sharing program and i think that's going to have an enduring effect on um the fight to counter iuu fishing in not just the pacific

Islands, I would like to think, in the whole of the Pacific. But I think before we drop this thread, I think it's also equally important. And I was struck by something, I don't know how many of your listeners were able to catch any of the Center for New American Security's annual conference. They had a panel on the Indo-Pacific, and one of the panelists was now retired General Suzanne Veras-Loom, who's president of the East West Center. And she said that there could be issues in this relationship if this relationship is interpreted by the pacific island as a transactional security-based initiative only and i wanted to highlight that because i think she's right um i think there really does need to be like a real comprehensive approach to how the quads

approach their relationship with the pacific islands what they think they're asking for um and they need to engage with the different needs of the different different pacific island states and take into serious consideration what those needs are versus just the four quad states kind of rolling up in this like large group and saying, look at this thing we have and we are giving you the end. So I'm hoping that in the coming months, we see the quads really emphasize the partnership part of this announcement and really kind of work together to make sure that everybody's needs are met, not just with the Maritime Domain Awareness Initiative, though that is my focus, but on all of the many things that this new QUADS initiative is announcing and

is rolling out. Well, I think IUU fishing is going to get even more of a close-up just as we watch what's happening in Ukraine unfold, because it's going to become a pillar of the global food supply issue, depending on what happens with Ukrainian grain harvests. And that's held up going anywhere that fish is another source of another source of food and it's all being diverted to one country in large part. But unfortunately, that's all the time that we have for today. I'd like to thank my guest, Gina Fiore. Gina, where can we find you online? What else are you working on? So right now, Pew is partnering with C4ADS and TM Tracking on a beneficial ownership in fisheries project.

and we hope to have something published by the end of 2022. So you can find that and more of my writing at the Petrus website, it's at thepetrus.org. And you can also find me and my semi-hot takes on New York Giants football and IUU fishing at MarsecGina on Twitter. Well, thank you again for joining us, the listeners.

Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time. We'll be right back. Water, wine, both white and red Oh, put it on the shimbo now So help me, Bob, I'm pulling the alley Why are they pulling the alley? Help me, Bob, I'm pulling the alley

Put it on the shimbo now